Never underestimate the commercial value of mental illness.
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 …
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.
3. That Camille’s reasoning for escaping her abusive-cum-murderous husband RIGHT THEN was flimsy.
4. That there just happened to be brothels everywhere along the path they took on their escape route, doubling as inns.
5. There are eunuchs! In a place we think might be 17th-18th Century France. Eunuchs! What the fuck?
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.
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.
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 [post is gone] (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.).
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.
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.
Okay, so I’m a schmuck who makes New Year’s resolutions. Kinda sorta. Maybe. It depends.
This is how it goes.
On New Year’s Day, I take down the Christmas tree, throw a sheet over it and stick it in the coat closet. In my world (and it took me 6 years to bring Dude around to it, although he won’t ever completely be around to it), you decorate a Christmas tree once about every ten years. And only once.
Next: Taxes. This means bookkeeping.
If I’ve been a good girl all year, this will only take me 2 or 3 days. If I haven’t, well … a week. It involves the following:
What do I end up with? A clean office, clean files, and my cursor on the TurboTax SEND button the minute Dude’s W-2 hits our mailbox.
Get the drift?
I might not get all of this done, but I like to spend the new year cleaning out the past year and preparing for the new one. I simply cannot make any New Year’s resolutions until I burn through the past, look to the future, and figure out where I need to go next—
—which means I usually end up making my New Year’s resolutions on or about November 12.
I AM AGAINST DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (DRM). ANY VENDOR I RECOMMEND WILL SHARE THIS STANCE AND ANY INSTRUCTIONS I GIVE WILL IGNORE ANY POSSIBILITY FOR ENCRYPTION. IF YOU WANT TO LOCK UP YOUR WORK, FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF.
In my last episode, I instructed you to go learn (X)HTML/CSS. I was gently taken to task for that with the point, “writers shouldn’t have to learn code.” While I am of the opinion that for some writers, this is not only true, but that they should be kept from any computer interaction whatsoever, I’m afraid it’s just not realistic in the long run. You will learn something, even if it’s only the paragraph tags and all of it will be useful to you at some point.
Yes, you can use blogger.com or wordpress.com or any other sign-in platform for your blogging.
Yes, you can use Word and PrimoPDF to set type and distribute your work as a free PDF.
If you want to:
you’re going to have to either pay someone to do it for you or learn how to do it yourself.
There are quite a few places that will help you with #A.
FEEDBOOKS. As far as I can tell, if you use this service, you must offer your work for free. If this is not acceptable to you, just don’t use their service. (And if this isn’t true, let me know because I scoured the site and couldn’t find any “payment” type information.) Also, you must manually build your book. Now, this has its pros and cons. The con is that it takes a while. The pro is that you can make it look purty with a little care and attention without having to learn much (if any) (X)HTML/CSS.
BOOKWORM. This is a peculiar service in that you may upload your own book, but the only format you get is the EPUB format. It is also more for reading than publishing (as far as I can tell; more information on this is welcome).
SMASHWORDS. This is the Q-DOS of e-book building/formatting. It’s very quick. And yeah, sometimes it’s dirty, especially if you don’t format your Word document correctly (as in, according to standard word processing practices and to Smashwords’s style guide). That’s the con. The pro is it’s fast and you can charge for your work.
I’m making several assumptions here. The FIRST assumption is that you want your book to be in as many electronic formats as possible. The SECOND assumption is that you want to have those formats available to you on your own hard drive for dissemination as you please. The THIRD assumption is that you want your work to have widespread visibility across the interwebz. The FOURTH assumption is that you might want to get paid for your work.
So let’s talk about Smashwords.
I heard about Smashwords from Eugene Woodbury quite a while back, who used it for his novel Path of Dreams, but I dismissed it because I thought the work had to be offered free. Then Zoe Winters used it for her free novella “Kept.” Okay. But then Aaron Ross Powell used it to offer his draft of The Hole in more formats than Kindle right after I bitched about it. Then RJ Keller used it to offer Waiting for Spring, and that’s when I had the V-8 moment.
I figured, well, what the hell, I’ll try this thing. So I took a vignette from The Proviso’s world (not in the book) called “25 to Life” and decided to put it on Smashwords.
[07/15/2025: At the time of cleaning this post up, I can’t retrieve “25 to Life” from the archive where I put it, so instead, I made my story from Monsters & Mormons, “Allow Me to Introduce Myself” available for free to demonstrate.]
