Bone Daddy

I had to share this deal that I found in my latest email from Publishers Marketplace:

FICTION: WOMEN'S/ROMANCE
R.G. Alexander's BONE DADDY, a three-novella single-author erotic anthology about a sexually charged voodoo spirit, the people whose bodies he inhabits, and the mischief he creates, to Kate Seaver at Berkley HEAT, for publication in summer 2010, by Roberta Brown of the Brown Literary Agency.

The reason I had to share is because my father, for whatever reason, likes to say "bone daddy" in a rather menacing voice when he's got his electric carving knife out and ready to do some damage to a ham or turkey. Reading this sale announcement and hearing my father's voice in my head saying "bone daddy" has scarred me for life!

Today was fine on the writing front, albeit not fantastic; I wrote ~2000 words, which is less than half of what I wanted to write, but is still eight pages farther along than I was before today. Hopefully I'll get a chance to write tomorrow, but the day job requires some serious attention. Have a lovely Sunday!

See: Quitting, Not

I'm feeling pretty happy on the motivation front right now. Rewrites for AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE are going both well and quickly, and I'm looking forward to getting back to Madeleine and Ferguson's story soon (in my head I'm calling it AN INCONVENIENT TITLE because a) I don't have a title, and b) Ferguson doesn't want his).

But, it never hurts to hear a little extra motivation from someone who's been through it all before. Check out this blog post about persevering through thousands (gasp) of rejections. Happily I'm nowhere near the thousand (or even hundred) rejection mark yet, but I intend to keep going even if I reach that point.

Now it's back to the writing -- enjoy the rest of your weekend!

eBook Readers - Resistance is Futile

From the NEW YORK TIMES today: "Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold"

And you can hear the tortured screams of bibliophiles everywhere. Personally, I'm holding off on getting a Kindle or any other ebook reader -- while I love the feel of hot new technology in my grasping hands, I feel that it's prudent to wait for the product to improve (and to clear out the 70+ TBR books on my shelves before adding a device that will make my TBR woes worse).

However, while I will always have a soft place in my heart for printed books, and while I will likely want to have them in copious amounts even if I start using a reader as my primary content provider, ebook readers are the way of the future. I think at some point in the future, we will all just have a handheld screen with us that serves as our television, our movie theatre, our stereo, our library, and our online lifeline. If you read sci-fi, you may also see it as a grim, new-world-order harbinger of the days when our global overlords will use it to provide an endless stream of propaganda, but I'll take my chances.

And really, is this that much different than the advent of the printing press? I would bet you a copy of my yet-to-be-published book that when the Gutenberg Bible first arrived, there were legions of monks who were (piously, quietly) up in arms about the death of the hand-printing industry, with all the same concerns about quality, look-and-feel, and relative cost as we're hearing from the publishing industry today. And yet what ended up happening was a revolution in terms of availability of information to the masses, information that would change the world. Ebook readers offer the same promise -- give kids excellent stories on the same screen that currently provides them with movies, and you might see a reading rebirth that no one could have predicted when musty old paper volumes were the only path to readership.

What do you think? Are you rushing out to buy a reader, or are you holding out until the last page is ripped from your hands?