various and sundry have five categories today

Happy Easter to my friends and readers who are observing. I hope the services are uplifting, and the baskets are overflowing...


1. Tech.
I have achieved new netbook! After going hands-on with a lot of models, and comparing price-to-tech, I decided to upgrade to the 10" HP Mini. Her name is Seshat and she is quite lovely. Still light (2.5 pounds) and portable, she also has a much larger screen (up from the 7" of Toke) and more comfortable keyboard, Windows rather than Linux so I don't have to hack the apps I wanted [I'm going for workability here, not geek cred}, a good sound system, and a built-in webcam. All for just a smidge more than I originally paid for Toke. I can't wait to see what $300 will buy consumers in a year or two...

2. Contest
Although the Midnight Cravings contest has closed, you still can enter the "plausibility" contest! and win a copy of one of the first three "Retriever" books in mass market!

3. Social
Had dinner last night at Via Emilia with friends visiting from Los Angeles, and kudos to the manager for not kicking us out (we were a group of 12 and probably sounded like 24). The six bottles of wine we ordered probably soothed his nerves quite a bit. Anyway excellent restaurant at reasonable prices, down on 21st and Park Avenue, and I highly recommend the pastas. They only take cash, though, so be prepared.

4. World Events
Although I've been too busy to do more than glance at the news, I am of an age where the mention of modern pirates brings two words to mind: Achille Lauro. Historical Figures aside, I do not like pirates. I do not find them romantic, or inspiring. I find them reprehensible and worthy of being smacked into a pike-studded wall. And I fear we will see more, not less, as the financial crisis goes on. I almost feel the urge to write about it...but every time I think about starting another short story I am reminded of the others still waiting their turn, for when I get out from under these novel deadlines.

Which leads me to 5. Writing
Unable to make the world take a time-out and straighten up, I dealt with what I can control -- the writing.
I've figured out what was broken in PACK OF LIES and am slowly rebuilding it be better, fast,er, stronger, and longer. On the drive home from Boston on Friday, I started thinking out loud about Vineart 2, much the way I had done previously on that same drive regarding Vineart 1, thinking out Major Points and letting the smaller details rise to the fore, as they often do. My mother sat in the back seat and scribbled down what seemed to be the salient points [I used to have a minicorder for this sort of thing, but it disappeared a few years ago].

Saturday morning, I sat down at my desk and started typing up sort of free-form what I had been vocalizing about the plot. Of course, as often happens, the writing of book 1 has completely changed what I planned to do in book 2 -- so I've been performing terrible genetic experiments, making a hybrid of the original outline and the revised ideas. And -- thank god -- the fire lit in me and I started to get excited about writing this book. Which is good, because that's all I'm going to be doing for six months after I finish PACK OF LIES and MUSTANG.....

Today, I am off to the Park with my outline and Puppy! to see if I can manage both productivity and exercise...

WTF Amazon?

EtA: This is all breaking news and the updates are coming too fast for me, at least, to keep up. The alarm went up in the LGBT community but it seems to have spread to anything that has any overt inklings of even slightly non-straight or overtly non-vanilla sexuality (including the Kushiel books). A quick looks shows that my books are still listed, as are Anne Bishop's books, even the ones that involve the sexual abuse of an underage child. EtA: Lynn Flewelling is waiting to see if they go after her books next. If they do, and my books remain listed... my books are slightly more explicit than hers, only difference is mine are m/f and hers are m/m.

Meta Writer seems to be on top of it, so I point you there or to Dear Author or Smart Bitches

My comments below stand. I will not buy there, I will not send people there, I will not include them in any of my announcement links. Until they get the head back on the chicken that's running that place, they are dead to me.




ETA: on the road. updates when I'm home.

Via EBear, via http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11369.html:

"If you write books with homosexual characters, read books with homosexual characters, please look at this: http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html

Mark, Erastes, and Alex (among others) had their Amazon sales rankings removed over the last few days for The Filly, Transgressions and False Colours respectively. On enquiring about this, Mark was told the following:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

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suri here. it seems, at first glance, that the only books getting hit with "adult" ratings are those dealing with homosexual or transgender characters -- even if the books are YA. I haven't had a chance to check into this further (pending a call in to romance editors on Monday) but I haven't heard of mainstream 'sexy' or 'adult' books getting the same treatment.

Amazon, being a privately-owned company, is free to make whatever marketing decisions they choose to. And I, being a private citizen, am free to make whatever buying decisions I choose to. And until this is reversed -- or applied across the board to any book that has adult material -- which would include my own! -- I will not be buying from Amazon; not books, not music, not anything. And certainly not a Kindle. And I will be telling Corporate Headquarters of my decision.

You might want to do the same, if you're feeling the same disgust at their actions....

I love the smell of PR flacks sweating in the evening...

Amazon Says Glitch to Blame for "New" Adult Policy
By Rachel Deahl & Jim Milliot

A groundswell of outrage, concern and confusion sprang up over the weekend, largely via Twitter, in response to what authors and others believed was a decision by Amazon to remove adult titles from its sales ranking. On Sunday evening, however, an Amazon spokesperson said that a glitch had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new adult policy.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6651080.html


Of course, this does not explain why authors who queried were told by Amazon reps that 'adult' material" was being excluded from appearing in "some searches and best seller lists" as a "consideration of our entire customer base." I'll be very interested what glitch explains that....