CAVEAT: “25 to Life” did not call for fancy formatting like The Proviso does. The Proviso has blog posts, e-mails, news clippings, court transcripts, social services records, a wedding announcement, and other specialized formatting that required different fonts, spacing, and margins to make those items look good. If you have something like that, this will not work for you.
ASSUMPTION 1. That you want your book to be in as many electronic formats as possible.
| Online Reading (HTML) | |
| MOBI (Kindle) | |
| EPUB (open industry format, good for Stanza reader, others) | |
| PDF (good for highly formatted books, or for home printing) | |
| LRF (for Sony Reader) | |
| PDB (Palm Doc, for Palm reading devices) | |
| TXT (plain text: flexible, but lacks much formatting) | |
ASSUMPTION 2. That you want to have those formats available to you on your own hard drive for dissemination as you please.
Don’t be an ass. Be courteous and leave it up on Smashwords. They did the work for you.
ASSUMPTION 3. That you want your work to have widespread visibility across the interwebz.
The founder of Smashwords, Mark Coker, says: “Our mission is to give every author a chance to find their audience.”
Smashwords is gradually gaining in name recognition and usage. Augment your presence on Smashwords with placement of your work elsewhere on the ’net. It benefits you and Smashwords (you know, the people who did the work for you).
ASSUMPTION 4. You might want to get paid for your work.
There are several payment options at Smashwords, which I’ve addressed. In my first “creating ebooks” post, commenter and indie author champion Morris Rosenthal told me about e-junkie.com, which is a payment portal for downloads. He’s had quite a bit of success with this method, though I can’t vouch for it at this time (although I do intend to check it out).
However, as far as I know, Smashwords is the only independent e-publishing vendor that offers an API process AND a payment portal and quite frankly, there’s just nothing else that beats that, even if you do have to sacrifice a little formatting.
So after having put “25 to Life” up on Smashwords, used their API, seen their output, what do I think?
The HTML and Java versions (the ones that you read on your computer) are very pretty and you can adjust fonts, colors, and sizes as you like.
The plain TXT ones are, well, plain text. It says “may lack some formatting,” but if you know anything about plain text, you know that means no formatting.
The EPUB (use with Stanza for iPhone/iTouch, Adobe Digital Editions) format doesn’t seem to have centered anything, but I can live with that.
The LRF (Sony) and PDB (Palm) didn’t pick up the italics, which is something I can’t live with, but it’s being worked on right now (no promises!).
The PDF looked like a manuscript because, well, it comes from a plain Word document, so you know that going in.
The MOBI/PRC (Kindle, MobiPocket) looked great.
The RTF is obviously going to look just like a Word document, and it’s my go-to for conversion to IMP (eBookWise), so I don’t care how it looks.
If you follow the Smashwords style guide to the letter, you’ll have a slew of decent-looking e-books (including EPUB!) as defined by my last post on “the page” and you’ll get them in about 3 minutes, along with a payment portal.
Smashwords is an elegant little API, and it’s still in beta testing. I can’t wait to see what it’ll be at full force.
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the definition of a “book,” or more specifically, the proper formatting of an e-book, and the definition of a “page” and its importance in the New eWorld Order.
I’m here to tell you: Unless it’s on paper or in PDF, they ain’t no such thing as a page.
I’ll admit that it took me a while to get used to reading on my eBookWise. Between the whacked-out spacing and the left justification and the lack of paragraph indents, it looked … sloppy. Inferior. But I stuck with it and realized that each book is formatted differently; some are prettier and easier to read than others, but mostly not. I did, however, have problems even with the “prettiest” of the formatting. I was able to adjust my expectations of the presentation once I realized it was a function of the DEVICE and that the DEVICE was not a print book. The print book and the e-book simply have nothing in common except the words they contain: not headers, not footers, not design, not formatting, not … page numbers.
To use the “page” as common ground, each user must have the same edition of a paper book and/or the same edition of the PDF file, but that’s a fairly easy task to accomplish.
In any other format, however, it’s nearly impossible without each user having the same device, the same font settings (i.e., large or small), the same page view settings. Gentlemen, let’s synchronize our devices. Taking the probability of that into account, then, the concept of the “page” vanishes.
The latest argument I have seen for the need for strict pagination in e-books to approximate or duplicate that of a print book is for reference books and the uses of academia viz. for annotation and bibliography, tables of contents and indices, footnotes and end notes. What this demonstrates to me is ignorance or lack of vision or an inability to understand the vast differences in the format, and the capabilities and limitations of each.
