Saying goodbye to my imaginary friends

The final book; editing phase

Halcyone Space began in a moment of anger and frustration. I was getting very little traction with my prior books and decided to write a story with an ensemble cast that nobody would like. (Yes, I am not proud of my 5-year-old tantrum phase.)

I created an unpleasant loner. A drug dealer. An obnoxious child prodigy. A stoner musician. In space.

And these were the protagonists.

Ultimately, my baseline good humor and equanimity returned and I was able to take the first premise, put forward during a fit of pique, and transform it into the story of a derelict space ship and its unwilling and accidental crew.

DERELICT was completed in 2012 and was my 8th written novel. It was published in June of 2014 and at the time, I had no real intention of turning it into a series.

But then something utterly unexpected and quite magical happened - it struck gold on Amazon and sold more copies than I could have dreamed of. And I realized there was more to tell about Ro Maldonado and her crew.

Since the publication of DERELICT in 2014, every summer has seen a new Halcyone Space book. The characters have grown and changed. The politics have become increasingly complex and compelling. The stakes have ramped up, both on an individual and galactic level. These stories have taken me places I never would have anticipated, especially to a post-climate change earth even more divided into haves (highsiders) and have-nots (settlement 'deeps' - displaced persons) than our world is. 

Along the way, the characters have become quite real. Some writers describe it as the characters talking to them, or dictating the story. For me, it's more like the characters have taken up residence in my brain somewhere and when I'm fortunate, they allow me to eavesdrop.

Their voices and personalities have become quite distinct.

I have recently finished the major revision pass of A STAR IN THE VOID; the fifth and final book of the series. The characters are currently standing around looking puzzled. I'm feeling quite lost and more than a little lonely.

In some ways, this was the most difficult book I've ever written. (For those of you keeping track, this is book number 14). It took me a long time to figure out why and when I finally did, I totally had the "V8" moment: It's a lot harder to finish a series than to start it.

For each of the prior books, the world and the story expands. Have a problem as a writer? Throw a new issue at your characters. Now add a ticking clock. And someone or something in peril.

Easiest way out of blocked creativity ever!

But then came book 5.

Finally, I was faced with the need to pull it all back together in a way that fit the series organically and would be satisfying to the reader, without throwing in new shiny distractions for the characters. And all while saying goodbye to my imaginary friends.

The only thing that would have make it harder would have been to do it backwards and in high heels.

Metaphorically speaking.

Really, I'm a terrible dancer.

But I digress.

When I wrote the final chapters, there were moments when I cried. Studies have shown that what we imagine is as real as our experiences and I've been imagining these people and their world for a very long time. We've been together more than six years. As much as I've been the architect of their adventures, they've also changed me. I don't think you can create something without being altered by it.

So I will take some time to mourn the loss of this world that has been as real to me as my day to day life and characters who have become dear friends.

And now, as I prepare to ready this fifth and final installment of Halcyone Space, I understand that it is no longer my story. It belongs to the universe.

A STAR IN THE VOID.
Summer, 2018

---

email:

• Free eBook
• Free/DRM-free short fiction
• publication news

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Countess Ada Lovelace, in 1852
By Henry Phillips (Wikimedia) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!  

There's a little 'easter egg' in her honor in my Halcyone Space books in the character of Adiana (Ada) May. In the books, the historical creators of the AI source code are two scientists named Dauber & May. CHARLES Dauber & ADA May. These were deliberate choices to echo the roles of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace in early computing. 

In my fiction, Dauber did more of the hardware work and May, the software - in homage to Babbage & Lovelace and their roles - Babbage created the physical difference engine and Lovelace grasped its applications. 

So who was Ada Lovelace, you ask? An excellent question!

Augusta Ada Lovelace was born in 1815, the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron and Lady Anne Isabella Milbanke Byron. Her parents separated just a few weeks after Ada was born and her mother had her educated in science and mathematics as a way to avoid what she saw as her former husband's instability.

As a young woman, Ada Lovelace met Charles Babbage and he became her mentor. Ada seemed to have an intuitive grasp of the possibilities of Babbage's Analytical Engine and in a translation of a scientific paper on Babbage's work from the French, she added notes that more than doubled the original text.

"In her notes, Ada described how codes could be created for the device to handle letters and symbols along with numbers. She also theorized a method for the engine to repeat a series of instructions, a process known as looping that computer programs use today. Ada also offered up other forward-thinking concepts in the article. For her work, Ada is often considered to be the first computer programmer."  From Ada Lovelace: Biography

While this doesn't seem radical to anyone who's played around with computer programs, remember, Lovelace wrote this in 1843.

1843! 

Her work was essentially lost until the 1950s, but she's now recognized as the first programmer, so the next time you sit down in front of your computer, thank Ada. 

10 Things You Might Not Know About Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace: The First Tech Visionary
How a poet's daughter created the concept of software

#SFWApro

---

email:

• Free eBook
• Free/DRM-free short fiction
• publication news

Squirrel!

Distracted? Who me? Photo of our dog, Dustin, by N. Halin,
used with permission

Once upon a time, I had the ability to focus and concentrate.

Really. I did.

Stop laughing! That's not nice!

Well, at least I seemed to be able to focus on my writing and get words down on the page in 20-30 minute writing sprints. These days, I'm about as flighty and distractable as a golden retriever puppy on speed. 

