…but plenty of tears.

Whatever else I believe, my faith in man’s basic goodness remains.

The New York Times reports that Coosje van Bruggen, the wife portion of the husband-and-wife sculpture team who designed them, died of breast cancer at age 66 (hat tip: Pitch).

Okay, I’ll admit I didn’t like them at first, but they’ve grown on me. But! Don’t think the construction trailer Bloch Addition will grow on me in a similar fashion.

Godspeed, Artist.

(OH HO!!!! What’s this? Now 24 hours after I wrote the above post and slotted it for publication):

So Tony reports that the Star reports that the Nelson-Atkins is laying off 20-25 people because their endowment income is down (well, shit, everybody’s investments are down—wanna look at our 401(k) stats? I thought not).

No, really. It’s not that the endowment is down. For Pete’s sake, the thing got built during the effing Depression (well, like everything else in Kansas City). Your problem is your light bill, which you knew back in October, if not before. So gallery CEO Marc Wilson says to the Star, he says,

“These figures are impacted by museum attendance,” Wilson said. “The public is not responding to the expanded museum the way past indicators suggest.”

Gee, ya think?

SOLUTION! Tear it down. Then you could create jobs and your attendance would go back up again. After all, the people who love and adore the construction trailer Bloch Addition don’t actually live here.

Oh, and donate the materials to Habitat for Humanity. I love those people.

Okay, so remember where I said I wouldn’t put The Proviso on SmashWords because it had special formatting and boo hoo hoo?

You know what? I’m a capitalist-pig whore* and I’m full of shit, too.

SmashWords partnered with Stanza and Stanza’s iPhone store, so naturally I got over my formatting/design hubris immediately and figured out a way to do all my special little touches with your bare-bones Word settings. So, yeah. Apple, bite me. Or rather, let me bite you. The Proviso is now available on your iPhone/iTouch at the Stanza store via SmashWords in EPUB, LRF, MOBI/PRC, PDB (the PalmDoc source file, not the eReader container), and PDF. You can read 30% of it free there, too.

*Yeah, I know it was redundant and probably went without saying anyway.

But, erm, be patient. Their servers are very popular at the moment.

Yay Stanza and a big THANKS! to Mark Coker and Bill Kendrick for going out of their way to help me.

There were the 3 Georgian historicals I liked, but thought were fairly flawed and Almost A Gentleman, the one erotic Georgian I couldn’t finish. I did, however, really enjoy The Bookseller’s Daughter and The Slightest Provocation, so I’ll give the author the benefit of the doubt no matter what.

Then there are the ones on the sidebar to the right, some of which are romance.
Under My Skin by Jenny Gilliam, which I liked enough that I only stopped reading when I had to tend to various obligations, like Tax Deductions 1 and 2. And congrats to her for its sale to Amira! (A little late on that congrats, Jenny. Mea culpa.)

Catch Of The Day by Kristan Higgins, which made me bawl and laugh and cringe in vicarious embarrassment, which was only cute/sweet because it wasn’t happening to me. Also, her Just One Of The Guys, which was good but not as heartwrenching as Catch of the Day. Her first effort, Fools Rush In (which I actually read in 2009, sorry!), I found at a thrift store for a quarter and damme if that wasn’t a bargain! All 3 books are written in first person, though Catch of the Day and Just One of the Guys are in present tense (I like!) and Fools Rush In was in past tense. (I crack myself up.) You must have a box of Kleenex for these books. I remember this author’s name. For me, that’s like saying her books are auto-buy and lo and behold! She’s got a new title, Too Good To Be True. Honestly, I think she’s more what people call “women’s fiction” because she seems to focus more on the heroine’s journey than the romance. Word of warning: Don’t glom this author.

Eva Gale’s short stories “Desperate Measures” and “Scorpion’s Orchid” (post-apoc/steampunk). Loved both, though not crazy about short story format (that’s my own failing); the short form worked better in “Scorpion’s Orchid.” And, oh, you must, must, must, must, MUST go catch Eva’s free reads. “The Seduction of Gabriel Stewart” was wonderful and part of what I want to read, as both a spiritual and sexual woman: a smooth meld of the erotic and the faithful.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Natural Born Charmer. Of course I read it straight through, but SEP’s losing her grip on me, I think. Not sure why because she’s got a book on my keeper shelf and in this one, though the heroine was an artist, she wasn’t flighty and she was quick to catch on to what was going on around her, so I was good with that.

