Some random Ebook musings.

I was a fairly early adopter when it came to the idea of ebooks. In the winter of 2003 I ordered a Palm PDA off the Dell Canada website, and it came pre-loaded with Palm Reader and a link to their website. I checked it out, and ordered my first few books – copies of fantasy novels that I’d read from the library but didn’t have print copies of, and installments of spinoff paperbacks like Roswell and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

That site, and other digital gadgets that I added to my collection, led me to other ebook vendor sites – the Simon & Schuster online webstore, Fictionwise.com, and ebooks.com . I heard about the Kindle and other dedicated ebook readers with lots of great features and bigger selections of books, but for a while those didn’t appear to be available in Canada. Finally, I got my Kindle delivered once Amazon started offering some kind of international sales and service for Kindle ebooks, and I haven’t regretted it.

Over the past few years, readers like Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, and smartphones and tablets have changed the ebook marketplace a lot. Some vendors have kept up reasonably well. Ebooks.com has their own iphone app that lets me download and read books that I originally ordered in mobipocket or Microsoft reader format, and read them anywhere I have the phone.

Palm reader is now Ereader.com, and they didn’t have much trouble adding iPhone, Android, Blackberry and others to the list of devices supporting their own proprietary format. Though I wasn’t impressed by their attempt to make a native linux version, probably because it was badly back-ported from the iphone version to devices that need a very different user interface. Fictionwise is still making a priority of selling books and stories DRM-free and offering as many different formats as humanly possible, which is a great approach.

But some formats have failed, and some vendors have had issues in keeping up with the technology. The Simon and Schuster e-store, unfortunately, seems to be in this category. I bought a lot of ebooks from them, mostly ‘Pocket Books’ paperbacks from franchises like Star Trek, Charmed, Angel, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and some of them were bought in Adobe PDF or Microsoft Reader format – with digital rights management technology to prevent piracy.

Yes, some will say, I should have known better.

The Adobe PDF DRM authentication servers appear to have been offlined years ago, as they moved on towards ‘Adobe Digital Editions’ and their ePub standard – though I still have a few devices that have kept their authentication codes and can read the books. Microsoft has said that it will discontinue support of Microsoft Reader in August of this year – but when I had to hard-reset my HP pocket PC a month and a half ago, I found no way to re-authenticate it again.

Simon and Schuster still has my account active, and apparently tried to migrate my books to Adobe Digital Editions, but apparently couldn’t get them all in that format for whatever reasons, and some of the books that they say they have are still stuck in technical difficulties – a few won’t download at all, and more than a dozen of the ones that I downloaded can’t be transferred to another device with the same Adobe ID – which means I can’t read them on the iPhone through Bluefire, (which is a nifty little ADE-compliant ePub reader program.)

I don’t have a problem with DRM in the concept. But when a failure in the system means that I’m not able to read the books that I bought, then the theory isn’t working out in practice. It makes me want to go out and crack the DRM files just out of spite.

What I’ve been reading – early May edition

Well, it’s been nearly four months since I checked in on my ’52 books in a year’ and other reader details, so guess what I’m blogging about today? My 52-books count currently stands at 19 since I finished ‘Equal Rites’, by Terry Pratchett, which sounds pretty good to me… though now that I’m doing the math it looks like I’m not ahead of the game like I thought I was. But the important thing is, I’m loving every word of it! A few highlights:

• Trading in Danger, by Elizabeth Moon. A nice little science fiction piece, alternately fun and gritty. I’ve never read anything written by Moon alone, though I loved ‘Sassinak’ which she co-wrote with Anne McCaffrey – apparently a lot of the detail in Sassinak about space ships and what it was like to fight in one, and live in one while the environmental systems are limping along, were Elizabeth’s, because she visits the same kind of territory to great effect with this book. Soon after I wrote it, I found some of the themes popping up in the next short story I wrote – ‘The Shuttle.’
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Another great installment in the series, with things going from bad to worse for Harry and his friends at Hogwarts. The school is taken over by a noxious Inquisitor from the Ministry of Magic, and Harry finds out the secret that connects him to the Dark Wizard Voldemort!
• Mort, by Terry Pratchett. This is one of the first Discworld books that I’ve read, but I really loved the humor and the sense of detail that Pratchett gives to his characters and the wacky world they find themselves in. This book did remind me a lot of Piers Anthony’s ‘On a Pale Horse’, as they both look at the Grim Reaper as a character with an uncomfortable job, and examine the possibilities of the job passing from one Death to another, but Terry Pratchett makes the premise his own as he takes it to the Discworld. (Disclaimer, I have no idea if Pratchett knew about ‘On a Pale Horse’ when he was writing this book – since Piers’ book was published four years earlier, it seems just about possible.)
• Power of Three, by Diana Wynne Jones. A great little stand-alone fantasy tale, with a fun twist that comes in just about half-way through. I won’t say anything more for fear of spoilers.

I also read a few of the ‘Star Trek: New Frontier” series, and enjoyed “Inheritance” and “The Puppet Masters” as audiobooks. Right now, I’m a little over three quarters of the way through “A Game of Thrones”, right in the middle of the war of the heirs, and hoping that Ned Stark will be free by the end!

What have you enjoyed reading lately?

Stretch goals versus the history of success

There’s an email from Holly Lisle – something from her ‘Holly’s Tips’ newsletter, that’s been sitting in my Gmail inbox for just over a month, and bugging me the whole time. In it, Holly tells a story from her past as a newbie writer, and how she set an incredible goal for her writing output in a fit of super-motivation. That didn’t really work out so well for herself, she wasn’t producing her best work and wasn’t loving it, and on some advice from an agent she lowered her goals. The lesson learned, she tells me, is to set your goals to what you already know you can achieve and thus create ‘A History of Success.’

Now, I’ve learned many lessons about goal setting myself, and I can understand where Holly’s coming from. Setting truly Herculean targets for yourself and failing to come near then could crush anybody’s spirit, and for some people, setting achievable targets, and then, as she says, “writing extra for the sheer joy of doing it” might be the best way to self-motivate. If your motivation is completely proportional to the level of success you feel, then why not?

Myself, I’m not always like that. For one thing, I don’t always blow past my limits just because I feel the joy. Sometimes I might, and sometimes I might be lazy and say “Okay, I’m done for the month now.” More importantly, I don’t always feel discouraged because I’ve set a big goal and don’t quite reach it. It isn’t too hard to turn that around and say “So – I didn’t finish a Holly Lisle lesson in April, or clean as much of my apartment as I hoped. And I didn’t quite finish reading my fiction slushpile that I wanted to have done by now. But I got my summer workshop situation sorted out, I won Script Frenzy, and I rocked the A to Z challenge!”

That’s the beauty of the stretch goal. It gives me all the motivation of setting really high targets for myself, but I don’t have to get down on myself for not going all the way when time’s up, because I was stretching myself. Sometimes I’m stretchier than I thought, and sometimes I’m stiffer than I’d like to be. (Especially my knee – ouch. ) And I may not be creating a history of success the Holly Lisle way, but I’m looking forward to finding out what I’ll achieve in May!

How about you. Would you rather build up a history of success with goals you know that you can reach, or try a stretcher with me? I’d love to hear from you whichever answer you have. And a big shout out to Elizabeth Twist, whose post on ‘Permission to Fail’ and the Story-a-day-in-May challenge nudged me into finally writing this. Good luck, Elizabeth!

Six Sentence Sunday – The Shuttle 1

Okay, I’m starting a new short story as of this week, a science fiction drama piece.

Dara checked all the displays as the sky outside the window faded from blue towards black. Everything within tolerance, including the important graph of altitude versus time; she was exactly on pace with the company schedule. “Eleven o’clock milk run, San Diego to Astris station. At least I’m a good milk run pilot.”

Dara pressed a few buttons on the control board to bring up a telescope view of her destination. Astris looked the same as ever, an irregular cylinder with stumpy projections spinning in deep space as it rotated.

