Apples to Apples: An eReader Comparison

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Notes on Book Availability:

There is no way to really say what is or will be soon available on each of these readers. Generalizations could get me in a lot of trouble, so I'm going to make it simple. I will explain how you publish to each of these readers and then you can use your brain to decide which one will have a better selection of available books.

Kindle: Kindle publishing requires a file of the eBook and a cover image. You are assigned an ASIN number (Kindle ID number) and do NOT need an ISBN. Anyone can publish to the Kindle with an Amazon account, meaning that there are indie books as well as professional books available. There is a small fee for some document conversions to be sent over 3G, but you can do conversion without Whispernet (the 3G) for free. If you have the 2nd generation, you'll need to plug in to a USB cable, but 3rd gen users can use Wi-Fi. You can load your own documents by looking up your account email and tagging free. in front of the kindle.com (example yourname@free.kindle.com). The Kindle does not display color.

Nook: Barnes & Noble lets you publish to the Nook without an ISBN through their PubIt! site. Also, B&N users can run a select number of apps, PDFs, and can read eBooks for free within the store, as if they were doing so with a real book.

iPad: iBook publishing requires purchasing an ISBN for the eBook edition, which can cost $125 dollars a book if you are an indie (big publishers buy in bulk and can get ISBNs for a buck a pop). HOWEVER, the iPad runs Kindle and Kobo apps, so you can read indie books on the free Kindle app.

Kobo: The Kobo requires an ISBN like the iBook publishing. You cannot simply submit to the store, either. You have to inquire for a publisher kit and fill out a form by email. They take a few days to get back to you, to. Kobo is not indie friendly.

Sony: While you can use Smashwords to publish to the Sony Reader, companies who don't want to use the indie service have to go through an email process to submit a release, much like with the Kobo. Sony books can also be borrowed from a library. The real problem plaguing Sony eBook publishing is that in an attempt at Digital Rights management, to let Libraries loan Harper Collins eBooks, Sony has made them self-destruct after 26 loans. The implication here is that real books are unreadable after being checked out 26 times (which we know isn't usually true) and that rather than embrace the improvement on the traditional book, Sony has gotten greedy and wants to make PUBLIC LIBRARIES keep paying for books. This is turning libraries off and making the library availability feature a moot point.

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JK Rowling: Pioneering New Media

Readers of Harry Potter were excited to hear JK Rowling's YouTube announcement this morning about Pottermore, the site that has been teasing fans for a week. For a while, all we had were a few screen-captures of bookshelves and  a chess board, and now we have just enough to know that whatever this is, it's going to be epic.

I'm writing about this because of the eBook angle. I have become a huge fan and proponent of eBooks over the last couple of years. The publishing company I have started to help build has been exploring ways to expand the multi-media experience with iPad apps and uniquely formatted stories. I am thrilled to see JK Rowling leaping on board the internet-express and helping to break new ground.

Pottermore is more than just a place to buy The Sorcerer's Stone for your eReader. Pottermore, though still largely undefined, is going to be a place for an interactive, Harry Potter reading experience. There will be art (hells yeah!), guest appearances, and Quidditch games. You will be able to create yourself within the Harry Potter World. JK Rowling has promised to share new information she has been "hoarding" from fans.

What down side do I see to this? Sony is hosting it. Considering all that happened with rootkit and the April and June hacks, I'm worried about the security of the site. Harry Potter is perhaps the biggest bullseye in the world when you are trying to make a statement. While print releases of Harry Potter books have had amazing security (threats of jail for anyone who smuggled out text before release), Anonymous still hates Sony, their security, and their policies that drive them to sue someone from modding their home console.

And then another concern comes to mind from Sony's involvement. Sony is way behind in the eReader race. The low price of their reader doesn't seem to keep them ahead of the Kindle and the Nook and there's just no competing with Steve Jobs and Apple's amazing product line. I was selling Sony Readers at Target long before I heard of the Kindle, but I think I sold two a year. I know someone with a reader, but when I see someone reading eBooks at the airport, it's on a Kindle or an iPad. Does Sony's involvement mean that they get exclusive eBook rights?

There is still a lot of uncertainty about this announcement, which you can watch for yourself. One thing is sure, I will be online on July 31, hoping to get in early.

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You Know You're in Alabama When

1. A houndstooth hat is not a fashion statement, it's a football statement.

2. People actually stop at stop signs.

3. "Who do you go for?" is a specific question.

4. There is a market for high-end elephant jewelry.

5. You know that there is Art in Birmingham.

6. Your politicians are frequently parodied on Youtube.

7. Your news stories are frequently auto-tuned on Youtube.

8. On a standard trip to the grocery store, you see at least two cars with cracked windshields.

9. School is called off when there's frost on the ground.

10. An ice-scraper is a foreign tool.

11. You avoid wearing white and red or orange and blue together, lest someone mistake you for a football fan.

12. The next logical step from Tiger is Eagle.

13. Dirt is no longer dirt, it's clay.

14. Children cast aside their green and brown crayons when drawing the ground in favor of red.

15. Nobody cares about professional sports.

16. Police are needed to direct traffic after church services on Sunday.

17. It's easier to find fried chicken than a burger in a hurry.

18. You know at least 4 ways to get to I65.

19. Publix is your happy place.

20. You write a list about your state and more than 1/4 of it is about football

BONUS!
21. You more often see roadkill armadillos than almost any other single kind of dead wildlife.

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Character Applications: Tips For Making Top-Notch Roleplaying Applications

If you love text-based role-play, then you're probably familiar with filling out character applications. They can take hours of your time and then you have to worry that they may not even be accepted.

I have over six years of experience moderating and have read hundreds of applications. I know what I look for and have only been rejected from one game in my time (their Hermione was a mod and was looking for a more sexy, less-flawed, Ron Weasley). I have had to fill out revisions and have made requests for revisions to be submitted to me, in turn.

This check list won't be fool-proof, but it will help to make sure that your application is thorough and leaves no room for question.

Character Application Checklist

Personality

Flaws: Your character cannot be the super best friend of everyone. What are her short-comings as a human being? These flaws, if concretely defined early on, will not only stop you from being marked as a Mary Sue, but will also give you room for character growth later on.

Sexy Flaws: A not really physically detracting scar or a flaw that is glamourous or can be toughed through is not a real flaw.

Practical Flaws: Your character is also a Mary Sue if their only real limitations are in their head. Practical Flaws are drawbacks that you can't get over or willpower through and you need at least one of these. Examples include: near-sighted, bad at math, bad back, can't swim, etc.

Likes and Dislikes: It may seem simple, but I have seen players scramble to know what their character likes. Even if it's just a meme you put in your journal behind a cut, have a clear list of hobbies, favorites, and things they dislike. It will help the simpler interaction later to know that Ron hates corned beef or that John is obsessed with Oreos.

History

Chronology: Make sure to put everything in chronological order and clearly label the flow of time. Statements like "When she was seven" or "Shortly after" give a sense of a timeline. I have received an application that had absolutely no sense of time or the order of events. I didn't think it was possible to forget time in a history, but it happened. En media res is a trick you can save for your own fiction. In a straight character biography, make it simple and clear.

Mind the Gaps: Make sure that every span of time is accounted for. If three years pass between life-defining events, mention it. Even if all they did was live comfortably and work at a nice job, mention it. We need to know what happened between those years.

Format

Length: An application that can fit on a page with minimal scrolling is probably too short and will make a moderator think you half-assed it. An application that is more than four pages in 12 font will make a tired moderator skim it and miss the details of your character. If you have a novel to write, save some of it for in-game. Be thorough, but don't make your application so much work that moderators will dread it. Length doesn't guarantee it's good, anyway.

Clarity: Html can help (bold form fields like Age: 17, Gender: Male) but it's not needed. On the internet, two scientific facts prevail; Sans-serif fonts are easier to read on a monitor and text is more palatable broken up into smaller, narrow chunks.

At the very least, without any Html, put headers in ALL CAPS and put return spaces between sections.

Experts can put the whole application in a blockquote to make a more narrow column. Change the font-family to Sans-Serif (Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, etc). Bold headers and add return spaces between paragraphs. Indents are hard to do on the internet, and you shouldn't combine paragraph indents with block spacing in a body of text anyway. Avoid scary color choices or white on black text. It's hard to read. Use some design sense if you're going to code it up.