Patti Shenberger’s The Captain’s Wench. I’m a sucker for seamen (heh) stories, but this story suffered from some logical fallacies like the fact that the heroine just accepted the strange man in her house was a ghost and bantered with him as if he were an old friend. Like there’s really nothing strange about that situation at all. It was a short story/novella, so it could’ve been a word length requirement problem.

I read The Dragon Earl, which I really enjoyed. The first chapter on the author’s website got me enough that I remembered it when I saw it at Wal-Mart.

Forbidden Shores didn’t impress me. I never felt like any of the characters actually loved each other and that the HEA (happily ever after) was forced.

The following has spoilers. Highlight the blank spaces to read.

Last but not least, this: A Mermaid’s Kiss by Joey W. Hill. I don’t know what to say about this because I’m conflicted in so many directions, yet it’s stuck with me ever since I read it. I hesitate to do a review on it, but here I am 3 months later, still thinking about it. It’s supposed to be erotic. It’s not. The reasoning for the sex between the hero and heroine is flimsy at best, though I wasn’t any more put off by the more, ah, unusual aspects of it than I was by any of the other sex scenes, none of which were necessary to the story. (The hero and heroine have sex with her in mermaid form and her in pixie form.) I also didn’t like the fact that the heroine had so many configurations (mermaid, pixie, human). The sex just…annoyed me. Why? Because I thought this was a terribly spiritual book with underpinnings of faith (some amalgam of Christianity and goddess mythos) and a keen insight on human behavior. In a lot of ways, its underlying theme reminded me of Dogma, although in a gut-wrenching way and not a satiric way. The sex got in the way of the character development (and worldbuilding) and pulled me out the story every single time. And it wasn’t even good sex.

It took me a while to write this post and 2008 was a busy year, but the ones I forgot must not have made an impact on me.

So let’s try this again and I will make myself very clear: I’m seriously pissed.

Apple rejected my book from its iApp store on the basis that it has the F-word. Now, I’m sorry, but the fact that the F-word is in my book is the least of its crimes (they must have missed the “cunt”), so…“fuck”? Really? But that’s not the point.

And you can download the Stanza (free) or eReader (free) applications to your iPhone, download my book, and read it that way, so all is not lost. But that’s not the point.

Some people call this censorship. I don’t; they’re well within their right to accept or reject any book they want. But that’s not the point.

The point is also not that Apple is cutting off its nose to spite its face. For whatever reason I don’t understand, they’re wishing-washing on e-books.

1) There is no iBooks.

2) There is no restriction of explicit lyrics and explicit/violent games and R-rated movies in the iApp store, which leads me to believe that the restriction is solely for e-book applications. Why? Are we discriminating against reading as a leisure activity? Why?

3) At the same time, Apple made a deal with ScrollMotion to provide a host of e-books as applications, but I notice they are of the young adult variety, which is a pretty safe bet, content-wise. However, they’re wrapping these up in DRM. Why?

4) Not only that, but some of them are seriously over-priced. More than the hardback!!! Gah.

5) When I actually looked at what was in the e-book section if the iApp store, it was classics in the public domain (good!) and puppies-and-kittens (no, seriously, books on puppies and kittens) and manga (in which I have no interest whatsoever). Yeah. Selection. I can get a better selection of books to read at Wal-Mart, albeit I have to go there and buy dead-tree books.

6) On Teleread, the speculation is that spikes in iTouch sales are good for e-books, but is that true for e-book applications?

Nothing Apple is doing on this front makes sense to me. David Carnoy’s Knife Music (read his whole post) was rejected for the F-word, but this wouldn’t have even come to light if he weren’t already semi-high-profile (which fact is okay with me, but it’s happening all over the place, not just with him). I mean, they’re adding e-book applications a little bit. Here and there. Snootily.

On a purely capitalist pig basis, wouldn’t you think this would be a market they would want to exploit? I can only conclude that Jobs simply carries an utter abhorrence for The Book and does not want to exploit it for another revenue stream.

Seriously.

Music.

Movies.

Games.

But not…books?

The Pleasures of a Big Fat Book

The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen had been sitting on my to-read shelf for about three years. Even though I wanted to read it, I kept avoiding it because, frankly, it was so darned long. I kept choosing shorter books and a growing diet of internet hors d’ouevres and snacks. [...]

