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The House at Cobb End
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The House at Cobb End
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I'm saving this right now and putting it on my Kindle to read tomorrow.
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Lannister wrote: "I'm saving this right now and putting it on my Kindle to read tomorrow."I can only find the PDF version. How are you getting one on your Kindle???
Kathy, do you have the Amazon personal document service set up? Actually, you probably don't even need that, though it's easier. I just went to KC's web site, and did Select All on the text & copied it. I pasted it into a Word document and saved it. I'm fairly sure the Kindle supports Word docs, so you could probably just hook up your Kindle to your PC and copy the file over. But, because I'm lazy, I email the doc file to my Amazon Kindle email address, then Amazon sends it direct to my Kindle. Have a look here: (Scroll down to 'Sending Personal Documents to Kindle'. This is the UK site, but I'm fairly sure the procedure is the same everywhere.)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/custo...
The whole thing was only a few clicks and took less than two minutes. If you use the yourname@free.kindle.com email address over wi-fi it's completely free. I use it all the time, cos it's far too much effort to go find my USB cable ;)
Having said all that, I haven't had time to read the dam story yet, cos today turned out busier than I expected. Tomorrow! Definitely!
I hear ya on finding that USB! I'll give it a try.
Lannister wrote: "Select All on the text & copied it into a Word document and saved it. Email the doc file to my Amazon Kindle email address, then Amazon sends it direct to my Kindle. Have a look here: (Scroll down to 'Sending Personal Documents to Kindle'.)"I am in the US and that is basically what I do as well. I have never tried just saving a .doc file directly on my Kindle. (Just did. The file shows up in the directory (on the PC) but I didn't find it on the Kindle.)
However, from Amazon's website.
Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.
The 'through conversion', to my thinking, the file has to be sent to Amazon, converted and sent back.
Ah, thanks for clarifying that Zaanodes. I knew I had read something about Doc files being supported, but obviously I missed or forgot that they need to be converted. It's good to know for future reference. :)
Lannister wrote: "Ah, thanks for clarifying that Zaanodes."I was curious myself.
Zaanodes wrote: "Lannister wrote: "Select All on the text & copied it into a Word document and saved it. Email the doc file to my Amazon Kindle email address, then Amazon sends it direct to my Kindle. Have a look h..."Hi, I have a kindle myself and the way to get around having to send it to amazon is copy and save the file either as a word document or text file. Go to the directory where you have saved this. Right click and choose copy. Connect your kindle, open up your kindle in "My computer". A few directories will open up. You want the folder that is called "Documents". Paste the file in there. Disconnect your kindle and your file will appear on your 'home page' of your kindle as a new file.
Mikey wrote: "Zaanodes wrote: "Lannister wrote: "Select All on the text & copied it into a Word document and saved it. Email the doc file to my Amazon Kindle email address, then Amazon sends it direct to my Kind..."I created a document (named it "Word test"). 'Save As' to my Kindle's folder called "Documents" (my Kindle was connected to my PC via USB). Checked for the document via PC directory, the .doc document is in that folder. I went through all of the documents via Kindle and could not find the "Word test" (documents listed alphabetically). It should have shown up in 'Home'. I looked there and in all of my categories ('Read', 'TBR', etc.)
The only difference I can tell from your explanation is that I saved directly to the Kindle as opposed to saving the a folder on the PC and then copying to Kindle's Documents folder.
Have you saved a .doc to your Kindle successfully?
I do not have a Kindle device so I may not be of any help there but I use a free app to convert documents to put on my iPhone. The free app is Calibre, it enables me to connect on my local network and send it directly to my device. I looked on the website and it is compatible with almost all the major devices and Kindle is one of them. I really like to convert Word and PDF documents to my preferred format (.epub in my case). The latest edition has been updated to run with Kindle Fire too. I looked breafly and what seems to be used for Kindle is the Mobipocket format, which has either a ".prc" or ".mobi" extension. Hope that helps. Here is the website
Valerie, Agreed! Calibre is a fabulous piece of software. Anyone with an e-reader should download it (it's free). Calibre will convert pretty much anything you can throw at it into any format of your choice. And yeah, you want to pick the mobi format for the Kindle. So, if you're getting stuff from sites like Project Gutenberg or Smashwords etc, grab the .mobi files.Mikey, I have the same experience at Zaanodes. I can copy a doc file over and it's definitely saved, cos it's there when I reconnect the Kindle to the PC, but the Kindle software just doesn't see it. I'm not sure how you've got this to work, to be honest, cos Zaanodes quotes above from Amazon's web site where it says that doc files are only supported after conversion.
Personally, I like emailing the docs to myself, as I find it so much quicker and easier than having to play 'Hunt the Cable', but of course YMMV.
I didn't bother with down-loading it. I read it straight from the site. If you haven't read all the books then I'd hold off on reading the short story. It has a bit of a spoiler in there.
