Today (as I write this– Monday) is my first day as a “professional full-time” writer. I’ve vowed to write each day, five days a week and get a minimum done. I got a bit of a late start today, as I had to deal with a couple of emergencies (IRS and car problems of all things), but now I’ve got those squared away and I’m sitting down to get back into chapter 7 of Blood Trade. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I remarked yesterday about the forced social participation in Kobo reading apps. I should note that you can turn this feature off, but you can’t partially use it. You are either all in or all out. One other annoying feature of this app is rewards for reading. As you read, you get awards for finishing a book, reading so many pages, etc. God, I hope this doesn’t catch on. The English teacher in me wants to say “whatever it takes to get somebody reading,” but if you’ve already downloaded a reading app or bought an ereader, you’re already a reader. This was clearly designed by somebody who isn’t.
Ebook readers have been making a lot of the social aspect of reading lately. I’ll be honest. I didn’t know there was one. I’ve always thought that reading was essentially a solitary activity. That’s what I like about it. Well, I guess I like a lot of other things about it more, but I’m happy with being a solitary reader. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind reading being a little bit social. I like recommending books that are good, but I don’t want everyone to know what page I’m on of every book I pick up.
The Kobo reading app on my iPad synchs to Facebook and Twitter and reports every little detail. That’s one of the reasons I don’t use that app. Some books are guilty pleasures that I don’t necessarily want to broadcast that I’m reading them. Others might be really guilty pleasures.
The new Nook lets me publish similarly to Social sites, but only when I want to. I can report which page I’m on, my rating, my review, and similar bits of information, but it doesn’t get automatically posted. You also can’t do it with books you didn’t buy from BN. That’s kind of annoying, but they are in the business of selling books.
All in all, I hope that the forced social details are a fad. I don’t find it fascinating to read that one of my Facebook friends is eating Chocolate Cheerios at 5 AM or that “Jersey Shore is Awesome”. Got news for you “friends.” Everything you type is not the wit and wisdom of the ages.
Noriandara Remontar is the titular character of Princess of Amathar, though she isn’t in most of the first two thirds of the book. She is the goal, the force that draws Alexander Ashton across the world of Ecos. Like most of the heroines in Edgar Rice Burroughs, she’s pretty snotty when she meets our hero. It wasn’t until I was well into the story that I decided she wasn’t going to stop being snotty. That was my own little additions to Burrough’s formula.
Noriandara Remontar is very tall and blue as are all Amatharians (I wrote this well before Avatar, I must point out). She is a skilled swordswoman and a knight.
I created Augie to be a mirror to his brother. He’s someone that nobody expects to be competent, and he often isn’t, but he might have been had he ever been given the chance to grow up that way. One of Augie’s great failures– not correctly translating the aboriginies’ language results in one of the major plot points. On the other hand, in battle, both against armed cultists in the jungle and thousands of lizard men in Birmisia, he proves quite heroic. Augie was fun to write in that his natural state is easy-going and pleasant, making him quite the counter to his two siblings who are serious and wrapped up in their own torments.
Augie owes a lot to Michael Caine’s character in Zulu, something I pointed to when I went back and wrote book 0, and had him accompanied by Colour Sergeant Bourne.
Terrence is one of my favorite characters that I’ve written. He is also as close to an anti-hero as I’ve written. I originally conceived of him as a kind of Indiana Jones type guy who would carry the action for most of the Senta and the Steel Dragon series. The truth is that he was rather boring that way. He needed something, so I gave him an addiction. Terrence is addicted to White Opthalium, a magical drug which takes him away to another world. Once I started writing along this path, his character became much more interesting to me. Here was a guy who is loved and admired by almost everyone except himself. And because he hates himself, he becomes more and more antagonistic and hateful to everyone else. People around him see him as a hero, but he can’t see himself as anything but a failure.
My new nook has arrived. I’ve had it all of four hours now and I’m loving it. The touch screen is very nice. I took it to the barber, to read while I waited. Turns out I didn’t have to wait too long and I didn’t get to read too much. Tomorrow I’m going to Barnes and Noble and try some of the in-store specials.
I’ve loaded all the ebooks that are on my To Read list and they appear just as they should in the menu, and I’ve tried loading a book with Calibre, which worked just fine. I already have some books in mind to buy, but there are so many free ebooks out there too.
City of Amathar 