Answer Everything and Then Put it Behind a Cut: Make sure every field is filled out. Proof-read it for silly grammar or spelling mistakes that will make mods want to nit-pick for more, and then make sure it's behind a cut. Nobody wants to add you to their game and then have to scroll through your whole application on their friend page. MAKE SURE IT IS VISIBLE TO MODS. At least once a month I receive an application that the player forgot to unlock.

*NOTE* Since creating this post I have left text-based RP. Working on my own fiction and business endeavors has taken my time away, but mostly the decision was made based on the current climate of the community. For those still toughing it out and fighting through the drama, flakes, and word-count elitism to find good gaming, good luck!

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Who is This Laine Thursday Girl And Why Should We Care (We Shouldn't)

I've been seeing a lot of screaming and ranting on RP Thieves about Quit Roleplay being deleted and the Laine Thursday scandal. What is going on? Who is Laine Thursday? I'm not really sure that who she is is important. What is important is the drama fueling cyclone around her and how it is destroying the Story Form community as a whole.

Laine Thursday is a Pen Name For a Pink-Haired Girl

This is Laine Thursday. She has pink hair and a tongue ring and that is all I know for sure. She may actually be a perfectly nice person who has gotten on the bad side of some mean-spirited people. I don't know.  

Laine Thursday is a girl who allegedly is a bad celeb RP player who has been in conflict with other players for harassing them. She switches usernames and pseudonyms and yet she somehow reveals herself to be the same crazy person. This is all alleged because I have never encountered the girl and don't care to.

More Annoying Are the Warnings About Laine Thursday
Quit Roleplay was flooded by repeated posts about Laine Thursday. The girl posting about her claims that she just wants to warn people, but either we're going to see her posts or not and it doesn't matter if every post on the page is about her. Flooding a community with warnings about Laine constitutes SPAM.

So when the offending journal was blocked from QRP, the user, who apparently had gotten in with the mods under another journal, hijacked the QRP community and deleted it before starting her own exclusively to rant about Laine Thursday.

I don't care how crazy this pink-haired Laine chick is, that's way more crazy.

You Can't Claim Someone Is Stalking You if You Keep Taunting Them On the Internet
If you keep posting about someone on the internet, warning people not to play with them, that's like asking for them to come out of hiding and defend themselves. If you really want the drama to end, DROP IT. Don't keep talking about her where she has no choice but to say something.

Further, the users involved in this drama claim that she has contacted them at work, but they are on The Dirty posting personal information about where she lives and what her house and kids and cats are like. Who is the stalker?

The user who was freaking out about Laine Thursday has a ridiculously long post in a journal about how Laine keeps claiming she is trying to end the conflict. The point is supposed to be that each letter claims she will leave them alone, but then another letter follows. The point I'd like to make is that between these letters are countless publics warnings to other players about Laine Thursday, trying to ostracize her from the Story Form community.

In real life if you ran around taking out newspaper ads to warn women in your hometown not to date your ex-boyfriend, you would be the crazy one.

The Point Is That You Can't Protect The Whole Internet, So Don't Try
It's a waste of your time and energy to run around every roleplaying community on the internet to make sure that every user is warned of drama and by doing that  you are actually perpetuating the drama.

It may not seem like it, but if you ignore a drama llama long enough, they will stop. It may take a week, it may take a month, but eventually with no response they will give up. It will be boring. Instead of running around trying to warn people about Laine Thursday, DELETE HER COMMUNICATIONS AND FORGET IT. Don't even post them somewhere for a laugh, just delete them and save yourself the stress.

Warning the whole internet about someone is just too damn much work!

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A Real Teenage Break Up Note

I was at a church for a special work event on Tuesday, May 24th, when I stumbled upon a piece of notebook paper blowing in the wind. Judging by the curly neat handwriting, I'd say it was written by a girl. Judging by the maturity of it, I'd say it was written by a teenage girl.

This note is comedy gold. Read the full text after the jump. Before the jump, check out the authentic tear stained exterior.

I couldn't make this up. I mean, literally. There's no way my handwriting could ever look that nice.

CLICK to ENLARGE!

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Book Review: Soul Quest

by Amy Jones
★★★☆☆

Available for 99¢ on Amazon Kindle

Soul Quest starts off in need of a tough editor, but rounds off to a formidable first publication. Structure problems early on do not stop Amy Jones' story from being suspenseful and touching.

