Sony Reader Redux

All right, I confess, I didn't take the Reader back today. Instead I spent the whole day - yes, ALL day - fiddling around with it.

I also spent some time over at the Sony ebook store - you can get a whole bunch of books through them - Harlequins, Hachette books, St. Martin's Press, Simon and Schuster - Samhain is even listed as a publisher, though I couldn't find any Samhain books available yet. Maybe in the future? One good thing was I found I could get CJ Lyon's new book where I'd have to order it through Amazon because Chapters doesn't carry it.

I especially like that you can enlarge the font on the Sony e-books - although I tend to get less than two paragraphs per screen, that's fine with me as I can read it without the eye strain I have been getting. And it's a lot lighter than carrying around my laptop! Although I still do like to have a book I can take into the tub ...

Sony's e-Reader

Gizmo Guy got me an earlier birthday present today. Sony's brand new ebook Reader PRS-505 - while it was released quite a while ago in the States, it's just made its way up here. Gizmo Guy has anxiously been waiting for them to be released - since the Kindle isn't available in Canada, this is the only product we could get. So when they announced they had a big display on at our local mall, he decided we had to go check it out.

I quite liked the looks of it, you can see the 6" display screen at any angle. It's about the size of a paperback in height and width, but only a half inch thick, came with a leather case that opens like a book. It was lovely. I questioned the salesman about whether it could load PDFs files (since I have a fair number of PDF's I've already purchased) and was assured it could - he rhymed off a whole list of files you could use other than the books download through Sony's ebook store. PDF? Sure! RTF, Word Docs, Txt files. There is a button that allows you to choose small, medium or large but I noticed that how big the text was (S, M, L) varied even amongst their provided excerpts. But if I could read my already-owned ebooks, I was onboard. So Gizmo Guy, grinning with anticipation, bought me one as an early birthday present.

As I waited the two hours for it to charge up, I carefully read the manual, loaded the software onto my laptop, and then once the reader was finished charging, loaded a couple of my favorite ebooks on to the reader.

Only to discover it sucks when displaying PDF's.

While you can load PDF's you have to view the entire page at a time and, I'm sorry Sony, but frankly, they're unreadable. Even if you rotate the screen, the text is still too small.

Now Sony does suggest a fix to make PDF files format better on the Reader. But you have to own Adobe PDF Professional and then jump through hoops (43 pages of instructions to follow!) to get it to their standards. Which means I'd have to spend ANOTHER $499 US to buy that package, and then download my purchased ebook in HTML format, copy it to Word and go through a zillion screens using the Adobe package ... yeah, right, like that's going to happen.

**Edited two days later: Originally I gave the Reader two thumbs down, but by the end of the next day I changed my mind and it became a thumbs up, though not for their PDFs.

Words that Rhyme with Duck

As I posted yesterday, my life has been reasonably boring lately. Not quiet however, since Curly is now out of school, and Guitar Hero is playing his electric guitar sans headphones even after I've yelled downstairs for him to wear them. (It's not that he plays badly, it's just that he's practicing scales and the same frickin' rhythms over and over and over again. When he actually plays songs I can recognize, I can tune him out.)

And speaking of 'frickin'... there's been a lot of press/blogging lately about the cursing/swearing in literature lately. I've even had a few discussions about it with my mother -- who objected to me letting my boys reading Harry Potter because it contained the word blimey which to her is an awful word (It's a derivation of an old phrase God Blind Me)

Now despite my mother's efforts to raise me as a proper 'lady' (HA!), or maybe in spite of my mother's efforts, I swear like a sailor. And I'm getting worse as I get older. I never used to swear - honest, I used to curb my tongue when my boys were younger, but once kids go to school they get exposed to all the worst words and they gradually got more and more daring in their langauge at home. (Before you get all up in arms, they're 17 and 23, not toddlers - who I do not find adorable when they use the F word, by the way.) In the last couple of years, I gave up and let my inner demons loose. It just feels better to get rid of the pent up frustration in letting loose with a good curse word. The heck on my mother's repeated mantra that cursing shows a lack of vocabulary. Does that mean every other word rhymes with duck? No, but sometimes only a good solid curse works when you stub your toe or someone cuts you off in traffic.