When your bishop or your preacher or your pastor or your minister or other Protestant-type ecclesiastical leader gets up and wants everybody to flip open their Bibles, does s/he say, “Please turn to page 1436 in your Bible”? No. He says, “Romans chapter 15.” (Cause that’s where mine is. In the King James Version. What if you prefer to use a different version? No problem! Romans chapter 15 is still where it’s supposed to be, which is between Romans 14 and Romans 16.)
When your English lit professor or your director or your acting coach directs you to a certain passage in a Shakespearean play, does he say, “Please turn to Hamlet, page 783”? No. (Well, first of all, he’s OBVIOUSLY working from an anthology if it has 783 pages to begin with.) He says, “Please turn to Act 2, Scene 2, Line 35.” So what this means is I was smart and brought my little bitty Hamlet and everybody else was stupid and brought their big fat anthologies. And it makes no difference whatsoever.
The two print books, Bible and Shakespearean anthology, have page numbers. But they aren’t referred to or necessary for annotation or bibliography. In fact, the only thing they’re used for is within the book itself to create tables of contents and indices.
So let’s talk about that.
There’s only one thing a table of contents and/or index is good for: To find your place in the book. Thing is, in a print book, that’s the only way you can find anything … maybe kinda sorta quickly.
In an e-book, the tables of contents and indices have completely different purposes. In fact, an index isn’t even necessary in an e-book, although I would argue that a table of contents is. However, their function and mechanism of use are entirely different from that of a print book.
If the argument (with regard to reference material) is that e-reference books can’t be annotated or bibliographed or referenced, there’s a simple way around that. Organize the book in some other fashion, a la the Bible or Shakespeare. It’s been done. The system’s only been around for a few hundred years now. If it ain’t on paper, it ain’t got pages.
And if it’s inevitable, just lay back and enjoy it.
Waiting for Spring
by RJ Keller
It’s been a long time since I threw common sense to the wind and stayed up to finish a book knowing how much I had to do the next day, but not resenting it the next day because it was totally worth it.
This book has no spiffy genre classification. After some thought, I think I’d call it “literary romance.” I don’t know what “women’s fiction” is and I’m not sure I really even know what “chick lit” is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not either of those. And you know, lately, I’ve been very happy with the books that haven’t been easily classified.
Here’s the blurb:
It’s not the kind of pain she can see and smell and wrap with an ace bandage. It’s the kind she tries to numb with sex and work and cleaning-cleaning-cleaning the house. The kind that comes from enduring a lifetime of rejection. First from her mother–whom Tess knows would have aborted her had the law allowed it–then from a string of men whose names she can never remember. And finally, at age thirty-four, from her husband of ten years; the man who once promised to love her forever.
You want angst? I gotcher angst right here, pal. And this is the good stuff, the kind that jerks you around and bashes you over the head and makes you come back for more to see how it all ends. In my experience with literary fiction (one of which was an Oprah pick—sue me), there seems to be some sort of unwritten rule about writing angst, which is to understate it, to let the subtleties of the angst dawn on the reader like a sunrise behind storm clouds.
Problem with that approach is that A) I don’t ever get to know or care about the characters enough to care about their angst and B) their angst isn’t that big of a deal anyway; if the characters clearly don’t care about their angst, why should I? So I’ll read literary fiction, don’t get me wrong, but later, I’ll scratch my head and say (if asked), “Yeah, I think I read that book, but I don’t remember the name or the author.” I just remember dipping my toe in the wading pool of that world once upon a time.
The main character, Tess, has angst and she doesn’t seem to care about her angst, either. But I cared about her angst from the very first paragraph:
They say actions speak louder than words. Maybe. But words do a hell of a lot more damage. Even well-meaning words spoken by well-meaning people.
People like Sister Patricia Mary Theriault. She was my catechism teacher when I was seven years old. Until she ruined my life. [ … ]
Then she told us about the bad soil. [ … ] But the only bad soil I heard about was this:
“As the Sower was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on and–”
Path. Trampled. Bad soil. [ … ]
“Don’t let your hearts become trampled down, children. Keep them soft and fertile so you can feel God’s love inside of you.”
Seven years old. And already I knew I was in some deep shit. The kind that even Sister Patricia couldn’t do anything about.
