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Books You Should Own

The avid reader, like myself, is always on the lookout for a good book to read. I have compiled a list of books that you should add to your downloads, wishlists or next order.


A must for DIYers.

For all you dog lovers.

One of Ben Franklin’s lesser known works.

Another history text.

The slightly less popular sequel to the Kama Sutra

I just have to include part of the sales description for the “Farts: A Spotter’s Guide”

The attached battery powered fart machine reproduces each emanation in accurate sound.

An absolute godsend of a book.

Hope these books make it onto your buying lists!

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May, the Zombie Awareness Month

It is time for everyone to buy their gray ribbon for Zombie Awareness.
http://www.zombieresearch.org/awareness.html

Every year we are asked to support worthy causes and this May is the time to recognise those who have been bitten or those who have been chased when their chainsaw ran out of fuel. The awareness campaign also funds vigilance towards the impending doom of the Zombie Pandemic.

Remember to keep your shotgun at hand and chainsaw sharp and fuelled this May!

Be prepared!

Zombie killer of the month:

Alice. Because I’m male.

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Warning about e-books

I made a startling discovery earlier today that I think everyone needs to be aware of: e-books and dead trees can interbreed!

This isn’t just alarmist rhetoric, this is a real concern.

Despite many pundits claiming that e-books are not real books, this is photographic proof that e-books are becoming real books.

Fun Articles, Humor

Things to do on holidays

As much as I like work, I really do like holidays. Finally I have time to do all the things I actually like doing rather than having a large chunk of my day taken up with, well, work. Now obviously if I am to get my first novel published before the end of this year, then I should take advantage of my break from a day job and churn out some writing.

So here’s what I’ve actually been doing.

Getting up early.
I think that you shouldn’t break your daily routine up too much, otherwise going back to work becomes too hard. As such I try to get up as early as possible, preferably before lunch time.

Reading.
Surprisingly I’ve had very little time for reading this holidays. It has been go, go, go the entire time. I think I may have only averaged 5-6 hours a day of reading. The list of things I have read this past week:
Hit List – Chris Ryan
The Dark Tower – Steven King
D.E.D. Dead – Geoff McGeachin
300 – Frank Miller
Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary) – Jeff Strand
Write the Fight Right – Alan Baxter

As always I don’t comment on 1-2 star books because they are never finished. But curse them for wasting valuable reading time!!

Exercise.
I’ve always been active and love weightlifting. When I’m on holidays it is very important to keep up the exercise levels, lest I start to resemble a daytime talk show audience member. My exercise routine starts not long after waking. I stumble to our library and start with a good stretch out on our couch. I like to superset (a weightlifting term meaning back to back) the stretch with reading. This holidays I’ve been averaging 5-6 hours of this. At the end I’m suitably warmed up for some weightlifting, or a beer, depending on how I feel on the day (5 days of 7 the beer has won).

Sure could do with a beer right about now.

Woodworking.
Holidays are a great time to spend on hobbies. There is nothing quite like the sense of accomplishment from crafting something with your bare hands. There is also nothing quite like the sense of satisfaction from using really sharp tools to stab, slice and hack away at something…….. Currently I’m making another bookshelf for our library, and have finished two clocks recently.

Jarrah clock. To say Jarrah is a hard wood is like saying steel is kinda hard.

Guitar.
If I have a second love it is guitar. Wait, sorry, my wife is first, so my writing is second, so guitar would be third. Honest mistake.

So, I have a number of toys that I enjoy to play with:
PRS Custom
7 string Flying V
Egnater Tweaker
Vox Night Train

Writing.
Now the juicy part: how much writing have I actually done? How much closer to finished is Overturned Stones? Well according to my Scrivener Windows Beta release, I have written nothing.

Yes I was scratching my head too. Seven days of writing usually results in an increased word count. Of course I’d forgotten to account for the Windows Affect. For those not familiar with the Windows Affect, basically when a new program is released in a format that is compatible with Windows OS, Windows will immediately stop being compatible and seek to destroy the new program. Usually this is achieved via updates that render the computer unusable.

I know, my own fault. I had Ubuntu installed and then some guy named Bill dropped around and reinstalled W7. I knew he was trouble when I saw that haircut.