I read Soul Quest on my Kindle for a humble 99¢. When I posted my review on Goodreads, Amy Jones contacted me to thank me for my review. She is a smart, gracious, level-headed woman who can appreciate constructive criticism. I highly recommend Soul Quest because-- while the first acts of the book are a bit shaky-- it pulls together to be what promises to be an engaging trilogy. Plus, you can't really go wrong for less than a dollar.


Soul Quest is one of those books that has a really excellent premise but could have stood to be edited a few more times. I feel like the indie writing community has been really supportive of Amy Jones, but perhaps because of the glowing support, she hasn’t had anyone be honest with her. George Lucas realized after it was too late that he had spent too much money making The Phantom Menace a terrible fuster-cluck of a story. Nobody told him they had doubts because he was freakin’ George Lucas, but the Star Wars book series shows that it could have been saved. Lucas has good ideas, as proven by the original trilogy.

Luckily with books, until they are published or the release date is announced, it’s never too late to fix some major problems. Hopefully, as Soul Quest is the start of a trilogy, Amy Jones can learn from some of the problems with the first book. Soul Quest may have suffered from a lack of a tough editor, but it is in no way irredeemable. I enjoyed the book overall. Everyone needs feedback and editing, even if they don’t have a major publishing house behind them. Amy Jones just needs to find a tough friend to help her hone her ideas.

The premise, that demons (we’ll call them demons for those who haven’t read it) would orchestrate a world event on the scale of 9/11 to start a war and feed off of the suffering of humanity is brilliant. I’m still not sure if it’s too soon to use 9/11, but that was a bold risk and I can’t say I was determinately against it.

The real problem is with the structure. Jones jumps between multiple narrators and relies too much on telling us her backstory rather than showing it. We meet Liv at the start of the book and then jump back in time to just before her birth. This is a smart choice, but one that sets up a missed opportunity.

As we go through the years bringing us back to present, Liv could have been used as an outsider. Characters who were insiders could have taught Liv all of the backstory we needed to know as readers. I think Jones worried that if she didn’t explain it all early on, she’d lose her audience, but I would rather be left curious than read multiple paragraphs coldly explaining how spirits in this universe work. We get back to near-present about 20% of the way through the book (according to my Kindle progress). In the first of a trilogy, that is not too long to wait to really understand what is going on.

Because the narrator changes, I often found myself confused over who was talking. Changing first person narratives need very distinct character voices and not too many of them. A third person narration-- or one that jumped simply between Liv and Beau, would have been easier to manage. She might have lost some opportunity to hear how the head of the oracles felt, but I’m not sure we needed that. Literary critics bash on female writers for talking too much about feelings and not about events. I’m a woman and I maintain that you need to understand emotional processes to understand motive sometimes. We just have to be sure that we try to show feelings rather than tell them, where we can, and that we don’t forget to be concrete about what is actually happening in a scene.

As for formatting, the Kindle version had some flaws. From my own experience, I’m going to guess that return spaces were used where section/page breaks should have been. I found quite a few blank pages between chapters in my read. I also would have liked to see some kind of formatting change between first person, past tense narrative and first person, present tense thoughts. There were a few minor homonym switches (wondering/wandering) that an editor could have caught, as well.

Jones starts off every chapter with a quote. I like it. I’ve been doing the same thing in my book series. Jones isn’t limited to famous Greeks like I am. Jones doesn’t limit herself to pretty, popular, neat inspiration quotes either. She boldly quotes Hitler at a poignant moment.

The descriptions in Soul Quest are quite beautiful. I especially like the description of Arcadia (and that she chose to call it that). Her interpretations of demonic infection, guardian angels, and soul mirrors are clever and serve the story well.

I tend to have a problem in modern fiction when everyone has names that sound like Bratz dolls. It’s my own personal taste and I try to put it aside. Real people have odd names like Brayan, but I like to see them balanced out with normal, common names. That’s probably why I was tickled pink that an oracle, a spirit, a non-human character, was named Kevin. My best friend always wanted to name a hamster Kevin because it was so normal and non-threatening. Naming him Kevin gave me a laugh. I think it’s good when you can find little spurts of joy in something as heavy as a post-9/11 spiritual drama.