The twin hyperbolic allegories of “until she ruined my life” and “Seven years old. And already I knew I was in some deep shit” are not, actually, hyperbolic or allegorical, but the reader doesn’t find out why or how until far, far into the book.
You might be tempted to point out that this is simply excellent fiction infrastructure, to which I would say … yeah, I know. But I don’t see that a whole lot anymore. As far as I can tell, the current writing fad is to make me, Random Reader, ask the question and then never let it linger like a good combination of spices on my tongue or let me savor the moment of enlightenment when/if it happens.
Instead, it will ask the question and proceed to answer it for me 2 pages later and sometimes, even worse, will over-explain it in case I didn’t get it fast enough or thoroughly digest all the layers of subtext. I’m very tired of being treated like an idiot in my fiction and, further, I hate that I actually have to call attention to this amazingly annoying trend.
There are quite a few laugh-out-loud lines, sharp. Wry.
When Tess, age 34, takes Brian, age 25, as a lover, they finish, talk, then begin again not long after. Tess observes,
Ready again. Twenty-five. Gotta love that.
Keller also gives the reader glimpses of the spirituality that’s woven all through the tale; they glimmer, like the gold threads in shot fabric:
The stars, he said, were actually souls; all the souls that were too restless to be locked up in heaven. They were so restless that God let them stay outside at night to play.
And when an 8-year-old girl about to take her first communion asks Tess if she believes in God, Tess says:
“Yes, I believe in God. I just … I don’t feel close to him in church.”
“Really? Why’s that?”
I shrugged, even though I knew exactly why. I knew because I’d felt that way since I was a little girl, sitting in my church clothes, listening to the Mass. Trying to feel His presence. Struggling to feel His love. But there was nothing there. Nothing but words I didn’t completely understand and scary status. And then, one beautiful Sunday Spring morning when I was nine years old, something occurred to me. Something I never told anyone else.
He’s not really in here. God doesn’t live inside a building, and that’s all a church is; just a building filled with lots of words. [ … ]
Because Anne [of Green Gables] said that if she really wanted to talk to God, a real true prayer, then she’d have to go outside to do it. She’s need to surround herself with God’s creation, with His beauty; drink it in and let it fill her up. And then she could look heavenward and just feel a prayer.
The narrative itself is choppy, with sentences and paragraphs written in fits and starts, which perfectly mirrors Tess’s personality and her coping mechanisms (particularly her “personality disorder”). In fact, a good portion of Tess’s internal dialog and her observations are written as wry asides to herself and she is inviting you, Random Reader, to chuckle along with her.
And I did. Even while I had tears running down my cheeks.
I have a boatload of work to do on the damned day job (filthy lucre!!!) and I have 23 people coming for Christmas Eve (which wouldn’t actually mean much unless you saw my house) and Tax Deduction #1 is home on Christmas break (yay) and I want to spend some time reading and writing (and possibly sewing). I’ll be back Saturday or Sunday or thereabouts. Thought I’d leave you with a pic of what a friend called my “dreidel tree,” which lives in my office in November and December.
I’ve been thinking about offering a quick’n’dirty series on how to create various ebook formats, wondering if independent publishers (or even micro- and small presses) know how to disseminate their wares effectively in electronic format. I know PDF is the fallback position and while I have a love/hate relationship with PDF (formatting, yay! reading on computer, boo! hiss!), most people who don’t have an ebook reading device pretty much are stuck with the computer.
(This is one reason I have issues with places like Lulu, iUniverse, AuthorHouse, etc. Their electronic delivery is exclusively PDF. I don’t know if the authors have the option to create other formats or even if they’re inclined to do so, but I urge those indies who choose such providers to check it out and diversify.)
Smashwords has a grinder program that allows you to upload your document and then spits out various electronic incarnations of it, but it has formatting issues, which is to say, some it ain’t pretty especially if you have a not-very-well-formatted RTF document to begin with. Oh well and get over it. They do a marvelous job with what they get and it’s a few hundred steps in the right direction—not to mention the fact that once you get it on your ebook reading device, it probably won’t make you any difference.
But in case you do want to know how it’s done (or, more properly, how we did it, properly or not), what tools we used, why—and we invite others to correct us on more efficient ways to do it (that doesn’t involve Book Designer, thanks)—here’s the first and most important thing you have to do:
Learn XHTML and CSS. Really.
