Help a Fab Editor

My editor at Loose Id, Raven McKnight, is ill and is currently trying to get her health insurance to do right by her.  She's a total fighter, but fighting requires being able to sit up and breathe at the same time, and she can't even get *those* meds.  So Katey Hawthorne got a bunch of us together in order to raise some money that will help her do just that.

How can you help?  Go to http://www.indiegogo.com/for-raven. There's different ways to donate, and each donation level gives you a chance to win a different prize.  They're awesome prizes, for a very good cause.

Raven edited "One Good Hand," "One Good Year," and "One Shot."  She's sharp, savvy, and not afraid to rip a manuscript apart in order to make it better.  She also keeps me from losing my damned mind at the height of edits and in those tense days just after a book release.  She's a great editor and a credit to writing.

Let's help her out.

Let’s ready to HOP!

I keep telling myself that I'll write better post titles. It doesn't appear to be working

I’m participating in two blog hops in May, and I’d like you to hop along with me!

The first is for Hop Against Homophobia, which runs from May 17th to 20th. May 17th marks the International Day Against Homophobia, so a lot of authors are getting together to share their thoughts and experiences. I encourage you to participate, not only to win prizes (I’ll be giving away a hardcopy of Want Me), but to share your stories with us as we share ours with you. You can find more information here.

On May 25th, Miho Li is hosting a scavenger hunt. Follow the clues to solve the puzzle, and you’ll be entered to win twenty books, including an e-copy of One Good Hand, the first book in the “One Good” series. During the search, authors Katrina Strauss, Z.A. Maxfield, Sloan Parker, and many more will be posting content exclusive to the hunt. I don’t know who I’ll draw yet, but the writer who gets me will post a sneak peek of the first chapter of One Good Verse, the third story in its series. More details can be had on Miho’s site.

It should be good. I hope to see you.

What's it mean when you win a badge in cyberspace?

An army of cats took over deviantART for April Fool's Day. Random thumbnails were replaced propaganda posters and clicking on anything pretty much meant you were going to get some weird fact about cats. Did you know that a cat's jaw is designed in such a way that makes it physically impossible for it to grind its sharp little teeth? Well, ya do now.

When I first saw it, I was sorta meh on the whole deal. Cats? Really? Not a fan. The mudkip invasion was much better.

Then I saw The Note. And The Note said that anyone who submitted a cat picture would get a cat BADGE. Oh, and there was something about getting 15000 submissions in order to release the dA logo from captivity, but the important thing here was the BADGE.

I saw The Note late. I hadn't drawn anything in a year and I'd certainly never drawn a cat. I thought briefly about making my brother wear my neko-ear cap and taking a photo, but then realized he would have put a pox on all our houses if I posted it. So I figured I'd draw the Cheshire Cat. Pretty easy, yeah? I mean, most of the time he's all face anyway.

Drew the line art. Had fun with the eyes. Remembered that my scanner has been broken since January. Took a picture with my phone and uploaded the sucker anyway. For some reason it's on its side and I have no idea why. It's quite well-behaved on my computer. Cheshire tease.

But I got my badge! Everything I dreamed it would be -->

I love internet badges and stickers. You can tell that just looking at my stories page. Every time a reviewer awards a badge or sticker to one of my books, it is on my site as fast as I can code it. Often in varying sizes depending on the page. I make a conscious effort to not learn exactly what GetGlue is because I see all my twitter friends earning stickers there and I have a feeling I'd never leave. I would definitely never write again.

But back to the cat badge. Once I got it, I figured I should at least finish the original picture. So I did. Remembered *again* that my scanner is busted. Sighed loudly in that frequency that only moms can hear.

She asked me what was wrong. I told her about my scanner (she was there when it bit the dust so my story of yearning packed quite the angsty punch) and suggested I try it again and see if it works now.

My words were literally, "Yeah, Mom. Maybe Jesus will come down from on high just to give my scanner a sweet, gentle kiss, raising the machine from the dead because it's Easter."

I laughed. She laughed. We both laughed.

So anyway here's the scanned pic:



Cheshire by ~rpm77 on deviantART

It was, ah, posted on the day after Easter. Scanned on Sunday.

Heh heh heh.

Heh heh.

Heh.

