C. Faron's Blog, page 8

Steve Jobs: Simply Inspiring

I don’t often cry when public figures die, but I have let more than a few tears escape tonight on learning that Steve Jobs has passed away. He was an inspiration and touched so many aspects of my life. The first computer I learned how to use was a Mac. In college I saw my first PowerBook and fell in love. Since then I have only owned Macs. I remember holding my iPhone for the first time and being amazed at the simple elegance of it. It is that simple elegance that has made me a steadfast fan of Steve Jobs. Some of my favorite movies were made by a studio he created and his name is in the credits of the shorts that inspired me to write my own.

Steve Jobs married art and technology, demanding excellence in both and never at the price of the other. By raising the bar for himself and the companies he led, he forced entire industries to push forward or be left behind. We have him to thank for not only the innovations at Apple and Pixar, but for influencing innovations across both the computing and film worlds.

Steve Jobs did what he loved and never settled. That is an ideal worth striving for. It gives me courage to continue writing when common sense says my time would be better spent elsewhere. There was nothing common about Steve Jobs, and that is why tonight people across the world are mourning him, many of them sharing their grief on devices he created.

Maybe tonight we honor his memory by doing what we love.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Kindle Sets the Internet on Fire

I promise, the title of this post is the only pun I’ll be using . I’ve been waiting for this announcement from Amazon for a long time; my husband’s been shopping for a tablet and we decided to hold off until we saw what Amazon was going to bring to the table. What I didn’t expect was all the other announcements that came out today.

Arguably the most exciting announcement out of Amazon’s press event was the new $79 Kindle. The Kindle as we’ve known it is now going to be called Kindle Keyboard. The new Kindle is smaller in every way–dimensions, memory, and battery life. Instead of a keyboard it has a 5 way controller and 4 buttons, but an on screen keyboard can be accessed. I’d guess that most people don’t use their keyboard much, so it seems like a logical move. The real news is the price. The $79 version comes with “special offers”, a nicer way of saying ads, and there is a regular version for $109. The fact that you can now get a Kindle for under $99 is amazing. And when I say now, I mean it. The new Kindle was shipping today.

The other unexpected announcement was the unveiling of a Kindle Touch. It’s no surprise that Amazon had this in the works after Barnes & Noble came out with their new Nook, but I wasn’t expecting it this soon. This is great for people who need everything to be touch screen. For people like me who shudder at the thought of anything touching their Kindle screen, not so much.

And that brings us to the Kindle Fire. Some are calling it a color e-reader, others are calling it a tablet. I think both of them are accurate, depending on what you want out of a tablet. I’ve been searching for a cheap tablet that will let me get online when I’m away from home without having to lug my laptop around or deal with an itty-bitty phone. For me, the Kindle Fire is perfect. Their new browser, Amazon Silk, sounds promising and I have no need for a lot of storage on a tablet. Since it runs on a modified version of Android, the only apps that will work out of the box are from the Amazon Appstore, which severely limits your choices. However, I’ve heard that it will be able to load other apps with some tinkering and Amazon has no plans to discourage people from hacking it. There’s something to be said for it all working out of the box the way you want, but for $199 it’s a great deal. That’s cheaper than the Nook Color.

The Kindle Fire is meant to act as a portal between the consumer and Amazon and the Internet. From a business standpoint, it’s a great strategy. Apple has made a killing selling people on all of their devices looking and working the same, syncing through iTunes. I like the idea of an Amazon tablet because I already do my shopping through Amazon. All new Kindle Fires come with a free month of Amazon Prime, which gives users free streaming movies and TV shows. I’m guessing they’re going to pick up a lot of subscribers after that first month is done, especially given the recent Netflix defections. While Amazon’s library is smaller than Netflix, it is growing where Netflix is shrinking.