Suffice to say I have decided to switch back to Open Office for now. The word count has caught back up and I hope to hit the halfway mark of Overturned Stones – 45,000 – next week. So far this holidays I have written 10,000 words, 7,000 of those have actually been saved when I pressed the save button.

Overturned Stones is a thriller based upon the idea that human trafficking and slavery can be solved via lead therapy. The central protagonist is very good at dispensing lead and avoiding anti-lead campaigners like police and mercenaries. But is he good enough to hide from the police and mercenaries when he saves a woman and child? He thinks so, but then again he’s biased.

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How to spot a Star Wars fan

Being a Star Wars fan isn’t just about the film series. It isn’t just about some merchandising either. It isn’t even about the series of ~~comics~~ graphic novels and books it has spawned. It is about taking your best friend to the convention with you, dressed up for the occasion.

May the force be with you!

Fun Articles, Humor, Reading, Writing

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

Internet Pirate, Yar!

I can remember back to when computers were nothing more than green text on a black background and made terrific boat anchors. Then suddenly they exploded, usually from a spilt drink or frustration in the 10 minutes it took for anything to load. Just as I was leaving high school the interwebz was suddenly all around us and promised to deliver us information, e-commerce, media and porn. This coincided with computers becoming faster, hard-drives becoming bigger and teenagers becoming hornier.

And that is when media piracy really took off.

Sure Napster popularised it a few years later and the music industry starting jumping up and down about it later again, but someone had forgotten to tell these people that the game had changed. I didn’t have to buy the entire Primus CD for the two songs I was actually going to listen to, now I could have a copy of those two songs on my computer, either downloaded from friends or copied off the CD.

I think we were all waiting for the music industry to catch up. At some point we were expecting all of our favourite songs to be available online for sale. But our computers were growing, so it wasn’t just music, we wanted our TV and movies as well. Why couldn’t we just grab a copy off the internet when we wanted? Where was the store that sold this stuff? And would they sell Debbie Does Dallas?

Well, sensing the growing change in consumer behaviour, the desire for an online store to sell entertainment, the music industry, movie industry and other media decided to band together and sue kids for millions of dollars each.

Brilliant! Rather than sell people stuff lets sue them! What a marketing and sales master stroke.

Instead of responding to consumer demands, the industries concerned decided they didn’t want to play. They thought that would be the end of that. Of course in a free market economy you have to expect the market to dictate terms, not anyone else. Piracy became embedded.

Now of course it isn’t the media industry’s fault that their products were being pirated, it was them damn pesky kids with their computas and iGizmos and and theys gots no respects for da rulz……… The e-generation were blamed for the down-turn in music sales and for massive losses to the music and movie industry. I like the assumption that every download must equal a lost sale, talk about a non-sequitur.

None of these arguments, discussion or history are really relevant though. I’m going to coin a new term SCREEN-GAZING which is the e-version of navel-gazing, because all of this piracy discussion is essentially nothing more than screen-gazing. Lets have a look at the real data that needs to be discussed.

The survey interviewed 1,700 music consumers age 13-60 and found that music is important to social networkers: 39% have embedded music in their personal profiles.
70% said they embed music to show off their taste; half said music is a good way to reflect personality.
Some other survey findings:

Some 53% of people actively surf social networking sites to find music.

30% said they went on to buy or download music that they had discovered on a social network site (for MySpace, the proportion is 36%).

On popular sites the numbers of people who use sites to find music increase – for MySpace and Bebo, 75% and 72%, respectively, and 66% for YouTube.

46% say they wish it were easier to purchase music they had discovered on social networking sites – for example via a “buy now” button on the site.

The number of those saying they illegally download music tracks has increased, from 40% in 2005 and 36% in 2006 to 43% in 2007.

Only 33% cited the risk of being prosecuted as a deterrent against illegal downloading, compared with 42% in 2006.

Nearly one in five respondents – 18% – claimed an intention to download more unauthorized tracks, up from 8% in 2006.

After a dramatic 40% increase in the number of legal downloaders between 2005 and 2006, only 16% growth occurred in the number of legal downloaders from 2006 to 2007.

22% of legal downloaders admitted that they had not paid for a track in the last six months.

84% agreed that digital downloads of older music should be cheaper; 48% said they would be prepared to pay more for newly released music.

So basically iTunes had been on the map for 4 years by the time this survey was performed, downloading had been around for a decade. Big congratulations to the industry for making those inroads into making music accessible. Almost half of the kids would like easier access to music to buy, and most thought it was too expensive.

Another survey shows that downloads of media were decreasing. So clearly the impact of actually selling media to people that they want was a good thing for lowering pirating. Just the industry hasn’t reached enough of the market yet.

How do you dissuade people from illegal downloads? The traditional approach for punishing pirates would be imprisonment, pilloring, flogging, enslavement, branding, keel hauling, and/or hanging. Given how well that worked in ridding the world of pirates maybe we should consider other methods.

Someone was really bright and had a look at what parental guidance did to downloading.

Who would have thought that parenting had a role in being a law abiding citizen?

What does all of this mean? Well pretty much media – be that ebooks, movies, music, TV shows – need to be easily accessible and priced appropriately. There also needs to be some responsibility taken by everyone to make sure that people expect to pay for media. This can’t be draconian, it has to be encouraged, and part of that encouragement comes from the ease of access and prices that people can afford. And now I hold my breath. Wake me after I pass out waiting for a solution rather than another blame game.

Fun Articles, Humor, Reading

Comment on Comments – A review of reviews

In case you haven’t been aware, there has been a few arguments riding the blogosphere this past week. The first was about the value of e-book or self-publishing being regarded as lesser than traditional print publishing. The second has been about the self-publishers who have commented on negative reviews of their books. Jenny at the Inner Bean has blogged and started some forum discussions on this topic.

Now I love the fact that several authors have posted here following one of my reviews. Essentially my reviews are promotions of books I have enjoyed reading, so them commenting doesn’t feel out of place. But reviews on Amazon and some review sites are not exactly the places to weigh in with a response.

Let us take an example of a review on Amazon:

Julia Argandona, of Costa Mesa, CA Review (‘17 of 59’ customers found this ‘helpful’):

I haven’t read this book yet but I can’t wait to read it so I am reviewing it early. The other people on Amazon who say don’t read it are brainwashed stooges of the Catholic religion, which has been sexually abusing children for 100’s of years. Who needs it? I already LOVE this book

I think the most important thing to note about this review is not that she hadn’t read the book, nor that she is clearly a fan of the author or genre regardless of the content of this particular book, no the important thing to note is that 17 of 59 other customers actually found this review helpful.

I’ve never driven a car, I’ve never held a license to drive a car, but I’m ever so keen to teaching my kids to drive. Can’t Wait!

Obviously everyone is entitled to an opinion. The internet has become a playground for the dispersal of opinions and porn. So we have to admit to ourselves that some people on the internet will not only be naked, but they will also have the intellectual might of a cheese cracker. I think it is safe to ignore these people, unless they look good naked.

But what about the normal or intelligent people and their opinions? Clearly all rational opinions will be in agreement. As a result you will never see a negative review for a book (or anything else) coming from someone worth listening to. Even if the book sucks.

I recently discovered that ~50% of the general public doesn’t believe in man made climate change and are willing to argue with the 97% of scientists who can prove it is happening. So opinions don’t have to be related to facts or evidence. There is a point here, but I’m not sure how it relates to internet nudity.

So even in the best of circumstances, when you are 100% right and the opinion holder is 100% wrong, telling people that is the case is just a waste of time. Remember, the best book ever written – Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – currently has 19 one star reviews on Amazon. This means that 3% of reviewers, despite being wrong, didn’t enjoy this masterpiece, proving that you can’t please everyone, so don’t bother arguing with them.

Of course reviewing the reviewers is all Anne Rice’s fault. She started it.

From the Author to the Some of the Negative Voices Here, September 6, 2004

Seldom do I really answer those who criticize my work. In fact, the entire development of my career has been fueled by my ability to ignore denigrating and trivializing criticism as I realize my dreams and my goals. However there is something compelling about Amazon’s willingness to publish just about anything, and the sheer outrageous stupidity of many things you’ve said here that actually touches my proletarian and Democratic soul. Also I use and enjoy Amazon and I do read the reviews of other people’s books in many fields. In sum, I believe in what happens here. And so, I speak. First off, let me say that this is addressed only to some of you, who have posted outrageously negative comments here, and not to all. You are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective. Indeed, you aren’t even reading it. You are projecting your own limitations on it. And you are giving a whole new meaning to the words “wide readership.” And you have strained my Dickensean principles to the max. I’m justifiably proud of being read by intellectual giants and waitresses in trailer parks,in fact, I love it, but who in the world are you? Now to the book. Allow me to point out: nowhere in this text are you told that this is the last of the chronicles, nowhere are you promised curtain calls or a finale, nowhere are you told there will be a wrap-up of all the earlier material. The text tells you exactly what to expect. And it warns you specifically that if you did not enjoy Memnoch the Devil, you may not enjoy this book. This book is by and about a hero whom many of you have already rejected. And he tells you that you are likely to reject him again. And this book is most certainly written — every word of it — by me. If and when I can’t write a book on my own, you’ll know about it. And no, I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself. I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art. Back to the novel itself: the character who tells the tale is my Lestat. I was with him more closely than I have ever been in this novel; his voice was as powerful for me as I’ve ever heard it. I experienced break through after break through as I walked with him, moved with him, saw through his eyes. What I ask of Lestat, Lestat unfailingly gives. For me, three hunting scenes, two which take place in hotels — the lone woman waiting for the hit man, the slaughter at the pimp’s party — and the late night foray into the slums –stand with any similar scenes in all of the chronicles. They can be read aloud without a single hitch. Every word is in perfect place. The short chapter in which Lestat describes his love for Rowan Mayfair was for me a totally realized poem. There are other such scenes in this book. You don’t get all this? Fine. But I experienced an intimacy with the character in those scenes that shattered all prior restraints, and when one is writing one does have to continuously and courageously fight a destructive tendency to inhibition and restraint. Getting really close to the subject matter is the achievement of only great art. Now, if it doesn’t appeal to you, fine. You don’t enjoy it? Read somebody else. But your stupid arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander. And you have used this site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies. I’ll never challenge your democratic freedom to do so, and yes, I’m answering you, but for what it’s worth, be assured of the utter contempt I feel for you, especially those of you who post anonymously (and perhaps repeatedly?) and how glad I am that this book is the last one in a series that has invited your hateful and ugly responses. Now, to return to the narrative in question: Lestat’s wanting to be a saint is a vision larded through and through with his characteristic vanity. It connects perfectly with his earlier ambitions to be an actor in Paris, a rock star in the modern age. If you can’t see that, you aren’t reading my work. In his conversation with the Pope he makes observations on the times which are in continuity with his observations on the late twentieth century in The Vampire Lestat, and in continuity with Marius’ observations in that book and later in Queen of the Damned. The state of the world has always been an important theme in the chronicles. Lestat’s comments matter. Every word he speaks is part of the achievement of this book. That Lestat renounced this saintly ambition within a matter of pages is plain enough for you to see. That he reverts to his old self is obvious, and that he intends to complete the tale of Blackwood Farm is also quite clear. There are many other themes and patterns in this work that I might mention — the interplay between St.Juan Diago and Lestat, the invisible creature who doesn’t “exist” in the eyes of the world is a case in point. There is also the theme of the snare of Blackwood Farm, the place where a human existence becomes so beguiling that Lestat relinquishes his power as if to a spell. The entire relationship between Lestat and Uncle Julien is carefully worked out. But I leave it to readers to discover how this complex and intricate novel establishes itself within a unique, if not unrivalled series of book. There are things to be said. And there is pleasure to be had. And readers will say wonderful things about Blood Canticle and they already are. There are readers out there and plenty of them who cherish the individuality of each of the chronicles which you so flippantly condemn. They can and do talk circles around you. And I am warmed by their response. Their letters, the papers they write in school, our face to face exchanges on the road — these things sustain me when I read the utter trash that you post. But I feel I have said enough. If this reaches one reader who is curious about my work and shocked by the ugly reviews here, I’ve served my goals. And Yo, you dude, the slang police! Lestat talks like I do. He always has and he always will. You really wouldn’t much like being around either one of us. And you don’t have to be. If any of you want to say anything about all this by all means Email me at Anneobrienrice@mac.com. And if you want your money back for the book, send it to 1239 First Street, New Orleans, La, 70130. I’m not a coward about my real name or where I live. And yes, the Chronicles are no more! Thank God! – Anne Rice

She also doesn’t abide by fan fiction, because it’s her work DAMMIT!

Fun Articles, Humor

Enhance Your E-Reader

The smell of e-books just got better

Does your Kindle leave you feeling like there’s something missing from your reading experience?

Have you been avoiding e-books because they just don’t smell right?

If you’ve been hesitant to jump on the e-book bandwagon, you’re not alone. Book lovers everywhere have resisted digital books because they still don’t compare to the experience of reading a good old fashioned paper book.

But all of that is changing thanks to Smell of Books™, a revolutionary new aerosol e-book enhancer.

Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books™ you can have the best of both worlds, the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book. Smell of Books™ is compatible with a wide range of e-reading devices and e-book formats and is 100% DRM-compatible. Whether you read your e-books on a Kindle or an iPhone using Stanza, Smell of Books™ will bring back that real book smell you miss so much.

Now available in:
Classic Musty Smell
Crunchy Bacon Scent
Eau You Have Cats
New Book Smell
Scent and Sensibility

Fun Articles, Humor

Define Irony

Yes that is right! Someone has released an e-book on Kindle that is critical of Kindle’s. Why The Kindle Will Fail by Rick Munarriz

From the reviews it sounds like the book is a review of the Kindle that the author has decided to turn into an e-book. Given the book title, the format and where he is selling it, he clearly can’t be taken too seriously. Opinions have to come from an educated point of view; how can a point of view be educated with this much irony?

It reminds me of a lovely cartoon that I think sums up a lot of opinion based articles:

Fun Articles

Inspiration – TV that is actually worth watching

Amazingly enough, I think that books and TV are compatible. If you were to ask my wife she would nod and agree as well, as she reads through most TV and enjoys the ambience. There are some fantastic TV shows out there that not only inspire, but they are also written not unlike a novel.

Generally a movie has to take a book and cut out every second page, in anything longer than a short story they often just take the title page. In this manner, they can squeeze all the wonder and joy of a novel into 90 minutes of unrelated drivel. TV doesn’t run for 90 minutes, it has much longer to develop characters, story arcs, plot, and in-jokes that you wonder about enough to read the director’s blog to understand what the hell is going on. As a result TV and the novel can have a lot in common.

I say that TV can have a lot in common with a novel, not that it always does, as that would be assuming that a novel writer could get away with a procedural crime drama that is always solved by identifying semen left at the crime scene. So the shows that do actually rise to great heights tend to be few and far between, or they get cancelled by a network executive who realises that the show may actually be interesting – yes Fox, I’m still pissed about Firefly!

So what are the good TV shows I’m talking about? Well, let’s go with a list, shall we?

Oz:

Justified:

Read the short story that Justified is based upon here.

Deadwood:

The Wire:

Now I could go on and add other shows I like (Leverage, Firefly, Daria, Family Guy, The Simpsons before they sucked) but this really is enough to illustrate my point. Oz was an amazing show with such a diverse range of characters. Justified is so good that Elmore Leonard not only approved it but came on board to write some episodes. Deadwood was so good the censors felt obliged to leave in the occasional curse word used. The Wire attracted some of the best crime writers to the production team because they saw the depth and intricacy this show had.