So I had to chuckle when I read this blog about why another author, Cornelia Read, lets her characters use words that rhyme with duck.

I got Smart

For Father's Day, Guitar Hero arranged for Gizmo Guy (and by default, me) to have a "dinner and a movie" night out. Originally he'd figured we'd go on Father's Day itself, but since Gizmo Guy wasn't feeling up to par then, we delayed it to yesterday. So yesterday we went to see Get Smart.

Now we're both of the age when we watched that show in first runs. Back in the day when a phone being disguised as a shoe, and was portable, was stuff straight out of James Bond. But I was hesitant about going to the movie. I could only take so much of Don Adams - he could be incredibly grating in his delivery, and since I'm not a huge fan of Steve Carell I was worried we were in for two hours of smarm or a really bad take off. But Gizmo Guy and I both thoroughly enjoyed this version of Get Smart. And one of the reasons I enjoyed it was because of the eye candy they threw my way.



*satisfied sigh* Dwayne Johnson. The Rock himself. He's got a self-effacing humor, he seems to be really composed and intelligent, and Whoa mama, he is one good looking man. And as I was watching him, and trying not to drool, I thought - Hey, he's just like Sam. 6'4 (or 6'5 according to who you're reading), approximately the right weight, and ... those pecs, that chest .... that ...

Oh, yeah, right, I'm supposed to be writing about my date with Gizmo Guy, not fantasizing. All righty. The movie was funny, and dinner was wonderful. It was nice to have a night out just the two of us.

Look! Up in the Sky! It's a bird, it's a ...

I'm sitting at my computer in my cave of an office and I start hearing this plane engine getting louder and louder. It's not only close, it's overhead. And then the engine cuts out.

Oh. Crap.

I live really close to the local airport. And yes, crashes have been known to happen in the neighbourhood - one just a few blocks to the east where a plane 'landed' in the second storey of a house while the people were in their bedroom asleep - though there were some major injuries everyone survived. Another a couple blocks to the north - that pilot steered his plane into a construction area away from homes - very heroic because he stayed with the plane ensuring it didn't hurt anyone at the cost of his life.

Then the engine starts up and the plane buzzes over head, circles and does it again. I realize the plane I was hearing was doing aerobatics.

Oh, yeah. It's June - the Canadian Aviation Expo is in town again. For the next three days our neighbourhood pulls up their lawn chairs (or climb on their roofs) and watch the air show for free. We'll watch an assortment of older prop planes from World War II like Spitfires and Harvards doing stunts and mock dog fights. Gliders and ultralights. Sail planes. Sometimes the Snowbirds have zoomed right over my house. (For you Americans, think Blue Angels). The pictures I've added here are of the Harvards - although the camera doesn't show it, they're actually a bright yellow. (I was shooting into the sun - even though it looks really cloudy in one picture, it is actually a lovely sunny day here.)

Three hours of free entertainment. Cool.

Star Crossed Parents by CJ Carmichael

I've been a big romance reader since I was in my teens - originally because my mother banned them from the house. What better way to pique a teenage girl's interest? But I'd never cottoned to Harlequins (okay, I confess, I read all of Nora's Silhouettes, but no one else's.) But lately I've started reading them as part of my writing growth. You may remember a while back I blogged about discovering Molly O'Keefe's Baby Makes Three, and A Man Worth Keeping. These stories had plot. They had flawed characters. They had normal people - not billionaires but working class people I could relate to. There was a line in A Man Worth Keeping that just hit me between the eyes and I wrote Molly a note of thanks and appreciation for the book.

I had the opportunity to do that again the other day, only this time the note was sent to CJ Carmichael - another Canadian author - for her Star-Crossed Parents.

Who says history can’t repeat itself?

Few people can say they’re starring in a real-life version of Romeo and Juliet. And single mom Leigh Hartwell certainly doesn’t want to play the role of disapproving mother. But when her daughter runs off to New Hampshire for a boy she’s met over the Internet, it’s a discomfiting reminder of Leigh’s own past...

Now admittedly, I got the book a while ago, and it's sat on my TBR pile. I think because somewhat unconsciously I didn't want to read it. Why? Because I think it hit a little too close to home and was 'a discomfiting reminder.'. You see, a little over two years ago, my just-turned 18 year old niece ran off to the States to meet up with someone she'd met over the internet.

