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Shooting Stars Playlist

July 19, 2010 in Books, Shameless Plugs | View Comments

Guess what? Shooting Stars is now available in PDF format! Yay! That means that you can buy it and put it just about anywhere where you read eBooks, so go ahead and download it!

In honor of its newfound PDF-iness, I’m posting the playlist today that I listened to when I was writing Shooting Stars. Desperado kind of became the theme song for the whole book, so I put that one last, but other than that, it’s not really in any particular order, except that Supermodel goes with the prologue. Hope you enjoy it!

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Barnes & Noble Nook: A Review

July 6, 2010 in 30 Before 30, Books | View Comments

Well, I did it! I took the plunge and bought a Nook!

Everyone’s been asking me why I chose the Nook and what I like about it, so I’m going to put it all in one giant post. Let me first say that I’m not sure the Nook is the right eReader for everyone to purchase, but it was definitely the right one for me to purchase.

The Specs

Nook Wi-Fi $149
11.6 oz (328 grams)
Height: 7.7 inches
Width:4.9 inches
Depth: 0.5 inches
2GB (approximately 1500 eBooks) storage
Expandable microSD slot
MP3 player
Built-in mono speaker
Universal 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack
Supported file types: EPUB, PDB, PDF
Wi-Fi ( 802.11 b/g)

Why Nook Won

The main reason I bought a Nook over a Kindle was that the Nook is less proprietary about eBook formats. The Nook will read PDB (B&N proprietary format), ePub, and PDF format eBooks with no problem at all. Kindle will read PDFs, but if you want your ePub format books on it, you have to run them through an extra piece of software to make it happen. So, the main consideration for me was that the reader be able to read the largest number of eBook formats possible, and Nook won on that front.

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Covers at Small Presses

July 2, 2010 in Books, On Writing | View Comments

Cover art is a fun thing that authors (like me) often get pretty excited about. It’s the visual representation of all the work in our novels, after all.

At large publishers, there are marketing meetings (hat tip to Katharine Ashe for the link) to talk about author covers, and the cover is the biggest marketing strategic move that they have to make. Sometimes authors get input (like if you’re Jenny Crusie), but often they just have to deal with what they get, whether it fits their vision or not.

It’s similar for small publishers, although they don’t generally have the resources for entire huge marketing teams. Whiskey Creek Press (my publisher for Shooting Stars) provides a cover created by an in-house cover artist and then allows the author to request up to 5 hours of changes.

First, the author fills out this giant questionnaire about their book: character descriptions, important elements, anything they’d really like to see on the cover, genre, etc. Here’s some of the stuff I provided:

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My Book is Available Now!

July 1, 2010 in Books, Shameless Plugs | View Comments

Surprise! Shooting Stars is available today from Whiskey Creek Press! Originally they’d told me it would release on the 15th of this month, but, lo and behold, it’s available now!

I’m so excited about this book– I wrote the draft in a month for National Novel Writing Month, and I’m proud to say it’s my first published full-length novel.

I hope that you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

It’s available right now in HTML and MOBI formats. (If neither of those formats work for you, just hang tight! The book will be available in other formats soon, although I don’t have a date to give you.)

More info:

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#24 Buy an eReader: Temptation

June 7, 2010 in 30 Before 30, Books | View Comments

Barnes & Noble is running a deal on the Nook wherein you get a $50 gift card with your Nook purchase. This effectively brings the Nook price down to $209 and makes me tempted beyond belief.

Previously I had been debating between a Nook and a Kindle, but when the iPad came out, I had to admit that I wanted it, too. Now I’m kind of swinging back toward the Nook, especially since the iPad I want is $1000 plus a monthly data plan subscription, and the Nook is still $259 minus $50. Say what you want, but value is important to me and I’m not sure I’d get enough value out of an iPad at that price point.

So why haven’t I bought one yet?

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