How to Amuse the Muse

I think I've figured out part of the reason for my writing slump of the past year. OK, aside from the ridiculous idea of going back to school and taking actual classes for actual college credits (which was a well-worth-it but miserable experince). And aside from the full time job, two kids, freelance business, house, and husband.

My car sucked.

No, really. I hated it. And that's a bad, bad thing if your muse lives in your car like mine does.

Oh, fine, laugh all you like, but she does. I don't know why, but she likes to sit behind me when I'm driving (and obnoxiously cranking my tunes) and whisper in my ear about worlds, weapons, and wonderment. Not sure if it's the motion, the tunes, or what, but she likes it there, and when I'm stuck on a character or plot, that's where I go to to get unstuck.

And having to drive a car that I grew to actively hate made that impossible, since I spent most of my time in the car cussing at it (and its utter inability to accelerate properly and tendancy to require an Act of Congress to change gears). This left the muse little opportunity to whisper anything, nevermind the fact that whispering wasn't going to cut it over the volume of the cussing (though, surprisingly, the whispering does just fine against the tunes - go figure).

Anyway.

In December, we got rid of the Stupid Car and bought Ruby. I love Ruby. Ruby shifts when I would shift. Ruby pushes you back in your seat when you hit the gas. Ruby has a bump shift, which means I can take her out of Drive, put her in Manual, and shift her myself, if the roads are a mess of snow and ice. Or if I just need to.

Yeah, silly as it is to love a car, I LOVE Ruby.

More importantly, my muse loves Ruby too. And the last few weeks she's started whispering again. And that makes the brain happy.

So what if Ruby was just barely in our price range. So what if the payments give me a heart attack. So what if I had to compromise my high-gas-mileage-or-forget-it principles.

The muse is amused. Some days, that's all that matters.

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Review: The Chocolatier's Wife

by Cindy Lynn Speer

A beautifully sweet story (pun unashamedly intended).

OK, leaving aside the fact that anything having to do with chocolate is almost automatically certain to be a hit with me, this really was a great story. Set in a world far, far away where marriages are 'arranged' by magic and one's mate is usually determined when one is very young, the story consists partly of letters written back and forth between William and his 'intended', Tasmin, over the course of the time before they meet and partly of the 'present day', in which William has been framed for murder and Tamsin comes to free him, since she knows from his letters that he's no murderer.

Their letters to each other alone are a good enough reason to read the book. They are charming and cleverly written, not only because they subtly reveal the nature of each of the main characters, but also because they evolve through the story, moving along from the first letter William writes as a 7 year old to Tamsin as an infant to them writing back and forth as adults. This imparts a depth to the characters and the sense that you have known them their whole lives yourself.

Meanwhile, in the main storyline, touches of magic, mystery, and romance are deftly woven together into a memorable tale that I really didn't want to end, since it meant leaving William and Tamsin's world. Throughout, author Cindy Lynn Speer's eloquent writing repeatedly put a smile on my face just from appreciation of the sheer skill it takes to write sentences that are cleverly put together, but still easy to follow.

So, in short, if you like a well-constructed, sweet (but not sappy) story spiked with a bit of whodunnit, The Chocolatier's Wife is Very Highly Recommended!

Publishing Crooks

OK, this will be brief, but this is an issue that really burns me up.

I got an email in my Inbox this morning from Wiley-Blackwell, publishers of all sorts of books. I'm on some mailing list they have and get these periodically -- it's basically an ad for news books. I don't mind it, because I love any and all forms of books.

Including eBooks.

Typically, the actual content of these ads don't interest me enough to click through, but this one caught my eye. So I clicked. I salivated over the Description. I drooled over the Table of Contents.

I frowned at the price tag. And then I saw this:

Other Available Formats: Adobe
E-Book

I cheered! I clicked! I had a small myocardial infarction at the price of the E-Book -- which was the same as the fucking hard copy!!!

What. The. Hell.