Thanks for any feedback, guys!

More Wizard World Toronto 2012 Memories

Previous memories.

Okay, so – the Vampire Diaries panel was a lot of fun. The panel was just Paul Wesley and Torrey DeVitto – and I think I didn’t realize for a few minutes that they were both married and castmates on the show, but it sounds like that’s a lot of fun for them. I hadn’t actually gotten to see any of Torrey’s episodes of the show at the time, because I was many months behind, though I’ve caught up to her first appearances by now, thanks to a small weekend marathon.

Jeri Ryan’s Q&A was scheduled in the same room next, and I’d heard enough to guess that Wizard World was going to enforce the ‘clear out of the room and let the people waiting in line have first choice of seats’ policy, so I actually took off five minutes early, when the volunteer mentioned that it was going to be last question, just to beat the rush – and that seemed to work pretty well, though I’m not sure if there was any chance of not getting back into the room.

Jeri was a lot of fun, telling stories about what it was like to be the new girl on Voyager and how she almost fell over on the bridge wearing a laser prosthetic piece over one of her eyes, because it took away her depth perception. She talked up her new show ‘Body of Proof’ a lot too, which makes sense because it’s still waiting on news for getting renewed. I asked her about if she felt she was typecast from having been on Voyager – “No, I feel like it gave me a lot of career opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise” – and asked about her favorite role since, which got her talking for several minutes about Leverage. I’ll have to check that series out.

My last event of the day on Saturday was a Doctor Who fan panel, which was a lot of fun. It was put on by a new fan group, the Doctor Who Society of Canada, which was apparently born at Fan Expo 2011, and they said that they’re looking for new members and had events regularly in the Toronto area.

After the panel, I hurried home so quickly I realized on the bus that I’d completely forgotten to collect the photo that I had taken with Amy.

Sunday morning, as I got off the bus at Union station, something unfortunate happened – I slipped on the slightly wet pavement and wrenched my knee. But I didn’t want to let it ruin my day, so I hurried off towards the convention center as quickly as I could manage, and soon I was in line to get back into the show. I’d inventoried my Buffy and Angel graphic novels Saturday evening, and managed to pick up several new titles, (getting a discount on a slightly worn copy of the last ‘Buffy Season Eight’) and I also remembered to get my Amy Acker photo.

Soon enough, I was headed back down to panel room B. First was the Quantum Leap Panel – Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell talking about the old days together, which was an awful lot of fun. I kept using the same trick of leaving the audience a few minutes early to get in line for the next one – hobbling actually, on my injured knee, but I managed well enough. Sean Maher’s Q&A session was next, and it was a lot of fun. He talked about some of his favorite bits of filming “The Playboy Club”, and being a part of Joss Whedon’s “Much Ado about Nothing.” I was able to ask him about his favorite moment of working with Jewel Staite – he said that moment in the Movie where Simon tells Kaylee that his one regret is not making time to be with her, and her reaction is ‘Hell with this – I’m gonna live!’ I also asked him if he had any notion of what happened next for Simon and Kaylee after the movie.

“Well, Jewel and I joked a bit about that. She said that if there was a Serenity 2, it should open with Kaylee like eight and a half months pregnant, really big. And she’s shaving Simon’s head, saying that he’s just too damn pretty.”

And the last Q&A panel of the entire con was Amy Acker. She was great, really funny and sweet, talked about Cabin in the Woods, and Much Ado about Nothing, and how she’s going to be guest starring on Person of Interest. That’s about all I can remember now – catch you later!

May the Fourth be with you.

Happy Star Wars day, everybody!

I’d like to ramble just a bit tonight about my completed Script Frenzy screenplay draft, ‘Geek at Heart’. It’s a romantic comedy set in the world of fandom, and my main character and a lot of his friends identify as Star Wars fans and dress up as the core cast of ‘A New Hope.’

