I made an interesting discovery this week. I prefer reading on my Kindle now to paper books.
It's almost a year since I received my Kindle, and in that time, I've done the vast majority of my reading on it. Yes, there are frustrations as I blogged about in my updated review. I'm still working my way through a research book that is heavy on charts and tables and those are still all but unreadable in Kindle. But fiction, well that's another story.
How'd I discover this?
I'm judging the RITA this year and my books arrived last Wednesday. I brought the first book to work to read during lunch and it was, well, a pain to hold the book propped open when I'm used to simply holding the Kindle. The position of my hand aggravated my tendonitis. I also got spoiled being able to just press a button to turn a page. Not an option with the book which required a manual turn. :-)
It kind of struck me because I couldn't imagine not having keeper books on paper. In my first Kindle review, I think I said something like I'd rebuy books I loved in paperback, but now I wonder. If I'm liking reading on the K more than on paper, why would I bother buying anymore paper books?
On the other hand, when I left work last night and knew I had too much to do to read anymore at home, it was sure nice to leave the book in my cube. I'd never do that with my Kindle, so there are still disadvantages, but not as many as maybe I thought. And if I've acclimated to e-books, more and more people will, too. Which would be awesome except that not all my books are available in electronic formats and I wish they were. I have no control over this either, no matter how much I wish I did.
So judging the RITA was eye opening because of how my reading habits have changed in 11 months since I went to Kindle. Wow. Still amazed.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
I Forgot How Much Work It Is
Yesterday, I got my new laptop. It was past time to replace my current one--it's made it five years and is still running, but it's so slow, I spent Saturday cursing it. The new Vaios had finally arrived in the store and it was time. I just forgot one, little thing: How long it takes to setup a Windows computer.
My last replacement was for the desktop computer and I switched to a Mac there. I literally took it out of the box, plugged it in, loaded a couple of programs and was good to go. No arduous setup required. I also bought a netbook this year, but since all I do with it is take it to work to write, I didn't need to do much except load an antivirus program and my writing software. Again, no arduous setup required.
Now? Arduous setup is required.
I spent almost 5 hours last night on the project. I made recovery disks (that took forever), loaded the antivirus software, deleted the software I was never going to use, and then I started loading programs. This is the long, hard part because simply loading them isn't enough. I have to get my preferences set, too. Let's not even talk about the files I need to move. Or the website bookmarks I have. Or setting up the email program. I figure I'm about halfway on the major stuff, but when preferences are factored in, I'll be at this for a long while longer.
I also want to figure out how to move my custom dictionary and my quick words in WordPerfect from my old computer to my new one. The idea of having to re-add each one makes me want to cry. I use both features constantly and probably have an enormous collection by now. I turned to Google for instructions, but I haven't found anything yet that explains how to do this for the X3 version I'm running.
This, however, is a problem for another day. I'm going to stay focused on getting the big stuff loaded and setup and then hit the fine points.
So after a night with my new laptop what do I think?
My first thought was why the hell do MacBook Pros have to cost so much??? The idea of opening the box, taking the laptop out, and being good to go in less than an hour is sounding awfully appealing right now. :-)
There are a few things I'm going to need to get used to on the new laptop. Because I wanted all the RAM I could afford, I ended up with a 16" screen. Awesome, I thought. Until I got the laptop. There's a number pad on the right. Again, awesome, right? Except that the touchpad is centered on the keyboard, which means it's offcenter for the laptop as a whole. Guess who was running her finger over the wrong place? ::blush:: Repeatedly.
The other issue with the 16" screen is the resolution is 1900x something. It's hideous. Everything is tiny. I mean really tiny. I was able to increase the size of my Windows icons, but the icons in Firefox as well as the address bar remain teeny tiny. I hate it and I have good vision; I just had my eyes checked. It's not a matter of needing reading glasses, it's just that small. I tried to adjust the resolution, but then the screen didn't go all the way to the edges of the monitor. I might have to Google this, too, and see if I can figure out some way to increase the resolution, but continue to use the entire screen space.
