October Horror Spotlight #2

Welcome to the second spotlight post. Here’s a few more books for your reading enjoyment. (If you’re running an ad-blocker, you might need to turn it off for farmanor.blogspot.com to see the links for some reason.)

Dark Tomorrows is a collection of short horror stories by various authors. Reviews on Amazon are divided equally among “love it!” and “hate it!” for some reason. I’m in the “love it!” camp, giving it five stars. You can see my review under my real name on Amazon if you want the full monty.

Three of the stories stood out in my mind, perhaps the three longest ones. I felt like one story — Amanda Hocking’s “The Second Coming of Pippykins” — didn’t really belong in here. Not because it was a bad story, it just wasn’t a piece of dark fiction. It was actually humorous to me. Her other story, “Of Shoes and Doom,” was also chuckle-worthy but still dark. If her other work is this amusing, I’ll have to try reading some of her novels.

I got Dark Tomorrows when it was free, but it went back to being 99¢ last night — just in time for it to get the Horror Spotlight treatment. It’s definitely worth the pittance, in my opinion.



Now on to the stories I’ve been pointed toward this week…

Fear in Words, Vol. 1 (The Stories) by Jason Darrick is another anthology. Darrick bills it as “Five short horror stories. Each is unique in the fear it brings, some cerebral, some more visceral.”

This one is also 99¢, and gathering rave reviews (all 4- and 5-star) so far.

No Laughing Matter by Jim Bronyaur is a novella about a murdered clown that won’t stay dead. Now that’s a scary premise. Some people are afraid of living clowns… an undead clown is like triple the terror.

One (4-star) review so far. Sounds like plenty of shivers for 99¢.




Who gets the spotlight next week? That’s up to you. Let me know about horror from an indie author (even if you’re the author) and I’ll put it in the queue!

October Horror Spotlight #1

If I don’t do this now, I’ll feel guilty about it all week. I was planning to have this one ready for Thursday, but I managed to hurt my knee by putting all my (not insubstantial) weight on it while it was resting on a register on Tuesday evening while playing with Mason under his bed. It hurt enough that I couldn’t even blog about it, and I blog about everything. The pain faded to background level some time Friday evening, in time to get a (late) #FridayFlash done.

So, without further ado… it’s time to spotlight some horror fiction by indie authors. Even with repeated begging on Twitter, I had to mostly dig up (haha) this week’s entries on my own. Maybe people will understand I’m serious about this and help me out the rest of the month. Prices listed are for Kindle eBooks. If you have a Nook or other eReader, I’m sure many of these titles are also available on Smashwords as well.

Here be Monsters — a free anthology of horror. The author list includes two Twitter friends of mine, S.M. Reine and Jeremy Shipp.

Seed (Ania Ahlborn) — Here’s a creepy little tale that will keep you reading. I owe Ania a full review, so I won’t go any farther here. Of the (so far) 92 reviews on Amazon, well over half of them are 5 star and there are very few ratings less than 4 stars. For a 99¢ eBook, that's saying something.

From Dark Places (Emma Newman) — UK author Emma Newman, aka @EmApocalyptic on Twitter, brings us an anthology of dark fiction. If you prefer to read from paper, that option is open as well. ($4.99)

Season Of The Harvest (Michael R. Hicks) — Murder and interstellar intrigue around genemod food? This sounds like a fascinating story, and I’ll grab it myself once I work down my current “to-read” pile. Another book whose Amazon ratings are top-heavy with 5- and 4-star reviews. ($2.99)

Don't Fear the Reaper (Michelle Muto) — This sounds like an interesting story, dealing with the afterlife for suicides. Of the 5 reviews on Amazon so far, every single one is 5 stars. ($2.99)


All right — if you’re an indie writer, and you want your day on the blog, email me at FARfetched58 at aim dot com.

Indie Author Horror Month!

A few years ago, I celebrated October by posting links to classic horror movies found on archive.org. This year, I’m arbitrarily proclaiming October to be Indie Author Horror Month. I should have started doing this last month, but I only thought about it today. Better late than never, right?

To celebrate, I’m going to post a list of horror fiction by indie authors. I want to support indie authors, because I’ll soon be one myself (hoping this very month!) and I think it’s the right thing to do in any case. So here’s a chance to plug your book!

1. Let me know about a book or story you want spotlighted! Authors are welcome to send in their own work, and everyone else is welcome to make suggestions too. Books, eBooks, and blog fiction are welcome. (If I get reader suggestions for any title, I’ll mention that.) Message me on Twitter at FARfetched58, or email lkollar at gmail dot com — or just leave a comment here if you’re in a hurry. If you email, put “Horror Spotlight” in the Subject title. If I get a bigger response than expected, I’ll use that to set up a Gmail tag. Include a link so people can buy the book, if applicable.
2. Let other writers know about this. Tweet it, Facebook it, Plus it, spread it around in forums. Include a link back here, or to…
3. On Thursdays, I’ll post — then you can buy or download the books that interest you! (I’ll probably run links through my Amazon affiliate account so I’ll make a few cents too. Yeehaw.)

Note that there’s no requirement about following me on Twitter, or following my blog, to participate. But I sure won't object if you want to follow either or both. ;-)

If I get a halfway decent response with this, I’ll spotlight another genre (thinking sci-fi right now) in January.

The Book Cover!

I know I’m weird, but I get giddy all over again just looking at it. If you want a photographic book cover, Sara Reine is a wiz with Photoshop and does great fast work at a great price. Tell her FARf sent you.

Hey FARf, stop yapping and post the cover already!


OK, OK… here it is:

Yup, there’s my real name. Now y’all know who I am. Sondra cleaned up gooooood for the book cover, didn’t she?

The only thing is, I have no idea what I’m going to do for the Pickups and Pestilence cover just yet. Oh well, I still have a while to think about that. Gotta finish the book, first things first.

The "Disposable" Price Point

J.A. Konrath is back from vacation, and brought home an interesting insight. He shares it in One More Nail in the Coffin. The heart of it is:

Kindles have dropped in price to the point where they've become disposable, like cell phones and laptops and digital cameras. Ever notice that you buy a new cell (or computer, or camera) every few years, even if your old one still works?

"Disposable" as a price point seems to have a pretty wide window. To me, it’s a lot closer to $20 than $114 (for the ad-bearing Kindle). Of course, I’m not the people he’s talking about: I’ll use a cellphone or computer until it wears out, or just won’t do what I need it to do. For me, MacBooks have a five-year use life (if they endure the life of hard knocks that laptops are heir to). Since I live in a rural area, and am often doing outdoor kind of things, my cellphones get banged around even more than laptops — if they last three years, they’re limping across the finish line with multiple injuries.