The sturdy hardback fell open in my hands in an easy way. The book’s weighty body felt good to hold. I enjoyed the reader’s ritual of choosing a lovely bookmark to hold my place as I progressed through the long work. [...]

It was as I read this hefty book that I realized my brain was entering a very different space. Rather than bopping around in a scattershot fashion, I was drawn to focus. [...]

In these fast-paced times, when readers’ attention spans are shrinking like puddles in the sun, publishers say the market demands shorter and pithier books. Some even look ahead and wonder if books’ days are numbered. [...]

To lose big books would be tragic. Reading a great fat book is a classic quality experience. There is nothing like it.

Yeah. What she said.

XX and XY Tax Deductions notwithstanding…

I have projects. I adore projects. Alas, I am only one person.

Let me tell you what’s on tap this weekend.

NEEDLEWORK. I do it. I also make a bit of money doing it when I actually do it. The Proviso has taken up a lot of time lately (heh, understatement) and I’ve neglected this needle-and-thread part of my life, to some detriment. I have 2 projects to add finishing touches to, 3 projects to stretch and frame, 1 project to stitch, and 1 project to design. Add in completely revamping the website and that’s 8 projects.

FREELANCE WEB CONTENT WRITING. I do that, too. Sometimes. This isn’t as easy as you might think, considering I seem to have diarrhea of the fingertips. 1 project right now, but it’s a bitch.

My DDJ (damned day job, my main business), which I keep separate from this for reasons which should be obvious. Anyway, I have a little side gig off of that, which makes me a little money when I keep up with it. 1 project, but it’s tedious.

The whole PUBLISHING gig, which next 3 projects I’m giddy over, only one of which is the next book in The Proviso series. Go ahead and count this bullet point as 3.

SEWING for the XX Tax Deduction. 2 projects.

And yeah, READING. Working on The Hole (draft) by Aaron Ross Powell.

Is it too early to make my Christmas list to Santa? ’Cause I wish for 6 more hours in a day and the ability to forego sleeping.

You may feel sorry for me now.

We just gave up our water cooler and water service.

For those of you tightening your belts, even if you A) don’t have any need to do so but you are anyway (yay, you!) or B) don’t have any notches in your belt ’cause it wraps around twice already (it’ll get better!), go here:

Save $1,000 in 30 days. I follow this guy regularly.

I probably should’ve tweeted this, but I’m still trying to figure out exactly what its purpose is.

KeyNote (not the Mac thingie). Freeware.

Unfortunately for MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE (because it’s all about me), this application is A) not undergoing development and B) not a portable (stand-alone) application.

Still trying to figure out how to get B without A. Poor guy went radio silent in 2005. I’m tempted to e-mail him, but I don’t want to impose.

Yadabytes Passwords. Freeware.

Fortunately for MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE (because it’s all about me), this application is a portable (stand-alone) application.

If you scroll down and see Yadabytes Notes, I did try this in lieu of KeyNote because it’s a stand-alone portable application, but I wasn’t impressed.

Multi-Timer Ultimate. Shareware.

Uhhhh…I have v1.27, which is super-easy and not this hard on the eyeballs, so I can’t vouch for THIS version. Unfortunately for YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU, I can’t find the earlier, easier version I have and I’m not sure it’d be kosher for me to let you download mine from here. Maybe JumboTimer would be simpler.

that he didn’t already have.

—America, “Tin Man”

This is one of my favorite sentences and has been since I was a child. When I was a child, I didn’t quite understand it (and some days I think I still don’t), but it resonated with me deeply until I was old enough to at least grasp the intellectual concept. (Some of the best things I’ve ever read/heard come from a subconscious wisdom that it took chemical enhancement to drag kicking and screaming into the light, but what the hell, right?)

I still draw on it for strength and encouragement fairly often, at least once a week. I don’t have it posted anywhere; I don’t need to.

Go ahead. Be brave. Pony up with your guiding maxims.

Or at least find the value in it.

Between The Apple Blog’s annoyance with books-as-applications and Booksquare’s rant about the newest ScrollMotion book app costing more than the hardcover edition,

When the ScrollMotion App and titles and prices were announced, I had one question for the publishers involved: are you on crack? Seriously, what were you smoking in that meeting?

