E-Publications: Are they Elitist?

While publishing trends are moving fast, I find the fact that parents continue to buy print books for reading to their kids comforting. Yeah, I find the overwhelming push towards e-publications disturbing. It makes reading, more and more, a past-time of the "haves", making those among the "haven'ts" do without -- except at school.

I can't think of anything more discouraging and limiting to a love for reading than to confine the excercise to the walls of the classroom.

Maria Zannini, keeper of the newsletter for the Online Writing Workshop for SF, Fantasy and Horror, set my mind along this track. She recently blogged about trends in publishing: The Apocalypse is Closer than You Think. All about e-readers and print trends -- which sent off this train of thought.

I'm finding the trend more than a little disturbing. See, I was one of the poor kids who got hooked into reading by cheap used paperbacks. The fantastic depiction on the cover [A. L. Merritt] attracted my attention at the army surplus store, back when the teachers still had me convinced I didn't know how to read. While my dad searched for the tool he needed, I spent my dime on the book. I still have the poor, battered copy as well as three other Merritt novels. I reread them regularly until when I decided I didn't like the way he portrayed girls. [Now, I re-read one or the other every other year.]

[A side note, the second novel I wrote was a counter to Merritt's need to rescue his beautiful female characters. My female character kept saving the male adventurer protagonist, and, I think, had a scar from getting too close to a knife. Too bad I lost the manuscript over time, but I do remember she had titian hair and green eyes. Wonder, if that was a cliche back then.]

I still have a hard time buying hardcover books, mostly because they don't fit into the chaos of my bookshelves. One hardback I recently bought: Mike Mullin's Ashfall -- about the consequences on a family after the volcano under Yellowstone Park blew its top.

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'Tis the season. I'm making Cavern Between Worlds available for free at Smashwords --
until the end of the season or someone tells me I can't offer it for free.

You don't have to have an e-reader to read it [or any other epub],

you can download it onto your computer ...

and I know you got one of those.

A Scary book for Summer

The Reading for Today ...

Actually the "reading" was from the first part of the week.  I finished reading the young adult book Bad Girls Don't Die by Katie Alender before the NYC son showed up to escape the humidity.  Imagine an atypical town where people live in the same spot for generations.  Next imagine a revengeful ghost seeking to punish townspeople (children) for past slights ... oh okay, for bullying and manslaughter.  Add some good writing and you have one scary book filled with tension as the characters try to solve the mystery of why the main character's sister is acting so strangely.

While every parent is "absentee" to some degree [One can never know everything your kid gets into, and I'm not sure it's healthy to be glued to every part of your child's life.] -- this is another example of casual parenting. The mother is concerned with a promotion at work, and the father is laid up in the hospital by the first "accident" cause by the possessing ghost.  This leaves the high school daughter, Alexis, having to cope with her middle grade sister's increasing strangeness (Kasey).  To make it even more interesting, the two girls live in the house where the first murder/manslaughter took place.

I liked the minimalist rendition of the story arc.  No gore, but plenty strangeness.  The most telling was the changing of Kasey's eyes from blue to green as well as the change in her vocabulary.  There's also the standard stuff like doors opening and slamming on their own.  Water boiling on an unlit stove.  Eerier, was a twelve-year-old's ability to make adults do her bidding.  Alexis manages to put the pieces of the puzzle together, with a little help from unexpected high school allies, in time to save the day.  To say more would be a spoiler.

Perhaps the lack of a firm opening hook was the most surprising here.  The opening page set an eerie atmosphere, and the next page shattered it by explaining that Alexis was into art photography -- in this case taking pictures of a misty moon breaking through a tattered veil.  Later on in the book, Alexis' photography skills become a crucial factor in solving the mystery.

Progress ????

Okay, I sort of tacked an ending on Voices of Ghost Creek.  My first through tenth? ending always stink.  For some reason I just rush at a "power" walk when I should sort of meander a bit to take the time to explain what's going on.  We're talking a few sentences scattered here and there. 

Another problem:  I'm just not an emotional person, and it yells loud and clear in my writing.

So, I need to print the piece today and get it ready for revision when we come back from the family trek.

The other last thing I need to do is send a critique to a critique partner, but I'm having problems explaining why his drunk scenes aren't working even though the premise of his short story is good -- getting caught in conflicting time loops.  I'll worry about that this afternoon.

Trivia ...

We're off to the west coast to visit family ... only problem we couldn't fit a visit to the ocean within the constraints imposed by the garden.  At least, we've been picking a few raspberries as they ripen.