The Best Thing Ever

All right, it's not really the best thing ever, but still...

The other night, while lazily slumped in bed, I realized I had nothing to read. I had finished the last book I'd been reading - Halfhead, by Stuart B. MacBride. This was a physical book, by the way.

I had finished my grad school homework (endless nights of study are quite annoying after working all day). Granted, I had some eBooks available to me I'd reserved from the local library.  I had even checked them out onto my computer with Adobe Digital Editions.  But to read one of those books, I would have to get up and haul my Nook and my butt downstairs to plug the thing into my PC... the Nook that is, not my butt.

That's when I remembered the second book in Rick Riordan's, Heroes of Olympus series was out.  Deciding I needed me a little Percy Jackson fix, I fired up the Nook at my bedside and turned on the Wi-Fi (I leave it off so as not to totally drain the battery). Pressing the "Shop" button, I found myself on the Barnes & Noble homepage.  And what do you think I found?  Much to my surprise and delight, staring back at me was some guy's top recommendations for the day, which included Riordan's, Son of Neptune.  I clicked it, or whatever you want to call "touching the screen with your finger".  Tapped? Yeah. I tapped that book. Well that sounds dirty.  Anyway, I tapped tapped the buy button, confirmed and within seconds the novel I wanted to read was in my hands.

Dude!  Yeah - I've bought some other books for the Nook, but those were mostly bought to "have and get to later".  This was a serious impulse buy.

Okay, like I said. It's not quite the best thing ever, but it made me seriously happy for a few minutes.

Urban Mythos now available for the Nook

I must say, it took me a lot longer to create the Kindle version of the book than the Nook version. Working with an ePub file is a lot easier. It's basically a ZIP file containing a bunch of HTML files, all of which I can deal with since, well, I am geekwriter1. Plus Calibre is really straightforward, and it actually converted the work I'd already done for the Kindle into the format I needed.

In any event, here it is. My YA Urban Fantasy Urban Mythos, available on Barnes & Noble. If you have any form of Nook, or any eReader than can read the ePub format, I hope you enjoy!

Queries, Space Missions and Angry Birds

During a short breather in my MBA program, I got to thinking about Urban Mythos again. I have about five queries and one submission outstanding on it. The sub is several months old at this point, and I sent a courtesy eMail checking in a month ago. The queries occurred about two plus months ago. The question is, do I wait, or do I start querying again? I fear I won't make a decision before the lull ends ... tomorrow. Maybe in between courses.

Time is precious as I close in on the last two weeks of this leadership course. I just finished my primary contribution to a paper detailing the leadership strengths of the primary characters in the film Apollo 13. I wound up writing about Jim Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, portrayed by Tom Hanks. I really would have liked to do Gene Kranz, the director of ground control portrayed by Ed Harris, because that guy seriously knew how to lead. "We've never lost an American in space. We sure as hell aren't going to lose one on my watch." And then the absolutely pervasive line, "Failure is not an option." Sure, Lovell said, "Houston, we have a problem," but still.

I have another paper to do in the next week or two. Two? Man, I hope it's two. It's a big paper. Who signed me up for this again? Thank goodness for my Nook Color. I've loaded a ton of required reading in PDF format onto the e-reader so I can take the material anywhere. Did I mention that I bought Angry Birds for the Nook? Yep. The most recent software update for the Nook brought a newer version of the Android O/S, and access to a ton of apps. The downside is I can't seem to pry the Nook out of my wife's hands. She's a bit hooked on Angry Birds.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

Tom Petty had it right. ABNA judging is underway, and all I can do is wait. Thousands of entrants with just a pitch to differentiate us all. It'll be another couple of weeks until I find out if I make the first cut, which I haven't done before. Of course those previous tries were with a different book.

Meanwhile, I soldier on. I've been spending a lot of time reading and critiquing the revisions on Alex Lidell's terrific YA fantasy, Service of the Crown. It's on the slate to be published by Dial Books, and was a finalist in last year's ABNA. She's done a great job with these changes. When this book comes out - buy it! Hmm. Now I need to find out exactly when it will be coming out.

While that's going on, I'm plugging along on Ghost Fishing, my middle grade adventure. I just finished writing the chapter in which the protagonist encounters a somewhat grumpy chimpanzee poet who wears a suit and fedora. The next chapter is going to be fun to write because I get to introduce the antagonist and some spooky bits. And then it's on to the next location. I've got a bad feeling, though, that my word count is going to be completely over the top for middle grade. Ah, well. I'll deal with that during revisions. For now, the words must fly.