Yes, I’m a cheap so-and-so, and eBook readers are (IMO) nowhere near the “disposable” price point. But fear not, they’re following the same curve as calculators. When I was gifted a Kindle a couple years ago, it was 1974 for eBook readers: $250+, limited functionality. It's now 1976, maybe 1977: prices approaching $99 for basic models, features considered “premium” last year (touch, color) are rapidly becoming standard in the mid-range.

Come “1980” (3–4 years from now), the price wars and standardization shakeout will come. Most of us will have to replace our eBook readers, but that won't matter because they’ll be $49–$79 and will have tablet-like functionality yet with amazing battery life. If what I’ve been hearing about solar panel developments is true, we could see the high-end ($119) sporting a solar panel on the back (again, like calculators except for placement). Lay your reader face-down near a sunny window to recharge it while you’re off doing something else. If you read outside a lot, you could have potentially infinite battery life.

The next step is “1984.” That’s when I had a calculator built into my watch. I don’t know how the equivalent would work for an eBook reader — maybe a goggle display with controls based on eye motion? The end-point is around 1990, where calculators (with solar cells and lots of features) ended up in supermarket checkout racks at $19. The thing is, I don’t think it will take 16 years to get to that point for eBook readers… it might happen by 2020 instead of 2025. Either way, that’s when paper books will finish dying out — when eBook readers are truly disposable.

Book Review: Blood Picnic and Other Stories

Disclaimers: Tony is an online acquaintance. This review also appears at Smashwords and the Kindle Store under my real name.

I admit I started reading "Blood Picnic" with a preconceived notion: that a book of less than 30,000 words would be a quick read, something I could knock off in an evening. It took much longer to finish, even though it held my interest all the way through.

Price/Length: $2.99 / 29,000 words

Synopsis: Tony Noland is a regular participant in #FridayFlash on Twitter, and "Blood Picnic" is a collection of 28 of Tony's flash (1000 words or less) pieces. He helpfully groups them by genre: fantasy, literary, horror, and magical realism.

Storytelling: five stars. Tony packs a lot of story into a flash, and there's 28 of them. I bought this book wishing he'd made it longer, but the stories are well worth reading. I'm one of those people who likes the "peek behind the curtain," so an introduction — maybe at the beginning of each genre section — would have been a nice plus.

Writing: five stars. Tony's a versatile storyteller, and does a great job of making his writing voice fit the story.

Editing: four stars. There's a few typos, but Tony says "perfection is the goal." He has already re-released "Blood Picnic" after making corrections. This is one of the better-edited indie works. I'd like the story titles to have a "section break" to start at the top of a page, is the only formatting issue I saw.

Summary: This one's worth your time. Tony put a lot of work into making it the best he could.

Book Review: The Gift of Fury

Disclaimers: I got this book when it was offered for free back in November. An earlier copy of this review appears under my real name in the Kindle Store.

If you're looking for urban fantasy with lots of action, and don't mind typos, this book is well-worth your time.

Price/Length: 99¢ (US of course) / 68,000 words

Synopsis: Count Albritton (“Count” is his name, not his title — he’s sensitive about that), a self-styled paranormal investigator, is looking into an attempted burglary at the NYC apartment of one of his sorcerer friends. It doesn’t take long for this seemingly routine investigation to turn into a battle for the future of the world and trip into his own past.

Storytelling: five stars. I’m not a fan of clichés like “can't put it down,” but that was almost how it was for me. I kept picking up my Kindle at odd moments during the day to take in a couple chapters. When my battery got low, I pulled it onto an iPad and finished reading. Lots of action and no long stretches of boredom to counter it. Sexual tension is present, not only between Count and his “guardian angel” Kara, but between himself and the vampiric Nerva as well — but no explicit sex scenes for those who are offended by such. Character development was okay, we learn more about each of them as we go, but the villain was just a little too two-dimensional.

Writing: four stars. If you are put off by a story told in first-person present tense, that’s what this is. I didn’t notice until I was a few chapters in, though. About a third of the story is a flashback to events that happened before (the story begins with Albritton in a hospital, recovering from various injuries from those events) -- that was a little gimmicky, but the story itself was strong enough to overcome it.

Editing: three stars. No glaring continuity errors that I saw, the story itself holds together very well. There are far too many copyediting problems though: dropped words, typos, and so on. That cost the book a five-star rating overall. I hope a second edition, and any sequels, addresses this issue.

You can’t go too far wrong for 99¢ unless you just can’t turn off your internal editor. I hope the second book comes out soon, and Jackson splurges for a copyeditor.

The Case for Low-Priced eBooks

You might think that being in my 50s, I’d be one of those “I love the look/feel/smell of paper” people (really? smell? really???), but I’ve embraced eBooks — maybe a little harder than I should — for various reasons. For one, my shelves are overflowing and I have a lot of books in boxes. I was going to turn The Boy’s bedroom into a library while he was gone, but Mrs. Fetched managed (as usual) to throw wrenches until he came back. For another, FAR Manor is in a rural area. The nearest indie bookstore is 30 miles away. The nearest Barnes & Noble is another five miles down the road from there. The nearest Borders is 10 miles beyond that, and closing anyway. Thanks to eBooks, I can buy a book as easily as a Manhattanite.

Recently, there’s been a fair amount of discussion in the circle of writers that I belong to about eBook pricing. Icy Sedgwick kicked it off last week with her blog entry E-book Pricing — Icy priced her own books at 99¢ each and thinks maybe she short-changed herself for various reasons:

I think the problem is that people don't attach much value to something if it's too cheap, and they become unwilling to pay if it's too expensive. To me, the $2.99-$4.99 bracket is just right - the e-books are still cheaper than paperbacks, and they're also cheaper than everyday luxury consumables.

This week, John Wiswell weighs in with High Book Prices Are Good for You. He starts with the example of Patrick Rothfuss (or rather, his publisher) releasing Wise Man’s Fear and pricing the Kindle edition at $14.99 (or $11.99 for a pre-order). John says:

Cheap shouldn’t be the standard for our industry. … What [Rothfuss] charges makes up the price ceiling for the industry. … This is the most that my work is allowed to cost.

The point that John is making, of course, is that extreme prices in the bestseller list allow independent authors a huge price advantage while avoiding the “bargain bin” stigma of the 99¢ bracket. I can get behind that. While Amanda Hocking and John Locke have done extremely well at that price point — these are two of the “Kindle Millionaires” you may have heard about — John W, Icy, or I may or may not find that kind of success. Of course, Amanda Hocking has accepted a major publisher deal: four books, $2 million. Kind of hard to argue with those numbers.

As someone who both reads and writes, eBook pricing (or heck, any kind of book pricing) is a difficult subject to resolve. I’d love to be able to quit my day job and make a living writing stories that people enjoy. But I’ll be honest here: I’d need sales well north of 50,000 books a year to make that happen. Between the senior technical writer’s salary and — ever more important as I skid into middle age — health benefits that I get from my day job, a more realistic expectation is a solid supplementary income that I can use to pay off bills and contribute toward that ever-elusive retirement. But given all the people my current income supports, I don’t have tons of spare change floating around to buy a bunch of books at full retail. And so:

Cheap eBooks are good for readers, and good for authors.

There, I said it.

The economy sucks right now. Mrs. Fetched hasn’t had much video work in the last year or so (one short but solid job and a couple small things). It’s only a little pinch for us though, especially compared to millions of people who lost good-paying jobs since 2000 with only a couple of feeble twitches of recovery in between. You think any of those folks are paying $12.99 for a book, period? If they’re reading new material at all, they’re either going to the library, borrowing from friends, or hitting the used bookstores.

Readers are already revolting against high eBook prices: I took a skim through Amazon’s Top 100 Monday night, and 42 of the titles are priced at $5 or less (free eBooks have a separate list). Amazon’s royalty structure encourages a price range between $3 and (I think) $7, by offering a 70% cut of sales in that range. This makes sense — I think eBooks should cost less than paperbacks, for several reasons:

1. It’s difficult to pass an eBook around. At my workplace, and where my mom lives, there are shelves of used books (paperback and hardcover). Anyone can grab whatever book they want, or leave one for anyone else. I've read several books that way recently. What lending features do exist are too restrictive.
2. Then there’s the issue of resales — while I might get only a buck for a used paperback, I’m forbidden by license to do even that much with an eBook.
3. Publishers almost always use DRM options. One wonderful exception is O’Reilly. A DRM’ed eBook can’t be (easily) converted to another format — which means if you trade in your Kindle for a Nook, or an iPad for your Kindle, you either lose your purchase or have to crack the DRM (which is technically illegal in the US). When I had to switch Kindles recently, my backup copies of Kindle purchases wouldn’t work on the new Kindle. Amazon let me re-download them, but I should have been able to transfer my library en masse from my computer.
4. Yes, I know that printing is cheap, but over thousands/millions of paperbacks, the costs add up. Then there’s shipping to bookstores and disposing of remainders to consider. You don’t have any of that with eBooks.

Okay, readers have spoken. They know that restrictions on eBooks they’ve purchased make them a lesser value. Therefore, they want lower eBook prices, and are willing to buy indie books to get them. What about authors?

Late last week, iReaderReview.com told the tale of one John Rector, who:

did really well with his indie novel. The Grove used to be around #300. Perhaps it even hit the Top 100 (not 100% sure as didn’t track it). People really, really loved it.

He got a book deal. Everyone was happy for him.

Now he has -

1. The Cold Kiss. Price: $7.99. Sales Rank: #12,726. Reviews: 4.5 stars on 25 reviews.
2. The Grove. Price: $7.99. Sales Rank: #26,038. Reviews: 4 stars on 80 reviews.

There’s no other way to put it – Signing a book deal was a huge mistake.

I don’t know what the difference in sales numbers from #300 to #12,700 is, but I’m sure it was a big hit. I think he was selling his indie edition of The Grove at 99¢. I wonder how much he earns from his “published” edition, but I’m guessing he’s actually making less money with his books selling at $8 than they did at 99¢. That might be offset by any print sales, and he could actually doing very well at it, but without hard numbers it’s hard to say either way.

In the current regime, it’s the mid-list authors who are getting whacked. I think $8 is a pretty typical eBook price for a mid-list author’s work. But without a big marketing push from the publisher, that mid-list’er is pretty much mired there — a relative unknown, decent sales but either keeps her day job or supplements his spouse’s income. Joe Newkindle comes along, sees the A-list author selling for $10 or even $12, decides to look for something cheaper. If they’re both getting good reviews, which unknown is he going to take a chance on: Mary Mid-list at $8, or Irv Indie at $3?

The Kindle Millionaires have a formula: offer a quality product, and lots of it, for dirt-cheap — for once, “make it up on volume” isn’t the punchline to a joke. In her this is why I took the book deal blog post, Amanda Hocking said she has 18 titles on Amazon, plus 18 more coming — even more telling, the $2 million book deal is for a four book series. To me, it’s clear that being prolific (and good) is the way to go if you’re working the impulse buyers. Suck in readers with the low price, make it worth their while, then make sure they have plenty of opportunity to give you repeat business. After all, even the nearly broke often have 99¢ laying around — and more of a need to escape than the rest of us. But if we’re not that prolific, we need a different formula and a different metric of success.

Expectations are a difficult beast to tame, especially when they’re someone else’s, but I can talk about mine. Wearing my author hat: as I said above, I don’t expect to be able to quit my day job and write stories for a living (I’d be delirious if it happened though!). I don’t have 18 novels in my head waiting for me to pour them out into my MacBook and roll them out at once, so I can’t make it up on volume. The 99¢ option probably wouldn’t bring in enough for me to report at tax time, let alone make me a Kindle Millionaire. I’d be happy to clear a few grand a year, after paying for editing and cover art.

Wearing my reader hat: I’m going to expect more from a $3 eBook than from a $1 eBook. For $1, I’m okay if it’s a novella or short anthology — but not a preview. I’ll put up with some editing issues — but if you use “there” in place of “their,” or don’t spellcheck, I’ll show no mercy. For $3, I’ll expect a full-length work with at least a little polish. I won’t fuss over a couple of typos, you’ll find them in traditionally-published work (especially nowadays), and at least you’ll be able to fix and re-release. That’s the standard I’m going to hold myself to.

I have a couple irons in the fire, and (unless I’m offered a non-exploitive book deal) I’ll probably roll them out at $3 — but offer an introductory price of $1. There are people who will go “BARGAINZ!” and buy at the “special price” even if they wouldn’t have bit if it “retailed” for $1. Not pricing at the bottom lets me play around some: nobody will complain if I drop the price, or return to “retail” after the introductory period expires, but they would if I raised the price. I could probably get away with going to $4 on the next book, assuming people are comfortable knowing they’re going to get a worthwhile read for the price.

This whole eBook market is still in the stage where people are feeling around, trying to get some idea of the “right” price to pay. Personally, as both an author and a reader, I think that price is a lot closer to $3 than $13.

Transferring eBooks to your Kindle

While Amazon is the primary source of eBooks for most Kindle owners, there are other sources out there: Smashwords and Project Gutenberg, just to name two; and even eBooks you or your friends create. If you’ve never done it, the process can be mysterious… but TFM is here to solve the mystery. I bring you instructions for both MacOSX and that Microsoft operating system. (If you use Linux, you know what you’re doing and you don’t need me to help you!)

If you’re using that Microsoft operating system, make sure you’re connected to the Internet because it may want to download a driver.

Plug It In, Plug It In

The first step is to connect your Kindle to your computer. In case you didn’t know, the Kindle’s charger cord detaches from the charger itself, giving you a convenient USB cable:

Plug the small connector into your Kindle, like you would to charge it, and the large connector into your computer:

USB connectors are where you usually plug in a keyboard, mouse, or “jump drive.” On laptops, they are usually on the left or right sides; some older laptops put everything around the back. On desktops, there are always USB connectors in back, but some have one or two up front — maybe behind a little panel. If you have a USB hub, you can use it, but plugging directly into your computer also lets you charge your Kindle.

The computer treats your Kindle as a detachable drive. On Macs, you’ll see Kindle in a Finder window below the primary hard drive. On that Microsoft OS, it makes a bunch of weird noises, maybe downloads a driver if this is the first time you plug it in, then displays it in the “removable storage” area. I’ve circled what to look for below.

Note: I used Windows 7 for the Microsoft side of things. XP is going to look a little different, but functionally it’s all the same. If your CD/DVD drive is D: the Kindle will likely be at E:.

 

Electric Slide

Now that you have your Kindle connected, and know where to find it, it’s just a matter of copying your eBooks into the right place. The “right place” is the documents folder inside the Kindle. To see it, click the Kindle in the Finder window (MacOS) or double-click the Kindle in the Computer window (Microsoft thing).

Now that you have the destination in mind, let’s start with the source. When you download an eBook on a Mac, it usually ends up in either the Desktop folder (OSX 10.4 and earlier) or the Downloads folder (10.5 and newer). On Windows, it goes to the Downloads folder. The Kindle can handle eBooks with either a .mobi (MOBIpocket) or .azw (Amazon) extension — so when you download an eBook from a non-Amazon source, make sure you get one of those two types! (Another very popular eBook type is .epub but Kindles don’t recognize them right now.)

So let’s use WhitePickups.mobi as an example file name. Go to the Downloads (or Desktop) folder as appropriate, find the file WhitePickups.mobi, then Ctrl-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) and select Copy. Go back to the Kindle’s documents directory, Ctrl-click (or right-click), and select Paste. Repeat as necessary to copy more than one eBook.

Almost done!

Eject-o-Mundo

Before you disconnect your Kindle from your computer, you need to eject it. This tidies everything up so you know your eBook is completely copied. To eject on OSX, click the little eject icon next to the Kindle in your Finder window. On Windows, go to the Computer (or My Computer) window, right-click on the Kindle, and select Eject.

Now you can enjoy your new eBook, knowing you’re not forced to use the Kindle Store if you don’t want to.

Other Ways

A program called Calibre is available to manage your eBook collection and simplify transferring eBooks from — and to — your computer. It runs on OSX, Linux… oh yeah, and on Windows too. It has several advantages: for one, it’s a lot easier than going through the steps I outlined above; it also works with multiple eBook readers and (if your eBooks aren’t copy-protected) converts between different formats. If I get a chance, I’ll run that by everyone next week. Until then… happy reading!

P.S. This post isn’t cast in stone, or even ink on paper. If I didn’t cover something throughly enough, leave me a comment. I can fix it.

Off-the-Cuff: Apple vs. Amazon

I didn’t think they’d do it, but I was wrong. Apple is putting the screws to Amazon and other companies, who have used former loopholes to get around Apple’s onerous demand for a 30% commission on “in-app” purchases, for iPad applications. A lot of people have been asking variations on the same question, what does it mean to Amazon and the Kindle app?

That’s the wrong question. The real question is, how many people use an iPad (or iPhone) as their primary eBook reader? As someone who has both a Kindle and an iPad, the only times I have used the iPad to read a book were: 1) When the Kindle screen went Tango Uniform and I was waiting for the replacement; 2) To check the ePub version of my White Pickups draft.

Yes, part of that is because the iPad gets passed around from hand to hand pretty much all day long — if M.A.E.’s not using it to check Facebook or play Angry Birds, it’s Lobster doing the same thing, or it’s Mrs. Fetched playing Mahjongg solitaire. Once in a while, I’ll use it to check Twitter or blogs, or play a round of Angry Birds or solitaire, but I don’t do much reading on it. The Kindle is so much better for that — the screen is easier on the eyes, it’s lighter, and the battery life is better (even though the iPad is no slouch in the battery department itself). In the iPad’s favor, it’s largely format-agnostic, able to read Kindle, Nook, and pretty much everyone else’s eBooks.

I remember all the pronouncements about how the iPad was going to destroy the eBook reader market, but it hasn’t quite turned out that way. Kindle hardware sales are thriving, with B&N’s Nook line running a distant but respectable second, and Sony and Kobo fighting over who will challenge Nook for the #2 spot later on. Apple’s iBookstore is there, but it’s far behind the Kindle Store in sales and probably brings up the rear behind B&N.com and Smashwords. And I don’t think Apple cares all that much. If they did, they’d talk up the eBook reading aspect a lot more in their advertising.

So why is Apple demanding a 30% cut of everything? I can see it for apps — Apple maintains the App Store, paying for the server farms that run it, dealing with payments, and keeping the front end (i.e. the web site) running smoothly. But when we’re talking about buying eBooks through the Kindle and Nook apps, Apple isn’t out of pocket for any of that. There’s something else going on here.

Personally, I think it’s a negotiating position. There’s a popular school of thought that says to ask for the moon in the initial round of negotiations, so you can “compromise” a lot and still get what you really wanted to begin with. Google responded with OnePass, which takes “only” a 10% cut, and I expect that Apple will match it or even undercut it by their self-imposed June 30 deadline for app providers. Credit card companies take 2.5%, so I expect that everyone will head that way sooner or later. Competition or antitrust action, either way things will improve.

Making a Virtue of Necessity

It’s Virtual Monday at FAR Manor, having come off a 3-day weekend. Mrs. Fetched has been working on a video (for a — wait for it — poultry convention!) and the client said they wanted widescreen after she showed them the first (standard screen) cut. Oops… we never did get around to upgrading her system (a G4 dualie “Quicksilver” that is only now showing its age after 7 years), but a copy of Final Cut Express 4 has been sitting around in an unopened box. Given the requirements, it had to go onto my MacBook. I plugged in my 1TB external drive, pulled all her stuff over, and let her get at it.

Of course, since we were starting with a standard (4:3) project, moving it to widescreen (16:9) involved more than opening the project and continuing. It isn’t much of an exaggeration to say the project fought us every step of the way, but Mrs. Fetched wanted to get it done so we did manage to wrassle it to the ground and hogtie it in the end. One of the hassles was that I had to install and run FCE as the admin user — a rather unpleasant surprise for a Mac user, especially when it’s one of Apple’s own products. We’re used to things not being so cranky. The upshot was, I was fenced off from my writing files for most of the weekend while Mrs. Fetched worked or left things for me to deal with.

Undaunted, I picked up my new replacement Kindle and finished reading Walden. Then I started on another book I transferred to the Kindle, one I hope you’re familiar with. I wanted to give it a once-over to note a few awkward passages, but then I remembered the note-taking capability…

This actually has worked pretty well so far, and I’m 2/3 of the way through the book. So not only did I make a virtue of necessity, it was a happy virtue. You don’t find many of those.

I’ve found that the AppleTV thing has been really helpful when Mason is tired but still fighting sleep. I can stream Groove Salad or Ambient Alternative, then the photos of the animals start a few minutes later. Mason watches them, gets still… and zzZZZzzzZZZzzz…

Wednesday (cough cough) Wibbles

OK, that’s enough of that. The “new” Blogger editor was sitting and spinning so I gave up and went back to the old one.

So it’s after midnight, and thus technically Thursday morning. Oh well, it’s still Wednesday night somewhere.

Mason has an ear infection, brought on by his back teeth coming in. I have some unspecified virus, according to the doc, that’s been going around Sector 706. Two different causes, but we’re both feverish, congested, and we both sound like we’re about to cough up a lung on occasion. I was well for about four days between shucking the first whatever and catching this one. I’d sleep all night anyway, or most of it, if Mason wasn’t waking up miserable.

Today (that is, Wednesday) was Mrs. Fetched’s and my 26^th anniversary. We had a dinner out, just the two of us. Kind of nice for a change. I bought us an AppleTV to go with the new HDTV as an anniversary present, and pulled some YouTube stuff in just to show off. The Boy has a Netflix account, and he said he’ll punch it in so we (Mrs. Fetched, really) can pull down movies to watch. Me, I’ll probably use it to stream Groove Salad or some other ambient station when I’m trying to put Mason to sleep.

With White Pickups pretty much wrapped up, I pulled it (episode by episode) into Sigil, a Free authoring tool that uses ePub as a native file format. From there, I gave it a more novel-like format, including actual chapters, and added some more story toward the beginning. There’s still a lot to go, but I pulled it into Calibre (a free ebook manager) and convert it to MOBI so I could load it onto my Kindle. I’m busy reading Thoreau’s Walden right now, but I’ll be soon marking places where the story needs more fleshing-out. I’m sure the ending (and other parts) will need a little work, but that’s what drafts are for, right? Whether I find a publisher or go indie (still trying to decide), the novel will have editing improvements and extended material.

Speaking of writing, I’ll have a #FridayFlash ready to go. It needs a little work as well, but that’s the beauty of flash fiction — it can be fixed up well enough in an evening or two.

I can’t wait to get better… I have stuff to do outside. I never did get the winter garden started, although the rain (and snow) never did let the patch dry out enough to dig up. I still need to finish clearing up the bank out by the road and hacking back the vines there. At least I managed to lose four pounds compared to June (at my last checkup), even with Eating Season. But I need to get exercising too. Maybe I’ll stay healthy for more than four days this time. :-)

Self-Published Publicity (NSFW?)

… or “Boobs, Books, and Buzz.” Or "Marketing 101 in the Internet Age.”


Have you heard the names “Hayley Williams” and “Paramore”? Until Saturday, I hadn’t, although Daughter Dearest insists that I’ve heard some of their music on the radio. Anyway, this self-snapped shot (look at the angle of her left arm) appeared in her TwitPic stream on Thursday night — OK, I’ve slightly doctored it to keep this post PG-rated:



The pic was pulled down, but not soon enough for it to get copied (obviously, see above) and the old Whoops, I got hacked excuse popped up in her tweetstream. 'Course, some folks checked the pic’s EXIF data and found the shot was snapped about eight minutes before it got posted… making the possibility of a hack, shall we say, extremely remote. A much more believable explanation would have been “it was supposed to be for my boyfriend and I messed up when I emailed it.”

For those of you who have to see the original, I found out about the whole kerfuffle in an [!!!!!NSFW!!!!!] article from TheRegister [!!!!!NSFW!!!!!]; it includes the picture in all its nude-tastic glory as I type (and ElReg tends to give the meaty middle finger to take-down notices).

So… this all happens on Thursday. I read about it on Saturday. And by Monday, I’m off to Amazon’s MP3 store to check out Paramore’s music selection… which turns out to be pleasant to listen to as well. There has been a ton of press about it, and “Hayley Williams” is a trending topic on Twitter at the moment — you just can’t buy publicity that good. Hey, if I thought I’d get a huge traffic bump by posting (and taking down) a nudie of myself, I’d go for it too… but my bits just aren’t as interesting to look at. IMHO.

Clothing choices aside, I like her face better in the above shot than the one in a more “turned-out” publicity pic (in which she looks like a Jennifer Aniston clone, not that I think Jen is unpleasant looking). Hayley, lose the makeup and the hair stylist, you look better and more like yourself without them.


Now that I’ve got your attention…

Last week, I mentioned, among other things, J.A. Konrath being the subject of a Publisher’s Weekly hit-piece and his response. This week, he embarks on a fascinating experiment he calls Steal This eBook: he makes available a zip file containing Jack Daniels Stories (one of his own books) in various ebook formats (and a direct link if the first one doesn’t work). The really audacious part is where he asks people to share the file far and wide via the usual “piracy” channels.

Konrath sums up his experiment thus: “I've said repeatedly that there is no proof piracy hurts sales. So I'm manning up and putting my money where my mouth is.” Indeed. This experiment has just sailed, so it’ll be interesting to see how it pans out. But I can already say, Konrath has put one of his books in my reading pile where there were none before. I’ve never been one to shy away from making predictions, so I’ll throw one out here: I think he’ll see a negligible effect on sales for this particular book, and a noticeable uptick in sales of his other books.