Seriously?? You're going to charge me $45 for a fucking computer file?? GET WITH THE PROGRAM, PEOPLE!!!

It costs you almost nothing to produce a PDF file. Yes, OK -- you have to recover the cost of setting it up, etc., but once it's set up you don't have to pay for paper, ink, and printing machines to print it. You don't have to pay to ship it to a retailer. You don't even have to pay to ship it to me directly! At least give me a friggin' discount!!!

Arrgh! It's no wonder the major players in the publishing industry are spiraling the drain -- with attitudes like this, they deserve to.

There. I have spoken.

Breathing Deep

I'm not even sure I can write a proper blog post anymore. It has been so long -- and I am now so used to teensy missives such as will fit into my Facebook status without generating a nastygram -- that I'm not sure I'm actually capable of anything else. So we shall just have to see how long this lasts...

Anyway, Anatomy & Physiology is over. I passed. More importantly, I learned a hell of a lot and feel a lot more confident in my ability to NOT introduce mistakes when I edit medical documents (a huge fear). So that is good.

However, I have decided NEVER to take another class during the fall. With NaNo and then the holidays, it's just too nuts. I'm sure I'll have to eat that 'never', if I ever do get into grad school, but for now, when I'm just putzing around doing whatever the hell I want -- Fall is For Fun. Spring is for classes.

Except for this spring. Because I need a fucking break after that hellacious fall.... heh...

I mean, I really SHOULD take Molecular Bio to get it out of the way, but I think I'll wait and take it next year. Most of it won't be new to me anyway, because most of it is stuff I've (slowly and painfully) taught myself over the last 6 years. Besides, me and Eldest Daughter need some serious dental work, so I need the freelance income and I can't freelance, if I'm trying to get good grades. And once the dental work is taken care of, there's that big, expensive, fucking car we just bought. *dies at recollection of pricetag* (It was worth it though. I love that car already.)

Anyway, my focus at the moment is to breathe deep, get through the rest of the week, get to Florida and breathe deep some more (preferably whilst laying in the sun beside a pool or beach...), survive the Night of the Man in Red, eat waaay too much, and see Avatar. Somewhat in that order. :)

(Wow! That's, like, four whole paragraphs!)

NaNo 2009 - Snippet!

Oh, my, has it ever been an age since I posted... well, you know the story. Busy, busy, busy...

Anyway, against my better judgement, I'm doing NaNo again this year. But just for the insanity part. :D

My villain just did away with her first victim, and I thought I'd share. Enjoy the evil!

*************

At first, he thought she’d missed, because he didn’t feel anything. But she wasn't acting like she had missed. She was just sitting there. Watching him. And looking thoughtful.

Then he saw something drooping down into his field of vision from above. He could barely see it if he crossed his eyes and looked up, but there appeared to be a miniature dart embedded in his forehead.

“What the… what is that?” he asked, his voice sounding far away.

Wynonna gave him a thoughtful, assessing gaze that sent chills down his spine. Or maybe that was something in the dart. It was hard to say really.

Finally, she answered him. “A prototype.”

And that was the last thing he heard before the dart dissolved into a small cloud of nanobots that bored into his brain.

**************

Life, The Universe, and The Kitchen Sink

Yeah, yeah. It's been a while. I'd launch a volley of excuses, but I don't have time. xD

And that's the whole story of late.

I've never been so busy in my life. Between kids, work, the official and suprisingly successful launch of the freelance biz, kids' school, my school, etc, etc, writing has suffered. There's a project in the works, but it's slow going. Most nights I have freelance jobs to work on, and by the time I'm done with those, the poor little brain is shot.

And I don't even want to talk about my goddamn kitchen sink (which is usually full of dirty dishes that no one but me seems to know what to do with....).

Oh, well.

My only goal for writing this year, I've decided, is to finish One Thing. Just one single project. Get it done to the point where I would let someone else read it. I'm hoping it's going to be the project I'm working on, but I don't know. It's taking me back to a time in my life that I'd rather forget, so sometimes it's tough to get into it. And there's that lack of time thing.

