Saturday Share: Best Sloppy Joe Ever

I worked on graphics most of the day because Darling Hubby was at our house in the country.

He wasn't supposed to be home tonight so I didn't make dinner.

Of course he showed up at dinner time so I used my Instant Pot to make dinner.

I grabbed a package of hamburger meat from the freezer and defrosted it in the microwave.

Note: If you have the saute function, you can defrost it as you brown it in your electric pressure cooker.

We love Sloppy Joe sandwiches so much that I always keep a jar of sweet relish in the fridge just for this recipe. It's so good. You'll love it!

Best Sloppy Joe Ever

• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1 medium to large onion, coasely chopped
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 large bell pepper (any color) chopped or 1 4-ounce can chopped green chiles
• 8 ounce can of tomato sauce
• 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons your favorite ketchup
• 5 ounces dark beer
• 1/2 tablespoon Worcestershire
• 1 teaspoon dry ground mustard
• 1 1/2 tablespoons mustard (yellow, Dijon, or spicy brown)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons chile powder
• 1 teaspoon dried garlic powder (omit if you're not a garlic fan)
• 2 tablespoons EVOO

Directions

• Brown ground beef, remove, and drain the fat off.
• Saute the onion, garlic, and bell peppers in the EVOO.
• Add the browned beef back to the pressure cooker, and toss in the other ingredients.
• Stir to mix it all together.
• Set your pressure cooker to cook for 15 minutes at high pressure. (If you have something other than an Instant Pot, use your cooker's settings which will probably be for stew or chili.)
• If you're in a hurry, do a quick steam release.
• Serve on a multigrain bun or bread with sweet relish. A salad or tangy cole slaw—and the rest of the bottle of dark beer—is perfect with a Sloppy Joe.

Takeaway Truth

Electric pressure cookers like Instant Pot make dinner easier than ever.

Create a Clean URL Amazon Link

What is a clean URL link and how do you make one?

When someone asks you for the buy link to your book, do you go to Amazon, click on your book, then copy the URL that appears in the address bar?

If so, you're probably giving them a very long that may break when someone tries to cut and paste it into a document or into a browser address bar.

(This article reprints at least once a year to help new authors.)

Example

The link below resulted from clicking the cover for Still The One in the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" section that appears on every book page.

Then when the page for Still The One opened, I copied the link as it appeared in the browser address bar. This is what it looked like:

http://www.amazon.com/Still-The-One-Romantic-Comedy-ebook/dp/B005062SLS/ref=pd_sim_kstore_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=158W5YVPQ6JV5T1BTC6H

Of everything you see in the link above, only this much is actually the direct link to the book's webpage on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Still-The-One-Romantic-Comedy-ebook/dp/B005062SLS/

The rest of that long link:

ref=pd_sim_kstore_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=158W5YVPQ6JV5T1BTC6H

is referral code that tells Amazon where you found the book.

When asked for the book's buy link, authors should give the book's direct link, called a clean link or clean URL.

Professionals always give the shortest, cleanest link possible.

How to Clean Up a Link

Even thought a long rambling link will get you to the book—eventually—it takes longer for a webpage to open when you're using a long link tricked out with referral code.

Why give a potential reader such an awkward link? Clean it up. It's easy to do.

Look at the link. See the Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN)?

Everything sold on Amazon has this ASIN, a 10 character alphabetical/numerical identifying number.

The ASIN is immediately followed by  a forward slash mark. Everything after that forward slash mark is referral code and can be deleted.

In the case of Still The One, the ASIN is B005062SLS/ (see the forward slash mark at the end of the ASIN?).  Everything after the forward slash is referral code that can be deleted.

This clean, direct link to the book's webpage is what you give if someone wants a buy link:

http://www.amazon.com/Still-The-One-Romantic-Comedy-ebook/dp/B005062SLS/

Make It Even Shorter

You can shorten that clean link though. A much shorter Amazon link is created by doing away with www and abbreviating Amazon as AMZN and omitting everything beyond .com except the ASIN.

Formula for short clean link for an Amazon product: http://amzn.com/+the ASIN.

That gives us a clean short link: http://amzn.com/B005062SLS for my romantic comedy, Still The One.

But, Wait, There's More

It's possible to get an even shorter, clean link for any Amazon Product and make it a link that's good at any Kindle store in the world.

Simply set up a Booklinker account and create links for your book. It's so easy.

For Still The One, this link would be: http://getbook.at/Still-The-One.