O’Reilly at Tools of Change is pushing for all formats to be based on XML, but if you’re reading this post, this is probably a DIY project and XHTML is, IMO, easier to learn. You will need this for every format you might want to offer (except PDB [Palm] and as an ebook application [iApp] to be sold in the iTunes store).
After that, it’s all tweaks and about 6 different pieces of (almost free) software.
Go on now and learn XHTML and CSS. I’m not going to post tutorials on that when others have done it better than I.
So around the bloggernacle I go about twice a week. I don’t spend too much time there because everybody discusses the same things over and over and over again and it’s wearying. The feminists fondle the patriarchy of the church like a worry doll; the academes throw around their $100 words and concepts that I don’t understand (click away! click away!); the more-righteous-than-Mojo bewail the crumbling standards in the church and how wicked the world is; the artistes ask, “Where are our Miltons and Shakespeares?”
Yawn and no big.
But then there are the people with way too much time on their hands who come up with nifty ideas that they want Someone Else to (help) implement Right Now and then wail and moan that these ideas haven’t come to fruition and what is wrong with You All?
Endlessly.
This isn’t an LDS blog phenomenon, so don’t think I’m picking on my own again. I see it in every sector of the web I visit, in the smaller niche communities where, apparently, because we’re “all in this together,” we’re all supposed to roll with the Next Great Idea because of some artificial construct of solidarity.
And every time I see the same permabloggers on every blog they contribute to express their desire for the same thing they expressed elsewhere, with the same plaintive whiny tone, I just want to say, “Do it your owndamnself.”
I see all sorts of ideas and requests for programs and calls to change, but the work product is pretty much 50,000 words of “Why won’t you support Meeeeeeeeeeeeee and my Great Ideeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee????” spread across about 14 blogs, mired in clarifications and addenda and backpeddling.
Oh, and speaking of backpeddling. When I began the process of actually implementing a (better, I thought) version of one of these ideas and shared it with one of the terminal whiners, the response was: “Yeah, good luck with that” with the internet equivalent of a sneer and no offer of help—for an idea that was GREAT! until it A) morphed out of this person’s comfort zone and B) started to require thought and action and money.
This happened to a friend of mine, too, in an interwebz community I inhabit, but she doesn’t. However, she’s good at looking at ideas and finding ways to monetize them. So she contacted the person with the Great Idea and the minute it involved A) work and B) money, the person promptly ignored her.
Eh, fuck ’em and the ideas they rode in on.
I’m not taking any of it seriously anymore until I see some evidence that it’s more than simply masturbating to Idea PrØn.
In order:
Waiting for Spring
by RJ Keller
The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom, and Their Lover
by Victoria Janssen
The Hole (Draft)
by Aaron Ross Powell
I have a bunch of beautiful books. They’re mostly in hardback because I don’t see paperbacks as objets d’art the way I do my hardback books. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I read hardbacks, certainly. If I have it, I read it. But there’s just something substantial about a hardback book. Specifically, I’m thinking of my faux leatherbound books, but no matter.
As I go around the ebook blogs like Teleread and The Book is Dead, a bunch of dissociated rememberies from my childhood plague me. They’re always the same ones, played in different order, but in a loop:
Remembery #1.
The mp3 player was only a Wish when I was a child (think 1970s) with my little panda transistor radio barely capable of tuning in the jazz station, but playing disco just fine and dandy. Rock the boat, don’t rock the boat, baby. Rock the boat, don’t tip the boat over.
I had my Wish in my mind like a jukebox, playing all the songs I loved and none of the songs I didn’t love, all in one place, in the palm of my hand. Even as I got older, I couldn’t afford to buy albums and then, once I got a “boom box,” couldn’t afford to buy cassettes, either. I taped random songs off the radio and tried my best to come up with as clean a version as a K-Tel compilation cassette as I could. It didn’t work and my wish became a longing so intense sometimes I couldn’t bear it. Then I got a Walkman, which was a step up, but my ADD/OCD could not be happy. Why, oh why, was there no way to buy a song at a time? What would that look like? How could it be done?
My Wish: a jukebox in my hand, with all the songs I loved and none of the songs I hated, with the ability to purchase one song at a time.
Remembery #2.
Dark house post family bedtime. Flashlight. Book. Covers. You all know this routine. For my mother, it was hiding in the back of a closet. With a flashlight. And a book. Why didn’t my book come with a light? You know, something handy, that I could clip onto it? That way I didn’t have to give my flashlight a blow job every time I had to turn the page.
