Quacking Alone

For Christmas this year all I wanted was a Kindle Fire, accessories for it, and an Amazon Prime subscription. 

By special arrangements with my wonderful hubby, I got exactly what I wanted. And you know what? I have no “Christmas regrets.”  I don’t have even the itty bittiest twinge of buyer’s remorse.  In fact, I have the opposite – I’m filled to the brim with buyer’s satisfaction.   So naturally, I had to put fingers to keyboard to tell y’all all about it.

I’ve been privileged to publish on Amazon via their magical, mystical KDP platform for a couple of years now.  Yet, I’m a newcomer to the Amazon customer universe.  I’m confessing that up front because I don’t doubt that some of my adoration for the Kindle Fire is actually adoration for the whole Amazon experience.  Getting a Fire gave me the keys to the ereading kingdom. I now have access to the biggest, the baddest, the best ebook variety on Planet Earth.  Pretty much, if there’s an ebook in existence, it’s gonna be on Amazon and it’s gonna be there for the lowest price. In this economy, that’s a big plus for the Amazon experience and for the Fire.

Before I got my Fire, I read the flood of criticism that seemed to pour from every which way. They said that the device is faulty because there is only 1 button.  That button turns the Fire on and off and critics claim it causes  many consumers to accidentally turn the device off while they’re using it.  Critics also said that the web browser was way, way too slow and that the App Store was vastly underpopulated.  And they cited big problems with the touch screen features that were sometimes unresponsive.

Of all those major problems that the reviewers cited, the only one I’ve encountered is that sometimes the touch features don’t respond.  When that happens, I’ll either try again, touch the home key, or touch that much maligned little on-off switch to restart.  Frankly, it doesn’t bother me that much but I understand Amazon is working on the issue.  Through recent personal experience with a bad Tablet purchase (not a Fire – an Android for my eldest son) from an Amazon vendor, I’ve learned that when Amazon gives its word, Amazon keeps its word.  So when the company says it’s working on the touch screen issues, I now believe it completely. 

Even if the little touch screen glitches remain, I’ve found the Fire to be the ultimate entertainment device experience and if y’all don’t have a Fire, you need to pick one up right now.  This minute. 

All of the other criticism – about the on/off switch, the slow browser and the insufficient App store – hasn’t cropped up as a problem for me at all. I mean, not even once have I had an issue with those features.  The good peeps at Dear Author have some very informative info up about how to change device settings on the Fire so that you can load Apps from other vendors.  I changed the setting, but I haven’t left the Amazon once to get anything from anywhere else. 

I’ve watched a video through the prime service - Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Christmas.  It was lots of fun and I look forward to boogling through some of the other offerings.  I’m looking forward to revisiting the 1st episode of the 1st season of “Grey’s Anatomy” and re-living the time when the Mer/Der magic was new. (Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been a Grey’s Gal since episode 1.) My youngest son will demand some Fire-time to watch the early seasons of ”Dr Who,” and my hubby will doubtless want to explore some of the Star Trek offerings.  The Amazon Prime video offerings are already numerous and they’re growing every day.  I may even pick up some of the first season of “Ellery Queen” – originally I thought it was free for Prime, but alas, I’ve discovered it’s $1.99 per episode.  Still, I’ll likely pick up one or two of ’em because that’s classic TV in its best, its most intelligent and excellent form. 

I never had a real yen for an iPad and now I’m glad I never got one.  My Kindle Fire is much more portable and it offers something that neither the iPad nor other Android devices can match – the ability to download video to the device.  Yes, America, you can download movies or TV shows onto your Fire and then watch them on a plane, in a train, or on a long road trip in the car.  Funny that the critics never mention that feature now, isn’t it?  The ability to download video means the Fire vanquishes Android Tablets and it even kills the mighty iPad.   But the critics couldn’t go around saying that now, could they?  Because their goal seems to be to dampen the Fire before it burns so far it gets out of control.

Kindle Fire brings the tablet to a place where nearly everyone can afford it and it dishes out the tablet experience in a way that even a non-techie like me can do more than “get it” – we can own it. 

Nope, the critics didn’t kill my Desire for Fire and I’m mighty glad I didn’t listen to them.  They were so loud in their howling cries that I suspected they had an agenda.  I suspect it much more now that my personal experience contradicts their claims.  The critics were ranting that Amazon’s everyman tablet experience would die beneath the weight of all the device returns to the company after the holidays.  Wonder how that’s working out?  I haven’t heard a peep from consumers who returned the Fire nor from Amazon, discussing Fire returns.  The critics would like Amazon to go under but it’s folks like you and me that will keep the company floating happily along at the head of the pack.