What To Know About Booklinker

With Booklinker, you can personalize the link and also make the beginning part of it say: "get book" or "my book."

Booklinker is part of the Amazon world and works only to create links for Amazon stores.

You can upgrade Booklinker to GeniusLink, but then it goes from free to paid. Once you upgrade, you can't go back to the free level.

Booklinker won't create a link from a URL that contains referral code so be sure you clean up the URL before using Booklinker.

Also, Booklinker does not currently support the shortened "amzn.to" format.

Takeaway Truth

Short links are infinitely easier to work with, and links made with Booklinker can bring you more sales from foreign Kindle shops. Try it!

VISIT JOAN & FOLLOW HER ONLINE

Amazon Author Page * BookBub Author Page * Facebook Fan Page * Twitter * YouTube * Joan's Website.

Be the first to know about New Books and Giveaways, sign up for Joan's Mailing List.

Tired of "It's Complicated"

"It's complicated."

If I had a dollar for every time I heard the phrase, I'd be a rich woman.

The phrase has become trite and clichéd and is beginning to elicit the same reaction from me as fingernails scraping down a blackboard.

Seems as if I hear that phrase a couple of times—if not more—every single day.

Talk shows, movies, television, conversations with friends, those two words are everywhere when talking about problematic relationships.

How on earth, I wondered, did those two words become part of our daily conversation in just about every country?

Origin of It's Complicated

Did it begin with the Meryl Streep/Alec Baldwin movie of the same name in 2009? That's the one where the now-divorced couple develop the hots for each other and embark on an affair.

No, it goes farther back than that according to an in-depth analysis of the phrase that appeared in The Cut. The article is quite witty as it details the history of this commonplace phrase.

Perhaps it came from responses to a Marie Claire poll in 1976 where 42 percent of French women bemoaned that juggling a spouse and a lover was "complicated?"

No, farther back than that because the phrase appeared in a 1919 newspaper article about a married entanglement where a married man married his girlfriend, without first divorcing his wife. The reporter described the situation as, "It's complicated."

In 1915, W. Somerset Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage used "complicated" to describe the situation facing the character of choosing between a wife and a mistress."

That still isn't as far back as the phrase goes. According to Kory Stamper, a Merriam-Webster lexicographer, who was quoted in the article from The Cut, the phrase dates from the late 1800's when used by Henry James in The Tragic Muse with a character saying, "...it’s awfully complicated."

Takeaway Truth

So there you have it. Even the origin of "it's complicated" is complicated.

I'd love it if we could express the bewildering entanglement of of a romantic relationship with a new phrase.

Got any ideas?

5 Tips: Great Blog Post Titles

How do you craft great blog post titles? Something that is compelling and incites interest?

Since I've been successfully blogging since 2005—OMG, that's 14 years of blogging!—I have a few tips for you.

1. Keep It Short, Sweetheart.

Yep, another KISS rule.

Many beginning bloggers write incredibly long titles. The problem is that your title becomes part of the URL. When your title is long, it ends up truncated in the URL.

Sure, you can create a custom permalink, but many of you don't know how to do that. Also, that takes some extra time.

2. Make it descriptive but compact.

Put some thought into making your short title also be a predictor of the content so your URL in itself can tell someone what the post is about.

3. Avoid URLs that are random letters and numbers.

People tend to distrust URLs that look like weird. They won't click them. That means your wonderful blog post won't get any traffic.

4. Use a Keyword in the title.

If at all possible, use a keyword in the title. Always think about the keywords someone would use to find your blog post. Brainstorm a short list.

Here's a bonus tip.

5. Use the same keyword in the first paragraph of your post.

Search engine spiders crawl websites from the URL to the text to the links in the post.

Utilizing these 5 tips will make it easy for those bots to crawl your site and give you good search traffic.

Takeaway Truth

In blogging or any internet writing, basic SEO, Search Engine Optimization, will increase the traffic to your content.

Review: Ear Bud Adapters

I bought a pack of these Ear Bud Adapters on Amazon Prime Day.

Thanks to these adapters, for the first time I can use ear buds in comfort and without constantly having to put them back in or adjust them.

They're such a great little invention and only $4.99 for a package of 4 pairs so I thought I'd write a review and tell everyone about them.

The actual title of this product is Ear Gel for iPhone Earpods, Ear Buds Tips, 4 Pair Anti-Slip Soft Silicone Replacement Earbud Tips for Earphone of iPhone 7/SE/6S/6S Plus/ 5S/ 5/ 5C (Black/White/Blue/Orange).