I think I’m okay with getting banned by Apple.

I gotta find the cachet in having gotten banned. Somehow…

I want to make something very clear. What I’m doing is giving you the tools to create e-books from scratch with very little money and not a lot of automation. There’s a reason for this: When you learn it this way, you learn principles you can carry with you to other projects. If you’re expecting oh golly gee whiz bang flashy stuff, this ain’t it. It’s just the nitty gritty. Now, it is a time suck, but hopefully, if you’re inclined toward DIY and you want to know how things work, you might have fun. In fact, I want you to have fun.

I. PRELIMINARIES

For the purposes of this series, I’m going to demonstrate using a short companion vignette to The Proviso called “July 14, 2001.”

A. COVER ART AND ANY GLYPHS

I’ve assumed you’ve formatted your cover art for use on a 6″ x 9″ trade paperback. At 300 dpi (as per Lightning Source’s specifications), that’s 1800 x 2700 pixels. I suggest you do everything to Lightning Source’s specifications because if you eventually want to go into paper, you will be used to them.

I have several different sizes and formats of the cover art for The Proviso for many different purposes. One includes a grayscale .png file for the IMP format that is 290 x 435 because that’s the most comfortable size my eBookWise device allows. Most of the software we’ll be using will allow you to use your biggest size and will re-size it for you.

If you use glyphs (e.g., a publisher or imprint logo), they should be simple, small, grayscale, and in the .png format.

B. FRONT MATTER

1. Title Page

2. Copyright notices

3. Table of Contents (if the work is long enough).

4. Any acknowledgments or specialty items necessary for understanding the story (e.g., family tree, maps, provisos [heh]).

C. TEXT

D. BACK MATTER

.
.
II. PREPARE YOUR TEXT

I’m going to assume you’re working from a Word document. You should work from your final manuscript (with minimal or no styles applied). Do not work from your typeset-with-styles document that you will use for your PDF format.

A. SELECT “Save As…” THEN CHOOSE “web page (.htm; .html).”

B. OPEN THE HTML DOCUMENT YOU JUST SAVED USING WORDPAD OR NOTEPAD.

C. STRIP ALL OF WORD’S MARKUP.

There will be scads of lines of it at the top and some along the bottom. Take it all out. You should have nothing left except straight text with <p></p> tags.

D. BUILD THE SKELETON OF THE HTML FILE:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN”>
<html>
<head>
<title>…</title>

<style type=“text/css”>

INSERT YOUR CSS STYLE SHEET HERE
OR
LINK TO YOUR CSS STYLE SHEET HERE

</style>

</head>

<body>

INSERT YOUR CLEANLY MARKED-UP TEXT HERE

</body>

</html>

E. BUILD YOUR CSS (CASCADING STYLE SHEET).

You should have learned how to do this elsewhere.

NOTE: In my opinion, these are the things you should include in your styles:

1. Left AND right justify your text.
2. Put a fraction of a line space between each paragraph if you wish. In e-book reading, I find this desirable, but others may disagree.
3. Indent your paragraphs. I find this desirable no matter what.
4. Make sure your left and right margins don’t go to the absolute edge of the device’s screen.

F. MAKE IT PRETTY.

You don’t have to, but I think it means something to the reader, which is that you care. You care about your work and you care about the reader. You care about how the reader sees your work. They may not notice or they may, but you will know you did everything you could as professionally as you could.

So if this is important to you, do it. Use the HTML entity or ISO Latin-1 code for curly quotes and apostrophes, accented letters, em dashes instead of double hyphens. Find-and-replace will automate the process somewhat. Always use the ASCII codes instead of depending on the visual in WordPad; it won’t translate to Notepad if you care to use that as your editor. For an ellipses, use 3 periods with spaces between them. Do not use the ASCII or 3 periods run together. (You should probably just get into the habit of doing this in your manuscript.)

Left double quote: &ldquo;
Right double quote: &rdquo;
Left single quote: &lsquo;
Right single quote (apostrophe): &rsquo;

Em dash: &mdash;

G. CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK YOUR ITALICS AND BOLDS.

Find any other specialty tags you used (e.g., double underline, strikethrough, etc.).

H. ADD IN YOUR FRONT MATTER AND BACK MATTER.

Mark it up as you wish to make it pretty, too.