As for the characters, I thought they were all very distinct and well rounded. Brayan reminds me of one of my own characters in his heart-breaking insecurity and just as Jones intended, I can’t help but like Laith. I think I liked his narration best. It was sweet, genuine, and distinct. Laith is one of the few characters who isn’t as-smart or smarter than the writer and so his simple diction was refreshing. I am a total Hermione Granger type. Laith’s thought-process was endearing without being too stereotypical slow kid.

More than half-way through you start to see the kids discovering and using their powers. It’s cool, but I feel like it would have been more exciting if we hadn’t gotten a Cerebro File-esque breakdown of their abilities much earlier in the book. Again, I feel like some reorganization and cuts could have made this book a 5-star, easily. By the time the third act was really taking off, I was eager to join the cast and shank the baddie with a light sword in the school cafeteria.

The final act really showed the true potential of this series. Jones writes grief beautifully and genuinely. She has created a cast of balanced, diverse characters and a story I care to see resolved. Soul Quest is an honorable first publication and I believe that I will be reading the next book on my Kindle to see if it gets better.

One last idea. What if this book was subtitled: Soul Quest: The Daeva You Know. Just an idea.

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Things Parents Could Learn From the Dog Whisperer

I'm going to start off by saying right away that I don't think we should treat children like dogs or that pinching your kids behind the ears is an effective method of discipline. Yes, the Dog Whisperer episode of South Park was hilarious, but it also made a very good point about the difference between effective parents and best friends.

Cesar Millan says in his instructional DVDs that dogs are not children and that we cannot treat them like children. We have to respect that they are a pack animal and give them the structure they need before we can move on to the happy love and affection part of our relationship.

While dogs and humans are psychologically very different (children have the potential to learn language and evolve into socially conscious beings; you can still swear in front of a dog), there is something to be said for the basic animal psychology that we always share. Namely that we need to know that the boss is indeed the boss and the fact that reward reinforces behavior.


Cesar Millan encourages leadership through calm-assertive energy (See Millan's blog on Energy as Communication). Human children may be capable of learning language at an early age, but it doesn't matter what your words are if your energy and tone do not reinforce the message. Saying "no" like a pleasant suggestion gives children room to test you. If a parent or a teacher doesn't seem certain of the command-- if their tone doesn't say "stop that, now", then the child will push the limits to see just how long it will take you to back up your words.

A very clear, confident direction tells children that you mean what you say and that you are in control. An adult in power is fulfilling a child's need for security, much like a human in charge fills the role of a pack leader to a dog. Clear and confident means firm, but not angry. Anger is a nervous emotion and tells a child (as well as a canine) that you are upset and that you are not in control.

"He who angers you, conquers you."
-Elizabeth Kenney

Millan's reason for most poor behavior is pent up energy and boredom. Have you ever heard teachers and parents talk about how the bright kids are always the ones who get into the most trouble? Bored dogs will shred your furniture and jump on your guests. Bored kids have much more creative imaginations and much more destructive capabilities (thumbs!) to make you tug at your hair.

Kids need plenty of exercise and mental stimulation. Keep your kids playing outside and keep them intellectually challenged and you will have a lot less problems. Encourage children to develop their imaginations to stimulate and entertain themselves. Cultivate a love of books and you'll find endless entertainment that is far more engaging than turning on Nick Toons.

Lastly, Millan reinforces good behavior and does not reward the bad. Attention is a reward and bored children will do horrible things for attention. If you are about to lose your mind with a child having a fit, try turning your back to him. Cesar Millan turns his back to excitable dogs and talks to other humans so as to show the animal that he is not the center of your universe.

Children before a certain stage of moral development are egocentric. They do not understand that other people have feelings like they do. A five-year-old child can hurt a friend and turn around confused and upset that the friend hurt them back. They need to know that the world does not revolve around them, that we are not just figments of their conscious perception. Next time a child is having a tantrum, turn around. I have closed a child refusing to behave out of a story circle and kept on reading to the other children. As soon as he (and in this case, he stands in for multiple successful employs of this method) noticed that we were going on without him, he sat down and behaved so that he, too, could participate in reading time.

Never leave a small child who is having a tantrum unsupervised. Always keep your peripheral vision on them, but give the illusion that you don't even notice their fit. Attention is positive reinforcement. Don't give it to a child who doesn't earn it.