Instead of a product return, I’m giving a product testimonial – and it goes out with a great big “Thank You” to Jeff Bezos and the entire Amazon Kindle Fire team.  Those critics I was talking about before seem like the kind of folks who believe  “You can’t get rich by overestimating the intelligence of the American public.”  I’ve never listened to those people – instead, I listen to the public and my readers – or I try to.  And I believe that Amazon is the company Bezos built on the principal that you CAN get rich by catering to the intelligent population of America – and other countries all around the world. 

Trust me on this one, the Kindle Fire is a tablet you can buy knowing you’ll love it and understand it because it was created for you by a company that believes you should want more, you should get more and you deserve more.  So Amazon gave you more - it’s created a Fire that puts the world at your fingertips.

I’ve given “A Faerie Fated Forever” a facelift – at least on Amazon.  The changes will boogle over to B&N and Smashwords eventually, but the new version is bright and shiny and STILL FREE for Kindle.  Why isn’t the new version available everywhere right now, you ask?  Because of the technical magic behind the scenes.  I can only work minor magic (tweaks I can make in Word). It takes my hubby, John the Magnificent, to work the high-grade magic Smashwords demands.

Right now, Faerie feeds out FREE to all the bookstores from Smashwords – except Amazon.  And the meat-grinder at SW is not for the faint of heart.  Sometimes even John the Magnificent has to tweak things a couple of times to satisfy the oh-so-exacting SW meat-grinder.  Like all wizards, John the Magnificent stays busy.  When he has time to direct his magic to the SW version of Faerie, we’ll get it out there.   

The older “enlarged” version of Faerie also remains in the Forever Series Bundle on Amazon and elsewhere.  I may leave the enlarged version in the bundle.  It gives an incentive to buy the bundle because then it’ll be the only place to read the full, original version.  (Inside every author building a platform marketing genes must grow – otherwise, the author’s career won’t grow either.) 

The edit to Faerie started with an email from the KDP maestros.  They said a customer had complained of spelling errors in the book and asked me to check it out.  The maestros didn’t remove the book or do anything a’tall heavy-handed. They simply made a request.  The huge, hideous error pointed out in the email was that once (and it was only once) I used the word brown when it should have read brow.  Okay, that was snarky, wasn’t it?  I have a little snark inside but I try never to feed it! Anyway, none of the spelling errors was major and in the original 100,000 word plus version I only found about 3 or 4 ( brown for brow, losses for looses, a missing e, and blond for blonde).  All were minor, but all are now fixed. 

The spelling “errors” were smaller than many I’ve run across in books published by the big houses, but that’s no excuse really.  And my snarkiness is like a porcupine’s quills - a defense mechanism.  Truthfully, if an error bothered a reader, then it should be fixed.  And it was.  But that’s where the journey started.  While I was listening to readers, I recalled some of the book’s reviews that complained it was too long.  So I turned a sharp eye to editing for length.

Some of my favorite events are missing from the new version, but they were things that kept Heather and Neil in England for a while after their reunion.  I loved those events because they confirmed that Neil and Heather loved each other.  But a goodly number of readers wanted the story to pace a little faster and now it does.  But it’s not just the plot edits that pace the tale faster because I also edited for word choice.  I tightened the language and kicked more adverbs to the curb than I thought I knew.  But it turned out – when I wrote Faerie, I had a near Guiness Record setting mass of “adverbial knowledge.”  I didn’t just know the adverbs- I loved them in a deep and meaningless way. 

Yes, Virginia, you guessed the next part – I sprinkled a generous helping of my adverbial prowess in Faerie.  But undoubtedly, assuredly and categorically, I guarantee that the remaining adverbs are nearly absolutely necessary. 

Now that Faerie’s had a facelift, I’d appreciate all y’all checking her out, especially if you read or reviewed the prior version.  It’s my understanding that if you email Amazon, they’ll let you download the new one even though the older version is still in your library.  Since Faerie is free, you have nothing to lose by checking out the new model.  If you like the story, you might pick up the Forever Series Bundle which will let you compare and contrast the new lean mean tale with the original gauzy, gaudy fuller version.  The Bundle is only $5.99 on Amazon.

Like I said, right now the trim, toned version of Faerie is an Amazon exclusive. Pick it up free for your Kindle or Kindle Fire (Or Kindle for PC – available as a free download from Amazon).  And be sure to quack back and let me know what you think because the changes to the story were made based on reader reviews and feedback.  See, I love y’all.  I really, really love y’all.  And just like any red-blooded romance heroine, I want y’all to love me back.

‘Tis the Crazy Duck Lady’s turn to blog over at All Day, All Night Writing Divas.  This time I’m giving out the 411 on a new study that indicates love is all about geography. 