Remembery #3.
Jean-Luc Picard sitting in his cabin reading a hardback book. To me, this was nothing until a crew member questioned him. Wesley, maybe? I can’t remember. Too young to know what a hardback book with paper pages was. To Picard, it was an antique. To Wesley, it was a novelty.
DISCLAIMER: I didn’t watch Star Trek much. Not the original, not the Next Generation, not Voyager, or many of the spinoffs (although I actually enjoyed Deep Space 9 because everybody on that show had serious faults and weren’t a bunch of Mary Sues and Gary Stus running around knowing how to deal with every situation). This is why my remembering an STNG episode is so…exceptional. And it had to do with a book and what must have happened to books to evoke the reaction Picard’s hardback paper book evoked.
Something that could store a library in one spot? Like my dream of a jukebox in my hand. Could it be? A library in my hand?
Don’t get me wrong. At that point, I was old enough to know it could be done, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up because the jukebox in my hand hadn’t materialized yet or if it had, I didn’t know about it.
You have to know something about me that makes my need for such things a compulsion (you know, besides my mental disorders): I am an anti-packrat. I hate Stuff. I have Stuff I don’t hate, really, but if it can be condensed, packed, and stored out of sight until I need it, so I can have SPACE, I am more kindly disposed toward Stuff. (Oh, Space Bags, how I would love thee if every blanket we own weren’t in use because it’s as cold as a witch’s tit outside.) I don’t like knickknacks, either. And as I get older, the Mies van der Rohe school of architecture (mid-century modern) gets more and more attractive to me.
The only things I collect and store without driving my OCD/ADD batty is data. And mp3s. And now, ebooks.
(I like lots of art, though, so as soon as the Tax Deductions stop coloring on the walls, I’ll paint and put up my art. It’s difficult to deal with the child who writes her name on the wall and then blames her little brother, who doesn’t know how to read, much less write.)
I haven’t quite figured out how to go completely minimalist, given the life of a family and its needs for Stuff.
But the jukebox-and-library in hand is a good start.
Last month, a friend of mine who is reading The Proviso said to me (paraphrase), “You know, a publishing house editor would have made you cut some of this.” Beat. “But I don’t know what it could have been.” At 283,000 words, it’s actually right on track for a novel that chronicles the romances of 3 couples. It’s 94,333 words per romance. (No, I don’t know which couple gets more air time, nor does it matter.)
A couple of days ago I blithely typed, “I want to be the Tom Wolfe of genre romance” and suddenly, the light came on for a few people, one of whom said so in that thread. I had never thought of my writing goals in that light until I actually said it, and that is true. (That’s just blindingly arrogant of me, isn’t it?)
Anyway, I had the feeling there were only 3 readers (including me) around Romancelandia longing for the long, involved, complex romance. But a Dear Author thread about the shrinking word counts of some of Harlequin’s lines (this isn’t unusual) disabused me of the notion. More readers came out of the woodwork to express their dissatisfaction with the snacks that are the single-title romances (and we won’t go into category aka Harlequin romance). We want feasts!
But alas. There are none.
Th. made the argument in a provocative post that series writing is a different skill from single-novel writing, and perhaps that’s where the epic novel went: to series. That must be read in the proper order to get the whole story.
I hate that. It’s inconvenient and, from a consumer’s point of view, extravagantly expensive. (And you thought MY book cost a lot of money!) By and large, I don’t stick with series, especially if they’re as intertwined as mine is, but give me an enormous novel that engages me all the way through and you got me and my money in one shot.
But, you know, it took me a long time to decide whether to split the romances out into 3 books and create a series, or create a long novel. It couldn’t be helped. The structure of the story arc just wouldn’t hold up under the weight of the extra bindings.
The one epic is more than the sum of its parts.
Now, would someone else PLEASE write something long and involved? And if you know of any, please let me know what they are.
Carl Peterson, general manager of the Chiefs since dirt, just resigned effective end of the season. [2025-07-08: Link and image are gone; this is what I get for hot-linking.]
“On behalf of my family and the entire Kansas City Chiefs organization, I want to thank Carl for his two decades of service to the Chiefs,” Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said. “Both Carl and I agreed that immediately initiating the search for the next Chiefs general manager would be the best thing for the future of the organization, and he will be resigning following the 2008 season.”
Well, we all know what “resigned” means in the rarefied air of executive management.