Luckily, this isn't an issue for my writing software. I set that view to margin width and made the program window wide enough that the text is almost a little too big.
This laptop is running Windows 7 and I find it less intuitive than Vista. Yeah, I know. But once I turned all the crap off in Vista, I didn't have any problems with it. Windows 7 will be fine once I get used to it and figure out where everything is--and once I turn all the crap off here, too. Yes, there is crap in 7. Every damn time I tried to load software it would warn me that a program wanted to make a change to my computer. I was like, yeah, I know, just shut up and load the damn thing. :-) I also don't really care for the appearance of the interface in 7. I think I can adjust that so that it suits me better, but that's a project for later. Oh! And I don't like pinning stuff to my bar on the bottom. I prefer the quick links on the right and the little tabs for the opened windows. I wonder if I can change that, too? Maybe once I get used to it...?
I also need to figure out if I can reconfigure Windows Explorer to look like the XP WE. I don't like the new look at all because I can't see everything as easily anymore. Maybe I'll get used to it. But I don't know. It seems like a lot of stuff I have to get used to and it's making me just a touch crabby.
But the computer is faster. It's quieter. My cursing had to do with Windows 7 and the resolution on the screen, not the laptop itself. I'm sure I'll end up loving it, but right now, wow, well, I wish the MacBooks were like half the cost that they are.
My last replacement was for the desktop computer and I switched to a Mac there. I literally took it out of the box, plugged it in, loaded a couple of programs and was good to go. No arduous setup required. I also bought a netbook this year, but since all I do with it is take it to work to write, I didn't need to do much except load an antivirus program and my writing software. Again, no arduous setup required.
Now? Arduous setup is required.
I spent almost 5 hours last night on the project. I made recovery disks (that took forever), loaded the antivirus software, deleted the software I was never going to use, and then I started loading programs. This is the long, hard part because simply loading them isn't enough. I have to get my preferences set, too. Let's not even talk about the files I need to move. Or the website bookmarks I have. Or setting up the email program. I figure I'm about halfway on the major stuff, but when preferences are factored in, I'll be at this for a long while longer.
I also want to figure out how to move my custom dictionary and my quick words in WordPerfect from my old computer to my new one. The idea of having to re-add each one makes me want to cry. I use both features constantly and probably have an enormous collection by now. I turned to Google for instructions, but I haven't found anything yet that explains how to do this for the X3 version I'm running.
This, however, is a problem for another day. I'm going to stay focused on getting the big stuff loaded and setup and then hit the fine points.
So after a night with my new laptop what do I think?
My first thought was why the hell do MacBook Pros have to cost so much??? The idea of opening the box, taking the laptop out, and being good to go in less than an hour is sounding awfully appealing right now. :-)
There are a few things I'm going to need to get used to on the new laptop. Because I wanted all the RAM I could afford, I ended up with a 16" screen. Awesome, I thought. Until I got the laptop. There's a number pad on the right. Again, awesome, right? Except that the touchpad is centered on the keyboard, which means it's offcenter for the laptop as a whole. Guess who was running her finger over the wrong place? ::blush:: Repeatedly.
The other issue with the 16" screen is the resolution is 1900x something. It's hideous. Everything is tiny. I mean really tiny. I was able to increase the size of my Windows icons, but the icons in Firefox as well as the address bar remain teeny tiny. I hate it and I have good vision; I just had my eyes checked. It's not a matter of needing reading glasses, it's just that small. I tried to adjust the resolution, but then the screen didn't go all the way to the edges of the monitor. I might have to Google this, too, and see if I can figure out some way to increase the resolution, but continue to use the entire screen space.
Luckily, this isn't an issue for my writing software. I set that view to margin width and made the program window wide enough that the text is almost a little too big.