I enjoyed the little story. It really is great that there are so many nice authors that go out of their way to give us these little gifts of insight!
Agreed Kaye620! I can't get enough of this kind of stuff. It really helps to pad out the world KC has created.
What a neat, little story! More background on Pritkin is always a good thing!
Yeah I have. Sometimes you have to look for it as a document file. If you save it as a text file it will show up in your home page as 'new' like if you've had a file delivered from amazon. Only set back from the text file is the formatting. The paragraphs don't always translate over neatly. I don't know why it didn't work for you. It's like saving a file in a big USB. I've used the same method to transfer over PDFs as well.Will definitely try Calibre now that I know about it.
Enjee wrote: "This is a nice short story Karen gave us. She is awesome.Did you notice that Pritkin is called Pritkin in this story, even though it predates his "birth" in 1929 according to Circle records?
[boo..."
I did think it was odd that his name was John Pritikin in the short. Not sure it was anywhere in the story, but I thought Pritikin had mentioned to Cassie that most people called him by his rank or his given name...
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If you were to recommend the order in which to read the Karen Chance books and short stories, where would you put "The House at Cobb End"? I set up the Goodreads book for it as #0.5 in the Cassandra Palmer series, but then I thought it has spoilers for all five books. So where should I put it?
Also, someone please ask KC this in the FB Question and Answer. Then I can edit the book info.
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I'd put it at #5.5 as well.
So, I'm on the ball this week and have read this story already! (Mostly because it's really short.)Some thoughts ...
Since the Marlowe shorts are fresh in my mind, I thought this quote was interesting ...
“there were a growing number of female members of the War Mage Corps, the body charged with protecting the magical community. However, that was over the protests of some of their male counterparts, less because of misogyny than the prevailing assumption that powerful female magic workers must be coven-trained. And the covens, especially those in Britain, had a long and bloody history with the Circle.So the Circle is still unhappy about the Covens and this story must be, what, 100/150 years later? (Not quite certain exactly when it's set.)
Of course, the fighting was long since over, but tensions remained, causing the female recruits no end of problems."
I thought Pritkin's memories of the Fey were sweet.
They’d been regretful, because he picked up the old ways so easily, astounding the Druids he met thereafter, whose magic had once derived from the same source. He’d been good at theirs, as well, since it was merely a mixture of two he already knew, two different strands of his heritage. But it had surprised them, since almost all of their adepts were women.So do you think it's Pritkin's tiny about of Fey blood that lets him work Druid magic? Or is it somehow related to his demon side? And why can't men, for the most part, work Druid/Coven magic? Women seem able to master the Silver Circle brand of magic, so I wonder what the reason could be that most men can't do the Coven kind.
John had often wondered about that. It wasn’t that men couldn’t do the spells—the difference between humans was, after all, fairly small, and in any case, it had never prevented male Fey from mastering their magic. It had never prevented him, and his Fey blood was miniscule. But most men could not. The Corps could not, leading to their contempt and fear of a magic they didn’t understand, a magic that whispered instead of roared.
And who knew that the Fey were like the Borg ...
The Fey always retrieve their dead. Even in time of war, they make provision for it. Particularly when that Fey is outside their world.Somebody better warn Scarface, since he's got a few Fey heads tied to his belt! I wonder how many Fey died in the Consul's house at the end of Fury's Kiss and what will happen to them.
And I thought this quote was so poignant ...
And so he sang to it the rest of the story, because his was not yet done. He sang of finding a place in a world, one that wasn’t his, no, not entirely. But one he hoped would someday become his. He sang about letting go of old dreams and dead hopes, of disappointments and failures, and of looking to the future with, if not optimism, not yet, then something edging cautiously up to it.This story takes place one month before Pritkin marries. Isn't it sad knowing what happened to his wife?
He sang about not going home, but making one.
I really did love this story. Pritkin is a remarkable person.Do you think that covens might still exist?
Maybe that depends on whether Gillian is still alive!! :)I thought the covens probably didn't still exist, yet it's odd that they would just disappear completely, rather than go underground. I wonder if the Coven or Druid magic is still used much, or is it all the Silver Circle magic now. I mean, take someone like Francoise. Do you think she uses Circle magic or Coven magic? (Actually, she's probably a bad example since she's been around since Coven time, but witches like her. What kind of magic do they use?)
I wonder what ever happened to that Triskelion mark that Gillian had. It was heavily tied to the Covens. Did Gillian ever pass it on? Maybe it died with her (if she did die!) Maybe the Triskelion was destroyed and that spelled the end of the covens?
It must surely be Pritkin's fey blood, small as it is, that allows him to use the witch brand of magic? Although you'd think there would be other mages with some fey heritage, especially if they come from magical families. It's odd. I dunno if Pritkin's demon side is a factor here or not.