Okay, so being the greedy little bitch I am, I still want Herm to go and the team to get therapy.
In case anybody missed it, I’m a Libertarian. Now, RJ Keller got me started and of course, it doesn’t take much to push me over the edge some days. In Maine, where she lives, apparently, people on state assistance get to purchase alcohol and tobacco with their state-granted funds, so she’s a wee bit pissy about this. I would be too, because in 2000, I was pissy enough about what I was seeing as a weekend graveyard cashier at a grocery store to write the following to my congress-critter:
CAUTION: It’s long and way ranty. Because I do not believe any such systems can/will be abolished, I have come up with some complex solutions, even though I am well aware gummint is not into solutions.
My part time job is working graveyards at a grocery store on weekends. I check out people all the time who use food stamps. Before working there, I had a fuzzy sense of exactly what food stamps were used for, since it wasn’t something I thought a whole lot about. My only up-close-and-personal experience with food stamps happened to be that my best friend, single, with two children, used them. She was always very careful to buy cheap, whole foods, fresh produce, and the ingredients to make bread, as she makes it more cheaply than buying bread. Naïve me. I thought everybody was as frugal with their benefits as my friend.
You should see the crap people buy on food stamps! Not only do they buy pre-packaged, expensive junk food, expensive cuts of meat, shrimp and lobster, but then they turn around and buy whole cartons of cigarettes and lots of booze with cash. They buy tons of dog food for dogs that could eat your HOUSE and still be hungry an hour later—with cash! If they can’t afford to buy their own food, where do they get the cash for this stuff???
Anyway, I realize that it would be a futile effort to try to abolish the system altogether, so I would like to propose some reforms that would be the first step in the incremental abolition of food stamps. They are as follows:
- Mandatory periodic drug and alcohol testing. I don’t have a problem with people who drink, but I sure do have a problem with people who drink on MY dime.
- Limitations on the use of the food stamp credit card.
- No usage between midnight and 6am (this is to discourage late-night trips to the store for a brownie mix, candy bars, and a case of Coke)
- Use limited to once in every 24-hour period
- No cash transactions during same trip through the check out line (this is to discourage cash beer, cigarette, and animal food sales; granted, this would be the hardest idea to enforce).
- Limitations on food selections. Users would be required to shop from a list of approved foods (a la WIC). There would be no paperwork like WIC, but a food stamp transaction would require the user to scan his food stamp card before checking out. The grocer’s UPC scanners would be required to be programmed to provide a fail-safe for the approved foods. As a concession to the grocer-as-policeman, the food stamp recipients would be required to work for the grocer free of charge by the state to do the data entry required to make this possible (BONUS: JOB TRAINING!). The following requirements would have to be reflected in the approved foods list.
- Whole foods only (which mean that users would have to GASP COOK)
- No shellfish, lobster, or other expensive cuts of meat; if a user buys chicken, he will have to buy it whole and learn to cut it up himself; no boneless, butterflied chicken breasts @ $2.99/lb when whole chickens are $.99/lb
- No junk food, convenience foods, prepackaged lunches, soda pop, potato chips, cookies, specialty foods, box cereal, ice cream, pop tarts, TV dinners, bottled water, etc.
- Store-brand canned food only; no name brands.
- Minimum percentage of total monthly benefits spend on fresh produce (say, 10%; if a user’s monthly benefit is $200, he should be required to buy $20 in produce).
- Inexpensive cooking spices should be allowed.
- Toilet paper, cleaning products, and feminine hygiene products should be allowed, but again at the discretion of the state.
Now, I realize that this will require more bureaucracy to regulate, but I have three thoughts on this:
- Government loves more bureaucracy; they should be very happy that their jobs will be secure,
- If I have to help pay for the crap these people buy to eat, and there’s no hope of getting the food stamps abolished, then we should have the right to regulate the hell out of it, and
- If the users refuse to work a regular job, then they should have to work to get their food (the food I’m paying for) home.
I guess what I’m most angry about is not so much that people get food, and cigarettes and booze and dog food on my dime, but that they’re so damn smug about it. You wouldn’t believe the arrogance of these people; their attitudes are nearly regal, as if they are special for being able to get their food for free while I, the chump who has to work two jobs (to pay my self-employment taxes, actually) waits on them.
Now, if you’ve never worked as a cashier at a place that takes EBT (aka food stamps), you really may not get the level of anger here, or why it exists. I’ll tell you why:
It’s the attitude.