There's a huge backstory behind my niece's departure which although the manner was similar, the reasons differ from SCP - most of which I found out months later - and I won't get into it here. But like Molly's A Man Worth Keeping, certain parts of Ms. Carmichael's story made me want to take the book and hand it to my single-mom sister and say "Read this!" Some of Leigh's reactions mirror my sister's reactions/actions - essentially the "just because you're 18, you haven't a clue about life. I'm your mother, you will do what I say" stance. I'm also pretty sure that my niece was reacting in the same way Taylor, Leigh's daughter, reacted - causing her to dig herself in deeper when she hadn't intended to.

In Star-Crossed Parents, luckily for both Leigh and Taylor, they grow. They learn about each other, and themselves. My sister and her daughter? Not seeing a lot of growth there from either of them. My sister wouldn't read SCP if I handed it to her anyway - and if she did, she wouldn't see herself or the message in it, she's too entrenched in her own position. Maybe in time, she'll exhibit the character growth we, as authors, are expected to give our characters.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Change in my Layout

I decided to take advantage of Blogger's new Blog listing feature which allows me to not only list what blogs I read, but also will pick up the title of your latest post - and when it was. (Which should help me stop surfing quite so much while I check to see if you've recently updated your blog. Ha! As if that'll stop me.)

I transferred them from my Google bookmarks, not from my bloglist so let me know if by some strange quirk (okay, laziness on my part)I accidentally dropped yours off and you want it re-added.

In other news, I've been busy working away on Sam's story. (I really need to come up with a proper title for it one of these days.) I've reached a critical point and the action's heating up now. And Sam has turned out to be a lot kinkier than I first thought, which is something considering one of my crit partners thought he was pretty kinky to begin with. In fact, Dani said:

Sam came off pretty kinky in Private Property. I can't imagine him being more than that. He came off as a MAJOR control freak, dominating (but in a sexy way) rough, bad ass.

Ah, be still my beating heart! That's exactly how I wanted him to be seen.

By the way, does anyone else really understand the expression Be still, my beating heart? Doesn't that mean, stop beating, or in other words "let me die?" Okay, being the geek I am, I googled it. According to Phrases.org. "Beating Heart" dates back to John Dryden in 1697, the full expression being used in 1705.

Originally used with the swooning earnestness of woman's poetry of the Romantic period. Now more often used ironically, about suitors who are indisputably unsuitable.

Hmm, yeah, that describes Sam. Indisputably Unsuitable.

Actually that doesn't sound like a bad title.

Happy Father's Day

That's one of my favorite pictures of Gizmo Guy and my boys. I think it's because we'd had a really good day and everyone's smiling, even if the weather is threatening. As you may have guessed, it was taken a very long time ago. Now it's tough to get any of them to look at a camera.

But Gizmo Guy, you're a great dad. We all love you!

It's that time already?

Wow, a whole month has flown by and tomorrow is the monthly Toronto Romance Writers meeting. Where the heck did the time go?

West, is what Gizmo Guy would say.

It's been a productive month at least. I've written a total of 47,266 words since the last meeting (and I'm still writing today, so it'll go up slightly.)

Sam's story is coming along nicely, though I've temporarily shelved the story Michelle challenged me to write for Harlequin until this draft is finished. But I don't think there's a particular rush on that - it's halfway finished, and I probably have a pitch session with Brenda Chin in September, so I've got a little bit of breathing room to get it polished up before then.

Father's Day is on Sunday - hopefully the weather's nice because Gizmo Guy has made reservations at his favorite golf course for him and the boys. And I have to take Curly out tonight to buy him a present, since I won't be around tomorrow to do it. Got a bit of a conundrum of what to do about my own father this year - considering this is the first Father's Day that he's talked to me since 1999, and now it's only because he doesn't remember me most days. It sort of stirs up some messy emotions there. Ah, well, such is life. I'll figure it out. (Wow, I was wantin' to drop my g's and t's there and I'm thinking in a laid back Georgia accent. I think I'm still channeling Sam! Which is both cool and disturbing at the same time.)

And congrats go out to Savannah Chase who has just sold a story to Red Rose Publishing! She's had a tough year with her original publisher closing down right after her story was released. Way to go, Savannah!

