M. K. Theodoratus, Fantasy Writer, blogs about the books she reads--mostly fantasy and mystery authors whose books catch her eye and keep her interest. Nothing so formal as a book review, just chats about what she liked. Theodoratus also mutters about her own writing progress or ... lack of it.

.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

To "e" or "not-to-e"

Publishing:  A major storm hit the blogs over the turf wars between Amazon and Macmillan.  Then, in the middle of the fight, the new multi-tasking I-phone appears.  Somewhere in the hot air, someone must have mentioned my opinion, but I'm going to puff anyway.  The question is: to book or to machine and who gets to make the most money.  

Both print and e technologies have their place, but I was most disturbed by Amazon dropping the Macmillan listings on their service.  Granted it's a stretch, but I still consider that a form a censorship.  Granted you can burn books.  But they can survive, tuck away in a corner, without electricity to keep them going.  I worry about the infrastructure collapsing around us. Rolling black and brown outs happen all to often even at today's usage, and batteries have to be charged somewhere, sometime.

Another thing bothers me:  proprietary technology.  As I understand it, you can only legally buy books to read on your Kindle from Amazon -- and thanks to their software, you can't share.  I don't know the restrictions on the I-phone.  Haven't gone into the details because the technology is too early in its development to get excited.  Sort of like buying a Timex computer or maybe a Commodore 64.

What am I waiting for?  Devices similar to CD players.  I buy the machine, and I can buy the "disk" or download from whomever publishes the thing.  (I'm not holding my breath.)

Progress:  Definitely going sideways, but I still think I'm going forwards.  Emma.  My critique group took a couple chapters, which I thought were done, apart.  Why?  Not enough emotions from Emma in a scary situation.  Oh, I had her trembling in her boots -- once.  Not enough they said.  The other was too much internal dialog.  Since I was looking to chop words out of the long chapters.  I chopped Emma's internal comments about what was going on around her.  Another critiquer is finding also finding ways to improve the manuscript.

So, still revising Emma.  Will probably continue even after I start submitting the idea to agents.

Maren?  My journaling is taking a definite distopian twist.  Worse, Marcus Kloken, Emma's little brother, seems to be the sheriff of Hardscrabble when Maren appears.  May have to give him another name.  Why?  Emma happened a hundred years ago.  Either Maren is also historical (70s or 80s, or maybe 60s) or it's contemporary.

Still, having problems on where to start -- When she's still in her birth world or when she's appears in a modification of ours.  Questions.  Questions.  At least my villain is solidifying, and it's not who I thought.   Oh, the decisions!

Trivia:  I'm still reading, but decided to wait until I finished the book to comment.

No comments: