Barbara G. Tarn's Blog, page 156

Random Friday

Welcome to random Friday! I’m going to start with last weekend procrastination techniques: drawing! It’s a hobby, at least when I do colored pencil portraits like the ones I uploaded on my DeviantART gallery. I’m also supposed to draw my graphic novel, but my one and only reader has learned patience (didn’t you, Jo? ) – yes, I still have to get to that #13. Sigh.

Anyhow, you can check the rest on DeviantART, I’m posting here only this “experiment” – black (HB & 2B) pencils for the skin, colors only for hair, eyes, lips and background. Last drawing I did like this was in 1997. And the previous from the late 1980…

I won’t post the old ones, but the first “model” was Simon Le Bon (so 80s – yeah, I was a Duranie, but Simon was not my favorite, LOL), the second Leonardo DiCaprio (pre or post-Titanic? Hm. Can’t remember) and now, well, just saying it for the new followers – that’s Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan. I also did last weekend – except can’t find new pics of him, so I had to use one from the 1980s and one more recent. I’ve really drawn all the pics I could get my hands on (and that’s 10% of the grand total, LOL!)! Obsessed much? Nah.

Now, tomorrow I may or may not go to Fiuggi for the Deepcon. I know I’ll see my friend Maurizio Manzieri in Torino Comics anyway, but there will be also my fellow Chicon panelist Luigi Petruzzelli, so I don’t know. We’ll see how I feel in the morning, which means… Sunday Surprise. Yeah, it’s always a surprise anyway, I know.

By the way – dear new followers, this blog has Sunday Surprises, which means that if you’d like to do a guest post and ramble about you, what you do and/or what you like, just leave a comment or contact me at creativebarbwire (at) gmail (dot) com and we’ll set up a date. You can do like Tricia and Katy and Peter K.Lean. You don’t need to have your own blog to participate. You don’t need to be a writer either. And it won’t be for this Sunday anyway, otherwise where is the surprise?

On another topic, I’m not sure if I should celebrate or start crying right now, but 25 years ago I started my adventure with DayJob. Which had changed more in the past 10 years than in the previous 15. But then – the whole world has changed more in the past 10 years than in the previous century, so who am I to complain? What bothers me most is that with this financial crisis, I’m even supposed to thank them for giving me a job – but sometimes I really wish they’d fire me so I can concentrate on indie publishing and drawing and creating other stuff instead… Except I’m too old to be fully exploited and too young to retire, so they’ll have to keep me, haha not-so-haha. Sigh.

Ending the random randomness with some Star Trek Classical Series (the only one I ever watched, in case you’re wondering) and a chuckle:

My comment: that’s why I love Galaxy Quest and Sam Rockwell’s Guy “who dies in the episode”!

: I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m just “Crewman Number Six.” I’m expendable. I’m the guy in the episode who dies to prove how serious the situation is. I’ve gotta get outta here.

Not to mention all the other wonderful quotes! That’s the best spoof of Star Trek that was ever made! Never give up, never surrender!

Now I’m going back to struggle with that story (gee, maybe I’ll just throw it away, but I need to do at least a first try) which is a sort of summary with omniscient narrator (that was my style way back when – I didn’t know about points of views and third person limited, and didn’t have any beta-readers shouting at me I was going too fast, I was telling and not showing and all those wonderful mistakes newbies do. Glad it’s still unpublished, LOL!) and needs a lot of work.

I might throw in a movie or two after dinner, but nothing new, so no reviews coming, sorry! And I need to read my 2 monthly mags before I start a new e-book… so hopefully next week I can tell you something about my reading. This week – nada. Have a wonderful weekend!

Writer Wednesday

Spent the weekend drawing – my usual procrastination technique… – but now I have started the next Amazon story, based on an old story of my space Amazons that was so silly it can easily be turned into fantasy instead of sci-fi. Except it was based on dreams and we all know that dreams are wonderful… until you wake up and realize the plot is totally unbelievable. So I’ll be struggling to make this story a little more believable in a fantasy setting than what it was in the futuristic setting. Some adjustments will occur, but that’s world building, folks!

I had approximately 10 “sales” (let’s say half were actually free-for-the-week e-books…) during the Smashwords e-book week and nothing on Amazon (unlike last July when during the Smashwords sale I kept selling Johnny&Marian full price on Kindle). Not that I check my Amazon rankings ever, but I do check the dashboard to see if and what I sold on KDP – just waiting for that first check to roll in!

Anyhow, I’m certainly not faking my way to the top bestsellers on Amazon – I’m saying it’s my (well B.G.Hope’s) bestselling title, not that I’m trying to send it to the top. I’m not sure how other people could do it, I know I put some tags when I upload to KDP, but then sometimes the ebook shows up with other tags. Like, I have no idea who put some tags on BoI-Air (such as paranormal) – and then I realized there are no more tags on Amazon, only the category… Mystery of Mighty A. I’ve given up trying to figure it out, honestly. I better be off writing, trust me!

Kris Rusch makes another excellent post on the state of publishing and indie authors and binge reading. No, I’m not a bestseller yet, but I’m working on it, LOL! And I most certainly will stay away from Random House and it’s imprints, especially Hydra (as I do write SF/F, the other imprints I don’t care). See John Scalzi’s note to SF/F writers on Hydra. And if you write YA, you better stay away from Alibi as well.

I guess traditional publishers are losing it. Check also the interview with Harlan Coben and his advice to new writers. And John Scalzi on the power to negotiate your contract, if you really really really want to stick to traditional publishing. Although if a math-challenged like me is doing her own “business” without the help of traditional publishing, so can you.

Especially if you’re younger than me and supposedly more technological than me. Yes, there might be people who are better than you at certain things (like cover design, marketing strategy), but this doesn’t mean you should sign contracts like the aforementioned. You can always outsource some things – I do outsource covers sometimes, (this year I’ll have Cristina doing some covers for me again – she did the BoI covers in 2011, in case you’re new to this blog) and always use outside editors like Katy or Tricia or Cassie.

Of course if you don’t want to bother your pretty head with business decisions, it’s your choice. Try not to end up in court like Patricia Cornwell, though! Or see if you have the guts of Hugh Howey – read how he handled his deal with Simon&Shuster! Can you do it? Can you not sell your soul in the process? Kudos to Hugh for opening up a path for all of us – if we stick to what we really want!

One last link is to David Farland’s Daily Kick about mining for good advice. David Farland is a teacher, so he nows how to help new writers. The other person he mentions might be someone like me – a writer who writes, but is unable to tell how he does it. If you asked me the questions Hemingway got asked, you’d probably receive a shrug and a grumble in return. Teaching is a talent that I don’t have *shrug*. That’s why I’m referring you to great pros who can also teach such as David Farland, Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katryn Rusch.

Not that anyone is asking my advice, but there were some discussions in my offline writers group about inviting an author to tell us how he wrote his one book – if he’s like me, he won’t be able to tell. Now I’m going back to writing fiction, as I’d rather be doing that. Can’t teach you much on how to do it, except just do it. Writers write. So get your butt in a chair and write. And stop whining. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody will. Happy writing!

Happiness is…

Surprise Sunday

… and it’s another guest! Please welcome Mighty Editor Katy Sozaeva and her wonderful post on reviews!

Critical Reviews vs. Negative Reviews

Recently, a friend of mine took part in a blog tour. The book she had to read was… not up to her expectations, so she wrote a well-balanced but critical review pointing out the deficits—and the positive aspects—of the book in question. The author was apparently having some sort of contest if her fans commented, so the blog was swarmed with comments, some of which were highly critical of my friend’s so-called “negative review”. This made me think about my own opinions about reviews, and to consider the differences between negative reviews and critical reviews.

A little background: some of you who have been living in a cave in Nepal might not be aware that there has been a lot of static in the book community between certain reviewers and certain authors over so-called “negative” reviews. Lines have been drawn. People have been polarized. Huge flame wars and arguments have broken out. Careers have been destroyed. All over people’s opinions about a book. This completely befuddles me. So, I started thinking about the issue a lot.

Here’s the thing. There is a major difference between a negative review and a critical review. A critical review is criticizing the book based upon specific details about it, outlining exactly why the reviewer feels that way, and explaining what might have been done to improve it. A negative review is, essentially, an attack. Consider the difference in my following examples.

 1 out of 1 star

 This book stank. It was a waste of my money, and I wouldn’t use the pages to wipe myself after using the toilet. It might be worth taking up a collection to hire someone to pull a Nancy Kerrigan on the author’s hands so we aren’t subjected to this sort of drivel anymore.

That is a negative review. Lest you think I’m exaggerating… I have seen reviews very similar to this, only with more profanity and additional frothing. The review tells us nothing about why the reviewer didn’t like the book. It doesn’t tell us anything about the book itself. It serves only to expose the reviewer as being incapable of expressing him/herself in a civilized manner. Take, for comparison, this critical review.

 1 out of 1 star

 While it is obvious that the author spent a lot of time working out the timeline and backgrounds for the characters in this book, it is also obvious that some critical elements in the publishing process were skipped, such as editing and proofreading. Words were frequently misused, or the wrong form of a homonym. Extra apostrophes were in words, or apostrophes were missing altogether. To make matters worse, while it is apparent that the characters backgrounds were carefully worked out, their personalities were skipped. They all sounded the same. Emotions were completely missing, and the author told us how we should react, rather than showing us through the actions of the characters and thereby building believable tension.

Do you see the difference there? The second hypothetical review (again, based upon other reviews I’ve both seen and written) explains exactly why the reviewer didn’t like the book. Since I am just making these up, I didn’t go into any sort of plot or book information, but hopefully you can see the idea behind it.

Any legitimate author will actually find something to help them with their future writing in a well-written and carefully crafted critical review, while a negative review… well, that just wastes everyone’s time. So, next time you read a book that is so bad you want to throw it against the wall, do everyone a favor. Cool down before you write your review, and since you’re taking the time to write the review, also take the time to tell the people who will read it why that book was horrible. And when you see a good critical review, take the time to tell that reviewer how much you appreciate them taking the time to do so as well. If you see a negative review? Just ignore it. Because why waste your time on all that negativity?

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Katy Sozaeva is an obsessive bibliophile, reader, reviewer, freelance editor, and slave to her three cats. You can find more information about her editing and reviewing by visiting her blog, Now is Gone, at http://katysozaeva.blogspot.com. She has edited close to 70 books in the year and a half since she started her freelance service. You can see them (or most of them anyway) listed on Shelfari here: http://www.shelfari.com/authors/a1002650799/Katy-Sozaeva/ or by visiting her profile on Goodreads and viewing her bookshelf entitled “i-edited”.

***

You know I review only the things I like – if I can’t give at least 3 stars, you won’t know I read/watched it. Maybe I’ll contact the author, if it’s a friend, or maybe I’ll just shut up. And I don’t read the reviews of my own books either (nor do I stalk wanna-be reviewers who were obviously only after free downloads…). But I’ve heard of those flame wars and childish authors or reviewers (who can tell who started it) and I decided I’m not interested. I don’t buy books or movies based on reviews anyway!

I wanted to add a list of my books edited by Katy (check the rest on her links):

Chronicles of the Varian Empire – The Left-handed Warrior (Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo and Lulu)

Chronicles of the Varian Empire – The Enlightened Emperor (Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo and Lulu)

Records of the Varian Empire (Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo and Lulu)

latest release The death of Queen Amazonia (Smashwords, Amazon and Kobo)

and mostly (because of some brainstorming on a couple of things) Star Minds:

Technological Angel (Smashwords, Amazon and Kobo)

Mind Link (Smashwords, Amazon and Kobo)

and upcoming Slave Traders (out next month).

Have a wonderful Sunday!

p.s. Katy, I’m afraid I mispelled your name in the acknowledgements of most of the above… forgive me? Won’t happen again, and on Star Minds I’ll write it properly, I swear, when the omnibus comes out you’ll be fairly credited!

Random Friday

Struggling with a wacky connection on Thursday afternoon, I guess I’ll keep this post short. Just in case I need to upload it quickly from DayJob before I start working, I’m writing in a Word.doc so I can paste it into WordPress.

Not much to say anyway. I’m reading a manuscript, so I won’t be able to share it with you. I don’t have any new movies to watch, and I’m not watching old ones either – busy writing and reading.

I’ve done another portrait last Sunday, so here’s the latest from DeviantART…

Speaking of art, here’s an artist’s story – and it sounds very similar to this writer’s story… I guess it goes for any creative endeavor, really! Words of wisdom from that post:

Sadly, the world is not filled with cheerleaders. No longer seven years old,  I can’t expect others to tell me how great my artwork is. Now it’s up to me to focus on the minor successes instead of the minor failings. And at the risk of being overly dramatic…. this just might be the secret to a successful art career.

Paste it on your wall, you creative people! And you’ll be happily successful, just like me!

Also, it’s Will Eisner week, so I’m going to give a short list of suggested graphic novels to read (all by creators who are both writers and artists… awesome people, even if I met only one of them and one has passed away, so I’ll never meet him):

Strangers in Paradise

A Distant Soil

Poison Elves

Elfquest

or you can check my own graphic novel S.K.Y.B.A.N.D.! Yes, I know, I still have to start on #13… sorry, Jo!

Have a great weekend and don’t forget the Smashwords sale! BTW, thanks to the kind soul who bought a title taking off the 50%OFF coupon and paid full price in spite of the promotional price…

Writer Wednesday

Ever heard the 10.000-hours-practice theory and the “write 1million words of crap before getting better“? Just out of curiosity I decided to try to calculate how many words I’ve written in English (since 2001) – it’s impossible to calculate how many in Italian because most of them are still handwritten on notebooks, but you can easily guess that what I did in 25 years is surely more than what I could do in 12. So I added the wordcount of the books I’ve published on Smashwords (easy because they’re all on one page and the wordcount is there – I didn’t count short stories that are included in anthologies and the “double bill” are included once. And I rounded the numbers and excluded the Italian titles.), the screenplays (not all, I’m afraid the first are lost to some hard disk misfunction and I didn’t bother check my back-up disks) and the blog posts (because that’s still writing, folks!).

Being math challenged I had to use a calculator, anyway, here’s what I came up with: Smashwords grand total 983000 words (so that’s already close to the million – and I started publishing in 2011, 10 years after I started writing in English); screenplays: 133300 words (yep, they’re shorter. I stopped writing them because I’m a control freak! ); blog posts – I considered 500 words a day posted daily for 27 months (Oct.2009-Dec.2011) + 1000 words Wed-Fri-Sun for 15 months (Jan.2012-Feb.2013): 640000 words. Grand total is 1.756.300 (I repeat, I’m math challenged to the point that I might have copied the results wrong…).

Writing is a muscle, if you don’t excercise it – and do it starting small, again habit vs motivation – you won’t get better. You’ll always have writer’s block or won’t know what to write next. I don’t know what writer’s block is. For me it’s such an ingrained habit, I’ve just started to actually counting how many words I produce. Like for the body switch I know I wrote 21000 words in 8 days. I might not earn my living yet, but I’m definitely a writer, not an author.

And the writer finally managed to publish another title (that’s because the previous ones were in Italian, that’s why I didn’t announce them here, but I usually publish something every other week)! Ladies and gentlemen, The Death of Queen Amazonia is finally live on Smashwords, Kindle and Kobo! And here’s the final cover for your eyes only.

The Kindle version unfortunately doesn’t have the internal illustration of Smeraldo and Kyrio I already uploaded on this blog, but the Smashwords and Kobo files have it. I’m so happy My Books on Kindle are all Smashwords files! On XinXii and DriveThruFiction, the mobi file has no inside picture, but the PDF and e-pub do.

I’ll leave you with the usual writerly links. Krish Rusch on the death of publishing – or not. About Ang Lee and the uncertainty of success – something we can all relate to!

Aaand – last but not least – it’s Smashwords Ebook Week again, so check the great deals from Unicorn Productions! Some titles have gone free, the rest is 50% off (including the new release) – only until Sunday!

And I’m not the only one doing the sale – check Mighty Joleene Naylor’s sale and if you’re an adult looking for a vampire story, don’t miss her Amaranthine series that starts with Shades of Gray which has nothing to do with 50… and it’s free for the week!

Or, if you’d like to try some gay erotic fantasy (paranormal with demons from what I could gather from his blog), try Ciaran Dwinvyl. He’s already on my wishlist, but I might just grab the opportunity and get his books with 50%off…

Look for more e-book deals on Smashwords… Have a wonderful week!

Happiness is…

Sunday Surprise

… and it’s a guest – albeit not the one scheduled who is postponed to next week!   Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Peter K. Lean (a.k.a. chronotraveler)!

Thanks, Barbara, for hosting on you blog my first two ‘e-book experiments’.

As you know, I am not an English native speaker writer, but I have recently felt the need to start writing in English, and … I discovered that I love it!

Moreover, I was not a writer of fiction at all; I have published only professional texts, and only in my native language, Italian. But, as they say, it is never too late to start, and during the last months of 2012, pushed by a sudden inspiration, I started to write short stories, which I am now going to include in a collection.

Thanks to the support and appreciation showed by many friends of mine (and a number of them are from UK and USA), I decided to continue writing, and I am now proud to have the first two short stories out on Kindle. They are both sci-fi stories, and one of them is an interesting exploration of the time-travel theme.

For the time being, I am publishing with a pen-name (by the way, suggested by you, Barbara), but I do not exclude, in the future, to use my real name.

And now, let’s go to the stories, that are available for free on Kindle during this weekend and the next one!

The first one is ‘The Guns of Napoleon’.

A professor of history, a mysterious scientific institute in the Russian countryside, a tablet computer. ‘The Guns of Napoleon’ is a short ‘time-travel’ story, which will lead you to an unexpected future.

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The second one – ‘Gaea’ – is, perhaps, a traditional science fiction story… but wait to read it before giving me your opinion.

The ‘Silver Belt’ is shining bright in the night sky of Earth in 3299 AD. A book is the only witness of the past times.

“Once upon a time, there was a planet called Mother Earth and she was covered with green forests under blue skies lit by the bright day sun, Sol. In those days, the seas of Earth were proud continents of water that moved in time to the heavens and the ground was so rich you could drop seeds behind you and the crops would spring up as you walked. In the evening, as Sol disappeared over the horizon, Luna, the night sun would rise to light the night sky; a hundred times larger and a thousand times brighter than any other star. For this was before the Fall; a time of wealth and plenty for everyone.”

What happened more than a millennium earlier on Gaea?

You’re wecome, Peter (says the multi-pseudonym writer), and good luck with your writing endehavor. I wish you all a wonderful Sunday… and happy reading!

Random Friday

I must say the year started well for this blog. The record of visit I had in January is unbeaten, but February closed with more visits than December 2012, in spite of being a shorter month. So welcome new followers, visitors and whatnot. In case you’re new, this blog has weekly features – Monday: Happiness is… Wednesday is for writers, Friday is random and Sunday… too. Well, Sunday is a surprise, and next Sunday is… a surprise as the scheduled guest seems to have computer problems. I might have to postpone that piece, so I’ll be improvising!

Randomness says to go to a completely different topic – reading! I read Wickedly Charming over the last weekend and it was a blast! First, let me say it’s the first paperback of the year… and I won’t be picking another until I read 3 more on Kindle (that’s because I have more TBR titles on my Kindle than on my desk). The fact that I read an almost-400-pages paperback in 4 days means I couldn’t put it down (and of course, the fact that 2 of those 4 days were a weekend helped – more reading time, LOL). I chuckled all the way through it. It has everything I like – revised fairy tales, writers, screenwriters, books, publishing industry and romance. And archetypes, not only from fairy tales, but also from the real world IMHO.  AND I bought it in Shelley’s bookshop North By Northwest, and it’s signed by the author. Every book lover would appreciate that! Yes, I loved it, I loved its humor and everything about it. I want to have more reading time to read more like this!

About movies – I rewatched a few titles for research purposes (because Ciaran is Irish and Harith is a stripper) starting with The Full Monty. God, I missed that British drawl! I also noticed a couple of things that escaped me when I bought the DVD. First there’s a line that says “There’s nothing as queer as folk” – the movie is from 1997, so I wonder if Russel T.Davies (who wrote the original British series “Queer as folk” that came out in 1999) got it from there. And the other is about dubbing and adaptation again: you see, in the Italian version when Guy shows what he has (can’t dance, can’t sing but has…), the dubbing said “The third leg!” – of which there was no trace in the original. But mention of the third leg for men has become topical in Italy after that movie. I wonder if something similar happened in England, although probably with other lines…

Then I rewatched Breakfast on Pluto and Desi Boyz (the second being already sort of reviewed on this blog, I’ll just ignore it for now). As for the first… well, I must say the Irish sound much like the British, so I’ll have to adjust the accent (mostly changing a few words here and there) in my dialogs. The movie is… interesting and I don’t want to read the book it’s based on. I know it won’t be as compelling – it won’t have all those lovely songs. Now I better go check on Amazon if there’s a soundtrack CD available, haha. Look at all those oldies songs! But mostly I want to hear the two sang by the cast (# 11 & 13 in case you’re wondering)!

And finally I watched Magic Mike, and once more I wonder why I bother buying DVDs in this country. Sigh. Anyway, it made me think of the couple of male striptease I saw over here (that was the 20th century, folks) – we have the Centocelle Nightmare (opposed to the then famous California Dreammen) and they move more or less like Channing Tatum. But I’ve become picky, and I actually prefer the Desi Boyz dances (not that Akky and John Abraham are my favorites dancers, but they look better, LOL). The story is okay, the music so and so. I guess I’m watching too many Bollywood movies to appreciate Western dances – although the breakdance always makes me think about… the 20th century! So 80s! Except now I think it’s called Hip-hop.

Whatever… Have a nice weekend! I hoped to go to a live show of Bollywood dance on Sunday, but I doubth my health will allow me… It will pass, I know… Que sera sera, what will be will be!

Writer Wednesday

I’m writing. Draft Zero on laptop. Unbelievable. But because it’s set in the real world, I find it useful to google any doubt I might have, instead of keep writing and jotting down “check this or that” in the margins. And I’m bothering my friends with emails as well. As of Monday afternoon I had 8200words – I started last Wednesday afternoon, but after a not so clean handwritten draft of the first 2 or 3 scenes, I moved to laptop.

Monday night I was at 10600 (okay, I admit the Word wordcount feature is cool). Last night (and Tuesday is busy with the Hindi lessons, so not much time to write) I closed at 14000. That’s when I saved the last draft of this post, scheduled for this morning.

Usually my handwritten drafts are very “clean” – I just write. But in this case it was messy, so I just typed it all and kept going. And if something comes up, I just add it or correct it immediately. I also had time to re-read what I’ve done so far (yeah, busy Tuesday morning at DayJob – not!) and modified a couple of things before adding the new scenes. So now I know I can have a weekly wordcount of 14k!

Ideas keep popping up to make it longer, so hopefully it will end up around 27k like the other body switch. I know, it’s not real novels, but I can’t stretch them too much. And comedies are usually shorter than dramas, and this his definitely another comedy – and a clash of cultures.

Then I’ve started the Emotion Thesaurus – but then decided it’s not worth reading it all. I read the introduction and then I keep it next to me, so I can check the emotions as soon as they happen, and adapt to each character whatever is going on. Like a dictionary. It was suggested by David Farland, by the way, and it’s a good tool for writers – maybe I can avoid some emotional cliché!

For fun, check this post about fonts. I use Times New Roman for prose and Comic Sans for graphic novels – I don’t care if people hate it, it is a comic, so it needs Comic Sans, LOL! And I’m so sick of Courier New after writing all those screenplays… and I come from manual or electric typewriters as well, so – really, enough already! I might download Celtx on laptop to write a screenplay version of the above story – if in the meantime I’ve got past my revulsion for Courier New!

Now, if you want some tips from a “classic” author, here’s Hemingway. I don’t agree with everything he says, so I’ll keep doing what I want, LOL! I’ll stop when my hand aches (or my back/eyes, if I’m writing directly on Laptop), I’ll keep thinking about the story whenever I can (especially when I’m at DayJob, if I can) and I’ll barely read the last sentence written before continuing because I used to do what he did, and then got so bored with story beginnings, I ended up hating them all and knowing them by heart. Yikes. Those were the times of shorter stories, so I really started from the beginning every time I went back to writing and still it was a very clean handwrittend draft – lucky youthful naivety!

And I use pencils only for drawing, but I do use a pen for Draft Zero, normally. As for the emotions – that’s what the thesaurus is for! By the way, anyone knows how to turn off highlights on Kindle? It feels like reading a used book! Why on earth would I care what somebody else I don’t even know liked – in fiction, it’s totally useless, in non-fiction it’s even worse, because I might want to hightlight something completely different, but I’d still have a copy of the e-book with other people’s highlights. That’s why I hate buying my ebooks on Amazon… So, is there a way to turn the thing off or should I just ignore the highlights?

I have also thought about “working with Neil Gaiman“, but considering the great artists already on DeviantART and being more a hobbyist artist myself, I decided to pass on this. I had found 3 stories I thought I could illustrate, but no, I don’t feel comfortable enough. I’ll collaborate with Neil Gaiman as a writer some day, sounds much better! Right, back to work. Have a wonderful week!