Wylde Ramblings

Head on over to West of Mars -- the Meet and Greet: Thursday Thirteen -- The Music Store where Susan Helene Gottfried has created 13 answers to my blog about Guitar Hero disrespecting a rockstar. It's a hoot, because two of her lines are definitely ones I can see being said, and one (#12) is actually what ZW said in his reply I discovered today.

When I first posted it last week, Guitar Hero was a little worried about my blog - he's worried Zakk will take offence that a 'chowderhead' (Susan's term for GH, LOL) disrespected him like that. I told him it probably happens a lot.

In answer to Wylie's comment, when they discovered who it had been they came home and banged their heads against the wall and felt like real morons. They knew 'of' him, but who'da thunk he'd be in our little corner of Ontario - which is about to become the Flint Michigan of Canada (but that's a different headline). (But doesn't that also say something about how the store didn't advertise the event very well?)

To add insult to injury, just before he'd discovered who it was, Guitar Hero had seen an article in the paper talking about how Mr. Wylde had been in town and he'd said, "Shoot (yeah, that's edited) I wish I'd known, I would have gotten him to sign my guitar, or taken a look at his." Pity Mr. Wylde didn't take a moment to introduce himself. He probably would have made a sale that day - GH was in the market, and likes the ZW paint job.

A couple weeks later, GH ordered this Gibson Explorer It sounds really nice, especially since it didn't set me back over a grand that it cost GH, although I wish he'd remember to put on his headphones while I'm writing. Still, it makes me wish I had been born with some musical talent. But six years of violin, a couple years of piano and a year of flute and I had to admit, I have no musical talent. GH's and Curly's talents obviously came from Gizmo Guy's side who keeps nudging me to buy him a set of drums like he had when he was in a band in high school.

Um, not a chance, guys. Not unless we win a couple mill and I can have a special sound proof room built out back where I don't have to listen to them.

Guy's POV according to Brad Paisley

I was researching songs that my character Sam would listen to - I'd gone through R&B and wondered if perhaps, being from Georgia, he might like country. So Marley asked a friend of hers and he sent back a list of country singers he likes. Naturally I started googling. And found Brad Paisley's "I'm still a guy" (The link takes you to the lyrics)

OMG If you want a guy's POV, here's a guy's POV. Give it a listen, it's hilarious!

Our shrinking world

Back in the mid-90s, Gizmo Guy and I took the boys to Disneyworld. We drove down, as we usually do. On the way we stopped off in Kentucky at - you guessed it - a Kentucky Fried chicken. They had a special on - if you bought a family meal, you got a home cooked apple pie. We had a brief discussion if we were about to be treated to some special southern recipe. No such luck. We'd stopped near Corbin Kentucky, over 700 miles from home, and we discovered the pie has been baked in Brighton, Ontario, less than an hour's drive from home.

A while back, I won a book written by Brenda Novak over on the Fog City Divas. I got it in today's mail, all the way from California. I opened the flap and discovered it had been printed where? Don Mills, Ontario. That's part of Toronto, folks, before it was incorporated into one big metropolis. So the book started its life in Toronto, made its way across the border all the way out to California, only to end up back on this side of the border about 45 minutes from its birthplace.

While we were in Quebec City, I noticed the people who checked out just as we were arriving were from one town over - not quite Wylie's experience of discovering her neighbors staying in the same hotel as them. Have you ever found something (or someone) somewhere you didn't expect to find it?

Boys and their Toys

Gizmo Guy's ecstatic - he's got a new Gizmo to play with. (And Leah's happy because she didn't have to pay for this latest toy. And because GG now has ideas for her to buy for him for Father's Day. Bonus!)

Last week GG's workplace was having a fundraiser for a health center - tickets were five bucks, the grand prize was a Wii with a Guitar Hero package. He wasn't really interested in yet another video game system but chucked in five bucks anyway. It was for charity after all.

Imagine his surprise when he got an email that he'd won second prize. Having no idea what he'd won, he went down to pick it up and discovered he'd won an IPod Touch - basically they're like an IPhone but without the phone part. They play your music, but also videos, and can surf the web as well. So right now he's downloading ITunes, and transferring over his music. He's surfed the web - yup, he checked my website. It's pretty cool because it's got this little gyroscope thingy in it so if you turn it sideways it automatically turns the image to match the screen. So he held it up and said "Here's your website this way," turned the IPod Touch on its side and said with a big grin, "Here's your website that way" and it automatically adjusted. I think the rest of the weekend's going to be like that.