Partly, I blame the stress of last year, which left me unsettled and unmoored. Partly is likely the dubious joys of peri-menopause. Partly to blame is the siren call of always-on internet devices and the irresistible ping of notifications.

I know it's not possible to be creative and productive while multitasking. Hell, I know that neurologically, multitasking is, in itself, impossible. We just single-task serially, some of us more seamlessly than others, giving the illusion of multitasking. But the truth is, each interruption costs something in terms of performance.

I know this, and still, I let myself get seduced by checking email, Google Plus notifications, my Amazon sales page, all the while deluding myself that I'm actually writing.

So I decided that the first step was admitting I had a problem and needed help.

Then I found "Freedom". It's a program originally created for the Mac, now ported to Windows, etc, that lets you set internet free stretches of time. I used to think I had the self-discipline and scoffed at such controlling external measures.

I'm not scoffing anymore.

I shelled out the 10 or so bucks for the program and have been using it to return to 30 minutes of focused writing sprints, scattered through my day. It's frustrating to sit with a difficult scene and a blinking cursor, and my prior strategy would be to check email, or surf over to G+ rather than be with the discomfort. And I KNOW that clicking into another window just drained away all my creative energy. Yet, I did it anyway. Repeatedly. For much of the past year. Honestly, it's a wonder I got anything completed at all.

So now you know my dirty secret.

I am slowly rebuilding my 'concentration muscles.' And you know what? It feels good to work my brain in this way. I've missed it a lot.

And I think I'll let the dogs worry about chasing the squirrels.

How to read blogs on your kindle: free and otherwise

As the world of eReaders (including kindle apps on multiple platforms) continues to expand, and many folks doing more and more of their reading on reading devices/tablets, I decided to explore ways to read the blogs I follow on my Kindle.

It turns out there are several ways to do this; some free, some subscription (fee) based, some simple, some requiring some technical knowledge.

So here are the results of my investigation:

1. Paid subscriptions (cost, easy, limited to e-ink kindles):

The Kindle store sells subscriptions to uploaded blogs for a monthly fee. Amazon sets the price ("Unfortunately, you would not be able to sell your blogs for free. Amazon will define the price based on what we deem is a fair value for customers.") between 0.99 and 1.99  per month, of which the blogger will earn 30%, . I've just experimented with adding both this blog and my story blog for DERELICT to the blog store at Amazon. This is the simplest way to archive blog content for offline reading on any of the kindle e-Ink devices. 

2. Subscribe using calibre to your kindle. (free*, moderately difficult, any kindle or app):

This method requires a free, open source ebook management system called Calibre.  There are step by step directions on how to 'fetch' a blog via its RSS feed to Calibre with images here.

A guide to setting up Calibre to email the converted feed in ebook form to your kindle is here. 
NOTE--this is a 2-step process.

3. Subscribe to blogs using KindleFeeder (free* and paid options, easy, any kindle or app):

There is a subscription/conversion service called KindleFeeder.  If you subscribe to less than 12 RSS feeds, it will deliver them to your kindle device/app for free. More than 12, and there is a paid service you can use. They have step by step directions on how to subscribe to a feed.

The MAIN problem with KindeFeeder, is that for the free version, there is no way to get an automatic delivery for new blog content.  You need to manually push your content over to your kindle via the 'queue new delivery' button on the main page. (Which means you will need to visit the KindleFeeder page each week to get the updated content.)

If you regularly read many feeds and want to have them delivered to your kindle automatically, then it may be worth your while to purchase a yearly subscription to KindleFeeder. $20/year gets you up to 70 feeds automatically pushed to your kindle with the ability to schedule your delivery. (I have no connection to kindlefeeder, am just considering the options.)

 **According to their website, they've just migrated to a new server and seem to be having trouble delivering content to the Kindle. I could not get it to work.

***HUZZAH! As of Aug 25th, this now works!! So if you want to follow DERELICT (or any other blog) on your kindle via RSS feed for free, sign up for KindleFeeder! ***

 4. Subscribe using a combination of Instapaper and IFTTT (Free*, minimally complex, with limitations, any kindle or app)

• Sign up (free) with Instapaper
• Under "Account" follow the directions after clicking "manage my kindle settings"
• Sign up (free) with IFTTT ("If this then that"--a way to link services with custom recipes--pretty cool!)
• Enable this recipe to push new blog posts to your Instapaper list

The main problem with Instapaper is that it only sends the NEW posts written AFTER you have set up your account. It also doesn't seem to send new posts from a subscribed RSS feed on its own, hence the addition of the IFTTT 'recipe'.

If you want all the previous chapters of DERELICT as a single kindle friendly file, email me (lisa at ljcohen dot net) and I'll be happy to send it to you.

Instapaper also has a paid subscription ($12.year) for higher send to kindle limits, faster updates)

5. (8/15/13) A commenter added this:

CURRENTLY, the best way to get all your custom and preset blog/RSS feeds automatically is to integrate Feedly.com with your @kindle account through IFTTT. Here is your recipe; https://ifttt.com/recipes/111316

You can find feedly here.  I'm not familiar with it, but I suspect it works like google reader (may it rest in peace!) used to.

*This will be free on any content delivered via wifi. Amazon charges a small fee for content delivered over its whispernet.

I'll keep updating this information as I find additional resources.

