Archive for the ‘Book Chat’ Category

It’s a bird…. no, it’s a plane… no! It’s a post from ME! Sound the alarms… bring out the donuts! *grin*

I know – it’s like I disappeared off the blogging planet. The truth is, I’ve been in a reading funk. But the first step to fixing it? I hear it is admitting it! or something. With the help of a little poking from a friend on twitter, I decided today would be the day I step back into my blogging shoes… or fuzzy slippers as they may be and just write what I have been thinking. Basically.. how did I get into this funk!??! I think I have read may 4 books over the last 2 months…. I was reading 2-3 books a week at one point.

The first thing to consider when questioning why a blogger may be in a funk…. what is going on in my life? Is something I am doing causing me to be in a funk? But really.. the answer is no. Life is pretty much the same as it always has been… the exception that I actually have had more time to read over the summer and plenty of opportunity since I find myself at the gym quite a bit. The kids may drive me batty with their bickering, but they are easy enough to send to their room and let myself cuddle up with my Kindle.

Is it just me? Maybe I need to take a break and stop reading and recollect myself? Maybe I burnt myself out reading 300+ books since I got my Kindle? I took a good hard look at this one, because its possible! Yet, I don’t think its the number one factor. Yes, I read a lot and needed a break.. I’ve taken a bit of one by reading less… by not accepting every review offered to me so I don’t feel obligated. Yet some books I’ve picked up lately, I just felt “meh” about anyway. At the same time, at least one book I picked up over the last 2 months I absolutely LOVED.

What all this rambling comes down to is this…. I think my tastes as a reader have evolved. I have read some really fantastic books over the last year. Moira Rogers, Jim Butcher, Ilona Andrews, Shiloh Walker… all authors that have absolutely blown me away in one way or another with their work. The more I read from them, and other authors of their caliber, the higher I set my standards for a book. At first, I thought maybe this is a bad thing? Maybe they are artificially inflating my expectations for their respective genres?

But really, how could expecting great reads be too much? Why should I settle for things that are “meh” or good when I know there is better waiting for me? The more I think about it, the more I feel this is where I am at. Will I eventually want to spend my time on the just “good enough” ..? I am sure I will. But for now, I want to be completely captivated and blow away when I pick up a book. I want that feeling that you get when you can not bear to set a book down, splashing cold water on your face at 3 am because you do not want to sleep til you get to the next chapter. Maybe this is too much to ask… but then I have to ask you… why would it be?

I’ve been quiet around these parts lately… I am sure you are wondering why. The truth is, picking up a book has been painful… nothing seems to grab my attention. I don’t know if the craptastic Bullet is to blame or if I am just in a slump, but I think it is time for me to take a break from paranormal romance.

So… I am introducing Turn Me On Tuesday… a day where I try to find new books and authors I haven’t heard of before but want to start reading. I am hoping I can turn you on to something new… get it? hah. If you have someone you think I would like, please contact me and let me know! I am especially interested in male UF writers or male UF points of view.

Anyway, today’s Turn Me On Tuesday book is….

Title: Sandman Slim
Author Richard Kadrey
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publication Date: 1st Aug. 2009

Summary:
Supernatural fantasy has a new antihero

Life sucks, and then you die. Or, if you’re James Stark, you spend eleven years in Hell as a hitman before finally escaping, only to land back in the hell-on-earth that is Los Angeles.

Now Stark’s back, and ready for revenge. And absolution, and maybe even love. But when his first stop saddles him with an abusive talking head, Stark discovers that the road to absolution and revenge is much longer than you’d expect, and both Heaven and Hell have their own ideas for his future.

Resurrection sucks. Saving the world is worse.

Darkly twisted, irreverent, and completely hilarious, Sandman Slim is the breakthrough novel by an acclaimed author

Next In Series:
Kill the Dead – October 5, 2010

I just started this one this morning and already love it. Great opening paragraph/quote and it has already used the phrase “asshole of creation”. Fingers crossed it continues to rock.

Oh and as a side note… I am over at MamaKitty‘s book blog talking about why I love to read today, stop by and say something!

Hey look at me, I finished a challenge! Woot! Now where are my cookies? I was promised cookies.

Timeline: 01 Jan 2010 – 31 Dec 2010 Rules: To read TWELVE (12) thrillers in 2010 1. Happy Hour of the Damned 2. Beneath the Skin 3. Road Trip of the Living Dead 4. Dead to Me 5. Deader Still 6. Shift 7. Dead Matter 8. Battle of the Network Zombies 9. and FALLING, fly 10. Silver Borne 11. Changes 12. Magic Bleeds

I was talking with a friend through email a while ago about Urban Fantasy books and we were discussing how they are almost always a series and never a finished one! Sometimes an Urban Fantasy series goes on well past its’ prime (I’m looking at you Laurell K Hamilton) but mostly we celebrate not having to let go of our favorite characters and move on to something new. We UF lovers are all so dysfunctional that we love the torture of a good cliffhanger or a long drawn out plot line.