That was a last-minute decision, because I was planning everything about Script Frenzy at the last minute this year. Sometime well into the last week of March I was still thinking I was going to be writing about a dating agency with all of the set-ups happening on trains – still a romantic comedy, but that movie would have been very different in the details. And I’m not a big Star Wars fan myself, but I guess I’ve absorbed a lot about it, because all kinds of cool Star Wars stuff kept coming out as soon as I got familiar with those characters.

My favorite line, which is hopefully going to be in a Script Frenzy official video, is from a montage where all of Harry’s friends are working the various fan groups that have come to the big convention, trying to find dates for him – and mostly striking out. Amanda, who plays the role of Princess Leia in their group, talks to an older Klingon couple about the possibility of setting Harry up with a Klingon girl:

“We have heard of your Jedi Knights, princess, with their light sabers and mind tricks. That is not the path of a true warrior, and there is no honor in it. Do not ask again!”

The Birds – they are Angry!

I’ve spent quite a lot of time this evening staring intently at my iPhone, catapulting birds at pigs and their walls made out of wood, glass, and stone – and then angrily hitting the ‘replay’ button when a particular angle didn’t work out quite as I expected them.

My usually mild obsession with Angry Birds only started around Christmas. I’d downloaded the ‘pusher’ free sample version of AB from the App Store quite a while before, but never got around to playing it, partly because I thought that you needed to register with Angry Birds separately – instead of just using my apple ID and password. But once I tried it, I quickly grew interested enough to pay up the 99 cents for the basic version.

I’ve now cleared almost every level that comes with that basic version of the game – all eight sequences: “Poached Eggs”, “Mighty Hoax”, “Danger Above”, “The Big Setup”, “Ham ‘em High”, “Mine and Dine”, “Birthday Party”, and “Surf and Turf.” I’ve also unlocked and cleared eight out of the ten crazy ‘Golden eggs’ levels.

The last two golden eggs are rather challenging to earn – for each of them, you have to get a perfect record on every single level of the first two sequences – all 63 levels in “Poached Eggs”, and all 42 levels in “Mighty Hoax.” A perfect record, in this case, means earning a score that is considered to be ‘three star’ worthy for each level.

Thanks to considerable effort this evening, (and some helpful how-to videos on youtube which I do NOT consider to be cheat resources,) I now have 3 stars in 62 out of 63 for Poached Eggs. Surprisingly, level 2-12 is the tricky holdout, just over halfway through. I haven’t given up for good, just for tonight.

There’s a lot that I love about Angry Birds. It isn’t a game with a very complicated plot, but you have some very simple elements – a half-dozen or so different bird types, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, against pigs from big to small who just sit there, hunkered down in their best-built houses and wait for the birds to come at them.

The physics of the game play is intuitive and remarkably realistic, and it demands incredibly fine control of your catapulting angle and split-second timing to best utilize the special abilities that most bird types bring to the game. Red bird and his Big Brother Bird unfortunately have no unique powers of that sort – Red is just the plucky bird who isn’t better than his friends at anything, really, but throws himself into what he needs to do with enough heart that he almost makes up for that, and Big Brother’s specialty is just his size and weight that can often smash through or drag down the strongest fortifications.

Wish me luck! I’ll try to remember to let you know when I unlock those last golden egg levels.

Somewhat faded memories of Wizard World Toronto 2012 – part 1

Because of the non-stop craziness of the A-Z challenge and continuing to do Six Sentence Sunday, I didn’t get to tell you anything about the Wizard World Toronto Comic Con, which took place April 14th and 15th. I had a really great time, (except for perhaps one moment that I’ll tell you about later,) and want to send a shout-out to the Wizard World team for a very well-run show.

I’ve been to Wizard World Comic Con in Toronto two times before. In 2010, it was actually the first fan convention I ever went to – I won a general admission ticket in a Toronto Browncoats shindig giveaway, and had a really great time, meeting Jewel Staite and Magda Apanowicz. I blogged quite a bit about the 2011 show at the time.