NOTE: For any of the methods that use the kindle personal document delivery system, you can go to your manage my kindle page and download the content to ANY of your linked kindle devices! 

Stepping Up My Game

Title taken from a Zen saying:
Before Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
I'd like to think it goes with the 'do the work' sentiment that the linked article discusses.

If you are a writer and you don't follow "Writer Unboxed," do not wait. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go follow them now. Day in and day out, they post thought provoking, moving, and information-rich content for writers. (Full disclosure--I have guest blogged for them.)

Today's post by Porter Anderson hit me square between the eyes. "Social Media: Your Shadow Career?" put into words something that I've been struggling with for some time now. I *know* that a social media presence is essential for today's writer. I *know* that building a platform is crucial for the elusive discovery--how to have your novels pop out from the sea of books published and self-published every day. I *know* that building relationships across multiple social networks is the important, as the circles of twitter, g+, FB, and pinterest (to name a few) users have some but not full overlap.

So I maintain various degrees of active presence on Twitter, G+, FB, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. I also blog regularly and comment frequently on blogs I follow.

It's work. I'm fairly good at it--have built up some lovely relationships and have learned an enormous amount about the business of publishing in the process.

But is it *the* work I need to be doing?  Or is it my shadow career?

If I am honest with myself, I can admit that I fritter away hours a day interacting on social media sites. There is something seductive and addictive about looking for that notification icon that tells me I've been RT'ed, or mentioned, re-blogged, emailed, commented. It's almost worse if I check and there's nothing, because then I keep refreshing looking for the next hit.

If this sounds like a gambler feeding coins into a slot machine over and over again, after losing, well, it is.

I've never been a gambler and I don't have any kind of craving for drugs or alcohol, so I always had a secret sense of superiority about my 'lack of an addictive personality.'  Guess what? That's bullshit. I just hadn't found my personal 'crack.'

It's social media.

And the near-obsessive need to monitor it is something I need to work on.

Now, it's not as if I don't write. I've managed to write a book a year for the past 7+ years, working steadily and slowly with daily and weekly wordcount goals. I'm even on track to write the first draft of my latest in approx 4 months.

But here's the thing. I'm spending far many more hours a day with social media than I am actually writing. And that's backwards.

I can absolutely step up my game and write more, edit more, spend more time on craft than on platform. I've known for some time that I also need to spend time every day caring for my physical well being, meaning scheduled exercise. The dangerous byproduct of social media is that I sit for vast stretches each day. Both in the short run and the long run, this is a harmful practice.

To those who say that a writer needs to focus on platform in order to market books, I answer, yes, but. . . And here's why.

I've done all the right things to support my debut YA title, THE BETWEEN. I generated buzz before the launch on social media, I solicited and obtained reviews, did guest blogging, giveaways, interviews, contests. And it has generated some sales.

I also have a poetry collection (CHOP WOOD, CARRY WATER)  available at B&N and iTunes. I didn't actually place them for sale. That was accidental. Nearly 3 years ago, I put this collection together as a physical chapbook and eBook through Lulu press, essentially as gifts for family members. It was also for sale at the insistence of my online poetry community and sold a handful of copies. Well, sometime a year ago or so, Lulu must have sent out an email letting folks know they were adding digital copies to online booksellers, unless you opted out.

I never got that email.

I don't market the collection. I barely mention it, other than it exists as a link on the right hand blog sidebar. I never asked for a single review. I don't do contests, giveaways, or interviews about it.

And month in, month out, it sells a few copies.

I actually earn royalties on a book I never intended to sell.

Sure, THE BETWEEN sells more copies and earns more money than the poetry collection, but not anywhere near to difference I would expect given the difference in promotional efforts between them.

So this is what I think:

• Be active on social media at least a little bit because it's important as an author to have a public presence
• Moderate your activity and make sure it doesn't interfere with what you are building your platform *for*
• Stay as involved as you feel it's enjoyable and supports your work, not simply because it becomes your work
• Be honest with yourself, especially if you see evidence of growing addiction (and no, I don't use that term lightly)
• Find ways to look inside and nurture yourself. Everything I've read in the research literature speaks of the need for solitude and silence as part of the creative process

Anything to add? 

Take a Sledgehammer to Social Media Day

Most people I know my age are pretty phobic when it comes to computers and email and social media.  I may be a 'grown up', but I'm no stranger to technology. You could say I grew up as an ultimate early adopter. 

When I was in Junior High, our district was given a mainframe computer from one of the aerospace companies on Long Island. I think the school plunked it in the Junior High because there was no where else in the district that had a big enough air conditioned room for it.

So I joined the nascent computer club. This was in the mid 70s and I learned basic and a smattering of other computer languages, programed silly games on punch cards and generally thought of computers as something to mess around with.

Fast forward to college, where I had the opportunity to write papers in a room full of dumb terminals instead of a typewriter. Mostly, I stayed with the typewriter, because I rarely had my act together to write the paper longhand before heading to the computer lab where there was a time limit on using the terminals.  Then in graduate school in 1984, when I realized a huge part of my program would include writing a thesis based on original research, I persuaded my parents to front me the money to buy a personal computer.  The IBM's were the top of the line, but way too expensive.  Radio Shack has just come out with an improvement to their TRS-80, a model that had TWO 5 1/4 floppy drives, so you could load the program in one and save the files in the other.

