The Proof is in the Pudding

Oh ho, all! I just got done looking at the proof of The Peacock's Tale. All those months of careful formatting was worth the effort! It looks great on the eReader. The cover looks really catching too! I can't wait for all of you to see the finished product! Stay tuned - it may still be awhile before it goes live on Amazon and longer for Nook and other readers. Be patient it will be available soon!

Peacock's Picture Perfect Cover

OK so this is the cover I decided to go with. I hope you like it! I used a great designer from fiver.com (sapizol), I am sure I got my money's worth!

The book is now at the publishers - BookBaby - and I am waiting with bated breath! Stay tuned!

Covering the Tale

I have been quiet lately because I have been very hard at work preparing The Peacock's Tale for publication as an eBook. I decide to go with the eBook format because I am not getting younger! Besides, I really think that eBooks are the new way of getting a book published! Why not be out there in front, instead of putting so much effort into trying to get an agent?  I want to progress to my next book. For me, personally to progress, I need closure on this project before I can really put my heart onto the next one. That's me and that's just how I feel now. Right or wrong ...

After many, many re-formats and several edits and lots and lots of learning about this whole process, the book is in its final countdown! Now I am at the stage of picking the cover! This too has been a learning process. I have two possibilities for the cover. I took these to the center where I hold the Writer's group each month and took a poll as to which they thought was the most intriguing - it was a tie!  Sigh. So I guess - you all will have to wait until I decide what the cover will be! Stay tuned!

    

Wordsmith's WhistleStop

DiscussionStation.com has opened their writer's forum called  Wordsmith's  WhistleStop. It is a great forum where writers can discuss their various questions as well as share their writing journey. The platform even allows published writer's to post information on their works. If you are interested in posting unpublished works for feedback there is also an area for that. Already there has been many interesting chats. Come join us when you can!

And while we are talking about DiscussionStation .com ,  the Platform Cafe has opened a reading Group on The Hobbit. Hop on over and join in!

Discussion Staion Opens!

Well I can finally reveal the project I and several  friends have been working on for a long time! A new discussion friendly web site for "Books, Films, TV shows and More"! It is called Discussion Station and can be found at Discussionstation.com ! We are opening in the discussion area with  The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling. You will also find other book talk, as well as news reports, the funny Quibbler magazine and much more. We are hoping to come the place to go to feed your need to talk about literature, films and TV shows. Please take a look and join in the fun!  Have fun posting and make sure to leave comments here about your experience!

E-Readers - The Other Side

As promised, I come today to discuss what I don't like about my e-reader - specifically my Kindle. Let's start with trying to find the book that you bought a month ago when you were in the throes of another book and didn't want to read the new book at that time. When you finally remember - somewhere back there in your mind that you bought the book - you can't remember the tittle. That makes you do the rounds of all the books on your home page and beyond. You hunt and hunt and have to bring up every book or if your savvy enough find the right button to bring up the book description. Finally you have found the right book! Then your not so sure that you want to read that book at the moment and you start again on your hunt for an appropriate book to fit your mood. Seems a whole lot easier to just run one's finger across books on a shelf, and in picking up a book, to read the blurb on the back of the cover to know what it is about.

Let's say you do finally find the book you wish to read. As I really get into the prose, I invariably want to physically turn the page! That is, I start to turn over the e-reader rather than punch the forward button! It seems to happen a lot to me and I am grateful that no one but me seems to notice! Then there is the quest for a name or fact that was seamlessly bypassed pages ago. You come across something on the page you are on and think, "Who is this character?" "Is this the city he was born in, or is this the city he is now in?" To find out the fact that you know you read somewhere back a few pages - the hunt begins. You flip the back-button several times - maybe a lot of times - and finally find the answer! Then you have to punch the  forward-button again and find where you left off. It's quite the pain as compared to easily flipping back a page or two with your fingers maintaining your place where you were with your other hand.

And don't get me started about using a book on your e-reader for a book club discussion. Goodness! Trying to keep characters straight and find your favorite passage or a fact that you want to present to the group is torture! Same thing goes if you wish to do research from an e-book. All that punching of buttons to find what you want is ridiculous. One can't even get page numbers to track where things are in the book!

Then there is the inconvenience of sharing a book. You have discovered the best book ever and after you have read it, you want to make sure your friends read it. But it is on you Kindle! In the old fashion realm of hard copy books, one just popped the book into your purse and took it to the person to read. You lent it too them. Ha! Try doing that with a book on your e-reader! It's one thing to lend a book to someone and another to lend your entire library including the current book you are now reading to a friend! You can only gush about the book and have no way to share it, on a practical basis,  with another person unless you physically give them your e-reader - Fat Chance!

Sigh! I really do enjoy my Kindle, but I certainly do have 'issues' with it that I haven't been able to resolve completely. Please feel free to share your 'issues' with e-readers. I'd love to hear from you!

The Advantages of An E-Reader

When I retired not so long ago, my cohorts, as a retirement gift, set up a money tree (actually a rose bush which is now flourishing in my garden). My friends gave generously and there was just enough on the tree for me to buy a Kindle. It was the rage at the time so I thought it would be a practical gift to myself. It languished  for awhile as I was fast friends with hard copy books. That is until I redid my floors ... Now what might you ask was the connection there? Well I have at least 10 bookcases in my house and everyone of them was heavy with books - chocked to the hilt with books, books, books! In order to put down the wood floors I had to be able to move those bookcases! So I sat about to box  up all the books and eventually I parted with 16 very stuffed boxes of books! Please don't feel sorry for me as I still had plenty left over and I got  my wood floors too!

I soon found a great use for Kindle books. It was easy to carry! I normally carry a large purse so stuffing it in there wasn't a problem. That way when I sat waiting at the doctor's office or when I was out to eat at a restaurant, I had a book handy all the time. It was certainly easier than hunting down the latest book I was reading and dragging it along every time I went out. And isn't it great that you never lose your place when you open up the e-reader! No more hunting about for a bookmark!

Another positive I found was that I could indulge in books that I wanted to read but knew I wouldn't want to keep the hard copy. So I didn't have the problem of  what to do with all those hard copies. (Not that I still don't have a zillion books in this house!) Oh and all those deals of $.99 and zero dollar books were very tempting to get me to buy fun books that I normally wouldn't explore.

Stay tuned folks as in a future post I will also talk about the disadvantages I find with an e-reader!

Have you an e-reader? What advantages have you noticed? Can't wait to hear your comments!