Of course, it can be debated (and is being debated in the comments on Konrath’s blog) whether this is actually “piracy” or not — after all, the author himself is encouraging spreading the file far and wide. Perhaps this should be better considered a “loss leader,” an old sales tactic where a store sells one product at a loss in hopes that people will buy other (more profitably marked-up) stuff while they’re grabbing the Great Deal. But successful buzz generation means you have to get people to notice what you’re saying — and is “A free ebook” or “Hey, pirate my ebook!” going to get more notice? Or, in the case of Hayley Williams, did “hey, music” or “BOOBZIEZ!!!!” turn more heads? (Big hint: of the thousands of bands out there, who’s getting the attention right now?)

Publicity is not for the faint of heart, and DIY publicity doubly so. I think there are some lessons to be learned here, though, to make things a little less scary…

1) You can only do this thing once. Williams’s stunt definitely lands in the category of “tough act to follow.” Konrath took a more modest approach, but even if he offers another freebie later on, a lot of people will go “yeah, yeah.”

2) Know what results you’re looking for. I’m guessing that both Konrath and Williams did, and got them.

3) Seize the opportunity when something goes wrong. Sometimes, you might get free publicity in a way you neither expected nor particularly wanted. Once the genie is out of the bottle, no amount of whining nor DMCA take-down notices will get it back in… and you’ll just end up looking clueless and petty. Make it work for you instead. Get out in front of the story so you’ll have at least some control — and for your own sake, don’t come up with a lame explanation that can be easily debunked (e.g. “I got hacked”). On the other hand, if you can extend the controversy (which is an unpleasant way of saying “extend the free publicity”) with a silly comment, it might be worth it.

Consider the sad case of Stephanie Meyer throwing a hissy-fit when an early draft of Midnight Sun* got leaked onto the net — she decided that she’d “been violated” and walked away from the work. To her credit, she soon acquired a partial clue and posted a copy herself (although with the usual “Any retranscription or reproduction is illegal” stuff), but still has no plans to finish it. She would have been far better off, publicity-wise, had she said something like “I’ve been rewriting this and what hits the shelves will be different and far better, it’ll be out on [some date]. Hang in there.”

*Thanks go to Daughter Dearest, a Stephanie Meyer fan, for supplying both the book title and the author name when my memory couldn’t produce either one.

Cheap electronics and public networks have changed creative media forever. It was once said, “freedom of the press applies only to those who can afford a printing press.” Now the electronic equivalent can be purchased for a few hundred bucks new, or sometimes fished out of a dumpster for free. Of course, the old “talent” issue still applies — Sturgeon’s Law says “Ninety percent of everything is crap,” and many would say Sturgeon was an optimist — and so publishers and the recording/movie industry can claim to be a filter for that ninety percent. Still, people like J.A. Konrath are making a comfortable living without having the mass-market appeal that the gatekeepers/filters demand, simply by using the tools available today and finding a way to get noticed.

Weird and Wacky Wednesday

Well, not that weird, not much weirder than any other day at FAR Manor. The day started out kind of promising; Snippet woke up pissy from a bad dream and threatened to leave The Boy. His response: “Go right ahead.” (They’ve talked about getting married in July, but stuff like this has to make you wonder.) She seems to have gotten over herself though — her mom coming by may have had something to do with that. She (Snippet’s mom) had to have an MRI today, and she needs to be sedated due to seizures when exposed to certain electrical fields, so Snippet did the driving. They took Mason with them, which made for a pretty quiet day.

Daughter Dearest was a little concerned about it; she heard much of the argument The Boy and Snippet had this morning and thought maybe Snippet would bolt the manor with the baby. “That’s the absolute last thing I’m worried about,” I told her. “Snippet lays in bed all day until I take Mason upstairs and drop him in bed with her, and ten minutes later she’s asking me to take him so she can get a shower or eat breakfast, and then she’ll eff off to watch TV. She takes care of him as little as possible; she’s not going to take him on full-time.” Sure enough, they were back later in the afternoon. Mason has been free-standing for a while now, and trying to take his first steps, but he’s not even 9 months old yet. He’ll be walking soon enough, then we’ll really have to get serious about baby-proofing the manor.

My wallet is $1500 lighter, but I have my Civic back. Most of that was replacing the clutch and timing belt/water pump, but there were a few other minor things that got done. I still don’t have working A/C, but so far everything else seems to be okay.

While my net worth took a thumpin’ at the mechanic’s, today was somewhat of a net-worth watershed for Apple: today was the day Apple’s market cap overtook Microsoft’s for the first time. I don’t expect it to be a permanent situation — Microsoft will rally, or Apple will stumble, and this might only last a few days or weeks — but it’s going to be a fun datapoint to rub in the faces of all those people who thought Apple was walking-dead just 10 years ago. Too bad I didn’t grab some Apple stock back then…

Lately, I’ve been reading J. A. Konrath’s blog, off and on. Konrath is a mid-list author who writes a series of crime novels, and has lately had a huge sales boost by selling Kindle editions of his books, out of print and otherwise, and pricing them dirt-cheap (like $1.99). As book publishing (the major publishing houses, collectively referred to as “New York”) has found itself circling the same drain as newspaper publishing, this hasn’t exactly been welcome news in some circles. Publisher’s Weekly wrote a nice little hit-piece about Konrath signing with AmazonEncore, including lovely sentiments like “a book that nobody wanted” (where “nobody” = New York), misrepresenting his sales, and implying that AmazonEncore is a bare step above self-publishing. Naturally, Konrath set the record straight. I’ve been the victim of a similar hit-piece in the past, when I posted a series of articles (on a now-defunct Yahoo!360° blog) that was critical of XML — or rather, how consultants were deliberately over-complicating it for their own gain — and a consultant got a bunch of other consultants together and trashed me… of course, without bothering to contact me for a rebuttal. It did have the side effect of sending a tsunami of traffic to that blog though.

Seeing that I’ll have to write a sequel to White Pickups, which is now “Book I of the Truckalypse,” maybe I should look into this whole publish-on-Kindle thing myself.

Approaching the end…

… of the year, anyway. As I type, we’re getting the classic wintry mix: rain, sleet, rain, and (at the moment) sleet and snow.

I've been wanting to do this for a while, and here it is. The Boy on the left (scanned from a portrait in the hall), Mason on the right (one I took) — both about 3-½ months old, give or take:



Yup, Mason is his dad’s kid awright. Just like his dad, he fights going to sleep and doesn’t like losing. There are differences, of course: The Boy’s happy place was the swing; Mason’s is getting walked around and he wants a lot more interaction than his dad did.