Boogle on over to the Divas site and give my piece a read.  THERE’S A HUNKY GUY IN AN AMERICAN FLAG THAT MAKES THE CLICK WORTHWHILE ALL ON HIS YUMMY OWN. 

After you spend some quality time drooling over flag guy, be sure and leave a comment!

This is the 19th Year that London’s Literary Review has handed out a prize known as the Bad Sex Award.  Basically, it honors the “worst sex scene of the year.”     The prize was established in 1993 to highlight and discourage the “crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels”. The award itself is a plaster foot “which is supposed to represent something to do with sex, though no one seems sure what”.   

It’s not a list you’d expect to see Stephen King, James Frey and Lee Child on – now is it?  But they were just 3 of the nominated authors.  The full list includes:  

• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
• On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry
• The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey
• Parallel Stories by Péter Nádas
• 11.22.63 by Stephen King
• Ed King by David Guterson
• The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M Auel
• The Affair by Lee Child
• Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas
• Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller
• Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy
• The Great Night by Chris Adrian.

This year’s prize was won by David Guterson for “Ed King,” which is described as a “reimagining of Oedipus Rex”.    With that book, should Mr. Guterson have been surprised to win the tongue-in-cheek honor?  One thinks —– not.  The author wasn’t surprised, as it turns out.  “Mr. Guterson sent a message: “Oedipus practically invented bad sex, so I’m not in the least bit surprised.”

In the ceremony where the award was presented to Guterson – or someone on behalf of his publisher, Bloomsbury,  the judges said Guterson’s sex scene won because of its  “uncertain register, euphemism and ineffective irony,” particularly in the part where “she abused him with a bar of soap.”  Parts of the entry that snagged Guterson the prize can be read here.    I haven’t read Guterson’s book, but the description of the “no man’s land” between a woman’s “front parlor” and “back door” made me want to scream at the author to remind him that even if a book isn’t a romance, a sex scene should always carry some emotion for the love of all ducks in the universe.  It shouldn’t ever read like confusing directions from the guy at the gas station.  Romance has truly gone by the wayside when a character in the middle of a sex scene makes observations like  “a freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike”.  That one’s from Murakami’s 1Q84, by the way. 

One of the authors nominated this year had the dubious honor of having been nominated before.  Christos Tsiolkas, whose “Dead Europe” was nominated this year, responded last year to his prior nomination for “The Slap” by speculating that the judges had “weird formative sex experiences at Eton”.     As Tsiolkas’ comment was mentioned at this year’s ceremony at London’s In and Out Club, a member of the audience noted that the author’s theory sounded “completely reasonable.” 

The books’ highly sexed leading characters are compared to ”wakening beasts, lightning rods, outrageous sea creatures and “the midnight train.” Quotes from this year’s nominees include:

“In the shower, Ed stood with his hands at the back of his head, like someone just arrested, while she abused him with a bar of soap.” (Ed King/Guterson)

“She was wearing jeans. The fabric whispered under my palm. She leaned back and her head bonked on the door. ‘Ouch!’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’” (11.22.63/King)

“[Her breasts] seemed to be virtually uninfluenced by the force of gravity, the nipples turned beautifully upward, like a vine’s new tendrils seeking sunlight.” (1Q84/Murakami)

“Faster, harder, faster, harder. The room began to shake. Just faintly at first, like a mild constant tremor, like the edge of a far distant earthquake. The French door trembled in its frame. A glass rattled on the bathroom shelf. The floor quivered. The hall door creaked and shuttered. My shoes hopped and moved. The bedhead hammered against the wall. The floor shook hard. The walls boomed. Coins in my abandoned pocket tinkled.” (The Affair/Child)

None of my books has made the list yet. I think that’s because I can’t write a sex scene without remembering that romance isn’t about sex – sex is about romance.  Likely, my books also haven’t made the list because the judges haven’t heard of me — yet.  But you never know – my books on Amazon are selling quite well in the UK so next year might be my year. 

If next year’s my year I’ll begin my acceptance speech by commenting on the trophy and suggesting where they might put their foot….

Huffpo published a piece about romance novel covers that proved the article’s writer hadn’t paid the first bit of attention to the linked video advertised in the headline.  No matter. 

The video is a Kensington romance novel covershoot and includes some great comments from industry pros at the publishing house.  About the second or third time you watch it, you might be able to pay attention to the comments.  Don’t even try to take in the dialogue the first time around. The first time is a feast for the eyes and spirits of all who find returning to work after a holiday a real downer.

And like the headline says:  You’re Welcome.