But whatever.

I'm just gonna keep on keepin' on....

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Bethanie's Fantastic Summer Reading List

Ah, yes, well part of it anyway. Do not be deceived by its present length -- I expect it to expand. (And please feel free to suggest stories, books, tales, sagas, etc. that you loved or have heard were really great.)

Anyway, The Plan - and I have to have A Plan, because if left to my own devices, I will read nothing but fantasy - is to alternate a fiction with a non-fiction. Why not just give in and stick with fantasy and nothing but fantasy? Well, I could do that. But I really want to read the non-fiction on my list and in order to do that I have to set up the fiction books as Rewards for reading the non-fiction, because otherwise all the shiny fiction will somehow find its way to the top of the pile and then it will be September and summer will be over and I'll still have a stack of non-fiction sitting there forlornly beckoning...

You think I'm kidding?

Exhibit No. 1: Let's take the Oliver Sacks book, Uncle Tungsten. I think I bought it at Christmas, which means I've had it for months. I started it. It's awesome. Oliver Sacks and his family are fascinating and he really did have an Uncle Tungsten and since tungsten happens to be my favorite metal (er, yes, actually I do have a "favorite metal"... um, doesn't everyone??), I can't wait to find out more about it.... But since Christmas I have also acquired four or five or seventeen fantasy/mystery/thriller/etc. books and, the way my brain is wired, they win the Oh-what-shall-I-read tug-o'-war every single time. Hence, the Rewards...

A few notes on the actual List as it appears below:

• Color coding: Unread books are yellow and orange (alternated just for ease of reading). Green are books in progress (yes, there are currently two -- two is my lower limit and you'll notice one is electronic and the other is a hard copy -- each has its time and place, you see).


• The "Epidemiology Chapter" is my plan to get through the epidemiology text book that Boss Lady loaned me (three years ago), by classifying it as non-fiction and forcing myself to read a chapter before reading another book from the fiction pile. I think that's doable (if I assign myself the whole book, it'll never happen, so I'm trying to be realistic).


• About "Twilight". Yes, I know, it's a teeny-bopper book and there has been SO MUCH FREAKIN' HYPE about it, that I almost don't want to read it, but The Husband and I rented the movie last weekend and it actually looks interesting, so I'll get me a copy from the library (hopefully...) and decide for myself.


• Yes, I know there are holes. I've forgotten some author names and I'm too damn lazy to run to the other end of the house and check and/or look them up on amazon. Sorry. Deal wid it.


• [EDITED: OK, I couldn't stand it. I had to fill in the holes and add a bunch of the rest.]
  

Allrighty then. What are y'all reading this summer? What should I add to my list? Suggest away people!

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Summer Break

I know. It's still spring. But my final exam is Monday, which means summer starts for me as soon as I hit "Submit Quiz", get the news, and calculate my final grade. :D

And I am So Fucking Sick of cramming my brain full of stuff I have to know, that I have actually formulated a plan to spend all summer cramming it full of stuff I want to know just 'cuz.

Specifically, I am talking about Bethanie's Fantastic Summer Reading List. Yaay for summers!! Yaay for reading!!

I plan to post The Official List here and check in with it and check things off and comment and review and contemplate and theorize and otherwise generally wallow shamelessly in my neglected and now-towering TBR pile. So. Be looking for the Fantastic List sometime next week and feel free to suggest any Must Reads on your Fantastic Summer (or Other) Reading List in the meantime (since I just know you're sitting there on the edge of your seat with nothing better to do...).

And we now return you to your regularly scheduled griping about how studying for a final sucks and what the HELL was Bethanie THINKING when she decided to go back to school in the midst of a full-time job, 2 kids, a freelance business....

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It's Here!!!

It's here! It's here!! IT'S HERE!!!

Witch Ember is here! It arrived this afternoon and I was so busy I never even checked the mailbox, and was shocked and delighted when The Husband brought it in this evening. Yahoo!