But that's fine because he's as happy as a pig in ... mud.

Guitar Hero gone Wylde

When I was reading Julia's Thursday 13 blog on Wylie Kinson's recent release Law of Averages about a burnt out rock star nicknamed The Dark Angel of Rock, I immediately flashed to a story Guitar Hero recently told me. A while back he and one of his buddies were in the music shop searching for that perfect guitar. It was early in the morning, and the store was empty except for a guy with long hair, sitting in the guitar section, playing *surprise* a guitar hooked up to a massive amp.

They wandered around for about half an hour, waiting for a clerk to help them but no one came out. The whole time the guy was tooling away on the guitar, the volume cranked up so high they had to shout to hear each other talk. In GH's words, "He was freakin' loud!."

Okay, he didn't actually say freaking, the word he used did start with an f though.

After another half hour of waiting (their guesstimate, I'm betting it was less), Guitar Hero's buddy got fed up with the guy on the guitar and when there was a moment of silence, yelled - yes, yelled - "Hey, buddy, do you want to shut the h*ll up? We're trying to shop over here." (I'm also guessing GH cleaned up his buddy's language for me. If it was indeed the buddy who yelled and not GH himself.)

When they went back a couple weeks later, the clerk looked at them and recognized GH's buddy. "OMG," he said. "You're the guy who told Zakk Wylde to shut up!"

Yup, they had a concert given just for them by Zakk Wylde of Ozzy Osbourne's band as he was promoting his new line of guitars, and they told him to shut up.

I wonder how Zakk tells that story ... or do you think it happens a lot to him?

But it just goes to show you, it doesn't matter how famous you are, not everyone's going to recognize you.

Just like the heroine in Wylie's story didn't recognize The Dark Angel of Rock.

Smelling your way to creativity

I'm eight words shy of 3,000 words for today's wordcount - not bad considering it's just turned two o'clock. But my brain is starting to cramp, so I'm taking a break before I get back to tormenting Sam a bit more.

The other night I was listening to a workshop from the 2006 RWA "Top 40" disk. It was called "Screw the Muse: I'm on a Deadline" by Susan Mallery. On it, Susan pulls no punches about how to get over writers' block. How to write even when the muse isn't speaking to you. She answers your whines and complaints about how you can't write, your muse isn't talking, there's not enough hours in the day, your family needs you to do laundry and drive them around and blah blah blah. She doesn't let you get away with any of it. And she has some very interesting points about why we get writers block -- I recognized several things that have stopped me and had me nodding my head through it.

One thing she suggested to help you work through a block was that you take advantage of your sense of smell. Use aromatherapy. Yeah yeah yeah, I thought cynically, another one of those new age solutions. But she explains that our brains file smell away with memories. That there is an association factor going on. (I remember an old episode of M*A*S*H where one of Hawkeye's old childhood memories reared its ugly head after he treated some soldiers who had fallen into a water-filled ditch.) So I filed away my cynicism and listened.

She says that when we have good writing days, we should pull out an aromatherapy candle or oil and light it/warm it and create a connection between that smell and whatever is going on in your brain that's inspiring you. That you should do that every time you have a good writing day. And eventually whenever you smell whatever scent you've chosen, it'll trigger your creativity. So when you're blocked, you pull out the aromatherapy oil or candle and light it, and that scent will help unblock you.

I'm not sure if it'll work, but I'm giving it a try. Since I've written close to three thousand words and I'm feeling pretty creative, I hauled in one of my aromatherapy thingies (what are they called anyway?) and went through the various oils I had. Victorian Rose, Lilac, Vanilla, Apple and Cinnamon, Lavender, Rain (which smells strangely enough like soap), Melon Strawberry, Plumeria, Orange Pine - nah, that's a Christmas scent, and Sangria Punch. I chose lilac as my 'writing' scent.