The refrigerator that came with the house definitely met its end yesterday morning. I was in the kitchen, fixing some coffee, when I heard a loud SPAT and saw sparks shoot out from the bottom of the fridge in my peripheral vision. The smell of burning electrical equipment made for a less than happy morning. After making sure the metal skin of the fridge wasn’t “hot,” I reached back and unplugged the sucker; Mrs. Fetched cleared it out while I was at work. Fortunately, we have (had) two refrigerators in the kitchen, side by side, so it’s not like we’ll have trouble keeping the formula cold or anything. I hope maybe we’ll be able to get along with one fridge and not worry about replacing it. If we have to have some extra cold storage, there’s a couple of small refrigerators in the studio and I’m not exactly keeping them both full of beer at the moment, unfortunately… we could move one into the kitchen as an overflow icebox.

I've been loading up my Kindle a little bit, and am getting to like this thing. I’m still not where I would have bought one myself, but I do like having it. One of the really nice features about buying a Kindle book from Amazon is that they send the book to the Kindle as soon as you buy it online, whether you’re buying it from the Kindle itself (not happening w/o a credit card) or your computer. The latter is a really nice convenience that Apple should adapt for iTunes customers; send a new track straight to your iPhone? Why not? OTOH, I’ve found a couple of glitches, only one of which is Amazon’s fault. It seems that Amazon wants you to have a credit card recorded with them to buy books straight from the Kindle — but if you’re buying from your computer, you can use gift cards and essentially run it as a pre-paid system. It’s only a minor hassle (like I said, once you buy a book it goes straight to your Kindle), but the rest of the purchasing system seems so well thought-out that this stands out.

The second problem is more of a publisher’s issue. I bought Maria Lima’s Blood Kin — third in the series, I have the first two in paperback — and it started right at Chapter One even though there was a Preface. I guess I should mention, Kindle books have a default starting point that isn’t necessarily the front cover… it could start with the Table of Contents, Preface, or wherever the publisher says. Juno (Maria’s publisher) might not quite get the whole e-book concept just yet. In addition to starting a little past (what I would consider) the most logical place to start, they include legal boilerplate about not buying books with the cover torn off. Somehow, i doubt that Amazon is going to sell e-books without the cover… that page could be eliminated entirely without hurting a thing.

On the freebie side, there’s two major places I’m going so far: Project Gutenberg, which digitizes as many books as they can find whose copyright has expired (so that the books are now public domain), is the place to go if (like me) you misspent your youth avoiding the classics. One title I thoroughly enjoyed was P.G. Wodehouse’s Love Among the Chickens, but I might be just a little biased for reasons well-known to longtime readers. Isaac Asimov spoke highly of Wodehouse, so I had to check out some of his titles. Of course, a sci-fi lover will go nutz just from the selection of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells titles.

Speaking of sci-fi, the Baen Free Library is another worthy link, and includes some more modern titles than Gutenberg. Baen’s evil plot is to get you hooked on the first books in a series so you’ll go out and buy the others… great idea, sez I.

I haven’t really had a chance to wander through the stacks of a third site, Manybooks, but some of the titles look like they’d be a good way to expand my horizons a bit.

Looking back at My predictions for 2009, I was a lot more pessimistic than the year actually turned out. Sure, I got a few things right, but I expected things to be a lot farther into the tank than they are now. Oh well, I’ll do a more detailed analysis tomorrow and maybe venture a few predictions for 2010.

If I miss you tomorrow night, Happy New Year, y’all!

Hardware, Mason, Hardware

We had a holiday party at work yesterday afternoon — good excuse to knock off for a couple of hours and nosh on some horsey-doovers. In the past, the company would rent out a club and invite spouses along; with the economy the way it is, they decided to dial it back… only a little. The big pile of geek-compatible door prizes was still there, though (the smallest prize was an iPod nano, or maybe a digital photo frame). For the first time in like, ever, my name got pulled out of the hat! The way this works, you come up and draw a number out of a second bag; they match the number to your prize. I got a Kindle and a $50 Amazon gift certificate.

While I was aware the thing existed, I’d seen a Kindle in meatspace only once, in the hands of a co-worker taking a break outside. The second one I’ve seen is sitting next to my keyboard on the desk. I haven’t registered it yet, still going through the user manual. (Professional courtesy, don’t you know.) Amazon says it’s about the size of a paperback — which is true, if you’re talking trade size:



I found myself surprised at several things as I unpacked the Kindle and got it going: on the display is a brief set of instructions telling you to plug it in and turn it on (with illustrations). I assumed that there was a transparent overlay on the screen, and actually tried to peel it off with my thumbnail before I realized the display was showing it. They claim their “electronic paper” display doesn’t require much power once it’s showing the page. The display is 16-shade greyscale, and it looks really clear and sharp. It’s not backlit, which means you can’t read in the dark, but that’s what wind-up flashlights are for; they claim you can read in bright sunlight, and I’m not too skeptical about that claim. Other surprises include a rudimentary MP3 player, web browser, and data access over the Sprint cellular network (on Amazon’s dime)… Sprint’s signal out here at the manor is better than I expected; I usually get 3 or 4 (out of 5) bars. It’s supposed to hold about 1500 books, which would keep me busy for a long time were I stranded on a desert island with the Kindle (and a solar panel to recharge it). Sleep mode displays random woodcut-like graphics: portraits of classic authors, ancient manuscripts, and so forth.

Like the iPhone, Amazon has built an ecosystem around the Kindle. Unlike the iPhone, Amazon is providing other means to access that ecosystem: Kindle readers for iPhone, PC, (eventually) Mac, and so forth. This makes sense; Apple is about selling hardware and Amazon is about selling books. Both companies are using the ecosystem they’ve built to sell more of their product. One thing the Kindle store does that I wish the iTunes store did: keep a record of your purchases and let you re-download them if necessary.

Downsides? The Kindle doesn’t feel like something you’d spend $259 on. It’s light, almost airy, and (despite the brushed metal backside) doesn’t give me the impression that it’s rugged enough to live the hard life of a mobile device. The buttons are probably better than they feel, but I wonder how long it will be before the labels wear off. The Kindle is too big to fit in a pocket, even a cargo pants pocket, but it could go in a purse or briefcase (or courier bag). Finally, I have to wonder how long Amazon will allow free data access beyond the confines of their store, especially since it has a lightweight web browser.

The geeks are already hacking away at the device; it runs a version of Linux and some folks have managed to install software needed to make it a more general-purpose computer. Amazon has wisely taken a hands-off stance, although I suspect they would get rather exercised if people were to pound on the network too much. This is something I wouldn’t have bought for myself, but now that I have it I’m interested in seeing what it can do.