I'm delivering it straight to the TBR pile. I'm gonna be good -- I'm not even gonna crack the cover, 'cuz I'm not allowed to read it until after my final on May 4th and I don't want to be tempted and ....

Say! Check out those maps!!

Uh-oh...

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Cake Wrecks

So a friend at work sent me a link to this blog and it's so damn amusing, I added it to my list of Distractions & Addictions. It's called Cake Wrecks and it's all about... well, let's just say the title is self explanatory...

It's been a great stress reliever over the past few weeks of family, family, wedding, school, work, family, family, OMG-more-family. In a word (or two) it's fucking hysterical. You must check it out! 'Cuz I said so!

Back to searching the archives for the Pepto-Bismal Barbie cake I made for Ms. Six when she turned Ms. Four (or was it Ms. Three...). Heh. No, seriously. Anyway, enjoy y'all!

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John Lawson's Witch Ember

I did it. I had to. I couldn't stand it anymore.

John Lawson's Witch Ember just sounds too awesome, and it finally popped up used on Amazon at a price I could afford, so I raided the emergency funds (books are an emergency, yes?) and ordered it. So there.

And so what if I won't have time to read it until after my effing A&P class comes to its gruesome and excruciating end in May. And so what if my freelance workload is scheduled to pick up right about then. And so what if my stack of Absolutely-Positively-Must-Read-This-Summer books is already taller than I am. So what!

Witch Ember goes to the top of the stack as soon as it arrives, and if it's here, it gets cracked open the minute I'm done taking my final on May 4th. So there!

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Review: Sorrow by John Lawson

First, The Usual Warning – probably, I am not going to do this review thing right. My 'reviews' are more a part of my own learning process as a writer than 'proper reviews’ in the traditional sense. They are more my ruminations, more my thoughts on and reactions to stories I either read or watch (yanno, movies), and more my attempt to process - mainly for my own benefit - the techniques and bits of craft that I most admired (or that didn’t seem to work for me). For that reason, it isn’t enough for me to say ‘I liked it’; I need to think about and say exactly why, so I get very specific.

Oh, and sorry about all the italics and bold and bold-italics in this one. I went sorta wild with it...

There. You have been warned. :)

On to Sorrow, by John Lawson!

* * *

I'm not going to begin with a synopsis or blurb of the plot. I think that's boring. Sorry. I'll tell you there's an assassin and nobody knows who it is, but they need to find out before more people die. That's plenty, right? :) (OK, if you need a real synopsis or blurb, and/or would like to read an excerpt, go to Drollerie Press's Sorrow page.)

I will begin with happily admitting that it was the cover that sold me on this one. What can I say? I'm a sucker for good visuals. I just HAD TO KNOW what those black tears were about. And that's good -- a cover that creates a story question and compells you to buy a book as just as all important as those first few lines you read standing in the bookstore (or sitting at your computer, if you're in an ebookstore...). Those lines should draw you into the story in such a way that you CANNOT put the books down and simply MUST. BUY. IT.

And next I will admit that the first few lines of Sorrow had me doubting the whole purchase thing...

There is a prologue, you see, and prologues are tricky. All the writing books say you don't need them and shouldn't use them and should start the story where the story starts and all kinds of other bullshit that, frankly, isn't all that helpful. As a reader, I think a prologue is totally fine -- as long as it relates to the story and totally draws me in and makes me HAVE TO buy the book.

Sorrow's Prologue almost didn't. I mean, it's neat -- it reads like a creation myth, so it's got a cool tone and the feel of a parable and I could see it being told by elder to a bunch of people sitting around a fire at night.... OK, so, yeah, it created really good visuals there and I loved it when I went back and read it after reading the rest of the book, but as a beginning it was almost too mysterious, plus I'm impatient and wanted the story to start already. I actually thought about giving up on it....

And then, quite suddenly, it ended and I hit this:

They were going to betray him.