That's quite a mouthful for such a tiny device. The package has blue, white, orange, and black ear bud adapters.

How Do You Wear These?

They look like bunny rabbit profiles, don't they?

The round part covers the ear bud, of course. The curving part that looks like bunny ears fits snugly into the ear below the top of the ear. See this image I made. The curved part fits right in there between the arrows.

I guess I have small ears or something because ear buds never stayed in my ears until my daughter gave me a pair of these earbud tips.

Problem solved. The curved piece always keeps the ear buds in place—even the weight of the little on/off microphone on my ear bud cord won't pull it out even when I'm jogging.

So I bought this package of 4 so I could keep a pair in my purse, a pair in my laptop, a pair in my office, and a pair to spare just in case.

For me, ear buds aren't for entertainment. I use them and listen to classical music when I'm writing and need to block out room noise.

I listen to audio books (reference and/or research books) which no one else in the room wants to listen to so I can do it without annoying others.

Takeaway Truth

If you've had a problem wearing earbuds, try these cleverly designed Ear Bud Adapters. You'll love them.

Who Invented Ice Cream?

I was watching the documentary Italian Gardens with Monty Don, my favorite English gardener, and was surprised by what was said as he was purchasing a gelato, the popular Italian ice cream.

The woman serving Monty Don said ice cream was invented in Italy. That surprised me enough that I looked up the history of ice cream.

Unless Marco Polo brought it back to Italy along with noodles, ice cream is another food item invented in China.

History of Ice Cream

A frozen ice cream type of food was eaten in China in 618-97AD. In fact, Emperor Tang of Shang, had 94 ice men who helped make a dish of buffalo milk, flour and camphor, freezing the mixture by packing it in snow.

Camphor? That does NOT sound appetizing.

Even though history says the Roman emperors sent slaves to mountain tops to bring back fresh snow which was mixed with honey and nuts, I think the actual blending of milk into a frozen mixture can probably be attributed to Marco Polo (1254-1324) where it's believed he saw ice creams being made during his trip to China.

Favorite ice cream in the Reeves household.

Ice Cream was a huge hit in every place where it was introduced. Charles I of England supposedly offered his chef £500 a year to keep his ice-cream recipe a secret from the rest of England.

What About Sundaes?

In 1890, a church in the town of Evanston, Illinois succeeded in having ice cream sodas banned on Sunday because it didn't like the crowds drawn to the local soda fountains on the Sabbath Day.

To circumvent that problem, some resourceful merchant replaced the soda with syrup and called the dessert an Ice Cream Sunday, changing the Y in Sunday to an E so they wouldn't upset religious leaders.

Takeaway Truth

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

Mystery, Thriller, Suspense Giveaway

Starting today, you can enter the Plotting Murder Giveaway.

If you love to read Mystery, Thriller & Romantic Suspense, then Plotting Murder, the last summer giveaway is for you.

Plotting Murder Giveaway runs from August 9-29.

How would you like to read that next bestseller on a Kindle Fire 7 tablet? Cool, right?

Or maybe you could win one of the Amazon gift cards, or a cool lamp that opens like a book, or a pack of ebooks that's on your TBR list.

Enter today—and enter often—through August 29, and you could be one of the winners.

Book Fair Too

Plus, don’t forget to shop our book fair and play the bonus scavenger hunt game, where we have a tea and brownie brittle bonus prize pack up for grabs. Plus, everyone scores a freebie, a short story download by C.J. Zahner exclusive to this event!

Photo by Kat Wilcox, Pexels #923681

Great Prizes

Kindle Fire 7 • Amazon Gift Cards • Ebook Packs • Maple Wood Folding Book Lamp • Ebook Bundles from Amazon.

Sponsored By These Fabulous Authors

Amanda Uhl • Anne McClane • Barbara Barrett • C.J. Zahner • Curtis Bausse • D.B. McNicol • Danielle M. Haas • Dawn Greenfield Ireland • Eichin Chang-Lim • Em Petrova • J.J. Cagney • Jacqueline Diamond • J.C. Andrijeski • Joan Reeves • Karen D. Bradley • Katherine Gilbert • Kerry Blaisdell • Kristy Tate • Lisa Lieberman • Mimi Barbour • Nancy C. Weeks • Naomi Bellina • Sierra Kay • Stephanie Queen • Susan D. Peters • Taylor Marsh • Tricia Tyler

Takeaway Truth

Books, authors, and prizes—all fabulous. Enter today and tell your friends too.

Enter the PLOTTING MURDER Rafflecopter Giveaway.