Welcome to my blog! If you’re wondering what it’s all about you’ve clicked on the right place. In a nutshell, let me say that there are a lot of serious issues in our world today; I won’t be addressing them. I seem to be predisposed to see the humorous side of what is going on around me. This is a blog dedicated to looking at the lighter side of life.
If you are wondering about me, you’re in good company. My husband has been wondering about me for years (maybe I should have him read this for a little refresher course). Thanks for checking out my blog, and without further ado, I give you the highlights of me.
- I’m a Christian and active in my local church.
- I have a wonderful husband named Bob. We’ve been married since 1975. Bob is an engineer and gives me a fair amount of fodder for blogging due to the fact that I am not an engineer and actually am more like an anti-engineer, which means we never look at anything from the same perspective.
- Bob and I have four grown children (three sons and a daughter) and eight grandchildren who show up in my blog from time to time. You’ll love reading about them – really, you will.
- I am a retired home-schooling mom, which sometimes shows up in my life as wanting to give learning opportunities. You’ll find one in the next bullet.
- We are privileged to have my mother live with us. Here’s a math problem for you: If my mom was born in March of 1928, how old is she now? (keep reading for the answer)
- People tell me I’m funny. I think they mean that as a compliment.
- I think laughter is one of the most amazing gifts that God ever gave us. A good sense of humor is a great support for our other five senses, especially as we get older.
- Since 1976, I have lived in Central Florida, which I love eight months out of the year.
- I am afraid of frogs and toads. I think it’s because they jump about unpredictably and might pee on you. That’s probably why I don’t like playing basketball, too (the jumping, not the peeing, though having had four kids, both may be a factor).
- I was born in Baltimore and raised in the Maryland suburbs just Southeast of D.C.
- I am an Oriole fan and think there will never be another player that can hold a candle to Cal Ripken, Jr.
- I’m a birder of sorts. I don’t go to great lengths to bird watch, but I do have the Peterson Guide to Birds app on my phone. I have thrown my neck out of whack bird watching and I have been known to do some pretty lame bird calls.
- I can’t whistle (which explains why my bird calls are so lame).
- I like my caffeine in my coffee not my sodas and I cannot drink it too late in the day, which is why I feel the liberty to sneak Caffeine Free Diet Coke into any movie theater that I attend after 4:00 pm and also boldly carry it with me when I go to Jason’s Deli or the local Fish and Chips restaurant.
- I like to talk to strangers.
- I am a recovering collector of weird and wonderful stuff; including happy meal toys, Barbie dolls, Lizzie High dolls, baseball cards, coffee mugs, postcards, and magnets of the states that I have visited. My first collection that I can remember was bottle caps. That was before twist-offs. I had a large box of those dirty things under my bed until I was about ten.
- I hate to exercise and make no apologies about it. Sorry.
- I published my first book in 2018. It’s a middle-school novel based on my dad’s life growing up during the Great Depression, yet it’s funny. Kids don’t want depressing Depression novels. It’s entitled, “Always Look for the Magic.” It’s available on Amazon.
- And, the answer is: Mom is 91. I asked her and then had my engineer check the math as he always does in my effort to provide you with the most mathematically correct non-math blog available.
Jesse
/ August 29, 2012Read the blog mom. Now, if I can just visit grandpa I may escape the clutches of hell. Jesse
Bonnie Anderson
/ August 29, 2012Thank you. I am honored! You’re halfway out of the clutches. Way to go!
Edigha Francisca
/ November 6, 2026Bonnie,
You wrote a novel about a homeless man with a beater car and an old lawnmower who sets out to conquer a neighborhood one lawn at a time, and you filled it with quirky senior citizens, scheming buddies, a wife who wants to shoot someone, and the love of God breaking through in the middle of it all. You compared it to Fanny Flagg and Erma Bombeck. That is not a small claim, and you earned it. Ten readers gave it five stars. That is a perfect record.
But here is what I see when I look at how this book sits on Amazon right now.
Hook: a reader is searching for a heartwarming, funny novel with faith at the center and cannot find yours.
She is typing “funny Christian fiction,” “heartwarming novel about homeless man,” “books like Fanny Flagg,” “hopeful fiction with quirky characters,” or “Christian fiction with humor” into Amazon tonight. She is not finding your book. She is finding the big names, the ones with hundreds of reviews and a publisher behind them. She would love Jacko Smith. She would love Oscar and the neighborhood. But the search is not showing her the door.
Niche: the shelf you belong on is not American Fiction Anthologies. It is the humorous Christian fiction shelf.
Your book is currently filed under American Fiction Anthologies and Humorous American Literature. Those are not the shelves where your reader is browsing. Anthologies are collections of short stories by multiple authors. Your book is a novel. Humorous American Literature is a broad literary shelf where your reader is not looking. She is browsing Christian fiction, or she is browsing heartwarming fiction, or she is browsing books like Fanny Flagg. That is where your book belongs, and that is where it is not.
Pain: the ten five-star reviews and the Fanny Flagg comparison are not doing their work on the page.
Ten ratings, every one of them five stars, on a book that reviewers called “heartwarming,” “comical,” and “a heartfelt and comical novel.” That is a perfect record, and it is invisible. There is no A+ content showing a reader the humor and the hope in the first three seconds, no clear statement that this is Christian fiction with a sense of humor, no route from this book to whatever you write next. The proof exists. The proof is doing nothing. Every day that passes, a reader who would have loved Jacko’s story closes the app without ever knowing it exists.
Here is how I will help you, and what it is worth.
Solution one: Amazon Keyword Research and SEO that moves the book to the Christian fiction and heartwarming novel shelves, and targets the phrases she actually types.
I will move the book out of the anthology and literary fiction categories and into Christian fiction, humorous Christian fiction, and heartwarming fiction, and I will build the backend keyword map around her actual searches: funny Christian fiction, heartwarming novel about second chances, books like Fanny Flagg, Christian fiction with humor, hopeful fiction with quirky characters. What this is worth to you: the reader who is searching for exactly this kind of book stops scrolling past you and starts finding you, on the shelf where she is actually looking.
Solution two: Amazon Central Account Optimization and A+ Content that puts the humor and the hope and the ten five-star reviews where she decides.
I will rebuild your author page and your book page so the Fanny Flagg and Erma Bombeck comparison, the ten five-star reviews, and the heart of the story are the first thing a reader feels. I will place a sample of the humor and a sample of the hope side by side, because that is the promise of the book. What this is worth to you: every visitor understands within seconds that this is a funny, hopeful, faith-filled novel, and buys with confidence instead of hesitation.
Solution three: a bridge to your next book, and a reader-to-reader route that Amazon cannot build on its own.
I will build you a reader card, a single page carrying the opening scene and the promise of the book, designed to be printed, shared in church book clubs, and forwarded in reader groups where Fanny Flagg fans gather. I will map the book club and Christian fiction search phrases so that when a reader hears about the book and types the title into Amazon, she lands on your page. And I will help you choose the first ten readers to ask for written reviews, drawn from readers who love Fanny Flagg and Christian fiction rather than strangers, because ten reviews from them will do more for this book than a hundred silent stars ever could. What this is worth to you: the readers you earn in this window become readers who buy your next book, who recommend you to their book clubs, and who wait for the next Jacko story.
You do not need anyone to tell you the book is good. Ten five-star ratings and the Fanny Flagg comparison already said it. You need the reader who is searching for a hopeful, funny, faith-filled novel to finally be shown the door.
If this resonates, reply “interested” and I will walk you through exactly how I would rebuild the shelf, the A+ content, and the reader-to-reader route around Down and Out and Ready for a Miracle.