So the entire point of this blog post may have been an excuse for me to write something other than my novel while I grab the next episode of Justified, but that doesn’t mean that quality TV and quality novels don’t have a lot in common – bloody good writers who don’t get paid nearly enough. I’ll leave you with two links to an interview with David Simon, the creator of The Wire. Fascinating stuff!
Part 1
Part 2

Fun Articles, Humor, Reading

Going For Broke

Everyone will have now read, seen or heard the news that Borders and Amazon have been heading up a fetid creek for far too long. In the land of Oz (the non-magical and not infested by Munchkins version) the media are now weighing in.
See this article

You see I’m to blame. I brazenly buy books from places other than big chain stores. I have a Kindle and enjoy reading e-books. I am, in short, the devil incarnate and will be sacrificed on a pyre of celebrity biographies, cookbooks and other non-selling book store stock.

A Recent Photo of Me.

Lets take a look at some of the points that were made.

I’ll play devils advocate here and talk about taxes first. There are only two sureties in life; taxes and whining about them. In the non-Munchkin land of Oz we have a 10% goods and services tax (GST) on everything except food. This means that imports don’t have this tax, because they aren’t Australian. I guess we evil overseas book buyers paying taxes to a foreign country should pay another tax for daring to participate in the global economy. That way I can be more involved in the global economy with taxes in multiple countries.

Recently we also had a change in the Aussie dollar, it reached parity with the US dollar. For those who haven’t studied economics, this means that if I have one Australian dollar I can trade it for one American dollar, I know because I saw an article on it – tricky stuff that economics. Now that means that if I wanted to, say, buy materials that are needed to print books they would have gotten cheaper. Equipment upgrades, cheaper. Printing ink, cheaper. So clearly a stronger Aussie dollar must mean that it is harder to compete…………

The threat from online sales is, of course, just terrible. How dare our country sign up to a fair trade agreement and actually have its citizens abide by it. Who’d have thought that when you have a business competing in an international market it would mean that you would have to compete with stores all over the globe?

Of course this means that me and my evil kind are killing retail jobs.

One point that Bob Carr (former politician – which means dodgy) makes is about how it is all the government’s fault that books cost so much. He states that they would be 33% cheaper if only his benevolent company Dymocks was able to buy their books from overseas instead of locally. 33%? I think it is basic maths time for this particular businessman.

As an example I will use the latest action-thriller by Andy McDermott. His book Empire of Gold (which I’m looking forward to getting my fiendish hands on) has just come out recently and is available from Dymocks in Australia, or for the evil book buyers, from Amazon.
Dymocks Australia online price: $24.79 (paperback)
Amazon: $9.99 (paperback) or $24.63 (hardcover)
So let us take 30% from the Dymocks price:
$24.79 – 30%(7.44) = $17.35

Well, I’m not a maths genius, but at a guess I’d say that being able to buy a hardcover at USA retail prices for the same price as the paperback retail in Australia is not exactly a 33% difference for a paperback. In fact, to buy it would be more like a 60% difference between the paperback prices. So I’d have to say that I’m not looking as evil as I first thought.

I wonder where that other 33% is going? It certainly isn’t into royalties for writers. I’d just like to be reminded what the wonderful companies that have just left a hole in the heavenly book retail world went bankrupt not paying (analogy: imagine that the authors are Marsellus Wallace, the publishers are Butch, the retailers are Zed and Maynard, and in this version Butch just does a runner). While we are on the subject, I’m unsure whether Dymocks is a discounting chain store driving every other book store out of business or The Coalition for Cheaper Books.

Clearly I’m so evil and my kind are the cause of all problems in the publishing world. It could never be the fault of antiquated business models forgetting that there are only two important parts in the publishing industry, namely the readers and the writers, everything else is clearly expendable. Excuse me while I pay a 70% royalty to a new author for a book that you can’t buy from a publisher or store.

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E-book: A New Hope

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A long time ago, in a publishing house far far away, the novel was created. It was a time of unrest for the publishing empire as they sought to grow their industry, promote authors, create an audience and inspire the world. The empire grew and prospered and many got rich, some of them authors.

The empire changed though; the e-book arrived, promising a new age in the empire. Rather than embrace the e-book, the empire struck out and became recalcitrant. A small band of mid-listers and indie authors formed a rebellion embracing the ways of the e-book.

Honestly who can understand major entertainment companies? The music industry, the movie industry, the publishing industry, they are all guilty of resistance to change. A new way to deliver their products to their clients, while cutting out costs and intermediaries, is handed to them on a platter and what do they do? Embrace it or demonise it?