 

 

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1083&st=1

Computer, complete with green glowing screen, and a loud dot matrix printer with fan fold pin paper cost nearly $1000. in 1984 dollars. And the "P" the model number stood for PORTABLE. Really.  Stop laughing.

Today, my ipod touch has more computing power and fits in my pocket.

I graduated from the 'trash 80' to a Compaq, to a PC that had a COLOR monitor and ran DOSCommander, a  kind of pre-windows shell to manage commands. Then windows came out and we had a series of windows machines, each with its own quirks and issues.

Now I have an HP laptop, an android tablet, and an iPod touch and I'm always on, always connected with a social media presence I never would have thought possible in the days of dial up modems and TCP/IP.

When I stop to think about it, it's pretty overwhelming, actually.  I can only imagine my 12 year old self looking at me in 2012 and thinking that I live in a Science Fiction universe. Practically nothing happens in our world without telling someone (or many someones) about it. We tweet, we FB, G+, Blog, and Pin. It's like we're never alone anymore.

Hardly 5 minutes goes by without one of my electronic vices beeping at me.  Ray Bradbury has a short story called 'The Murderer' about this. Go look for it, if you've never read it. He was pretty damned prescient about our wired up future. While I may not be ready to take a sledgehammer to my phone or my ipod, I do think I need more time without external distractions for my creative process.

This morning, I did a small thing.  I didn't check any social media with my morning coffee.  Instead, I let the  silence in the house keep me company while I worked on hand writing revisions to a manuscript. 

And then I sat and blogged about it.

:)

There's No Place Like Home

My office, during the post-fire demolition, winter 2011

When my kids were rug-rats, this narrow, little room off our living room was their playroom. It was a hodgepodge of books, toys, games, and art supplies for about 12 years of our life in this house we've lived in for the past 19 years. When the kids got old enough that their 'toys' became gaming systems instead of matchbox cars, they took over the finished side of the basement.  I refer to it as 'the man pit.'  I claimed the room they no longer used as my office.

In the space that spans the windows, sat my enormous desk, bought 20 years ago at a furniture closeout sale where it fit a specific room in our former rented house.  Since this room is only 7 feet wide and the desk is over 3 feet wide, it make the long narrow space even narrower, but I've never minded.  I love being able to spread out the piles of papers and reference books I use when I'm writing.  And it's the only horizontal space in the house that belongs completely to me.

On the morning of our fire, the desk was there, my laptop open on top of it, doing its nightly automatic backup. When the firefighters answered the emergency call, they smashed all the windows with fire axes, sprinkling glass over every surface in the room.  Including my laptop.  When the house was safe to enter, the firefighters carefully closed my laptop and brought it to me.  While there was no direct fire damage in the office, they had closed the laptop with the glass inside it, grinding glass shards between screen and keyboard. Even if that had been the only damage, the fan had sucked in the oily smoke, killing the hard drive.

Fortunately, all I lost was my usual writing space and not all my writing.  (Dropbox is your friend, people.  Really.) Once we got a new laptop, I was back in business.

But it was a hard year, being displaced from home in into a cramped apartment with my family and no designated personal space. I still managed to fill notebooks with scribblings, found places to lug my laptop to and write, but when we moved back into our home and I was able to put my restored desk in its rightful place, well, then all was right with the world again.

Today’s post was inspired by the topic “My favorite writing place”– March’s topic in the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour — an ongoing tour where you, the reader, travel around the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. We have all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s something for everyone to enjoy. 

If you want to get to know nearly twenty other writers and find out their thoughts on crossing genre lines, check out the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour. You can find links to all of the posts on the tour by checking out the group site. Read and enjoy!

Facebook and Twitter and Google+ Oh My

Once upon a time, there was only dial up.  Email was a relatively new thang for folks outside of the military or academia. Then there was compuserve and the lucky few who had the money to afford their own computer and the know how could have their own email address.  Their OWN email.  That it was a long string of numbers, nearly impossible to remember and that getting online meant knowing how to negotiate DOS, using a modem, tying up your phone line, and hoping not to get disconnected, was besides the point.  It was gee-whiz amazing.

Holy early adopters, batman.

I didn't have a compuserve address, but my hubby was a beta tester for one of the first versions of AOL.  AOL!  Even the name meant something.  America On Line.  This was nothing short of revolutionary. You could choose a NAME for your email address.  A name that would be simple for you to remember and to share with your friends.  And AOL made it easier to find other people who you could communicate with through their message boards.  You didn't need to know some random string of numbers to find an online community.  (Yes, there were online communities in the dark ages of the late 80s, you just had to know the secret handshake.)  AOL made it accessible.  It was visually stunning, compared to what we had before.

I remember spending guilty and expensive (you had to pay for your phone time, remember?) hours on those message boards.  That was where I found my first online poetry community.  Do you have any idea how amazing that was?  I could talk to poets from around the globe and we could share our words, work together.

And as is wont in anything technological, things accelerated.  They evolved.  Computers got faster and faster.  Programs became more sophisticated and simpler to use at the same time.  The web became the infrastructure we never really think about--like the water pipes that lurk under our streets that bring our water to the tap.  It is just there.  A given.

Now we have facebook, twitter, linkedin, foursquare, google+, etc.

Smart phones and ubiquitous wifi means there's an expectation of always on, instant interconnectivity.  We narrate our lives in public.