This laptop is running Windows 7 and I find it less intuitive than Vista. Yeah, I know. But once I turned all the crap off in Vista, I didn't have any problems with it. Windows 7 will be fine once I get used to it and figure out where everything is--and once I turn all the crap off here, too. Yes, there is crap in 7. Every damn time I tried to load software it would warn me that a program wanted to make a change to my computer. I was like, yeah, I know, just shut up and load the damn thing. :-) I also don't really care for the appearance of the interface in 7. I think I can adjust that so that it suits me better, but that's a project for later. Oh! And I don't like pinning stuff to my bar on the bottom. I prefer the quick links on the right and the little tabs for the opened windows. I wonder if I can change that, too? Maybe once I get used to it...?
I also need to figure out if I can reconfigure Windows Explorer to look like the XP WE. I don't like the new look at all because I can't see everything as easily anymore. Maybe I'll get used to it. But I don't know. It seems like a lot of stuff I have to get used to and it's making me just a touch crabby.
But the computer is faster. It's quieter. My cursing had to do with Windows 7 and the resolution on the screen, not the laptop itself. I'm sure I'll end up loving it, but right now, wow, well, I wish the MacBooks were like half the cost that they are.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Adventures In Auto Repair
Monday, on my way home from the Evil Day Job (EDJ), I stopped off to get gas. It's been thawing in Minneapolis the last week or so and my car windows were pretty coated with ick from the roads. After filling up with gas, I reached for the squeegee thing and began cleaning them. I saved the front windshield for last. All was well until I lifted the windshield wiper on the driver's side and it came off in my hand. There I am, standing at the pumps at the convenience store with a wiper blade in my hand a metal rod sticking out from my car. Oops.
There's a service center across the street and I considered driving over there, but then I thought, well, maybe I'll see if my dad can fix it for me first. I tossed the wiper into the passenger side and drove home.
Maybe I've been working with engineers for too long, but after I pulled into the garage I began to think, how hard can it be to fix it? Keep in mind that my sum total of knowledge on a car is where to put in the gas, where to refill the washer fluid, and that I need to bring my car in every 3,000 miles to get the oil changed. Not a strong base from which to start. Still, how bad could I mess things up?
I examined the wiper that was still intact, considered the blade from the other one, and figured out what I would try on my first attempt. It worked! I snapped it right into place, and boom, it was done! It was so simple, I can't believe I ever paid anyone to put on wiper blades for me.
Feeling totally proud of myself, I posted my accomplishment on Twitter. No one commented. Okay, well, they don't know me well enough to understand how huge this feat was. I told my dad. He started talking about the new phone he'd bought that day. :-( I called his attention to my mechanical success. Good, he says, and goes back to his new phone. Sigh.
You'd think someone would be properly impressed.
That's when it occurred to me to blog about it. Surely, y'all will understand just how awesome this achievement really was. Right?
There's a service center across the street and I considered driving over there, but then I thought, well, maybe I'll see if my dad can fix it for me first. I tossed the wiper into the passenger side and drove home.
Maybe I've been working with engineers for too long, but after I pulled into the garage I began to think, how hard can it be to fix it? Keep in mind that my sum total of knowledge on a car is where to put in the gas, where to refill the washer fluid, and that I need to bring my car in every 3,000 miles to get the oil changed. Not a strong base from which to start. Still, how bad could I mess things up?
I examined the wiper that was still intact, considered the blade from the other one, and figured out what I would try on my first attempt. It worked! I snapped it right into place, and boom, it was done! It was so simple, I can't believe I ever paid anyone to put on wiper blades for me.
Feeling totally proud of myself, I posted my accomplishment on Twitter. No one commented. Okay, well, they don't know me well enough to understand how huge this feat was. I told my dad. He started talking about the new phone he'd bought that day. :-( I called his attention to my mechanical success. Good, he says, and goes back to his new phone. Sigh.
You'd think someone would be properly impressed.
That's when it occurred to me to blog about it. Surely, y'all will understand just how awesome this achievement really was. Right?
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Talking a Little Music
I never really considered myself that into music. Sure, I had a lot of CDs and I'm always buying MP3s, but I can't sing worth a damn and my attempts at playing an instrument went nowhere. Not that I didn't try. I attempted to learn the viola, the guitar, the piano, the drums, and I think there's one more, but I can't remember what it was now. I failed miserably at each. I even know why--I never practiced.