Sure, the music industry took a hit on sales because they no longer controlled the medium of consumption. But does anyone remember what was topping the charts the year after mp3s hit it big in 1999? The answer is ‘N Sync, Madonna, Celine Dion and Britney Spears. Definitely worth buying their albums. The point being that the music industry was late to the party and they combined it with generic pop music releases. That’s like mixing prescription drugs with alcohol only to realise that it doesn’t actually get you wasted.

When you actually take a look at the music industry you don’t see the new market as being plagued by downloads, but rather enhanced by them. Aside from that initial euphoric rush on downloads the music market eventually woke up next to Britney Spears and realised what a big mistake that last few years had been. They alighted that train wreck and downloads are now not really impacting upon real sales. Sure the music industry will point out that downloads are still high, but who would honestly pay for a Britney Spears album? I’m surprised anyone downloads her music. Maybe they have the Chinese firewall technicians downloading terrible western music to keep them focused on not allowing the west in.

The people who download music these days were either going to browse and buy or never buy (studies are showing this more and more in the past 3 to 5 years), so e-media is a good thing for sales now. I can confirm that downloads have actually increased my buying habits. It has also given me easy access to a much larger market of music. My local music store never used to stock much in the way of Pirate Death Metal (yes that is a real genre), but now I can download an album, see if the Arrr’s are rocking and then buy the album to support the artists and their scurvy mates. With all the options now with e-books, free samples, cheap prices, access virtually anywhere, and the fact that you can find something other than James Paterson’s latest, makes e-books a great new market.

So e-books are the New Hope. Then can boldly go…….. sorry wrong Star Something.

Right now the e-book is booming at a whopping ~10% of the market, definitely time for publishers to worry. They have a Death Star, a fleet of Imperial Cruisers and the e-books have Harrison Ford. Great things are coming, even if it is ruined eventually by a crystal skull.

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The book to movie process

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When I am not busy writing or researching I like to stretch out on the couch and revel in abject mindless entertainment. The problem is that even a Hollywood blockbuster can make me think, even it is just thinking of derisive comments.

Recently I finished reading a thriller that had been adapted into a movie. The book was ok, as was the movie, but aside from some character names there was very little resemblance between the two. Having experienced both within a short time period, and despite Hollywood’s efforts to stop me thinking too much, I was left with a nagging question.

Why did they bother?

How many times have we seen a film that is supposedly based upon a book (or a play, or a short story, or a comic book) , yet if you were to compare the two you would be hard pressed to draw any similarities? In some instances the lack of resemblance is a blessing and gives people on the Internet something to complain about. In other instances it stops the movie adaptation from being a 10 hour long exercise in boredom.

The average book reader usually has an advantage over the average movie goer, in that they are intelligent and educated enough to be able to read. So obviously any movie has to be simplified, say by removing plot, characters and adding in more explosions, although in fairness on this last point I do think that the odd explosion could add an interesting twist to something like Wuthering Heights. But when does the adaptation go too far and waste the links to the source material?

I’m sure that there is a good reason to pay lots of money to an author for the rights to a book and subsequently ignore completely when making the film of it. I know that 80% of our movies have come from another medium, the popular source at the moment being comic books. Sorry, that should be ‘graphic novels’ because adults don’t read comics because [insert lame justification here]. Do screenwriters really lack imagination and need to have the title of the book and main characters names before than can begin writing? Given how different the films end up being they certainly don’t lack for imagination.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that because movie studios go out on a limb and option every single book (etc) that sells more than 2 copies, they need to make a movie of some sort using the titles they have paid for. There would be nothing worse than admitting that they had spent lots of money obtaining the rights to a book that could never be made into a film. So they take this approach to most things they have optioned, as it saves them reading time, time that could be better employed making something up.

Here’s to the pile of money for movie rights for authors! May Hollywood never realise that they should read the source material.

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Write what you know

Who hasn’t received this sage advice?

What a fantastic way to make a new author feel comfortable writing a story. So in the interests of writing my first thriller I decided I needed to experience a few things.

