James R. Hardin's Blog

If you've read Softlife and liked it (and you did, right?), I'd appreciate it if you'd leave a review on Amazon, as well as any other place, like Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, anywhere. I can't offer you anything for doing this--that would be against ethics and Amazon's policies--but you'd have my gratitude. More reviews may help sales, may help other readers find a book they'd like, and would make me feel good! Thanks!

If you haven't read Softlife but want to, here's the link to it on Amazon,
https://www.amazon.com/.../ref=rdr_ki...
and here's my website page showing other places to get it
https://jamesrhardin.com/softlife/
The website includes a link for five free chapters (and Amazon's Look Inside feature works too), so you can try it and see whether you want to buy it or not. I won't know if you don't, and I promise I wouldn't have come after you anyway!

No, it's not a call to release the book from prison. Smashwords is having its end-of-year sale, and Softlife is available for free! The sale ends January 1, and the ebook will soon be returning to its normal price of $2.99. This is your chance to grab a late Christmas present from me. Smashwords makes numerous file types available, so you can read a book from them on almost anything.

Softlife on Smashwords is at
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

The Smashwords sale is at
https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/pr...

And while you're there, have a look at the other free and reduced-price books in their sale.

I'm so confused! (But that's not so unusual.)

I was just reading blog posts about reviews. Some people were adamant that an author should never "Like" reviews he or she gets, because that's too much like responding directly to a review, which everybody agrees is bad form. Others insisted that authors who don't "Like" good reviews come across as snooty, and that "Liking" a review is a way of saying "Thank you."

Well, I certainly do appreciate good reviews (and I'll welcome bad ones too, even if I won't enjoy them as much), and I don't want to be thankless or snooty, so I'll go back and "Like" some of my reviews. Keep 'em coming!

If you have an opinion on this subject, add a comment here. Help allay this author's confusion (or perhaps worsen it, depending).

I just wanted to point out that Softlife was written long before Donald Trump was even a candidate, so my use of the term "Space Force" has nothing to do with his.

I'm not sure I'm doing this whole social media thing right. I always feel like people are busy and won't want to waste their time reading a post from me unless I have something fascinating to say. And I feel like this Goodreads page and my Facebook author page should be about my writing in particular, where fascinating things are few and far between. And so I don't post much. Should I talk about more than writing, like moving some content from my Facebook personal page to here? Should I just try to be more fascinating (now THAT might be a tough one!)?

I'm running a Goodreads Giveaway for 100 Kindle copies of Softlife through March 5. You can find the giveaway from the book page here: Softlife. Or just search through the giveaways.

I've never tried this before, and I'm curious to see how it goes. I've read that some people just enter all the giveaways they can as fast as they can click, then look to see what they've won later and don't necessarily read the books they got. I'll just have to hope my giveaway entrants are the sort who will really read the book and maybe even give it some good reviews (if they like it--but of course they'll like it!). I'm guessing that if you've stopped to read this blog post, you're one of the more engaged readers I'm looking for.

So go have a look and enter the giveaway! And good luck!

Reviews must be honest to be of any use, so if I were to review everything I read, I'd have to write some unfavorable ones. Being an author myself gives me three reasons to avoid doing this:

1. It could come across as snarky. No matter how much I deny it, if I say something bad about Joe Hypothetical Author's work, people will tend to see an implied "but my material is much better."

2. It could alienate potential readers. Even if I'm not crazy about Joe Hypothetical Author's work, some of his readers might like my material--if they aren't predisposed against me by learning my dirty little secret that I don't like their favorite author's work.

3. It could alienate or harm an author. Maybe Joe Hypothetical Author likes my work and will say nice things about it, if I haven't slammed him. Besides, even if I don't care for his work, it's nothing personal; I still wish him well and don't want to hurt his sales. We authors ought to help each other out.

All that said, I want the chance to tell you about some really great books I've read. So I'll still review certain selected books--not necessarily all the good books I've read, so don't assume the absence of a review means I'd say something bad.

The only place my reviews might wobble a bit from pure honesty is that I tend to be more lenient with authors I've actually met. I wouldn't say I liked something that I didn't, but I might advertise for them just a little more. Again, we authors ought to help each other out.

Nothing against dark and dystopian; such books have a worthy place in the wide universe of science fiction and fantasy (SF/F). But I feel the upbeat is sometimes dismissed as somehow less significant. I like a lot of things, but I do prefer to read stories with characters who hang in there and triumph in at least some way. This is where my writing tends to be as well (though I won't promise that all of my stories will be optimistic; I have to keep the readers guessing!).

So I'm starting an "Optimistic SF/F" shelf in Goodreads. "Optimistic" does not mean all sunlight and roses; some of these stories get pretty harsh and some of the characters get pretty ambiguous. But deep down, they know they need to try to do what's right, and they generally succeed eventually, even if not in the way they originally wanted.

Not surprisingly, there's a lot of overlap with my "Favorites" shelf, but the two are not identical--non-favorites can be optimistic, and favorites don't have to be upbeat. I recommend these books to anyone looking for good, optimistic science fiction and fantasy.

Okay, now I know not to bump the Enter key while starting a blog post, or I get something silly like the previous post of "I." I have a hand tremor, and typing sometimes gets kind of exciting. (And book signings are really hopeless--yes, I'm a writer who can't write.)

Anyway, I just wanted to post something since it's been so long. I've been sending my latest novel to agents, sending a couple of short stories to markets, and trying to market Softlife--I have a couple of pre-Christmas ads running on Amazon and Goodreads now--has anybody seen one? And I thought I'd finished another short story, but after my reviewers were done with it, I realized it had gone a little off the rails and would need more work. It may have to marinate in the subconscious a while.

So, lots in progress, but nothing exciting to report. But I'm still here!