Likewise, when they are doing the right thing, be sure to reward them with praise and privilege. I always choose the preschoolers who are following directions to go first. Reinforce the good behavior when it happens and keep it consistent.

Coincidentally, after writing this blog I started browsing for an appropriate video to leave you with. I'm not the first person to want to link Millan to child rearing.

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The End of Soaps: Americans Don't Have Time for That Kind of Commitment

A few months back many Americans, but mostly Susan Lucci, were shocked to find out that ABC is cancelling two of its soaps this fall/winter. All My Children (the one with Susan Lucci) and One Life to Live (the one with the split personality family) are being axed. AMC will end in September and OLTL will run its last episode in January 2012. Talk about getting notice!

Characters I remember watching as little kids are now having teen pregnancy plots and Lord only knows how many times Erica has been married to Jackson.

I remember her bratty kid plots! Oh and her parents have been married and divorced 80 bazillion times!

Why are these shows, which have been running for eons, being cancelled now? Where will infomercials and Dancing With the Stars find their semi-celebrities? I can't really answer the second question, but I can give you a pretty good idea of why these shows are dying.


Americans have a lot competing for their attention in a 21st Century world. We have the internet (and don't say we had that ten years ago because you know that dial up and streaming Kanye West faux pas are not the same!) We have smart phones. We have Netflix streaming movies directly into our homes without having to go to the store for a rental! More Moms are working during the day, too. So does America really have the time to commit to watching  the same hour long show five days a week? We could be playing Angry Birds!

Then there's the cost of running a soap opera. These shows film enough episodes to run year round, five days a week. Their long time stars get millions of dollars or they quit and there has to be another convoluted plot twist to give them a new face or explain why Lucky, whose parents are both blonds, has black hair now (so I may have watched a good amount of ABC Soaps on sick days as a kid).

It's hard to come up with plot to fill 5 hours a week and it's hard to do complex camera work when your actors have to memorize the gist of it, do it, and move on. Actors write their lines on potted plants in soaps. That's why Sonny, the mobster on General Hospital (which will be ABCs only remaining soap), always looks like he's staring down. It's not a character nervous tick. He's reading.

Now, ABC Soaps, according to the Neilsen Ratings, are lower ranked than some of the other famous shows like The Young and the Restless. Oddly, the show being kept is the lowest rated of the ABC soaps and yet it's the only one remaining. I would chalk that up to the timeslot being at 3 in the afternoon. The soap audience is home from a shopping spree, having just picked up the kids from carpool. Dinner doesn't need to be started until after 4. It's still an ideal slot.

Americans have other sources for drama and shirtless men. Browsing Bellazon for shirtless male models takes less time and requires no DVR to do if you have a day job. Shows like One Tree Hill have much better written relationship drama that doesn't have to resort to desperate measures like the return of a now-grown aborted child (I KID YOU NOT!) to fill out five hours a week.

What's replacing these daytime staples? My mother complained that they would likely be replaced by talk shows (My mother, who is barely home to see them as she's always off gallivanting with the quilt coven or substitute teaching.) The shows being picked up are about food and lifestyle. I actually like shows that teach me things (I watched an awful lot of home improvement shows when I lived with my parents). As long as we don't fill it with two more hours of Rosie yelling at a conservative woman, I don't care because I don't have cable.

Whatever they run, if people don't like it they'll just turn to Hulu for reruns of Glee. That's the real danger broadcast television is facing these days. Soap Operas were too frequent to keep up with uploading them to the internet and if you missed an episode you had no time to catch up. I think we're going to find, going forward, that the shows that survive are the fresh types that air on cable as well as the web and the shows that shine will be the ones that become viral-- like clips from the Daily Show.

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Story Form eBook

The following eBook contains 2 previous blog posts (A Drama Intervention and 6 Common Mistakes of RP Plot) plus much more content for expert and newbie text-based Roleplayers. It's an in-depth guide to the format I play, "Story Form."

Table of Contents:
Story Form vs Action Form
Story Form vs Tabletop RPG
6 Common Fatal Mistakes of RP Plot
Navigating Game Information
A Drama Intervention: How to Avoid RP Drama and Why
A Guide to Gaming Graphics
Expert Tips for Moderators

If you're new to the medium or just want some ideas for moderating, this guide is for you. Click the cover image to download the pdf eBook!

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