Why lilac? Because to me lilac has always been the scent of spring. No more snow. Freedom from heavy boots and heavy winter coats, freedom from mitts and hats. Warm breezes instead of freezing cheeks, fingers and toes. Chirping birdies - first the red winged black birds trilling, then white throated sparrows and robins and the finches going from dun to bright yellow. Trees finally in leaf, new grass spearing up through old - bright green landscapes after months of monotones. Newborn calves and colts suckling from their mothers in the fields (yeah yeah, I was raised a country girl can't you tell.) And best of all - school was about to finish for the year.

Renewal. Rebirth. Freedom.

So now my office - and my first floor - smells like lilac. Even Guitar Hero said it smelled nice when he came up from the dungeon just now. Let's hope it creates a good memory for my brain to file away and associate with creativity. But even if it doesn't work, my house will still smell nice.

So what scent would you choose? And why?


**Edited at 5 p.m.: I just decided my brain is now mush - 3783 words today. Pity because I was really getting deep into Sam's head today ... and to give a teaser, here's the last line I wrote today - in other words it's really rough, but I like it (by the way, it's a contemporary erotica):

He couldn’t fault her vigilance, it was what she’d signed on for when Hauberk hired her, but damned if it didn’t shrivel his balls that she was willing to take a bullet meant for him.

Too many choices!

Akkk! I signed up for the Ottawa Romance Writers conference and blogged about it yesterday, and then JK Choi posted about one she's going to in NJ in October that is SOOOO tempting. JR Ward's going to be there. Eloisa James is going to be there. (Okay, she's going to be here in Canada too that month, so that's not as big a draw as normal.) But I want to go to that one too!

Can I afford both? *sob* I can't really afford Ottawa, so probably not. I wonder if Gizmo Guy would notice if I disappear that weekend ... or if JK might notice when I hide in her trunk?

Plus I just discovered the Bloody Words conference is going on in Toronto THIS weekend - June 6 - 9th. How had I not heard about it before? Anyone else from this area going?

TRW's own Kelley Armstrong is going to be there, along with a whole bunch of agents and editors and other authors. There are works such as "Girls just wanna have guns", "Forget CSI: How Canadian Cops investigate", Sins of the Father which discusses what sins of the past lead to present day murders, Kelley is participating in one called: "Not Your Ordinary Sleuth" (Crooks, blind doctors, psychics – they’re sleuths? Why not?). There's also Romancing the Agent, "Art Imitates Life", "What Crime authors should know about firearms", etc. etc. There's even a panel on poisons.

All right, it's not a romance writers' conference, it's a crime writers' venue, but still. That close to home and I hadn't even heard about it?

Oh, and the writing is going well - I switched to Sam's story yesterday, wrote another 2100 words. And Dani required the googlemeister's services for a couple hours, and I critiqued Marley's requested sub for HQs SR. How's your day going?

Needing that Windfall

I'm getting over some nasty bug that's gone through the family - Gizmo Guy and Curly had it first. Headache, nausea, general lethargy and spacey feeling. Seems to be gone now.

Sunday, I blogged about what I'd do with a windfall. I could use one about now - I've registered for the Ottawa Romance Writers Sweet and Spicy conference in September. I still have to reserve a hotel room which is what will be the main cost of the trip. (Hence the need for a windfall.) I had figured I would send out a call on the TRW loop and see if anyone else is planning on attending and ask if they wanted to split the cost of a room, but Gizmo Guy has said he wants to come with me that weekend. (Isn't that so sweet and supportive?) So if you're planning on going too, you'll get to meet GG in person.

Although I have to wonder if he's going to enjoy being surrounded by a bunch of romance writers.

Probably.

Talk about a Cash Flow!

We've all seen posts on various loops about how to market ourselves as authors. Bookmarks, speaking engagements, book signings. Blogs *VBG*

Yesterday I think this author in Indonesia took the prize. What was his marketing ploy? Something straight out of the Simpsons - he dropped cash - yes, cash! - from an airplane over a soccer field. 100 million rupiah. Before you get too excited and want to head to Indonesia to see if there's anything left, that's worth just under $11K US. Considering that the average worker in Indonesia earns less than $2 a day, it got me wondering. Would it result in those people using that money to buy his book, do you think?

What would you do if you stumbled into a windfall? If someone literally dropped money from the sky. Would you go out and buy his book? Or someone else's? Would you use it to pay off a bill? Or be totally frivolous and self-indulgent?