My kids have grown up taking this landscape for granted.  While I am no luddite by any stretch of the imagination, I didn't really have any interest in facebook when it was *the thing* for any teen, but joined so my kids could join.  (Friending me was a condition of their accounts.)

I grew to appreciate facebook, and the way I could stay in touch with far-flung friends and relations in a casual, asynchronous way.  Then twitter clamored for my attention.  And I joined that too, knowing that social media was not optional for writers--even aspiring ones.  I then grew to appreciate the way other twitterers had essentially curated the WWW and I could follow fascinating links that I would have otherwise missed.

And now, Google+.  A friend who is an earlier adopter than I am sent me an invite.  I wanted to claim my user name, so I hopped aboard.  There are a lot of very smart features of G+, but that is not what I want to talk about.  (Just search for Google+ and you will find a plethora of usability posts.)

What I want to talk about is my sense of overwhelm.  Yes, I have met fascinating and lovely people via social networking.  Yes, I enjoy being able to talk with folks from around the globe and share their perspectives.  Yes, it's fun to participate and to share what I love with like-minded individuals.

Yes to all those things that are part of the social media world.

And yet, I am feeling for the first time the inklings of worry.  Can I keep up with the pace?  Is the conversation flowing so rapidly that if I don't swim with all my might, I'll be swept away?

There is also a cost to staying in that current.  I worry about losing the ability to be in the moment and soak up an experience without feeling the need to interpret or mediate it publicly.  Silence and stillness are vital to the creative process.  In the background noise of updates and notifications, will I be able to hear myself think? Will talking about writing supplant my actual writing?

I don't have any easy answers to this, but I know I will need to find a balance that will allow me to both stay engaged with a community I have grown to appreciate and find enough private, quiet time to create.

This is not the fault of google+, or any particular social media system, it is only the latest pull on my attention.  I suppose that in time, I will integrate g+ into my routine the way I have figured out how to follow blogs by reading my rss feed with my morning coffee.

So far, I have resisted the siren song of a smart phone.  It's bad enough that a broadband always on internet connection at home means that I am always once click away from distraction.  Some days, I am nostalgic for the inconvenience of a modem and checking my email once a day.

Huzzah! Mobile version of Once in a Blue Muse enabled!

Blogger has done a nice job of optimizing the look of its blogs for a mobile device.  If you are a blogger, definitely consider turning on the mobile optimization.  You have to log in to blogger in draft mode to do it, however.  (You can do this by going to draft.blogger.com and logging in to your dashboard.   I don't recommend clicking the "Make Blogger in Draft my default dashboard" option, unless you are comfortable with playing with blogger settings.)

If you have a mobile device, take a look at the Once in a Blue Muse blog and tell me what you think.

After the Honeymoon is Over

It's been a little more than a year and a half since I took the plunge and bought my kindle.  Since then, I've read many dozens of books on the device, read others on my ipod touch via the kindle app, ibooks, and stanza.  Still other books I've read on my laptop.  Do I like the convenience of ebooks?  Sure.  It's especially wonderful for a book lover like me (and also as someone with no ability to wait!) to hear about something on NPRs "Fresh Air" and buy it *right now!!!* for my reading pleasure.

Another reason to embrace the ebook is space and portability.  My bookshelves are groaning.  There are 4 booklovers in this household--it's not hard to see the problem.

But, here is my true confession.  I vastly prefer paper books.

I am no luddite.  Hell, I have more gadgets and gizmos that all require different chargers and operating systems than the average bear. (Hmm--interesting visual image--an average bear with cell phone, ipod, kindle, tablet,GPS, and laptop. . . )  Moreover, I tend to be among the early adopters of technology. 

For the past month or so, I've been trying to work out what my resistence to ebooks is all about.  After all, I readily embraced digital music.  Now I look at the shelf space taken up by my CD collection and shake my head.  All that music and more can happy fit on my ipod.  And I can listen to the music far more easily, with more portability, and with sufficient sound quality to match the CD/stereo experience.  I've even happily watched episodes of favorite shows and movies on my ipod, streamed courtesy of netflix, without feeling nostalgic for video's, DVD's or good old network TV.

So why not books?

Part of the problem may be that the delivery of music and videos via handheld/portable device is really not that different to the end user whether the user is experiencing it through digital means or a more tangible method. The content on CDs, videos, and DVDs have all needed to be delivered to the consumer through some sort of translation device.  Hell, even a record needed a record player.

But a book can be utilized as is, without any added delivery device.  The delivery device is built into the item. 

An ebook is a fundamentally different way to experience a book in a way that an ipod is not fundamentally different in delivering music or video. Yes, I can absorb the content of a book in electronic form, using any number of delivery devices.  Indeed, I have over the past 18 months.  The convenience is unmistakable.  But the experience is nowhere as satisfying or pleasurable to me as holding a paper book in my hands and being able to kinesthetically flip through its pages.

I relate differently to the same book in ebook versus paper book form.

Perhaps I have reached my generational wall.  Perhaps if I had grown up with equating books with reading devices I would have a different experience.  Yet, when I think back, I have been interacting with computers since my early teens, learning to program in BASIC in the 1970s on a mainframe.  Using punchcards.   I am comfortable writing with a computer and follow dozens of blogs daily using an RSS reader, so it's not a problem of fear of device.