Hurrah, this is one of my favourite shorts, partly as its about Pritkin :) but partly as I really like the mood- it's much slower paced than most of KCs work. The slow pace makes it more poignant, - it juxtaposes Pritkin's delight in the house/his positive mood, with our knowledge that later events are so tragic.@Lannister I think it's the fey blood that allows him to do the magic. I always figured that's why he was able to survive in the Fey kingdom in #2 when others weren't so lucky.
Re your other points... Wanders off to think about them
This was a sweet one. But what was the time/year on this? I get the impression it was just before his first marriage, but that whole real estate book seems really advanced for that time period.It just reads so contemporary...
Anna, I agree that it's a lovely little story and I liked learning about Pritkin's past and more about the Fey. I feel for Pritkin, cos we knew already that he was an outcast, but this really rams it home how much of one he is. He doesn't fit anywhere. The demons don't like him, the fey seem to like him but don't want him, and he doesn't fit in amongst humans either. It's a miracle that he only gets grumpy and short-tempered. A lesser person would be consumed with anger and bitterness. Honestly, when you read something like this, there's no way he's not getting a HEA with Cassie. (Well, unless he dies of course!!) KC has made his life too tragic for the readers to accept less, I think. Sorry, Cassie/Mircea shippers! :)Kathy, I tried to research the timeline a little. I'd assumed at first the story took place in the late 1700s/early 1800s, but I think it's much later than that, possibly by 100 years!
In Hunt the Moon, Pritkin thinks about his wife and how she hated the squalor of the industrial revolution and how filthy the cities were. Pritkin says "Even Prince Albert died of diphtheria, because of the filthy drains at Windsor." I admit my knowledge of history isn't great, but I'm assuming he's talking about Queen Victoria's hubby here, and according to Wikipedia, he died in 1861.
So it looks as if it's late 1800s roughly. I've no idea what estate agents were like at that time, but I think you maybe have to cut some slack since there was magic involved with the book. If you aren't limited to inventions of the time, why not have a fancy pants listing of your properties! :)
Yes, you're right on Prince Albert. He was Victoria's husband. I kind of had the impression that he was married earlier than the late 1800s. More like in the mid- to late-1700s. But, wouldn't the mages of the time been limited to what was considered possible in the late 1800s? It's only the Pythia who can flit through time...wait, I forgot about that group of mages who are running through history. But then, again, those weren't the usual run of mages.
I had thought the same about Pritkin, that he was married earlier. I think it might be because of the mention of the Industrial Revolution, which I tend to associate with the late 1700s rather than the late 1800s. It's possible that Pritkin is generalising when he talks about Prince Albert's death and his wife could have died at the same time, or even shortly before Prince Albert. But that would probably place it as mid-1800s at the earliest. I can't see him mentioning Albert's death if it happened something like 50 years later than Ruth's death. That would seem too far out of context.
I read through the scene in Curse the Dawn at the house and Pritkin says it's belonged to him for over a century. And Cassie says to herself that "Sometime in the nineteenth century, he’d met a girl and gotten married." So I don't know if we can be more precise than that.
I don't know about the limitations of magic within an era. I'd have tended to think you were only limited by your power and your imagination, and I don't think a book with a list of properties would be too far fetched. They probably printed it up with all the places they owned, then enchanted it to show what was available and what wasn't. That doesn't seem too out there, I guess.
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Good point, Enjee! I don't know that we're going to be able to narrow it down any further.Pritkin needs to move on, and stop punishing himself for a mistake he made over 100 years ago! I hope we see some of that in Tempt the Stars.
I know! Besides, it wasn't even entirely Pritkin's fault. His wife was the one the started the drain, Pritkin just didn't know how to stop it.
Agreed! Pritkin was such an innocent about the whole demon sex thing and he got blind-sided by something he didn't expect. And it was so tragically sad that he said she was dead before he even realised what was happening.Wow, imagine having the sex of your life and you close your eyes for a minute and when you open them again .... oh shit! :(
I really hope Pritkin and Rosier work out something in Tempt the Stars. I think the war with the gods has got to influence Rosier, since he was willing to kill Cassie because of it. Surely he has to put a war or the potential enslavement of his entire race ahead of a grievance with his son?
Lannister wrote: "Wow, imagine having the sex of your life and you close your eyes for a minute and when you open them again .... oh shit! :("talk about traumatizing!
Egods...enough to put you off sex for life!
It would certainly put me off sex with Pritkin! ;)
Ahh I suppose being dead would affect your libido :P
It doesn't seem to have affected Mircea's!! :D
Hey, Marlowe's dead too, missy.
Ah but Pritkin's not :P
Did you notice that Pritkin is called Pritkin in this story, even though it predates his "birth" in 1929 according to Circle records?