Friskbiskit

Highlights of Today's Grocery Shopping Trip

I got a bunch of stuff at the store today. I'm particularly excited about the cornish hen stuffed with mushrooms, spinach, asiago cheese and wild rice, the beer battered cod, the lovely golden beets with thei r lovely greens still attached, the blue diamond cheddar and the chicken calzone with pine nuts. Wheeeeee!

Duelling Videos

There are about a million videos set to the song "I Kissed a Boy" by Cobra Starship, which is in response to/parody of "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry. Here are two of them. I like the first one for the energy and the second one because, well, it actually has boys kissing. Which is your favorite?

David and Seth Get Some Love...

...from The Bookkeeper.  Thank you, Rikki, for your lovely review!  And for those who may be wondering, yes, there is more of David and Seth's story in the works.  Stay tuned to Friskbiskit or join my low-traffic newsletter group for updates on new releases.

Look Alikes

Alison Jackson does these great photographs of fake celebrities.  Click on Diana for more.

I've Joined Facebook

And there goes the last of my productivity.  I am having too much fun on Facebook, you guys.  This can only lead to trouble.

Nevertheless if you're also on Facebook and want to say hello, I'm registered there as Anne Harris.

Man Candy Monday

It's another Man Candy Monday, in affiliation with Erotica Cover Watch:

This image, tantalyzingly entitled "Wolf," is ganked, once again, from the dotty pinhole blog.

Book View Cafe on iPhone/Facebook

Book View Café has a partnership with TextOnPhone, which makes an application called Portable Reading for viewing books on the iPhone and on Facebook.  To check out the Facebook app, go here: http://apps.facebook.com/textonphone/

Here are what readers are saying about the BVC offerings on Portable Reading:

**

Need Shadow
Sarah Zettel

JohnH
Thank you, that was beautiful.

**

Still Life With Boobs
Anne Harris

luckypsd
heh read through the obvious and enjoy the nice hidden meanings, well written and a fun read.

naomii_baybee
haha so funny, good book ii spose, wudda liked tu see more of the ending tho but niice job x

beautyfullperla
it was a great short story. this was a diff meaning behind it and i got it lol. read between the lines ppl!

**

Accidental Creatures
Anne Harris

yankeefan
this was a very interesting and thought provoking book. well written

**

Feather of The Phoenix
Katharine Eliska Kimbriel

Snevarez
This is the first Arabic tale I've ever read. It was great, loved it.

sassnfrass
This book was great. I have always love arabic tales.

gweniij
so romantic and adventurous like others i have read loved it

**

Doctor Dodge
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

RichNez
It was a great read loved the ending

karladenise
good book. the ending was good

drzeyez
it was ok. i liked the ending tho

everlas
It was an excellent book. Predictable, but great read.

dolewhite
poignant.

mykisha
good story

A
enjoyable...though predictable...still pleasant

v3nne
i kinda knew death would not be something he expected and at the end when it says loneliness always flees when death is near is so true.

doctordiva
i enjoyed it.

**

Slave Trade
Susan Wright

sari215
i think the story is good but i was hoping for more needs another part

**

Glad Yule
Pati Nagle

reyde1000coronas
good

leslapesla
it was good, just short

lionsmoke
good story

**

Murder in Quotes
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

# imqt2818
interesting ending but not credible that she was the only person who saw stain...made me lose some interest aftr that

# sandy
Fabolous .....Need I Say More....

# machead42
Very good, surprising ending.

**

Blow Job Red
Laura Anne GIlman

simone12
it was ok

1gromit
a good story, well written and interesting. I preferred the emotional/sensual sections more than the 'world' explanations

Galeni
Good story with a different take on space travel. Thought provoking.

Hoody Hoo!

I just finished the first draft of the sequel to Virgin.  Working title, Predator.  Length: 40,000 words.

Yay!

And now, I go to celebrate.

Book View Cafe News

Book View Café now has 500 registered members.  We've been invited to speak at the Library of Congress this spring, and, have I mentioned that we also have a blog?  It's true. Scroll down to read about Vonda McIntyre's stint writing Star Trek Novels, and Jennifer Stevenson's communion with crows.

Lit Soup Book Block Features Virgin

My agent, Jenny Rappaport, has a blog, Lit Soup, and she's been doing this really cool thing where she gives authors a chance to write a post about their recently published book.  I did one for her for Virgin, and it's up today, so go check it out.  And if you're an author with a book out, go check out her book block guidelines, because I hear she's looking for more.