In any thriller you have to have a hero. So my first stop was Man-Ville. For those unaware what Man-Ville is, basically it is a chain store catering to people who look like they just stepped in from the great outdoors and shave to leave a days worth of stubble. At this store I picked up several necessary supplies: boots, because no man wears anything but; pants that can actually hold a wallet, a pristine condition, SharpenedKnife brand pocket knife and a set of keys that would undoubtedly unlock every door ever made; and a button up shirt that can have the sleeves rolled up. Clothes maketh the man, so now I was a hero. Of course I could have waited to be rescued from a natural disaster and have the media bestow the title of hero upon me for surviving, but I felt it was easier to shop.

With my new attire I am now ready to go to a bar. It is very important to know the ins and outs of every single bar, pub, drinking spot and speak-easy around the area in which your novel is set. It is also a very good chance to pick up some valuable research in one of the key aspects of any thriller, physical violence. I wanted to start out easy and only take on two guys in a pub brawl before working myself up to the impossible odds scenarios expected in fiction.

The next part of my experience necessary for thriller writing came very quickly. Pain in the form of broken bones, bruising and a nasty knife wound were all particularly good experiences. Now when my hero gets hurt I can actually tell that tale from first hand experience. I tried to get someone to shoot me as well, but apparently most people seem more content kicking you repeatedly whilst you are laying unconscious on the ground.

The next step is to be in a car chase, preferably at ridiculous speeds whilst being pursued by ‘bad guys’. Unfortunately I don’t know any people likely to chase me, short of stealing a police car and taunting some traffic police I can’t see a genuine chase ensuing. So I decided to do some high speed driving along the city streets in my Toyota Prius. I really enjoyed taking corners as quickly as possible, driving through intersections with narrow misses all around, and out running an elderly gentleman on his bike.

Now my thriller is partly set in a neighboring galaxy where my hero’s knowledge and skills of current society proves invaluable in a far more advanced alien culture. Obviously space travel is inordinately expensive and time consuming for a first time author, this leaves very few options to suitably experience alien cultures. So in order for me to fully appreciate space adventures, other worlds and live amongst an alien culture, I moved to Siberia. This was a great break from sunny Australia. Siberia also proved a suitable chance for me to tread in the footsteps, or thrust in the manner, of Captain Kirk. Any space hero is required to emulate the ultimate in masculine space heroes. Admittedly Siberian women are not green, more a pale white to light blue.

So now I’m ready to write what I know. Much better idea than doing research.

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A bit about me.

Hi everyone and welcome to my blog.

I suppose I should start off with a little background about myself.

I was born in a small town in rural Western Australia. After spending my formative years growing up on the family farm I was abruptly packed off to boarding school to learn about why the city doesn’t like to spend money on rural schools.

Once at boarding school I discovered my love of being hung from balconies by my feet and being tormented for having an IQ in excess of 100. It was also here that I picked up the invaluable life long habit of procrastination.

After deciding that I didn’t have enough education I gave university a go and diligently proved that you can graduate from a science degree whilst either drunk or hungover. It was during a sober moment at university that I met my future wife and editor when she inexplicably didn’t run away when I introduced myself.

Not satisfied with punishing my liver with a mere Bachelors degree I signed on for a PhD before realising all too late that a PhD wouldn’t grant me the power to write prescriptions. Now highly over-educated and in need of a job I proceeded to move out of the city in order to lower my chances of employment. But, as fate would have it, a job in the government sector hunted me down and has since trapped me in paper work.

It was only then after crawling out from under a very important piece of triplicate I was burying for the requisite ‘filing time’ that I decided to turn one of my hobbies into a career. Since Metallica didn’t need a lead guitarist, and at 1.82m I’m too tall to be an Olympic weightlifter, I decided upon writing.

My first story was written at the age of 9 after discovering Douglas Adams. Like any other preteen, my writings reflected the last thing I had seen on TV. It was in year 7 that my teacher, Mr Melhuish, would encourage my writing further by actually praising it. It only took 22 years for this praise to overcome my diligent procrastination efforts.

I hope this blog will be of interest to some as I journey towards my first novel and beyond. Subscribe, comment and generally tell me how wonderful I am. I’ll try to return the favour.