There were a lot of changes to Wizard World Toronto in 2012. They moved from the Direct Energy Center on the CNE grounds to the North building of the Metro Toronto Convention Center, a venue that I haven’t been to since the overcrowded 2010 Fan Expo. They also cut it down to a 2-day show, eliminating the Friday afternoon part of the schedule, and moved into April – the same weekend as the Ad Astra fan-run literary convention, actually. I’m disappointed that I couldn’t go to both Wizard World and Ad Astra this year, but I have no regrets about picking Wizard World.

I stuck with the same strategy I used in the March comic con of taking the GO bus into Toronto each day, rather than getting a hotel room downtown. I was also able to drive to the Hamilton bus station this time, in my new car, which actually made the commute a lot less stressful. I got to the South building pretty early on Saturday morning, armed with my barcode ticket printouts. It didn’t take too long to get one of the barcodes scanned and an official wristband sealed onto my person. Then helpful volunteers directed me up an escalator…

To wait in line, with the rest of the general admission peons, for the doors to the show floor to open. (Behind the advance VIP line, but they had to line up too, at least.)

But around 10 am the line started moving, and I went straight for the celebrity autograph area along the back of the floor. Not many stars were there yet, but I think there was a volunteer at Sean Maher’s booth, saying that he was on his way, so I waited around and got him to sign the two items that I’m trying to get signed by the whole Firefly cast – my Serenity blueprints book, and the graphic novel of ‘Those Left Behind.’ Waited a bit longer for somebody to show up at Amy Acker’s booth – eventually heard from somebody that her flight was delayed and she’d be half an hour – or an hour.

The rest of that morning went pretty quickly. Lining up for the photo op with Sean, by that time the word was in that Amy was on her way and a line was forming at her booth, so I joined the line, got her to sign an Angel comic and a head shot, then lined up to get my photo taken with her. I think around this point I must have grabbed a slice of pizza from the ubiquitous Pizza Pizza concession, and wandered the sales floor, looking for anything really cool I had to buy, Picked up some ‘Firefly’ promotional cards, wandered through the comic book stands looking at all the Buffy and Angel graphic novels, and realized that I had very little certainty of which titles I already owned, so I didn’t buy any that day.

I don’t really remember anything else before three in the afternoon on Saturday, which was the Vampire Diaries panel. Actually, I remember lining up for the panel shortly after two. And I think that I’ve rambled long enough for one post, so I’ll pick it up there next time!

Z is for Zenxara

The Script Frenzy A-Z challenge so far…

Hi everybody. For the last day of my Script Frenzy A-Z I’d like to share a spotlight interview with a fellow A-Zer and Script Frenzier, Steph, who goes by Zenxara on Script Frenzy and Twitter. Zenxara reached 100 pages of her script on April the 16th, (Wow!)

How many years have you been doing Script Frenzy?
This is actually my first year doing Script Frenzy, I entered last year but couldn’t make it because of school work, but now that I graduated I have all the time in the world.

How did you first find out about it?
I first heard of Script Frenzy when I was doing NaNoWriMo in 2010. I was looking at what else OLL did besides NaNO and found Script Frenzy.

What’s your favorite thing about the script that you’re writing this year?
My script is about a magic bond and trust. My favorite thing that I love to write about right now is the HighLands, which is where the elves are. HighLands is the most magical place there is in my story. I love to write about the Elves.

What’s the hardest thing about participating in Script Frenzy?
There isn’t anything that I find hard really, it’s much easier then NaNoWriMo, but what I find really sad is that there is no one in my region that is doing the challenge so I’m writing alone.

Why should my blog followers join the Frenzy next year?
I went to a workshop once and they say that a script version of your novel is a great outline, because you have a description of the world or characters, you know who is talking and you can get the character’s voice. You can have the action and see them act. It’s much easier to write in script form then novel form and you can use it as an outline later! That’s what I’m doing.

Thanks, Steph, and congratulations on your successes this April!

Six Sentence Sunday – Geek at Heart 4

First six. Second six. Third six.

Still in the initial scene, and still all in dialog. Note that Brent is the character dressed up as C-3PO.

Here’s wishing all of you a good week full of writing joy! And at least 100 pages to all my fellow Script Frenziers!