Mason was not in a wonderful mood much of yesterday. He woke up twice last night, maybe more… I got up with him twice anyway. Mrs. Fetched took him to the doctor today, and she suspects he has rotavirus, aka “baby flu.” Here’s hoping he gets over it soon. He tries really hard to be good-natured, and nothing brightens up a house like a baby laughing. Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest got the tree put up and strung some LED lights on it, and he loves looking at all the colors.


Since Mrs. Fetched needed the car to take Mason to the doc, I ended up on the motorcycle. It was one of those mornings where I put in all the linings in the jacket, added more layers underneath, cranked up the heated gloves, and only my feet froze. I’m working at the office all week since we have a new contractor in and I need to throw all the stuff I can’t get done on him (and help him get started doing it). He and I worked at the same place about 12 years ago, and dimly recognized each other at the interview… he likes his motorcycle too, and was glad to see mine.

Getting a Little Behind

…unfortunately, just in my reading. :-P

I have in my queue, in order:

July 2008 issue of Asimov’s

Kelly McCullough’s CodeSpell (3rd book; WebMage and Cybermancy are fantastic, go get ’em if you haven’t already)

A double-preview booklet: one side is Maria Lima’s Blood Bargain (the sequel to Matters of the Blood, which was pretty darn good even if it’s half romance :-) — the other side is a preview of Brimstone Kiss by Carole Nelson Douglas (new author to me). If you could judge a book by its cover, I’d be… well, never mind what I’d be doing.

And that’s just pleasure reading. For work, I have a 180-page spec and an article about DITA to read. The latter is sort of optional; consultants (who make big $$$ off support packages for complex XML systems) think it’s the Second Coming of Something or Other but I don’t see what it can do that I can’t do at least as well with groff and some scripts.

And… I have a FAR Future episode to get done this week. Read or write? Tough decision sometimes.

A (mostly) peaceful weekend

I was blessed this weekend with less crazy stuff than I expected. The Boy’s counseling session was moved to Saturday morning since today is Mother’s Day. (My mom is out West having a good time on a tour.) I spent an hour & a half taking care of various business, combining a bunch of errands into one trip, finishing up with groceries.

Coming out of the grocery store, I found a message on my smellphone: “don’t get groceries, go by Subway and get sandwiches… [list] …then bring them over to the chicken houses; we have a water leak.” Since I’d already got the groceries, including ice cream, I decided to just make sandwiches at home and take them over. Fortunately, the leak was near the back end of the house so Mrs. Fetched just drove the small tractor in to scoop the wet stuff out and it really didn’t take long. We finished to rumbling noises in the sky, so we went home, unplugged stuff, and several of us (including yours truly) took a nap.

Today has truly been a day of rest. We took Mrs. Fetched out for Mother’s Day, watched A Night at the Museum and haven’t done much since then.

Family Man describes himself as a slacker, but I’ll bet Dolly Freed could teach even him a thing or three. Back in 1975 or so, at age 19, she wrote a book called Possum Living (link to full text) about the extremely low-maintenance lifestyle she and her father lived. I wish I’d run across this book when I got out of college — it could have changed my life. It would be interesting to see whether she’s still living that ultra-slackerly lifestyle now at age 50-ish, and what improvements she might have made on it.

Sounds crazy

So crazy, in fact, I want to do it. But not this year.

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the writers’ version of motorcycling’s Iron Butt Rally. It’s a simple contest: during the month of November, write a short (50,000 word) novel. But like haiku, there’s deep water beneath that simple surface.

Both NaNoWriMo and Iron Butt are endurance tests, of both operator and machine. Both require the participant to forego luxuries like sleep, regular meals, entertainment, and family. NaNoWriMo throws in another little monkey wrench, the minor detail of a major holiday (Thanksgiving, at least in the US) — toward the end of the month, when contestants will be pushing hard to wrap up, no less. Not to mention the 8.33% of us who happen to have a birthday in November.

To give you an idea of what 50,000 words is like, look through the October archive for Tales from FAR Manor. Read it all. Then multiply by 4. And I only thought I’d been writing like crazy this month. To really have a shot at completing NaNoWriMo, I would probably have to use up most of my vacation time (by taking November off, which ain’t gonna happen due to deadlines) kick the renters out of the old place in the woods, and move in there for the month.

Book review: American Gods

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
(Bear with me, this is the first book review I've written since high school.)

“One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see?”

There are several ways, I've found, to write a story that people enjoy reading. One is to create characters the readers can identify with; another is to research the absolute heck out of things and create a solid backdrop. American Gods falls in the second category, though you shouldn't take that to mean the characters are cardboard or wooden (it's just hard to identify with gods sometimes). But Gaiman is either an enthusiastic student of ancient pagan beliefs or a fantastic researcher — perhaps both.

The story centers around Shadow Moon (although you never quite hear him called that), a big quiet man. As the story begins, Shadow is counting down the days to the end of three years in prison. He has a wife and a job waiting for him outside, and he wants nothing more than to get home and stay out of trouble for the rest of his life. But just days before his release, both his wife and future boss are killed in an accident.

Released a few days early, Shadow struggles to get home through a storm, meeting a strange man on the airplane who calls himself “Wednesday.” He knows Shadow's name, offers him a job and refuses to take “no” for an answer. Finally bowing to the inevitable, Shadow sets out on a strange journey that takes him all across America and even “backstage.”

“What I'm trying to say is that America is like that. It's not good growing country for gods.”

To many immigrants, America was truly the Land of Opportunity, where everyone could have a place of their own and live unmolested by nobility. But for their old gods like Odin or Eostre, or mythical creatures like piskies and leprechauns, America is a desert isle where belief fades with the first generation immigrants. Worse, there are new gods to contend with: gods of steel and glass, gods of cathode rays and silicon, gods of intangibles, gods of rail and highway. There's only so much belief to go around, and Wednesday's quest is to rally as many of his fellow old gods as he can to face off against the modern upstarts. And the beliefs and culture heroes of those who came first are still to be contended with.

“You know why dead people only go out at night? Because it's easier to pass for real, in the dark.”

In the presence of gods and myths, even those who feed on human sacrifice (Old Europe's gods were bloody-minded creatures), sometimes it's hard for the dead to stay dead. But in what we like to think of as the “real” world, sometimes the living do not truly live. Shadow's wife Laura is somewhat more than a memory, and sometimes Shadow seems to just go through the motions of living. But in the end, as Wednesday says, misquoting Julian of Norwich, “All is well, and all is well, and all shall be well.”*

---

*The actual quote is “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Not even pagan gods are infallible.