And I've been getting to know my Nook Color quite a bit more. I bought a couple of eBooks from Borders on New Years' Day - they had a big sale - $5 books. And yes, you can buy an ebook for the Nook from everyone but Amazon. But I haven't read them yet, because all the eBooks I reserved at my local library suddenly became available. I was bombarded with eMails listing all the eBooks I initially reserved because, well, I wanted to read something. But I've read The Hobbit and The Stand too many times to count, so I let those reservations expire. However, Seth Grahame-Smith's, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter was a total blast. And now I'm in the middle of Sara Gruen's, Ape House, which is equally terrific, albeit for entirely different reasons.

Did I mention that the Nook Color is the best-selling item in Barnes & Noble's nearly 40 year history?

Back to waiting!

My Nook and I

See that device over there on the left of the page? That's a Nook Color from Barnes & Noble. It's based on the Android O/S. I got me one of those the day it came out. This is a big deal for me because I am most definitely NOT on the bleeding edge on technology purchases.

Witness this conversation between my older brother Lee and yours truly more than fifteen years ago.

Lee - "This is my computer."
Me - "I've heard Intel is coming out with a 386 chip, but you'll never need anything more advanced than the 286 you have there."

I wound up with the Nook for two reasons. One - While I purchase loads of book, I also am a huge user of the public library. The Kindle doesn't do that. Two - it's got a color touch screen (Did I mention Android O/S?) which makes it like a mini poor-man's iPad without any of the caché. I fiddled with the Nook as soon as it arrived at my house on 11/19 (was that Fedex or UPS? Can't remember.) from B&N dot com. It's slick. Pages do, in fact, turn quickly. The print is easily read. The wireless connectivity is flawless. I was enjoying it.

And then?

It sat for a couple of weeks because I was in the middle of another book - Rick Riordan's, The Lost Hero, which was for some reason taking me a long time to read, despite how much I liked it.

Now, however, I've loaded a couple of books on my Nook: Frankenstein, which I downloaded for free from Google Books - it's in the public domain; Alan Furst's Dark Star, which was one of the very few interesting e-books available for download from the virtual public library that did not have a massive waiting list. Yes - downloading e-books from your public library is NOT a gimme. There is this whole digital rights management deal. If the library purchased one e-copy of the book, then only one person at a time may download the e-book for a given loan period. This seems to result in long wait times. Also, my local public library is part of a county library system that is networked with a third party that actually offers the e-books. This means there's that many more people from all over waiting on virtual line to download an e-book.

I imagine this whole process will improve over time as more and more folks go the e-book route, and libraries stock their own e-copies of books. I'm hoping to join the NYC Public Library in a couple of weeks -- they let us New Jersey folk do so if you show up in person. They've got a massive e-book catalog. I've got a few books on my list I'll be purchasing for my Nook as well.

My new toy and me.

Which E-Reader?

The time has arrived, or it will in a few weeks. It's a big wedding anniversary coming up and Rona's going to buy me an e-reader. Or, I should say, I'll pick one and order it. But I'm torn. Originally, I just thought I'd get a Kindle. Why not? Every literary agent apparently has a broken one they're replacing or maybe they've just bought one for the first time.

Me and Amazon go back a long way. Back when they were simply the earth's largest bookstore, I was a devoted customer. Jeff Bezos and I are such bosom buddies that I actually have an Amazon travel mug-- a good one, too. I never even paid for it - they just sent it to me one day a long while back to go with some refrigerator magnet. Just for being me. Ho Ho Ho. I still have it.

So, there I was all pumped up about it's wireless capabilities, it's built in 3G access, when I uncovered the fact that I could not borrow e-books from my public library in a format the Kindle could handle. Yep. No library books for the Kindle, which supports a MOBI based proprietary format as well as PDF and some others. The rest of the world supports the open ePub format, which is how most libraries offer electronic media managed through Digital Rights Management (DRM).

So then, I began to wonder if I should consider the Nook, from Barnes & Noble. The Nook does support the ePub format, but then I can't buy books for it from Amazon, which, as far as I can tell, only offers media in its propriety format. You can get ePub from B&N, Borders, wherever. And now apparently B&N has reached an agreement to sell the Nook at Walmart as well as its own stores in advance of the holiday shopping season.

I've been staring at review after recent review, and these two e-readers always ride the top of the charts, with the Kindle generally on top, but not by much. There's also the Sony eReader, Kobo (becoming the house brand of Borders if you ask me), Velocity Micro and others. And of course don't forget the iPad, but that's not really a dedicated eReader. For books and such, I'd rather have E-Ink display, which is incredibly easy on the eye, as opposed to the brilliant iPad display.

I am so confused. I'm leaning toward the Nook, but I don't know if my ePub concern is particularly valid. Everyone keeps buying Kindles! (or getting replacement Kindles). Does anyone have any recommendations? Ideas? Predispositions? Biases?