No, it is essentially a problem of relationship.  Books and I decided that we should see other people.  And I admit, it was exciting to flirt with kindle and ipod, but really, all I want to do next Saturday night is curl up on the sofa with a good book.  Maybe share a bottle of wine, some soft music, candlelight.

It's a date.

Credit where credit is due

I had to abandon my beloved Palm Zire 71 a few months ago, after the conduits broke following a windows update and I got tired of spending the several hours it took to get them working again.

So I joined 'the dark side' and now use an ipod touch as my external brain.  For the most part, after the pain of the switch and struggling to get all my data from one platform to another, I've been happy with the touch.  Certainly, having email access in any wifi area is a convenient perk.  And having all my music at hand another.

But, I still morn the loss of my week-at-a-glance view that I had with my palm.  The apple calendar app for the touch doesn't have it.  Which seems really odd to me.  After all, it's just a database that is shown in multiple formats.  They have day, month, and list views coded.  Why not a week at a time?  Making new appts on the device without that is awkward.

So I was thrilled when I found a new app that has the week at a glance view:  Calendars by Readdle.  I purchased it, and after a little difficulty actually downloading it from the itunes store (it wouldn't load via my computer, no matter what I tried, so I accessed it directly from the ipod), got it set up in no time.

Happy me--week at a glance.  Worth paying $6.99 for to make my day to day life vastly easier.

Then I got greedy.  There were things I thought would make the product even better, so I decided to contact the developer.

I went on their website, filled out the contact form with my impressions and suggestions, hit send.  Didn't think I'd hear anything back.  Certainly I haven't from other companies whose software I've bought and used.

Well, I need to eat my words.  Not only did I hear back from them within hours of my message, they have asked me for my opinions and we have had several email exchanges.

Rarely, in this brave new world, do you find such responsive companies.  Kudos to Readdle for a product that is good and will be even better as they continue to develop it.

How do we and others value our work?

As an aspiring author, I've been thinking a lot lately about issues related to building a community of (future) readers. There's quite a bit of discussion on the internet about giving away content as a way to forge relationships with your audience and as a way to increase sales.

Cory Doctorow is the front runner in this. He has managed to leverage his large internet presence, technological savvy, and his writing creativity to build a huge following of readers. Perhaps they (as I did) discover him by his free fiction, and then go on to purchase his books.

But this model doesn't work for everyone, as this post by J.C. Hutchins, a SciFi writer and podcaster discusses. He put his all into podcasting and making his writing available for free on the net, but despite all that work and a loyal following of readers/audience, it didn't lead toward increased sales and his publisher declined to publish the sequels to his work.

Even industry insiders disagree on whether or not to share work on line. This post at Writers Unboxed shows the 'pro' side.

A conflicting view is here, on the Guide to Literary Agents Blog.

And Writer Beware has a recent guest post talking about the dangers of self-promotion.

So what is an aspiring novelist to do?

I think it depends on what your goal is.

I have 6 completed novels, and a 7th in process. My agent is working hard to sell one, while assessing a second for its marketability. Both of these are YA fantasy novels.

One of the first novels I wrote was an epic/high fantasy novel about a war between humans and shapeshifters. I have extensively revised it over the years, as my writing skills improved, and I now think it has moved from the category of 'trunk novel' to a story I would be proud to see on the bookshelves.

Trouble is, it's not a genre that is very commercially viable right now. It may be years before it is. And it isn't exactly a fit with the majority of what I'm currently writing. (Contemporary YA Fantasy)

I love this story and I want it to be read. That's really the goal of the artist--to get the work in the hands of an audience. That's what completes the creative cycle. So I have been mulling over the prospect of releasing it for free as a serialized novel.

My hopes in this are:

1--to share a world and a story that I believe in with readers
2--to start to build a network/tribe of interested readers who would get a sense of my work before having to commit to a (future--I hope!) purchase
3--to get a sense of reader interest in high fantasy (I'd love to write in this world again)

My concerns center around retaining credibility as a professional writer, not losing the ability to sell the novel for future publication, and not falling into the trap of undervaluing my work. In the end, I wish to make a living as a novelist. And that can't happen if the work isn't available for purchase and people don't buy it.

If you are an industry person, a published writer, or an aspiring writer, I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

The Utter Frustration of Computers and technology, part II

As I chronicled in part I of my rant, I did eventually get the palm zire 71 to play nicely in the sandbox with my computer.  A few days later, the conduits mysteriously urped again, then started working again.  While it is syncing now, I am living in abject terror of the day when this lovely device will no longer work.

The perils of using an ancient (in technology terms) device is that there's not a lot of resources available to troubleshooting problems when they occur.  And while the 'net can be a font of informational goodness, wading through pages and pages of posts about other users' experiences and frustrations is a little like being in a massive game of blind man's bluff. 

I *love* my palm.

It is a simple device that does *exactly* what I need it to do.  And then some.  It functions as:
      ~a calendar in an easy to see, easy to use format
      ~a to do list
      ~a contact's list
      ~an alarm clock/world clock
      ~a memo pad and document reader (and writer, using the external keyboard*)
      ~a password safe
      ~a repository for custom databases via handbase (the best money I ever spent on a program)
      ~for fun, it also takes and stores photos, can play music, read books in pdb format, and has games (solitaire!)

It does all this and seamlessly (at least until a few weeks ago) synchronizes with my computer as well as can back up to an SD card, for on the go security.

What it does NOT do (nor do I need it to) is get on the internet, fetch or send email, or use or require wifi.