Is the Kindle Fire a computer replacement? No. Is it great for someone who wants the convenience of a tablet without the bells and whistles and the hefty price tag that comes with them? Absolutely. It’s not an iPad killer, I don’t think it’s even much of a competitor. These are two very different products. The Nook Color is a different story. I don’t know how Barnes & Noble is going to survive this latest blow; right now Amazon has them beat on price and selection.

My verdict? I like my Kindle Keyboard and it’s staying put. I do some editing on my Kindle so I use the keyboard quite a bit and I still think E Ink is the best way to read. That said, we do have a Kindle Fire coming in November (the Fire and Touch are available for pre-order); at the price it’s worth seeing if it will fill our tablet needs. But what do you think about these announcements? Let me know!

Exciting Announcements!

The last few months have been busy all the way around, but I finally have some exciting news to share! Or at least it’s exciting to me .

First, I finally have Measure of Devotion in the hands of some of betas.

Second, I have found my editor for Measure of Devotion.

Third, Amazon has a special announcement coming on the 28th. It’s rumored that this is going to be the unveiling of their tablet which we’ve been eagerly awaiting at my house. I’ll be blogging about whatever the announcement is on Wednesday.

Fourth, this site is going to be redesigned. I don’t know when, but it’s coming and I’m excited.

Last, but not least, I will be unveiling the cover of Measure of Devotion on Friday! Covers are fun and I’ve had a very basic mockup of one for a long time now (making it was a great way to procrastinate actually writing the novel it’s for), but I now have a professional cover.

I’ve already started work on the sequel to Measure of Devotion. I’m in that happy bright-eyed phase of plotting and planning. It’s like I’ve completely forgotten that just a few weeks ago I was beating my head against a desk asking myself whatever possessed me to write a novel. I’m excited to follow these characters and see what they’ve been up to since the conclusion of Measure of Devotion.

I know that I haven’t posted much about the actual plot of Measure of Devotion and I plan to fix that soon. I’m not trying to be secretive, I swear, but I haven’t come up with my blurb yet and anytime I start to post something about the story it feels weird since it’s not done and I know there are rewrites coming (even though the basic plot hasn’t changed since the beginning). With my cover unveiling I’ll also reveal more details about the book.

Oh, and I am now officially on Google+. I love it, it’s the perfect blend of Facebook and Twitter. If you’re there, feel free to add me.

So, enough about me, what have you all been up to while I’ve been gone? Let me know!

 

A New Nook: Competition is a Good Thing

I’m a Kindle girl all the way, but the new Nook that Barnes and Noble launched on the 24th has drawn my interest. It looks like it was built to go head to head with the Kindle, the undisputed leader in the e-reader market. It’s exciting to see the developments in this rather young industry. Barnes and Noble seems to be focusing on reader experience with this new Nook and I’m curious to see how this affects other e-reader developers.

My first impressions? It looks squat. I can’t get my head around the funny shape of it. Other than that, I think it’s a wise decision to go back to E-Ink. When I was first looking at getting an e-reader, I eliminated the Nook Color because of the display. After sitting in front of a computer all day, the last thing I want is to be staring at a back lit screen to read; it’s too strenuous on the eyes.

The touchscreen component is a significant differentiation between the Kindle and this new Nook. When I got my Kindle, I thought the lack of a touchscreen would frustrate me, but it didn’t. However, I think this could win over a lot of people. Within the last few years everything has gone touchscreen and it’s the type of technology that consumers are becoming more comfortable with. If you have a touchscreen phone, it makes you want more things in your life to be touchscreen. My only concern here is smudging. I’m fanatical about people not touching my Kindle screen, it drives me nuts, so I don’t know how I would fare with a touchscreen e-reader.

The battery is supposed to last twice as long as a Kindle’s. That sounds pretty amazing because I rarely charge my Kindle. In fact, since I got it at the beginning of the year I’ve only had to “charge” it once, it’s done fine just charging from me connecting it to my computer to transfer files. It will be interesting to see if the Nook lives up to its battery hype.

Now for the feature that I find the most exciting: you can scan through books. This has, by far, been the biggest downside to reading on a Kindle; there is no way to effectively thumb through a book. This new Nook promises that by holding down the button to turn the pages you’ll be able to scan through the book. I can’t wait to see that in action.

Some people will be interested in the fact that you can personalize your screensaver on the Nook. This is something that can’t be done on a Kindle without tampering with it. This isn’t a huge deal to me, but I know some people like that extra touch and I think it was a huge oversight on Amazon’s part with the Kindle.

Like the Nook Color, this Nook comes with wi-fi, but no 3G. For me, that is a huge downside. I haven’t ever used my Kindle’s wi-fi, only the 3G and that’s mainly on the road. When traveling it’s just more convenient to connect to a 3G network than to drive around looking for an open wi-fi connection.

All in all, I think this was a great move by Barnes and Noble. The style and price of it puts it as a direct competitor to the Kindle. If there is anyway to dethrone the Kindle, this is the way to do it. With tablets becoming more and more popular and easier to get, I think the Nook Color is going to lose a lot of its appeal. It’s too flashy and bulky for just an e-reader, but it’s not full functioned enough to be a tablet (discarding any tampering that may be done by consumers).

I can’t wait to get my hands on this new Nook and play with it. My husband thinks I should have one since I will be publishing an ebook on it, and I tend to agree . Actually, my husband spoils me rotten and is as much (if not more so) of a tech and gadget lover as I am. I don’t anticipate I’ll be switching loyalties from the Kindle yet, but all Kindle users should be excited about this new Nook. It means that Amazon is going to be forced to up its game. While I have faith in Amazon’s development team, having an e-reader that is nipping at the Kindle’s heels can only force all e-readers to improve and bring out new innovations.

What do you think of the new Nook? Are you going to be giving it a try? Let me know!

A Quick Update

My hand is finally better, *happy dance*! It got pretty bad there for awhile and I had to cut back on my typing to rest it (hence the lack of blog posts). There were two days where my husband insisted I not use it at all . However, the last few days the hand has been better and I’ve been immersing myself in Measure of Devotion, so that’s a good thing. It’s looking like I’ll be sending a draft over to one of my betas on April 25th!

I’m excited to get blogging again, but with my push to get Measure of Devotion done and start working on another story, I’m going to forgo my Monday, Wednesday, Friday posting schedule that I had been keeping up prior to my hand going haywire. I’m still planning on posting regularly, but it’s not going to be on the rigid schedule that I was keeping before.

So there you have it, I’m still alive and have not fallen off the face of the earth . Oh, and an interesting (or not) factoid: when I was a kid my family had 2 pet tortoises that looked almost exactly like the one in today’s picture. Isn’t it cute?

 

 

Fiction Friday: Writing Sex Scenes

I’m not one for gratuitous sex in novels. I believe that like every other scene in a book, a sex scene should show us something, it should tell us something we didn’t already know. If the sex scene was cut, there should be a gaping hole where it was, otherwise it should be skipped. I like to think that my readers can guess at my characters’ sex lives without me having to write about every encounter. Kind of like how they assume that at some point during the day my characters use the bathroom, even if I don’t show it.

It just so happens that in my novels, there are sex scenes. Most of the time they flow and are some of the easiest scenes for me to write. That doesn’t mean they’re good, necessarily, only that they come to me easily. Most of the time. Except for this one time. Right now.

It all started several weeks ago. I was writing Measure of Devotion and got to the first sex scene between the two main characters, Kale and Jason. I wasn’t in the mood at the time to write a sex scene. For one thing, my husband was running around, coming in and out of the room and it just wasn’t conducive to envisioning this particular scene. So I skipped it and kept writing. I didn’t think much of it.

Now it’s been weeks and there’s this big hole in my manuscript. It’s like you’re walking down the street and fall into a manhole. Whoosh. That’s a good thing, in a way; it shows that the scene isn’t gratuitous. The bad thing is that I can’t bring myself to write it. Instead of filling in the hole, I’m standing on the edge of it staring into the black abyss. This scene has been built up in my head too much. How can I convey everything I need to? How can I do justice to what these two characters are feeling?