I. HAVE FUN.

Experiment. Try different things to make it as pleasing to your eye as possible. It won’t be possible for you to make it pleasing to everyone, but have fun in the trying.

.
.
III. REFINE

A. PAGINATE

I say that tongue-in-cheek because, as I’ve already discussed, there is no such thing as a page in an e-book. But for the purposes of this discussion, there is such a thing as front matter breaks, chapter breaks, and back matter breaks and I firmly believe they need to be separated and not run together.

You’ll need this tag:

<p style=“page-break-before: always”>

Live it, learn it, love it.

B. BUILD YOUR TABLE OF CONTENTS

If you have a novella or short story, don’t worry about this. If you have a doorstopper, do this. Unquestionably.

You’ll need these tags:

table: <a href=“#MARKER NAME”></a>

reference: <a name=“MARKER NAME”></a>

C. INSERT HEADERS AND FOOTERS.

If your device/reading software needs that done manually. My eBookWise does and I like it.

You’ll need these tags:

<!– HEADER –>

<header>
<table border=“0” width=“100%”>
<tr>
<td align=“left”>TITLE</td>
<td align=“right”>AUTHOR</td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr>
</header>

<!– FOOTER –>

<footer>
<table border=“0” width=“100%”>
<hr>
<tr>
<td align=“center”>PUBLISHER</td>
</tr>
</table>
</footer>

IV. CHECK IT OVER

What you should have when you’re finished is a cleanly marked-up HTML document ready to put through the eBook Publisher to create an IMP file (OEB container). Open it up in your browser. Look for formatting mistakes.

We’re going to start with the IMP (eBook Publisher) because this program has a compiler that will catch a lot of your markup errors and will help you create an even cleaner HTML document for the construction of the rest of your formats.

The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom & Their Lover: An Erotic Novel
by Victoria Janssen
Published by Spice

Please note the title and study the cover a bit. Does that say “romance novel” to you? Me, neither.

And yet, despite the absence of the word “Harlequin” anywhere on the cover, on the copyright page, on the “coming attractions” back matter, apparently, Romancelandia thought this was a romance. I don’t know why, unless Romancelandia simply has no history with pure erotica.

There is a difference between romantic erotica and pure erotica (aka could-be-porn-if-that’s-your-definition) and perhaps Ellora’s Cave has just trained Romancelandia to read “romance” or “romantic erotica” where they see “erotic novel” or “erotica.”

I don’t know how this could have been mistaken for a romance.

Moving along. Jessica, over at Racy Romance Reviews, reviewed this and while her review wasn’t necessarily favorable, it was academic (’cause she R 1) and in no way (I thought) insulting. She also admitted that she didn’t have much experience with whatever “pure” erotica really is.

I wanted to read this book, but balked at paying $11.30 for the ELECTRONIC book, so someone took pity on me and sent it to me, requesting that, if possible, I review it because that person was interested in my opinion (though heaven only knows WHY!).

My opinion is that I can’t finish this book.

Why?

The nastiness that went on concerning a liveblogging “review” incident between Dear Author and Smart Bitches (NOT linking). I didn’t read the transcript, so I am not speaking to whether the liveblogging was nasty or not, but the comments on the thread really, really disheartened me. It destroyed any enjoyment I might have gotten out of it and made me want to pick nits where there were no nits to pick.

I read 40% of the book before I simply had to put it down, so I feel very cheated and I’m going to address others’ complaints of the book that apply to what I read and comment on those, then I’ll pick the two very big nits I actually did have.

COMPLAINTS:

1. Nobody could figure out the setting, but thought it might be somewhere in 17th-18th Century France.

Okay, first, it’s erotica. Have we established this fact? It doesn’t need a setting. It’s a fairy tale and the descriptions were such that I envisioned a Neuschwanstein-type castle.

As long as the descriptions of the castle let you know these characters were amongst lush, and candles were the major source of light, and the clothes were voluminous and bulky, the exact place and time weren’t important.

2. That the sexual situations were totally ridiculous.

Yeah, they sure were. It’s erotica. Have I mentioned that? The “plot” of escaping the abusive-cum-murderous husband is a lot stronger than in most erotica I’ve read, but still more flimsy than that of a romance novel. I suppose if one were reading it as if the plot were the strongest element, I could see how one would be tempted to want to call it “romantic erotica” and be disappointed in the result, but let’s get real: erotica doesn’t need an actual, fleshed-out (heh) plot.