There you have it. There is a God. Although considering the absolute creepy nature of the image, I'm sort of inclined to believe that it was the devil making sweet sweet love to my scanner. That or Holy Humor has a bit of twistyness to it. Makes for an interesting afterlife, either way. ;)

Just Perfect story review

The first official review for Just Perfect is in! Serena Yates, of QMO Books, wrote “The characters and their roles are flipped around, turned inside out and any preconception you may have had will go out the window when you read this. … This is definitely a book worth reading for its lack of conventionalism alone.”

Pretty snazzy, yeah? She said a lot of other great things, which you can read at QMOBooks.com.

Reader reviews are also filtering in, but I don’t know what the protocol is on quoting those so I won’t post any here. Last I checked, the ratings on GoodReads have been across the board, resulting in a weird, perfect aggregate rating dead center at 3 stars. I’ve never had that before. Usually, the majority either likes or dislikes my book, so the rating is either over 3 or under it.

Another interesting thing I noticed was that a lot of readers felt Cody was cold and Just Perfect was generally unromantic, while many readers of One Good Year believe the story was too sentimental and overly romantic. So my advice to you is to read both stories simultaneously in order to achieve perfect balance. ;)

That’s it for the Zen of Rowan.

Have a good week!

Easter Chat!

I'll be participating in an M/M chat on Easter weekend, hosted by Literary Nymphs. Some of the other writers attending are Ariel Tachna, Jaime Samms, Andrea Speed, Christiane France, Kathryn Scannell, Berengaria Brown, Sloan Parker, and Jessica Freely.

To play, you have to be a member of the Literary Nymphs Chat loop here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LiteraryNymphsChat/. These chats tend to be mega high traffic, so when you join I highly suggest selecting "web only" as your membership default. I've known people to wake up with a thousand emails in their inbox. lol.

The chat goes from April 7th to 8th. I'll be posting excerpts, chatting people up, and giving away an e-copy of One Good Hand. If you drop by, please give me a wave. It's my first official chat in two years, and I'd love to hear from you. :)

Bought a Nook

My beloved hiebook fizzled out a few weeks ago. I was totally sad because it had been my e-reader for almost 10 years, and it had been my very first e-reader, so naturally I was attached. Given all the platforms available today to read electronic books, the prospect of finding a new one was daunting. Especially since nothing seemed to compare to my hiebook. It had a built-in dictionary, it had an address book, it had games, it translated handwriting to text, it stored pictures, was an MP3 player, had external storage.

And it was light, with page turn buttons that rested perfectly under my left thumb. If I wanted to hold it in my right hand, all I had to do was flip it over, and the text on the screen flipped right along with me. It re-sized text, and had a back-light. The list goes on and on, but it was way ahead of its time. So ahead of its time, that its company went bankrupt before the e-book boom hit, so there was no chance of getting an upgraded version.

No choice but to jump ship and try something new. I looked at a lot of e-readers and tablets, trying to find one that was right for me. A high-end tablet wouldn’t work because all I wanted to do was read and maybe watch some videos. I like the idea of e-ink, but I wanted to be able to read digital comics, many of which are in color. And it definitely needed to be able to read more than one format.

So I'm dinking around, mourning the loss of my hiebook. Narrowed it down to a few. Then I got lucky. A friend of mine who works at a manga publishing company had the opportunity to compare several e-readers and tablets. She told me that the Nook tablet blew away the competition* in terms of reading manga files, and it could read epub and PDF. Technically it can also read HTML, but to do so the Nook opens the file in a browser which means you're scrolling through the document instead of turning pages.

My Nook Tablet. Sexy Spade is my sexy wallpaper. Note my strategically placed "most recent reads" along the bottom. ;)

I'm still getting used to it, but here are my impressions so far.


What I like:

• External storage


• This is a must for me. I'm a digital pack rat, so I’m always adding way too much stuff to my devices. It takes a micro-SD card, sold separately. The card I picked up is 32GB.
  


• Resolution


• My friend was right. It does read manga beautifully. The Sublime Manga titles are in PDF and read crisp and clear. I bought Blue Exorcist directly through the Barnes & Noble store, and it's also wicked clear, with the added bonus of being able to flip pages from left to right. I also bought Venom vs Carnage through the BN and store, and it is sweet.