My Trip to California

So, I was out of town for eight days at the beginning of Feb.  (In case you've been wondering, I scheduled a bunch of blog posts ahead of time, something I often do to keep the blog active during busy times.)  I took advantage of a cheap flight and friends and family in southern California to get out of Michigan for a few days of sun.

Well, the sun part only worked out part of the time.  After the first couple of wonderful, bright, 70 degree days, the weather quickly took a turn for the worse and it was in the fifties and rainy most of the rest of the time.  But, the injustice of that notwithstanding, I had a blast.  I hung out with Nica Berry in San Diego, and she took me all around the city and to the zoo, and then I went up to LA where my nephew Adam, his wife Abby, my niece Molly and her husband Matt showed me a wonderful time. We went to the Getty Museum, and Little Tokyo, and I had lunch on Hollywood Blvd. with Tim and Serena Powers, followed by an excursion to the Writer's of the Future Author Services Building, where Tim did a taped interview about Algys Budrys.  And now I"m back again, refreshed.

I left the laptop at home on this trip and I'll tell you, I'm really glad I did.  You know how things creep up on you without you noticing?  I've been letting the internet rule my life.  I was very surprised at how much I did not miss being connected for eight days.  Not worrying about my stats, or whether I might be missing some big opportunity on Twitter or Facebook, was really a nice change of pace.  Now that I'm back at home again, I'm going to try to change my relationship with the web.  Treat it like a tool, instead of the other way around.

For more about my trip, and the pictures I took while I was there, see my Flickr set.

From Books to Bytes in Fifteen Minutes or Less

Ever wonder how existing print books get turned into ebooks?  Well obviously there are a number of different ways.  This article, ganked from TeleRead, talks about a company called Kirtas that makes book scanning devices.  Here's a video of one in action:

Man Candy Monday

Here it is, my contribution to Erotica Cover Watch's Man Candy Monday:

I ganked these from the dotty pinhole blog.

Erotica Cover Watch

Let me tell you about this new site I've found: Erotica Cover Watch.  It's a blog by Mathilde Madden and Kristina Lloyd, two erotica authors who are up in arms about the lack of hot men on the covers of erotica books.  Apparently, unlike in erotic romance, erotica publishers won't put hot men on the covers of their titles because they think it will turn off male customers.  What about women erotica customers?  For that matter, what about underwear advertisements, as ECW commenter Samantha so aptly points out.

To do something about it, they've formed a movement: Banish Inequality on Covers in Erotica, Porn and Smut!  Otherwise known as BICEPS.  If you blog, and you support gender parity in sexualized imagery, as Friskbiskit does, you can join them and get this nifty graphic for your sidebar:

 

Coming Tomorrow: Every week, ECW hosts Man Candy Monday, where they post pics of hot men to prove that guys can be sexy too (duh), and they invite other bloggers to participate.  Stay tuned for Friskbiskit's contribution to the cause.

The New Kindle

Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device goes on sale Feb. 24.  (Full disclosure: I have an Amazon Associates membership and if you follow this link, and eventually buy something from them, I get an itty bit of money.)  The new e-reader is a slimmed down, prettier version of the first generation device, with just two substantial upgrades in functionality.

The new Kindle will read an ebook to you, albeit in a monotone, computer voice.  With the toggle of a switch, you can go from text to audio and back again, each mode picking up at the spot in the text where the last left off. 

This text-to-speech function has prompted the Author's Guild to issue an e-book rights alert, telling authors that "Amazon may be undermining your audio market as it exploits your e-books." 

Whispersync allows you to synchronize multiple Kindles so that you can leave off reading on one, and pick up at the same spot in the same book on another device.  Of course, at $360 a pop, how may Kindles are you likely to have?  The answer is, of course, none.  I love my old school Kindle, but I don't think ereaders will become a real market force until they get down below $200.

Here's an interesting article from the New York Times that analyzes Kindle 2 within the context of the overall struggle for dominance of the ebook market. It contains this quote from the chief exectuive of Simon & Schuster: "“I don’t believe that a new book by an author should ipso facto be less expensive electronically than it is in paper format.”  She's referring to the fact that Amazon offers all best-sellers in ebook format for $9.99, eating any discrepancy between their price point and the list price, for now.  Publishers, as well as the Author's Guild, are concerned that should Amazon's Kindle Store become the iTunes of publishing, they will force publishers to lower their prices.  It's a reasonable fear.

But what I want to know is, why shouldn't an ebook cost less than a paper one?  They cost a lot less to create and distribute.  And if Simon & Schuster can get people to pay print prices for ebooks, will they share all that extra profit with their authors, or keep us at the current royalty rate of 7-10 percent?