3. That Camille’s reasoning for escaping her abusive-cum-murderous husband RIGHT THEN was flimsy.

Actually, I thought that part was very well set up and the strongest point of the plot. Camille was on the last upswing of the abusive-husband cycle and she knew it. I’ve volunteered at battered women’s shelters. There comes a do-or-die point (literally) for the woman to run and she usually knows when that is. Whether she runs or not…well, that’s up to her.

4. That there just happened to be brothels everywhere along the path they took on their escape route, doubling as inns.

Yeah, there sure were. It’s erotica. Have I mentioned that?

5. There are eunuchs! In a place we think might be 17th-18th Century France. Eunuchs! What the fuck?

Fuck, indeed and precisely. It’s erotica. Have I mentioned that?

STRENGTHS:

I think Jessica summed it up best when she said this:

In some ways, despite the sexual sadism of the Duke, this book offers a very positive view of sex. Sex is the go-to coping strategy for most of life’s problems: Need an heir? Feeling stressed? Husband trying to kill you? Lonely? Bored? Want to show someone you have power over them? Need a place to stay for free? Want to escape those thugs? Need a favor? Want to convince someone to ally with you? Want to thank someone? The answer is sex, sex, sex, sex, and more sex.

That was its strength and its purpose. Why? Because it’s erotica. Have I mentioned that?

Okay, so now that we’ve got all that out of the way, here was my problem with what I read:

NIT ONE:

The cover. Come on. It’s gorgeous, absolutely breathtaking all textured and ripe with hot redhead right there in the center of groping hands and a pearl necklace around her neck (make of that what you will).

Except…Camille is described as having black hair with gray streaks.

FAIL.

NIT TWO, which is the genuine weakness of the book:

The sexual logical inconsistencies. “What?!?!” you cry. “You just finished telling us it was erotica and don’t get hung up on the ridiculousness of it. What could you possibly mean?” Not that way, you silly goose.

1. Camille needs an heir or her husband will kill her. Her husband is shooting blanks. She summons the groom to attempt to impregnate her because any child of his could pass for her husband’s. Okay, so far so good. Sounds like a plan. But immediately after finishing with the groom, she is summoned to her husband’s wannabe de Sade dungeon.

[Her husband] had to fuck her at least once, in case she had managed to become pregnant that afternoon.

Okay. We know she doesn’t want to, but we get the timing issue. But then he doesn’t. And not only does she not worry about this, it doesn’t even occur to her that she missed her chance to cover up her possible switcheroo.

2. Camille’s been married to this dude for 20 years and has been exposed (as a spectator and submissive) to every sexual deviance possible because he’s sick and twisted that way. And yet, this night, the relatively mild antics are…different? And now she’s aroused by them? After 20 years of debauchery? Really? Just now? No, I don’t believe it.

a. She has eunuchs who are her bodyguards and, ostensibly, sexual servants. She has an ivory carving (dildo). In 20 years of exposure and being aroused (for the first time!) that night, she finally—FINALLY!—asks her eunuchs to pleasure her? No, I don’t believe it.

b. In 20 years of exposure and forced sexual obeisance, she’s never given head until this night? (That’s the way I read it, anyway.) No, I don’t believe it.

In other circumstances, she might have enjoyed tasting so large a cock, but not in front of the duke.

So…has she or has she not experienced pleasure before? Has she or has she not given head? The implication before this passage is that she had (by force), but at this moment thinks about how delicious it might be if her husband wasn’t watching? Say what? No, I don’t believe it.

c. It’s discussed that she was never unfaithful to her husband—in 20 years!—and just that day with the groom was the first time for seeking her pleasure elsewhere and the first time, in fact, that she’d known pleasure at all. No, I don’t believe it.

d. Once the entourage takes to the road, it’s as if everything is a new experience for her, as in, she never knew X activity existed. She becomes lovers with her maid and the author makes a point of letting us know that she hasn’t had a woman. Really? In 20 years of Duke Debauchery and forced sexual obeisance and his own propensity toward voyeurism and she’s never done a woman? No, I don’t believe it.

I think I would have had a problem with Camille’s contradictory sexual history anyway, but I don’t think it would have made me simply put the book down and not want to pick it up again. The unpleasantness surrounding it combined with that simply destroyed any enjoyment I might have had.