AND
Charity should be voluntary, not mandatory. Taking money out of my pocket to give to those the state deems worthy takes away my choices and is, in effect, legalized theft. It deprives me of my freedom and it deprives those I would have given to.
The USA has the highest percentage of charitable giving in the world [PDF], and that is in spite of what is wrested by force from our paychecks by the gummint to give to someone else. In the article Why are Americans so generous?, one point came through loud and clear to me:
“Most people think Americans are generous because we are rich. However, the truth is that we are rich, in significant part, because we are generous. Generosity is not a luxury in this country. It is a cultural norm.”
Can you imagine what we’d give if we had that money back?
My lovely, dear boys:
You have obviously got a fear of success, as evidenced by the last 4 (yes, FOUR!) games you have lost on your last play of the game.
Fear of success.
I prescribe the following:
*A new general manager
*A new head coach (oh, Marteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)
*A therapist (to find out why you can’t stand to win)
Love,
Mojo
In my work in progress, Magdalene (#3 in the Dunham series), the non-Mormon heroine, Cassie, wants to ambush the (widowed) Mormon bishop hero, Mitch, at church. They’ve been dating (excruciatingly chastely) for 5 months and she is thoroughly bewildered as to why he hasn’t invited her to attend (not to mention more than a little peeved that she hasn’t been able to seduce him). Not that she wants to go to church, mind, much less join; she just had the idea that we were all about acquiring converts—which is a completely reasonable and wholly correct assumption.
Since Mitch lives in the heart of the steel belt and she lives in Manhattan, she has quite a bit of trouble figuring out which ward he oversees, where to go, and what time to be there. Thus, she turns to Mitch’s best friend, who left the church halfway through his mission and is a professed and semi-practicing pagan. He gives her the procedural rundown and says,
“The more you understand about our culture, the better you’ll understand Mitch.”
“Our culture?”
“Well, yeah. Mine, too. You don’t stop being a Jew just because you convert to Christianity.”
“That’s genetic.”
“With us, it might as well be.”
I live in a place that’s rich with Mormon history, so, like any native, I take it for granted. I don’t feel any sense of heritage when I go to Utah (which state I avoid like the plague). It’s in Nauvoo, Illinois, where I feel this connection to my heritage; every time I go, I find my cynicism and willingness to snipe seeping out of my soul, leaving a refreshing softness and wistful smiles. And, well, I got married in Nauvoo. That might have something to do with it.
So I took some pictures when we were there in August for my cousin’s wedding. Enjoy.
* There’s a saying about a portion of folks who identify as ex-Mormon or recovering Mormon (yes, there is a 12-step group for it): You can leave the church, but you can’t leave it alone.
offended.
I think I’m supposed to be. I’m told I should be. My neck twitches just slightly when I know I ought to be. But I don’t think I am. Am I?
I just can’t muster up the outrage necessary to protest the term. I mean, there are seriously a bunch more important things to do in life and better battles to fight and more important wars to wage.
A friend of mine refers to The Proviso as a “Mormon bodice ripper.” To my recollection, no bodices were harmed in the making of this book, but a pair of shorts was. So … shorts ripper? Cause, that’s where the goods are, folks, and Some People’s Hero really needed to get to Some People’s Heroine’s goods. Right then.
Okay. Anyway.
No, sorry. Can’t be outraged today. Try me tomorrow.
So for the last 2 years I’ve been collecting recipes for plain cleaners and wanting to go “green” and cheap, and have done nothing. Nothing! I tell you. I am ashamed.
At least we have our 72-hour kits and a good supply of food laid in (but what WE have depends on electricity, yipes). I also have Amy Dacyczyn’s book, The Tightwad Gazette, and there are all sorts of resources online to help pare down.
It’s time for the Mojo-Dude Family to turn Yank: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.
First thing to go: Water cooler and associated water delivery service.
Second thing: Homemade cleaners, coming right up! No more Scrubbing Bubbles or Simple Green, no matter how much I love thee.
Third thing: Homemade bribes for the Tax Deductions. No more “if you eat your dinner, I’ll let you have a [insert store-bought treat here].” This means I will have to, uhm, bake. I’m not a bad cook, nor a bad baker. I don’t loathe and despise and spit upon the act of baking, either. I just don’t care for it much. Today’s bribery stock-up baking: goodie cookies also known as Russian tea cakes.