But a few years back, Palm took a turn away from simpler, stand alone devices running the very robust palm OS and has morphed into a smart phone company.

I don't want a smart phone.  I'm quite happy with my 'dumb' phone.  I'm quite happy to carry around a small phone AND a palm. The problems with convergence devices are that if one part of your device stops working, you lose all functionality in all aspects until it's fixed or replaced AND the form factor can't easily match all its functions.  The ideal shape of a phone is quite different than the ideal shape of a calendar, for example.

Judging by internet postings, I'm not alone in bemoaning the predominance of convergence devices (smart phones/ipod touch, etc) in the PDA marketplace.

More complex isn't always more better.

Still looking for a solution and a replacement for my beloved Zire 71.

-----
*I've used WordSmith for years on the palm platforms.  It allows for seamless sharing of word or rtf documents between the computer and the palm.  Several of my novels were either partially written or edited on the palm.  Talk about having a word processor in your pocket.

The Utter Frustration of Computers

Lest you think I'm a luddite, I am actually quite tech/computer savvy.  And I love a good gadget.  We were early subscribers to AOL, way back in the dark ages of 1989/1990 (or thereabouts.  Don't quote me on it--it was a long time ago.)  I even has a personal webpage back in the day--probably by '96/'97.  It advertised and sold slings to hold your baby in.  The 'baby' who was featured on the front page is now entering high school.

I also fiddle with html and visual basic for various projects.  So I'm no shrinking violet when it comes to troubleshooting computers.  When my workhorse of a laptop refused to play in the sandbox with my old reliable palm zire 71 (my 3rd or 4th palm device), I didn't panic.  I can be systematic.

I did all the usual stuff.  Tried a system restore back to the date just before the last successful sync.  No luck.

I did a repair reinstall of the desktop software.  No luck.

I uninstalled the program and reinstalled.  No luck.

I did a clean uninstall and took out all the relevant registry keys and reinstalled.  No luck.

I did it all again.

And again.

In between all these attempts, my fingers were furiously googling, reading newsgroups and blogposts about similar problems.

The major issue is orphaned software and increasingly complex systems.  It used to be, you have a few programs installed on your basic computer.  There weren't a lot of options, so there were few conflicts.

Then we got Windows and endless problems with memory hogging and space chewing.  And programs that didn't always get along.

After much coffee and frustration, I did get everything working again, but I know this palm's days are numbered.

It is a perfectly wonderful piece of computer hardware with the right software that does what it says it will do.  I love it.  I have no desire for a smart phone or an itouch or ipad.  The last thing I need is more access to the internet.

But I do need a simple to use, convenient electronic day planner. 

I have no idea what to do when the Zire 71 is no more.

Some days, I think clay tablets would be just the thing. . .

What did I do today?

What does a day in the writing life look like?

I got up at 6:20 this morning to get my HS kid off to school. Usually, I sleep in a bit later than this--till 6:45 or 7, but hubby got paged in at 5 am for an emergency, so it was my turn. After the middle school kiddo got on his way at 7:45, I waited for the contractors to come and start the repair work after the plumbing leak last month.

They came and went by 9, unable to start the job until tomorrow. Sigh.

I gave myself an hour to read/respond to emails, and blogs, while slurping several cups of coffee, before opening the WIP.

I finished the scene I had ended in the middle of yesterday (that's a wonderful tool for me--it keeps my momentum going) and pushed into today's writing.

Then I realized I needed some research information in order to write it. Off to the 'net to look at resources for hand to hand fighting, karate, and boxing moves.

The internet is definitely a double edged sword when it comes to research. It can be a treasure trove as well as a time suck, often simultaneously.

I was able to get the information I needed and returned to scrabble out my 1,000 words.

Then a break for lunch and hot tea. (We had our first frost last night and none of our storm windows are down yet--it's cold in here!)

A walk for the dog, and it was time for my youngest to get home from school.

It might not seem like a productive day, but 1K a day can net a first draft of a novel in a matter of months.

Now it's off to wear the parent hat and take said youngest child to his clarinet lesson.

Happy writing.

Dealing with distractions

By all accounts, I am a little bit intense. When I fall in love with an idea, have a problem to solve, or start reading a book, it's all or nothing. That's one of the reasons the computer, and specifically the lure of the internet is dangerous for me.

I can so easily fall down the rabbit hole.

This week, I started unsubscribing from all sorts of lists/newsletters/causes in an attempt to keep my inbox clear in the off chance we will be able to check email from Kyrgyzstan. What I have noticed is how much more manageable my computer use seems to be. With less email to wade through, it's easier to read and respond to ones that are important and then move on.

While I still follow dozens of blogs in my rss reader, I haven't gone the one step further to cut them from my life. I figure, some folks read the newspaper with their morning coffee. I have my blogfeeds.

Fortunately, I'm not terribly addicted to FB and have never gotten into following twitter feeds because as a writer, it's not like I can go cold turkey from the computer. It's become an essential tool for research and writing.

I am hoping I can carry this new leaner/meaner email system into the fall and my future writing. Less distraction will be a welcome relief for my magpie brain.

Discovering Cory Doctorow

While I am a voracious reader, and I read a fair amount of YA and Adult science fiction and fantasy, I had not read anything by Cory Doctorow until I read "Little Brother" in one furious sitting yesterday.

