The end? No.

Is text dead?

Michael Haitt, on the Apple tablet:

Once consumers get used to this kind of rich media, they will not be content to read text alone

Did film destroy theater? Did television destroy film? Don’t freak, peoples. The “tablet” experience is going to be cool, esp for informative-type works. Who wouldn’t like to click on any word for its precise definition? How about clicking on a proper name for a pop-up picture of the dude or dudette?

The day links replace footnotes is the day the angels sing.

It’s going to kick. It’ll be a blast. Info just seems to go better these days with ‘tainment. And as I said, I’m talking about informative works.

But narrative works? I’m not convinced.

Because readers stop looking at text the minute they’re hooked. Just as listeners forget the storyteller until they hear “the end” and playgoers forget they’re in a theater until the lights come up.

This, I think, is the key that explains why traditional publishers are freaking the hell out over ebooks: Publishers think they sell books, and with the tablet, books just got a friggin’ LOT more expensive to produce.

The creative types saw this coming. When publishing consolidated, when real book publishers were replaced with bean counting conglomerates, all the editors and authors cried, “But you don’t understand what creativity is, what the novel is all about! It’s not about the book; it’s about the story!”

Cry-babies.

Well, the conglomerates won, didn’t they? They’ve got their bestsellers and their WalMarts and their refusal to let the e out of the bag for four months. And their many happy returns.

Sure, they’re shaking when they see the Apple tablet. OMG, they’re going to have to spend more money on product!

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, all the authors they’ve let go and editors they’ve fired have gone off to create stories in the land of e. A mysterious place, where the distance between storyteller and audience is measured in clicks. Distribution is a slayed dragon. It’s Smashwords uber alles, baby. Bloggers provide the curation, and the readers decide whom to believe.

The tablet experience will be very cool, but it’s not going to be in competition with novel-length fiction. Text is simplicity and elegance itself, the tool an author uses to encode a story and a reader uses to decode the story. When the story is well-written, the reader falls into the story’s world, doesn’t even notice the text is there.

I’m sure all e-readers will grow increasingly sophisticated and feature-rich. I’m also sure that I won’t want to be bothered by bells and whistles while I’m finding out what Sirantha Jax does next.

Another reason Smashwords will thrive

I haven’t uploaded anything to Smashwords yet — but I’m sure I will.

Will you? Read this. Does your answer change?

Happy Happy

I’m a Whiny Baby

I still believe it is unprofessional to make comments about specific queries on Twitter, and there are still a couple of agents I won’t query based on (what I perceive to be) their hostility to writers.

But I’ve decided that I need to set aside my tender feelings while going through the query gauntlet. It’s business. That is all. If no agent out there thinks she can sell my book, then this book isn’t going to have an agent.

Notice I said she? I have my prejudices too, I guess. Hmm. Shouldn’t I have ironed out all my failings by now?

Anyway. I joined QueryTracker — even though I’m 95% convinced I want to go with Samhain or Carina. It’s a must-have resource, along with Publishers Marketplace.

It really bothers me that I’m having to do a lot more work than Mrs. Muir did to get my manuscript published.

Query <– truly a sad and lonely word

I was going to comment on Anne Frasier’s blog, but it ran too long. This is my unpublished-writer’s version of this post.

I use UPS in my day job. I send deposition transcripts out to lawyers, and I need to be able to track that the packages have been received. So I get an email from UPS when each of my shipments is delivered.

So I decided to query on my new novel. I’ve been working on it for almost/around a year (note to self: in future, mark on calendar the day you start a new book). But a year in aspiring novelist time is not the same as a year in real novelist time. There’s that other, at-least-40-hour-a-week job taking up the hours.

It’s good. And it could use one more run-through before it’s wonderful. Or am I making the perfect the enemy of the good? (hate that phrase)

Agents take forever to respond. And the first 30 pages of the book are what they are going to be. They really are ready for an editor. Why not start sending out the queries now? I can continue buffing up the rest of it while waiting for the rejection letters.