It was a dark and stormy night on the last episode of Grey’s that aired before the “mid-Winter break.”  (BTW – how do you get a job where there’s a mid-Winter break?  The couple of days the rest of us get off at Thanksgiving and Christmas don’t nearly measure up to the length of these “breaks.” ) The next new epi won’t air until January 5, 2012. 

The last episode aired was titled “Dark was The Night” and there’s a good summary here  and here to tickle your memory cells – if they need tickling.  Personally, I’m up for a good tickle most any time. But that’s for another blog post entirely.  For this one, I’m doing one of my most favorite things – I’m donning my Swami Cap and guessin’ Grey’s.  Keep in mind, my POV is from way over the top and Sunshine Shonda Rhimes is as likely to have written things the way I see ‘em as I am to win the powerball lottery.  Okay – it’s more likely that I’ll win the powerball.

The whole thing was dark and stormy.  Lots of bad things happened to the characters, with one of the worst undoubtedly being the death of Henry on the OR table during a fairly routine procedure while his wife, Teddy, was operating on an emergency patient.  So Teddy wasn’t there when her hubby died and new-Chief Owen didn’t tell her. By epi’s end she still didn’t know.  And Cristina didn’t know the patient she was called to do a heart procedure on was Teddy’s hubby.  She was rushing through becausec she’d been practicing for a procedure on her “dream list.” And Owen didn’t tell Cristina that the patient was Henry.  She found out after he died.

There was lots of trauma to go around.  Mer and Karev were called out to pick up a newborn infant who is having trouble breathing and must be transported to Seattle Grace.   On the way back the ambulance stalls on a narrow mountain road and a paramedic goes off to get help after warning Mer and Alex that if anything hits the ambulance it’ll explode b/c of all the oxygen tanks.  The paramedic tells the pair to get out but neither will leave the baby. They’re connected to the hospital for advice from Arizona who is in the middle of a procedure with Derek and Mark. Mark tells one of ‘em to leave. Alex tells Mer to go but she refuses to leave the baby. While they argue, something hits the ambulance, they’re thrown around and the OR loses the connection to the phone.

Der is finally struck by how much his wife means to him and he gets all jittery and teary and Jackson has to take over the surgery. (Maybe now he’ll even stop trying to destroy Mer’s career – you think?)  In the closing scene Alex and Mer crawl out of the ambulance – apparently okay – and see a car tipped over and dead bodies thrown around. It’s a tough scene and yeah – I wonder what it portends.  Maybe I’ll blog about those guesses later. The Duck Lady’s over the top thoughts on that scene would likely be far more horrific than whatever Sunshine’s crack writers dreamed up.

But that’s not what this blog is about.  This is about the call Mer/Der got from the social worker indicating that she didn’t think they’d get Zola.  She basically told ‘em to move on.  Der tells Mer that it’s not over – they’ll fight for Zola or get another baby. But Mer refuses and says Zola was their baby and she’s gone.  Mer says she doesn’t want another one and for now McDreamy is feeling a little guilty that he pushed Mer towards motherhood before she was ready. 

But one way or another, the pitter patter of little McDreamy feet seems inevitable, doesn’t it?  So – what route will the stork take to deliver a McDreamy bundle?

(more…)

This week over at Smart Bitches, SB Sarah summarized a recent conference (link may be down; understand they are doing some work on the site) she attended.  What caught my attention was the disagreement between Dr. Mary Bly, who writes as Eloisa James, and the President of the RWA (Romance Writer’s Association) over a topic that – at first blush – seems very simple:  What is romance?

The RWA Prez had been judging a Food Network Romance Cakes cooking competition. She ruled out one of the finalists because it showed a married couple.  She said books featuring a married couple weren’t romance novels. 

It’s an interesting question.  What is romance? What books fit the genre?  I guess every reader and every writer has their own definition.  To me, a book is only a romance if it fits three key criteria. 

First and foremost AND forever, amen – to be a romance it must have a happy ending.  By that, I mean that by story’s end the hero and the heroine must have committed themselves to more than a relationship. They must have committed themselves to each other forever.  (My definition of a happy ending is pretty strict for such a loosey goosey duck lady, isn’t it?)

Second, the book must focus on the relationship between a couple. And third, the book must focus more on internal than external action.  It’s both an exact and a very loose definition.  But I don’t think every book that many consider a romance fits.  Several of Nicholas Sparks don’t fit the definition because there’s no HEA. Gabaldon’s “Outlander” doesn’t fit for the same reason. 

A romance novel is a tale of the heart.  Action, interaction, scenery and setting are window dressing. Emotion creates the story, emotion carries the story and emotion concludes the story.