Which is the first line of the 'real' story, which grabbed me like a super-size vise grips and never let go, which is exactly what I love in a first line. Bravo!

Overall Impression

Better yet, the rest of the story is fantastic. It's part who-dun-it, part dark fantasy, part horror (OK, I'm a light-weight with the horror, so take that with a grain of salt), and moves quickly through a vividly imagined world with a plot that twists and turns until the very, very, very end. In other words: definitely my kind of book. In fact, not only is Sorrow a serious contender for the Bethanie's Favorite-Books-of-All-Time list, but it has also made the Yes-I-Want-A-Hard-Copy list, which is huge, because there are very few books that merit an allowance of space in my teeny, tiny house, as well as the I-Can't-Wait-To-Read-It-Again list.

The Specifics

Plot. As I've already mentioned, the plot moves quickly. This is always good. What made Sorrow really interesting for me, however, was that the who-dun-it part was somewhat non-traditional. It starts out traditional: there are clues, there are red herrings, there are possible suspects... and then, about two-thirds of the way through the story, you know the Who.

Now I suppose the pundits and mavens will tell us that is a Serious No-No and that John Lawson is a rule breaker and should be locked up writer's prison, at which point I shall happily thumb my nose at them and inform them that Sorrow is a good example when to go ahead and break the damn rules. Because instead of relieving the tension by knowing Who, the tension is instantly 10 times worse. Which makes you keep reading - just as fast as you can - because now you are howling to know WHY!? It's brilliant.

Language. I have read other reviews of Sorrow and several have mentioned that there is a lot of story-specific language, strange/foreign words, and that readers should be prepared to use the glossary. And yes, there's a lot of that and you might prepare yourself to use the glossary frequently or you might steer clear of Sorrow, if you don't like that sort of thing.

Me? I'm a language junkie. I love that sort of thing. For me, there is no such thing as too much. Especially when it's so expertly woven into the story, as it is in Sorrow, that you swear you can feel the fabric of the world the characters are moving in. I mean, it's really well done -- almost Tolkein-esque. Seriously! (And really, you can figure out most things from context, so I'm not sure what all the whining is about in the first place.)

Names. What I did find confusing at times were the myriad names, titles, and forms of address for any given character. An example, and perhaps the most confusing for me, was Hashii, who is referred to by three different names -- "Lord Ash", "Count Hashii", and "Hashii" -- in the section of the story where he is introduced. (OK, maybe the last one shouldn't count, but I'm trying to make a point here, bear with me.) I had to read that section three times before I was certain there was only one character. Even just re-reading it now, I kept thinking Lord Ash was Hashii's boss.

Perhaps my confusion is due to being American and having no clue whatsoever about titles and nobility. Or perhaps I'm being especially nit-picky on this because I'm so very guilty of it in my own writing... :D Could be... In any case, it really threw me in spots and, lesson learned, is something I'll try to avoid myself.

Characters. I suppose it goes without saying that good characters are essential for a good story. Sorrow is full of good characters. They are as vivid as the world they live in, as human as anyone you know, and are drawn with heartbreaking detail, like the woman who makes a doll for every miscarriage she has so when she eventually has a child, it can play with its brothers and sisters. (That one killed me... *sobs*)

The End. Since I'm an utterly hopeless romantic, the ending was not what I was hoping for. It's not exactly unhappy, but it's not happily ever after either. And yet, for all my romantic loyalties, I wouldn't change a thing about it. It was perfectly "right" for the story. And that's where my respect for John Lawson really soared. I hate endings. I suck at endings. I can't write a proper ending to save my life. To see an ending so expertly put together is amazing.

My Only Real Complaint... ...is that there are two other Witch Ember books, Witch Ember and The Raven, that I can't get. Boo! Hiss! OK, I guess you can get them used through Amazon, but they're, like, 40 bucks each or something crazy and, dude, that is so out of my price range. :( Bummer.

Hopefully, that will change sometime soon, but in the meantime, go get you a copy of Sorrow. You'll be glad you did. It's available here from Drollerie Press.