I think this is what separates an interest from a passion--the desire to work at the passion. Writing is my passion. From the age of 14, I wrote and rewrote and revised. If my words didn't live up to my standards, I didn't give up. I went back in and worked on it some more, or I chalked it up as a lesson and went to a new story.
With music and art, I gave up when I wasn't immediately good enough in my own view. Yes, I have an interest in both and I wish I could pick up a pencil and draw. I can't. But then I've never taken the time to try to improve. These are interests for me, not passions.
Oops, digressed. Sorry. Anyway, I never considered myself that into music despite my large collection because I'm a passive consumer and I don't even really listen to music all that much. Then I started thinking about it some more. I listen to music a lot at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). Not every day, but I call my iPod "life support." (At home, the laptop is called "life support." ;-)
I also usually have a song in my head, even if it's just a stanza or something replaying itself. This week it's been the Brady Bunch kids singing It's a Sunshine Day. Why? I have no idea. I haven't watched the Bradys in a long, long time.
My books have theme songs. This started by accident. When I was revising my first published book, Ravyn's Flight, I was listening to Devo's Greatest Hits and when Girl U Want came on, I kept replaying it over and over and over. It finally dawned on me that I was looping the song because it fit my book. Ever since then, I've tried to find a theme song for every story.
Sometimes I just pick one because I can't come up with the perfect choice and I don't have time to waste looking any more. So while I list theme songs for Through a Crimson Veil and my story in Shards of Crimson (among others), they don't really bring the book to mind or the characters.
But when a book has picked it's song, it's a completely different story. I can't hear that Devo song I mentioned without thinking of Ravyn, Damon, Alex, and Stacey. And the music can influence me while I'm writing the book. The theme song for book 2 of the paranormal trilogy my agent is shopping right now brings in information on that hero every single time I play it. I know that when I actually grow close to writing his story, I'll have this song looping to get my head into it.
Another example was when I was writing The Power of Two. Whenever I wasn't sure what to do next (and back then, I wrote a lot more seat of the pants than I do right now), I would listen to Corey Hart's Never Surrender. That was Cai's motto: Never surrender. So the song helped me see what the character would do next.
It's not always theme songs either. When I wrote Blood Feud for The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2, Isobel and Seere were listening to Tchaikovsky in her car and I'll be damned if I didn't have to listen to Tchaikovsky, too. The weird thing is that I had to listen to it while I was writing In the Darkest Night, which has no relationship whatsoever with the vampire story. I don't know why, but I bought 3 MP3 albums and shuffled them all weekend while I wrote Kel's book. Kel has zero interest in classical music. He's more Seether and Korn than violins and horns.
And that's the other weird thing--my characters influence me. If they have a word they use all the time, I'll pick it up even if it's one I rarely used until they came in. Same with music. I'd never listened to Seether until Kel, now I have one of their albums and I listened to it just this week. Actually, I'm blaming my heroes for all the hard, edgy music I have now. I have always had an eclectic taste in music, but metal was not something I liked or played. Until I started writing contemporary paranormal and my guys arrived.
It's also interesting that music is more important to my heroes than my heroines. Hmm. I need to think about that. Maybe I have a blog topic for another day.
I think this is what separates an interest from a passion--the desire to work at the passion. Writing is my passion. From the age of 14, I wrote and rewrote and revised. If my words didn't live up to my standards, I didn't give up. I went back in and worked on it some more, or I chalked it up as a lesson and went to a new story.
With music and art, I gave up when I wasn't immediately good enough in my own view. Yes, I have an interest in both and I wish I could pick up a pencil and draw. I can't. But then I've never taken the time to try to improve. These are interests for me, not passions.