It is a near-future cautionary tale of how fear of terrorism destroys us far more than the terrorism itself and I found it compelling, chilling, and all too plausible. I plan on passing the story on to my teenage sons.

But the story is not the reason for my blog post.

"Little Brother" is a 2009 Locus Award finalist, published in 2008 by TOR. And Cory Doctorow released it as a free (free to buy, free of DRM) ebook under a creative commons license. Clearly he and his publisher are not afraid that allowing this novel to be read online with no strings attached will destroy Doctorow's career or decimate TOR's profits. Rather, Doctorow believes that obscurity, not piracy, is the writer's and artist's biggest enemy.

And you know what? That works for me. Because I did not need to jump through hoops to find, download, and read this novel, and because it was well written, engaging, and relevant, I now will buy Doctorow's work when I see it on a shelf in a bookstore. I will take a risk with my hard earned money on this author even though I could probably read most of his backlist for free in ebook form on my kindle.

I will do this because I still prefer the feel and experience of a book in my hand, the ability to shove said book in a friend's hand with a 'you must read this', and the "social networking" of seeing what other people are reading; all elements missing in the ebook experience.

As a fledgling author, I am both intrigued and comforted by Doctorow's model. His example shows me that developing an open relationship between reader and writer is an essential element in sustaining a successful career. You don't do that by treating potential readers as presumed criminals. You treat them as partners in a creative process and trust that they will understand and support that process.

Fear is never a good model--not for business, not for living. I found Doctorow's lack of fear a much needed antidote to the gloom and doom about electronic piracy. It gives this aspiring novelist hope.

Taxes, computers, and backups, a tale of woe

In an effort to streamline our paperwork and to cut down on the number of banker's boxes full of paper that line our attic, we purchased a document scanner this past fall. Over the fall and early winter, I spent hours and hours scanning, tagging, and filing scanned documents before shredding the originals.

This included all our tax related documents.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Did she forget to back it all up? The answer: no, but we ended up with a huge mess when the hard drive on my laptop (where we did the scanning to) completely died.

No problem. We have a networked hard drive and automatic back up software over the network. I made backups of our scanned files and they were saved to the network.

Hubby bought a new drive and recovered the files from the network drive. Everything was fine, EXCEPT the scanner backups. They were all corrupted.

Apparently the laptop hard drive was failing for some time and wasn't able to make the backups.

This all happened at the end of February/beginning of March. With taxes due April 15th.

So after multiple email/phone chats with the scanner company, we were able to ascertain that the scanner files were in a specific mssql folder and if we could get the drive recovered, we *should* (or might, according to the tech support folks) be able to read our files.

The long and short of it is we had to send the drive out to a recovery service. The good news: they were able to recover the drive. The bad news: It cost of $2,000 to essentially get back a single critical folder. (Everything else was already on our own backup system.)

Now that specific folder is included in our automatic backups and I check the integrity of the archived back up made through the program.

The moral of the story is even if you do everything right, sh*t happens, but the quantities of sh*t happening are less if you do frequent backups. I think I might have jumped out the window if I'd lost my writing files. *Those* are backed up 6 ways from sunday.

Please back up your critical files today. Now. Right now. I'm not kidding.

A handy app to synchronize files between computers, served with a whine

I'm achy all over and even my eyeballs hurt. I am only upright by dint of regular applications of hot tea, tylenol and advil. I'm only waiting to let the dog in the yard for her last 'visit' so I can stumble my poor body into bed.

If hubby was home, he could let the dog out, but alas, he's at a Radiologic conference in Washington DC and I'm here feeling dreadful and wondering if the dog could possible hold her bladder for the next 10 hours.

Sigh.

This is *not* a good time to be sick. I'm supposed to travel to NYC sunday to meet up with some dear poetry friends, traveling to the Big Apple from Portland, OR.

Anyway, if you managed to muddle through my whining, here's a link to a piece of free software that I have found indispensable in this era of working on multiple computers.

It's called 'alway sync' and it will allow you to specify folders and files that you wish to synchronize between (windows based) computers. I have it set up to run off my USB thumbdrive and have sync jobs to sync my writing files between the table pc and the USB, and between the USB and the laptop. The interface is clean and easy to set up and use. I found it in the March 2008 issue of PC Magazine in their article on the best free software apps. Worth a look, regardless of which platform you use, as they have a list/descriptions of 157 free applications.

Technology Abounds

It may be old technology (oh so last week...) but I have been lent a Compaq tablet PC and I'm really enjoying it. In form factor it is the size of a text book. With a touch of a button, I can orient the screen from horizontal to vertical. It only weighs 3 pounds. What I love about it is that I can use it as an e book reader and be cozy with it in places where my laptop is clunky. And it helps to be able to handwrite when I'm working on edits. The handwriting recognition is about 90% accurate-- which is pretty amazing if you know my handwriting.

what makes the tablet problematic in terms of replacing my laptop is the slow processor speed and small hard drive.

It's definitely not a laptop or desktop replacement, but it will certainly lighten the load when I travel and if I can load it up with lots of ebooks, I have a library in my hands.

It also has an optional keyboard that I'm looking to pick up on ebay.

I have been lusting over an ebook reader and have been impressed by the digital ink technology of the Sony reader and the kindle, but for now, the tablet will fit the bill.

Oh--and it also supports voice dictation. Something I've always wanted to play with.