Quite simply, it was a chore to read, which frustrated and disappointed me to no end because it was a book I wanted to read and expected to enjoy.

Since this was given to me, I’d like to pass it along. First person to email me gets it.

I’m a permablogger over at Publishing Renaissance (for those of you who don’t know). I’m alternating Thursdays, starting January 1 (yeah, I know, it was 2 days ago). And it’s so cool to be kicking off Publishing Renaissance’s year.

Lately, I’ve been around some blogs that are extraordinarily kinda negative and I notice it brings my production down, in terms of writing the next books in the Dunham series, in terms of the projects B10 Mediaworx has on the table right now (I don’t have enough fingers to count), in terms of my own blogging, in terms of doing what writers are supposed to do once their books are published, in terms of the DDJ, and most importantly, in terms of how I treat my Tax Deductions and Dude. I know I shouldn’t allow myself to be that influenced by negativity that it starts trickling down to my fandamily, but I am.

I’ve never been a positive-thinker type of person, but Dude is and he’s rubbed off on me. I’m also not one of those “think it into existence” people, either. It’s just that I’ve noticed that the more productive I get the more positive I get; the more I hang around negativity, the less productive I get. This isn’t a good situation. I have too many interesting things to do to mess around with things that don’t advance my goals.

One of the interesting things I’m into is, as you know, independent publishing. While I do point out what I feel are the weaknesses of traditional publishing (and I’ll admit to a certain level of frustration and bitterness—I’m only human), I do that to highlight the fact that one can be in charge of one’s own destiny—

—and it’s an incredible feeling, let me tell you.

There are “vanity press” naysayers and name-callers and compulsive “helpers” who aren’t really helping. The fact that they quite often don’t differentiate between “vanity” and “POD” and “self” publishing is, I think, a function of insufficient research or a measure of insulation from the querying masses or resentment for taking a “shortcut” and bypassing the “system.” Depending on the day, that might hurt my feelings, but I keep on keeping on.

Mostly what keeps me going is when I look at the pile of projects that have been brought to us (B10 Mediaworx) that are incredible and fantastic. To know we might have a role in bringing such incredible and fantastic things to the public—things that have never been done before and we would never have conceived of on our own—because I took my destiny in my own hands is…

I have no words to describe it.

We might fail. I might fail.

And that’s okay.

But I have to make the effort, cut through the bullshit, and go forward with courage and optimism. Maybe, just maybe, I can offer someone else a hand up or a piece of information they needed or some encouragement along the way.

My stats say that consistently the most viewed spot on this site is the Kansas City picture gallery. I don’t know why, but I’m glad because you know what? We have some nice stuff here. It’s the cozy kind of romantic where you snuggle up with your honey in front of a fire feeling.

UMKC (University of Missouri-Kansas City) is an urban commuter school in the University of Missouri (known for the journalism school) system with the one in St. Louis and Rolla (School of Mines). UMKC has a law school, an MBA school, a pharmacy school, a dental school, and a medical school. But it doesn’t look urban or commuter once you start going from building to building. I think people forget that once you get off Rockhill Road and start walking, it’s a very pretty (and more importantly!) compact campus. (Uh, but could you plant more flowers, please? BYU spoilt me on the flowers thing.)

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Platte County is, weirdly, the same shape and size as Chouteau County in The Proviso and it’s in the same spot, too! I don’t know how the hell that happened.

Although it’s not exactly the same demographic, it has Parkville, which is just too cute. If you’re coming into Parkville via 3rd Street from the north going toward the Missouri River, it kind of reminds me of a microscopic Estes Park, Colorado. Or at least, the Estes Park I remember from my childhood. Without the mountain part. If you’re coming into Parkville via 9 Highway from the east, it kind of reminds me of Hannibal, Missouri. Only with a smaller river. There’s a walking path in English Landing Park right along the river.

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And about that Chouteau (pr. SHOW-toe) County thing. If it’s not an English or Irish word around here, it’s Shawnee or French. There’s a reason for that. Anyway, half of the northland (i.e., north of the Missouri River) is Chouteau this and Chouteau that and Chouteau something-else. When I was looking for a name for my not-so-fictional fictional county, I looked it up and there was NO Chouteau County in Missouri. Surely, this must have been an oversight, thought I, but yay for me. Something uniquely Kansas City that hadn’t been done.

Yet.

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