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Drowning

OK, so it's been a while since I last posted. But we are drowning here. Drowing in more ways than one. Drowning in life due to soccer, school events, and life events (we have a family wedding this weekend, so everyone's in town and wants to visit). Drowing in resposibilities at the Evil Day Job, which is getting perpetually stranger every single day...

Oh, yes. And it's raining.

It's been raining all week. We're supposed to have "possibly severe thunderstorms" today (so the wedding won't be outside this afternoon; poor sister-in-law-to-be :( And actually, we get a break from drowning in soccer today, since the fields are closed, which is good since because of the wedding we'd have been running around like crazy all day. This way we're only running around like crazy half the day....)

I don't even want to talk about school - my school - and the test I have tomorrow and how I haven't even read the chapter yet, let alone done any studying...

Writing, needless to say, isn't even on the damn list anymore.

I mean, story-related things occur to me here and there throughout the day and many times throughout the nights that I'm spending half of awake because I can't stop thinking, worrying and otherwise stressing about everything else. But I'm too exhausted and disheartened to bother even jotting them down any more.

So poor Caleb the Supernatural Bank Robber and Pollo the Dragon-Seeker Pirate are on perpetual hold for now. Maybe permanent hold. I don't know. Maybe I'll try again when my class is over in May. But for now, I'm sick of failing to finish anything. I'm sick of the dread in the pit of my stomach I get every time I think about actually working on a story. I'm sick of everything I read about the writing process making me feel totally inadequate. I'm sick of feeling like I've never had an original idea in my life.

It sucks to be a quitter, and I know that, but something has to give and for the moment, it looks like it's going to be writing.

*theatrical sigh*

Well. Off to study for that test, then...

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Watchmen

So The Husband and I got to go on one of our very rare movie dates this afternoon and picked Watchmen. Yaay for the small miracle of movie dates!

Almost 30 bucks and 3 hours later, I'm still sort of shell shocked. It was violent. It was graphic. It was gory. It had waaay too many flashbacks and moved waaay slower than I would normally tolerate and yet I've come away from it thinking it was great.

I'm struggling to put my finger on why.

I mean, normally any movie that moves that slow has me yawning, bored and pissed off that I just spent 30 bucks to be bored halfway through and hoping it will end. Watchmen somehow eluded this fate.

I think there are a number of reasons for this. For one thing, there was a giant, blue man walking around totally naked for most of the movie. Two thumbs, way up! ;-D

Seriously, though...

The characters had enough depth to keep me interested. Maybe not as much as I usually like, but there were interesting internal conflicts going on. There were interesting inter-personal conflicts as well -- not to mention the sometimes brutal action going on in the main story line (slow as it was at times).

I had the who of who-dun-it figured out early, which should have ticked me off, but the way it ended left me OK with that. Not your typical Hollywood wrap-up, for sure. So that was good too.

There was also a lot of superheros kicking butt, which I always like a lot. And there was superhero humor and sex and betrayal and - my favorite - an antihero.

I don't know. I'm still struggling with why I wasn't unhappy with it, and the last half was definitely better than the first half, but it was worth the money. Go see it!

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The Grindstone

So a few weeks back a Big Editing Company notified me that they wanted to hire me as a freelance editor, but didn't want me to edit in the field where I actually have editing experience -- they wanted me to edit in the field I have a degree in, even though I haven't done THING ONE in that field for 14 years. I didn't know what to tell them because I was so irritated with their lack of respect for the actual work that I DO and their apparent faith in a piece of paper given to me by my undergraduate university so long ago that it is now lost in the mists of time.

So I did what came natually: I ignored them.

Yesterday they emailed me back, ever so politely requesting that I send them the other stuff they need for me to start editing for them and again suggesting that I edit in that other field.

Perhaps they're hard up for editors in that particular field. I don't know, I don't really care, and my inclination is to ignore them again. However.