Oops, digressed. Sorry. Anyway, I never considered myself that into music despite my large collection because I'm a passive consumer and I don't even really listen to music all that much. Then I started thinking about it some more. I listen to music a lot at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). Not every day, but I call my iPod "life support." (At home, the laptop is called "life support." ;-)
I also usually have a song in my head, even if it's just a stanza or something replaying itself. This week it's been the Brady Bunch kids singing It's a Sunshine Day. Why? I have no idea. I haven't watched the Bradys in a long, long time.
My books have theme songs. This started by accident. When I was revising my first published book, Ravyn's Flight, I was listening to Devo's Greatest Hits and when Girl U Want came on, I kept replaying it over and over and over. It finally dawned on me that I was looping the song because it fit my book. Ever since then, I've tried to find a theme song for every story.
Sometimes I just pick one because I can't come up with the perfect choice and I don't have time to waste looking any more. So while I list theme songs for Through a Crimson Veil and my story in Shards of Crimson (among others), they don't really bring the book to mind or the characters.
But when a book has picked it's song, it's a completely different story. I can't hear that Devo song I mentioned without thinking of Ravyn, Damon, Alex, and Stacey. And the music can influence me while I'm writing the book. The theme song for book 2 of the paranormal trilogy my agent is shopping right now brings in information on that hero every single time I play it. I know that when I actually grow close to writing his story, I'll have this song looping to get my head into it.
Another example was when I was writing The Power of Two. Whenever I wasn't sure what to do next (and back then, I wrote a lot more seat of the pants than I do right now), I would listen to Corey Hart's Never Surrender. That was Cai's motto: Never surrender. So the song helped me see what the character would do next.
It's not always theme songs either. When I wrote Blood Feud for The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2, Isobel and Seere were listening to Tchaikovsky in her car and I'll be damned if I didn't have to listen to Tchaikovsky, too. The weird thing is that I had to listen to it while I was writing In the Darkest Night, which has no relationship whatsoever with the vampire story. I don't know why, but I bought 3 MP3 albums and shuffled them all weekend while I wrote Kel's book. Kel has zero interest in classical music. He's more Seether and Korn than violins and horns.
And that's the other weird thing--my characters influence me. If they have a word they use all the time, I'll pick it up even if it's one I rarely used until they came in. Same with music. I'd never listened to Seether until Kel, now I have one of their albums and I listened to it just this week. Actually, I'm blaming my heroes for all the hard, edgy music I have now. I have always had an eclectic taste in music, but metal was not something I liked or played. Until I started writing contemporary paranormal and my guys arrived.
It's also interesting that music is more important to my heroes than my heroines. Hmm. I need to think about that. Maybe I have a blog topic for another day.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Dancing Hobbes Time!
Yes, the dancing Hobbes means another project is complete and turned in! This is a short story for Nocturne Bites. I don't know the title or release date yet (my working title didn't stick), but as soon as I have that information, I'll post it.
I love finishing project and posting my animated .gif. It makes me feel so happy inside. :-)
This story is set in the same world as Blood Feud from The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2, but it totally stands alone. In Blood Feud you met Isobel who's a vampire and Seere who's a demon prince, and in a Romeo and Juliet kind of star-crossed lover thing, vampires and demons are enemies. Earlier, about 800 years earlier, they waged a war that lasted 300 years before peace was declared, but bad feelings remain. The Bites doesn't have any vampires (not this one, although I have an idea for another one that would), but the demons are back.
The whole idea came to me from a tweet I read on Twitter. It was the headline of a news story and said something along the lines of: Exorcist Found Guilty of Murder. Now I knew what that really meant, that the exorcist must have accidentally killed the human that was allegedly possessed and that he/she was tried for that in regular, real human court.
That's not where my mind went. :-)
And so my premise was born. What happens when a demon slayer is put on trial by demons and found guilty of murder?
I thought this was cool, but I couldn't see any chance of getting a full-length book out of this idea, not without adding a lot of other stuff. But I'd already written two short stories and had all kinds of fun with them and I thought, hmm, why not do this one as another short? So I put together a proposal with a 3 page synopsis and a chapter, and here we are today. And I know. Me? A 3 page synopsis? That's like totally amazing. Who knows if I'll ever be able to do that again. ;-)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)