The answer is: I can’t. I’m not good enough. The scene has grown too big in my head. The only thing to do now is write the most god awful sex scene in existence and then hope I can rewrite it. It has to get done sometime this week, I can’t put it off any longer. This is a strange position for me to be in. I’ve never had to think much about writing sex scenes because I normally just put my hands on the keyboard and out comes a scene. Now I feel like I’m writing a playbook or something. We’ll start off with x here and then o will come in from behind… It’s not good. On the bright side, I hear there’s an award for the worst sex scene in a book each year. Anyone know if they consider self-published books? Might be my only chance for an award.

On the bright side, I never use nauseating nicknames for anatomy. That has got to be the most annoying thing ever. My sex scenes are not the times for metaphors and similes. I’m a pretty straight forward kind of gal, probably because that’s how I like the sex scenes I read to be.

How do you like your sex scenes to read? Writers out there, how do you deal with writing sex scenes? Avoid it altogether? Let me know!

Note: the picture is the first one that popped up when I searched for ‘sex’ on a stock photography site. It cracked me up.

 

Attack of the Terrible Tendonitis: A Cautionary Tale

I use to be somewhat athletic when I was a kid. I danced, played basketball, ran track. I wasn’t exceptional at any of those, but I was pretty active for a bookworm. When you’re doing physical activities you expect to occasionally deal with injuries. In my dancing days I dealt with twisted and sprained ankles, I had a nasty hamstring injury once that lasted through track season, and there were the regular aches and pains that came came from doing sports. Those were all expected. What I didn’t expect was having to deal with physical problems from writing.

Apparently sitting all day at the computer brings its own risks of physical injury.

Over the last several months I’ve dealt with wrist and thumb issues. All in my right hand (I’m left-handed, btw). I was able to pin down my wrist issues to the mouse I had started using way too much. I cut down on using it and wore a wrist brace for awhile, which did wonders showing me how much I was actually straining my wrist, and I altered my hand posture accordingly.

Things went along just peachy for awhile. Occasionally my right thumb would twitch if I typed for too long without taking a break, but nothing major. My right thumb is the one I use to press the space bar and apparently I can learn advanced calculus, but not how to type with my left thumb hitting the space bar.

Then I began to get an ache deep in my hand. It’s buried in that big meaty part of the hand below the thumb. Weeks go by and this ache, while not constant, becomes a familiar thing. It felt like an achy muscle, and what’s good for achy muscles? Massage. My husband, like the nice guy he is, offers to massage it for me. He’s the type that likes to give back massages that hurt like hell but then make those achy muscles feel so much better. (Whether they only seem to feel better because he’s no longer rubbing them is up for debate.) So he begins to do a commercial strength deep tissue massage on my thumb.

Colossal, ginormous, I-can’t-believe-I’m-that-stupid mistake.

After this well intentioned massage, my hand is now constantly in pain. Come to find out, I’m not a medical a professional and I know jack shit about anything. I have the beginnings of tendonitis. Despite aggravating the crap out of it, it has not become severe. Turns out I just need to wear a brace when I sleep and while I’m not working for several weeks. It was emphasized to me that wearing it while typing will not speed up healing, all it will do is cause straining in my other fingers. Man did that make me feel transparent, because that was exactly what I was going to try.

Moral of this tale? Writing is a dangerous thing and should only be done by professionals, or people not stupid enough to ignore constant pain and then press on the source of pain in a misguided attempt to relieve it. Seriously, pay attention to discomfort as you type and take action early, don’t let it turn into something big.

So how do you cut down on typing related injuries? Sorry, writing less is not an option. Right now I’m just trying to be smarter. That means paying attention to my hands and taking breaks when necessary, slapping a brace on at the first sign of pain instead of waiting until the pain is a distraction, and being more conscious of posture while I type. But what are some of your tips? Let me know!