Yet, I can’t be alone in that sometimes I wish I had a series I could read start to finish and be done with it, completed. Right now to get that closure I have to jump genres to paranormal romance or contemporary romance, but why can’t we have that in Urban Fantasy? Surely there are some well written series that aren’t never ending? Looking through my Goodreads lists I did find three Urban Fantasy series that are finishing up this year.

Rachel Caine’s Weather Wardens

Book 9 is releasing on August 3rd and will be the last one. While I will miss Jo and David, it feels like the right time to say goodbye. Jo has been put through hell and back over and over again, she deserves a little quiet time

Keri Arthur’s Riley Jenson

Book 9, Moon Sworn, released May 25th and marked the end of Riley Jenson’s story. These are technically Urban Fantasy but they lean pretty heavily toward Paranormal Romance in my opinion, lots of explicit sex in many of them.

Jenna Black’s Morgan Kingsley

The last book, The Devil’s Playground, released March 23rd but I believe it was ended by the publisher, not because the author was finished with the series. Because of that I don’t know how much closure there is… I haven’t gotten around to reading the last book yet.

So, can you help me out? Do you know of any completed urban fantasy series we must read??

And before you even say it, no…. we are not talking about the sexy pirates. Tho I do love a good sexy pirate… especially if he is all scruffy and can talk with an accent of some kind….. hmm pirates… *dreamy look*

Anyway, before I get distracted by the idea of sexy pirates, let me say I am very happy to have a special guest posting here at KindleVixen today. The Mighty Buzzard graciously agreed to stop by and talk about ebooks with me. I am sure you are all tired of hearing me rant and rave on twitter about them and the new Agency Pricing Model that is looming over our heads today. The Buzzard brings up some great points, if only the publishers would listen. So thanks to him for being here…. take it away sexy techy dude… (I love a man who can make use of a good formula).

There’s been a lot of chatter lately about REP. It’s gotten me to thinking about ebooks in general and piracy. Now I could go off on a rant but I’ve been coding a lot lately, so I’m going to go for logic this time even though there’s been no evidence that publishers are swayed by things like that.

Publishers, you are competing with piracy. It makes no difference that you have legal right to distribute the material and they don’t, they’re still competition. Further, they’re not going away. If the RIAA and MPAA combined can’t do a damned thing to even slow piracy, you’re certainly not going to with much shallower pockets. You have to offer more value than pirates if you want to make a sale.

Let’s have a go at the math behind this nebulous term “value”. Start off with the value of the content of an ebook to the customer (Its value to you doesn’t matter. At all.), call it $C for content. We also need to value the convenience of the distribution method for the customer, call it $E, because their time and effort is valuable to them. We’ll need to valuate any moral repulsion they have to violating copyright and not contributing anything to the author (Yes, only the author. Customers don’t give two shits about publishers.), call it $M. Of course we need the price of the book, $P. Because you seem to want to use the hell out of it lately, set $F equal to the fear of jail/lawsuits. Conversely, there is the defiance of heavy-handed methods that the user feels, or $D. One last bit, cross-title (hopefully) targeted advertising on the site of purchase, $A. Believe it or not, this last one does have value to the customer as well as to you; they want to be able to find other books they’d like.

So we have for publishers legit distribution chanels:
$C + $E + $A – $P – $D = total value to customer

and from piratical channels:
$C + $E + $A – $M – $F = total value to customer

Recognize that since we have factored in morals and fear, the customer will be going with the choice with higher value every single time. Now $C is the same value in both channels, so we can effectively discount it for this discussion but you should keep in mind that it exists when considering the math of release windows because you set $C to zero if you don’t release what the customer wants before the pirates.

In $A, you should have an incredible advantage over piracy but you seem to not want to invest much into it. So you have only a very small advantage that you could lose at any time.

Using $F as a method of devaluing piratical distribution channels hasn’t worked very well for movies or music. Do you assume that you have some innate attribute that will cause it to work for you? Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But let’s assume a very small positive value here just for argument’s sake even if it will increase $D for a good chunk of potential customers.

Experience has shown that you can increase $M by getting authors to connect positively with their fans. Negative comments from authors or publishers have no effect on $M and serve only to increase $D. Always. Every. Single. Time.

Increasing $E is the most important place you really should be able kick the hell out of the pirates but you’ve instead chosen to let them have an overwhelmingly commanding lead because of the need to control the material through DRM and exclusive hardware. People want to be able to get a book in a click or two and they’d like to be able to shift format for use on their device of choice. Forget control. It’s an illusion. You never had it and you never will. Worry about your total value to customer. If it’s higher than the pirates’, you will win.

Lastly, there’s $P. Pirates will always have the advantage over you here, what with $P being zero in their case. So, tell me, how does increasing $P, thereby decreasing your total value to customer, help you compete?

I’m not going to bother summarizing. I don’t feel like going back through all that and shortening it to fit in one paragraph. Make yourself some bullet points or an outline or something. Office guys like that kind of crap.

~The Mighty Buzzard