(insert pithy comment about positive thinking here)

I’ve done my agent search. I’ve found an agent who seems just right. She’s not a super agent. She hasn’t done any really good deals, according to Publishers Marketplace, which puts a crimp in my dreams of JKRowlinghood. However, she’s got a nice group of romance authors. In fact, one of her authors is one of my favorites. She has given interviews on the web, and seems like a genuinely pleasant, intelligent, sensitive person.

I go to her website and read the guidelines. I write a blankety-blank synopsis. It takes days. It’s okay, but it ain’t litercher. I look at her guide to a query letter and write mine, making sure to put in the elements listed there. I print it all out with the requisite number of pages from the ms.

I put it in a nice 10 x 13 white envelope and add it to the deposition transcripts going out that day. Two days later, I get the email confirmation that the query package has been delivered.

I happen to be on Twitter, and the agent happens to tweat an amusing comment about a query she’s just read. No one in the world would know from that comment who the query was from.

Except the person who wrote the query.

I love writing. I hate publishing.

Twitter thingy

Okay. So I made up this little utility a couple years back. I use it all the time. I mean all the time. Whenever I’m using a computer keyboard. I never type words I hate to type.

Like definitely. I type dfl and “definitely” automatically appears.

Basically, my little utility (called Stenogger — you can see it over there –> in the right column) is like Word’s autocorrect feature, a little more robust, and it works in everything — email, word processors — and, I just realized, Twitter.

It’s a teeny tiny joy:

I type aff and “@Anne_Frasier” shows up.

akbb = @katiebabs
ajane = @jane_l
akkn = @Karenknowsbest
appa = @ElyssaPapa
amvn = @mcvane

On and on.

Anyway. I loved this little thing so much, I thought every one else would too. I priced it way too high and sold three copies at 19.95, ha.

But I still think it’s wonderful. So I lowered the price to $1.95 (meaning, that as soon as I publish this post, I’m going to e-junkie to change the price to 1.95). Maybe someone will get it and love it as I do.

For one thing, if you’re writing a fantasy novel with weird names, you don’t have to remember the spellings.

or words like schadenfreude (I type shfe and “schadenfreude” comes out)

or your website address (I type mfid and “http://missfiddyment.wordpress.com/” comes out.

PS: If you decide to get it and you have any questions about it, post a comment here.

PS plus: Disclaimer (embarrassing) I compiled the program before Barack Obama was a household name, and it’s in Stenogger as Barak Obama (bbma). But all the entries are easy to edit.

Pale Immortal – the novel that refuses to die

pale immortal

PALE IMMORTAL by Anne Frasier is available now as a download, published by Belfry Press, Anne’s own new label.

Disclaimer: I haven’t read Pale Immortal yet, but I have read the sequel, Garden of Darkness, which is just wonderful. Frasier’s storytelling is fast-paced, creepy and lovely at the same time.

Her descriptive skills are so powerful that you don’t even realize she’s used all these words about trees and underbrush and chilled winds — you just think you’re in a forest. And something’s coming to get you, eek!

The link above and this one go to Frasier’s website where you can click on the e-junkie link to download. E-junkie works with PayPal, quick and easy.

You can also read about Frasier’s crooked road to re-release this book after getting her rights back. It’s a story in itself, as Pale Immortal has gone from published to out of print to flagship reprint for Quartet Press (talk about nipped in the bud), to the search for the best web-publishing platform.

If you’ve ever wondered what authors can do with works they own the rights to, this is an ongoing story. Bookmark Frasier’s webpage. Support her efforts — (or just buy her novels because you like good reads). She’s doing all the hard work and generously sharing the process.

Wrenching, But Not Painful

Admission time: The metaphysical (and I mean that; I don’t mean metaphorical) wall I’ve run into over and over and over again the last two weeks must have been put there by my not-so-amusing muse.

Because it stopped me from going down the wrong road.

Out on the wrong limb.

Whatever.

So now to the wrenching but not painful work of re-routing the ending scenes of this story, back onto the correct long and winding road to the HEA.

Not painful at all.

note to self

Okay. This blog has the Best Title Art Ever. Or whatever you want to call those duckies.

Duckies like black and white cows
White hat and black hat
‘kerchiefs
serious attitude

and cute as hell

Aren’t human beings interesting?

Useful Link re Google Settlement

Writer Beware has a post up with many useful links regarding the Google scam scanning settlement.