• So far, the videos I've downloaded onto it look fab as well. They’ve all been mp4’s.
  


• Size


• It's bigger than my hiebook but still pretty comfortable to hold. It has a little bit of heft to it but I am told the Kindle Fire is actually heavier.


• Dropbox


• I love having a cloud. I downloaded Dropbox onto my Nook, and set my Calibre library inside my dropbox ecosystem. So now when I add e-books to my library via my laptop, it's automatically uploaded to my cloud and downloaded to my Nook. I export the file to my SD card, and add it to one of my shelves. I like this method because it lets me skip the usb cord part.


• If you’d like to try out Dropbox, you can follow this link: http://db.tt/IA2wj7e. It’s free, and if you use the link I gave you then you’ll get a little extra space as well as give me the same amount of extra space.


• There’s also an app (drop2sync) that I think can access your Dropbox directly from the cloud as opposed to downloading all your Dropbox files to your Nook. I'm looking into it, but haven't downloaded it yet because it costs $1.99 and I want to be sure it does what I think it does. Plus if you don't want either app on your Nook, there's always the option of accessing your Dropbox directly from the web.
  


• Wireless with Wi-Fi


• I like being able to download things directly either from the Barnes & Noble store or from my Dropbox. Streaming video kind of rocks, too. The Nook has a decent browser, but I prefer DolphinHD, which is one of the few free apps available in the app store.
  


• Battery life


• Excellent. I'm a slow reader, so any device that lets me complete the book without needing a recharge is a plus.


• Clean interface


• There's a Nook menu button on the bottom, an on/off button on the left edge, and a pair of volume buttons on the right edge. Other than that, everything else is done by touchscreen.


• Accessing the dictionary while reading a story is very easy. The native software also allows you to make notes and to set bookmarks.


• Customer service


• So far, only had to contact them once. But I got to do it on an honest to God phone and {gasp} even talked to a real person who walked me through the steps necessary to fix my issue.


• The interactive Nook books


• Some of them are so freaking cool, you have no idea. I had way too much fun with the Lorax and Puff the Magic Dragon.


• It's got a hook for cellphone charms


• Which is useless and weird, but I have a cell charm *obsession* and yet I never hook any into my phone, so this totally works for me.


• The twitter app is user-friendly.


• Comes with Netflix :)

What I Don't like:

• the Barnes & Noble search engine


• Oh my God it is horrible. You can shop the store directly from your Nook, but I can't tell you how many times I've searched the title only to have the engine come up with "no results available" with a parenthesis containing a 29 or 82 or a 300, indicating that the store actually does have those results, but the system just doesn't feel like showing them to me.


• There's no way to search the products you want to search. If you type up a search phrase in the app store, the system will also give you all the books that includes those words.


• The Barnes & Noble storefront


• It's not as easy to browse as it is at some other retailers. For instance, I could go to Amazon and browse graphic novels, narrowing my categories to manga, to yaoi, all the way down to salarymen stories. The BN store will only take you as far as manga.


• Shelves


• The Nook lets you create customized shelves, which is a feature I do like. You can't really organize those shelves, though, which is a problem if you have a lot of books. Even when you do create a shelf, you can't even organize the books on that particular shelf alphabetically, let alone by author, or series.


• There's also a separate kid's shelf, which is cool because it’s a completely different niece/nephew safe tab, but for some reason it doesn't think that Dr. Seuss's the Sneetches belongs there.


• Sound


• The speakers seemed very weak to me. But I also found out this year that I lost some hearing and I might be going deaf, so I might not be the best judge of that particular feature.


• Not a lot of apps


• Every time I check there are new ones listed, so this might get substantially better in the near future. But there are also apps that are free on my phone but can cost up to $1.99 on the Nook, so I pass on those.


• Like I said above, searching for a particular app can be a pain in the ass.

That's all I can think of right now. What e-reader do you use? What do you like about it? What don't you like about it?

---

*under $400, including the Kindle Fire.

A new way to think about creativity

I missed my usual Thursday post. But today's post, although late, although not mine, is really, really good.

This is a Ted Talks lecture given by Elizabeth Gilbert. Everyone who's felt that spark of creativity should watch this twenty minute video. The viewpoint she shares is straight forward, poignant, funny, and inspirational.