Drollerie Press had this great celebration of ebook week and were giving away two free ebooks a day. It was awesome and exciting and now I have a bunch of great ebooks I can't wait to read. But I also missed a bunch, because I wasn't fast enough on the clicker, and so I decided to just outright buy some of those plus few others I've been meaning to pick up, and now.... well, now I have a habit to support.

And the extra income from the freelance work would certainly help support the habit, so.... I'm still annoyed with the Big Editing Company, but now I'm also reconsidering their offer.

In other words, I'm gonna whore myself for books.

I guess there are worse things in life, right?

(Oh, and if the folks at Drollerie Press were hoping that pushing ebooks by giving away free samples would help boost sales, well.... it worked! At least for me and anyone else I can convince to go check them out. :D )

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Giving Up Writing.

Or: Maybe Not.

So I decided last night that I was done. After reading so many good books lately while occasionally glancing at my growing pile of pathetic, feeble - and entirely unfinished - attempts at writing, I just gave up.

"Fuck writing," I said. "I'm all done. I'll just read from now on. And edit. And maybe review some stuff."

As I left the house at 6 AM this morning, I was resigned to just driving. No more plotting on the commute. No more conversations with my characters during the inevitable stop 'n' go near Trinity Lane. No more feeding Dorothy the Muse with my new favorite song while going 80 in the slow lane. Just no more.

Dorothy apparently took offense at this decision and smacked me upside the head continuously the whole way to work with all kinds of things I've been stonewalled on for the past several weeks. Figures.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I may just ignore it and go ahead with the plan to take up something that involves less blood-letting. Like boxing, maybe....

But damned if Dorothy didn't make Caleb all freakin' interesting...

Crap. Crap on a stick, in fact.

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eBooks: A Rant

So Fictionwise - and it's little brother eReader.com - have been acquired by B&N apparently. I've been an eReader.com customer for ... well, a really, really long time. For me, the initial draw to ebooks was based on 1) convenience (lots of books available all the time, all in my purse on an itty-bitty reading device), 2) ease of storage (ebooks take up no physical space - a good thing in a small house), and 3) PRICE.

PRICE was the big one (that's why it's in caps, heh-heh). Ebooks, back in the day, were cheaper than regular books (paperbacks or hardcover). The people who produced ebooks seemed to understand that since they aren't having to cover the cost of paper, printing, shipping, storage, etc., it ultimately costs them less to produce an ebook and hey, why not pass that savings on to readers. OK, yes, sure - they have to maintain servers and websites and such, but these days, most booksellers have to do that anyway.

The price has gone up over the years, but I don't mind paying 7 or 8 bucks for an ebook. That's about the same as a paperback these days, and let's face it: the economy sucks and ebook producers have to feed their kids too, so I don't mind doing my part. :) And honestly, the convenience and storage features are worth it, so the $7-8 range seems quite reasonable.

So imagine the sticker shock I experienced when I clicked on a link to an interesting ebook in my newsletter from eReader.com and discovered that the fucking thing is $25!!! WHAT?!?? I just sat there blinking at my screen thinking, "You're fucking kidding, right? That's, like, a typo, right? That's the price of a hardcover! I'm seeing things, yes?"

But, no. I was not seeing things. That was the actual price, and folks, that is fucking ridiculous.

Now I understand that a hardcover book costs more to produce than a paperback, and for certain books, I'm not only willing but happy to pay it. But I'm sorry, but I see no reason for an ebook "equivalent" to a hardcover -- other than the greed of the booksellers. OK, if they want to make a bit extra by charging double the cost of a paperback, let's say $15 or $16, for a new release, I'd pay that much (and have) for an ebook that I really don't want to wait for. But I draw the line at paying over three times the cost of a paperback. That's just highway robbery, plain and simple.

Besides that, I'm seriously doubting that authors see anything extra when their ebooks get priced this high. The poor author of the ebook I was interested in unfortunately isn't going to be seeing ANYTHING from me, because I refuse to participate in the greedfest. Bummer. It sounded really interesting too.

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