That would be a series of blog posts, but this one is about the Amazon-Hachette dust up. David Gaughran says it better than I can.
The Amazon-Hachette dispute has caught the media’s attention. But what about the story the media refuses to cover?
The media is more concerned with one-sided accounts of Amazon’s perceived actions – when no one really knows the exact nature of the dispute.
Just couldn't pass up highlighting this.
Sometimes, the sound and fury of an uninformed pseudo-critic should be ignored, because that lessens their impact. When someone attempts to condemn an entire genre on the basis of one book, it is too familiar, an ill-informed position we've seen too often in the last few weeks.
After almost losing her Uncle Phen during the investigation of her mother’s murder, Felicia “Lucky” Fascino cut all ties and ran away, hoping her family would move on and forget the promises they made. Putting the past behind her has never been easy, but Lucky knows the job is slowly destroying her already fractured psyche. Staying away, especially now that her family is in danger, is the only way to keep everyone safe.
Kenji Zinn, determined to locate his ex-lover, tracks Lucky to a small island with her family’s help, and finds her in a miserable and self-destructive condition. His connection to her is strained after months apart but his feelings haven’t change, and he attempts to persuade her to come home, to protect her family and keep her promise. Despite her obvious mental fatigue, only Phen is able to convince her that the way to get closure is finding an elusive man named Quimby and take him out permanently.
Once home, Lucky breaks it off with Kenji, and agrees to go back to work if Phen promises to let her go when it’s done. While her family continues to track their target, Lucky returns to work for the network—struggling through each job, aware that pushing her family away won’t bring anyone the peace they deserve. As she begins to repair her shattered relationships, her true feelings for Kenji are tested when she almost loses him completely. Before it’s too late, Lucky realizes he’s her best ally to help her finish what she started and find Quimby before he strikes again.
Excerpt 2Lucky and Kenji regroup after taking out an obstacle…
“That’s about as bad as it gets. Most of my marks are from a distance,” Lucky said with a shrug of her shoulders. “Up close and I tend to get….”
“Forceful.”
“Brutal, Kenji. I wanted him to hurt. I had to walk away, afraid I was going to pummel him just for the hell of it.” Her body shuddered under his hands.
“You were not brutal. You did what you needed to do.”
“I didn’t need to kill him. I wanted to.” She stepped back out of his grasp and walked to the bed. “I’m not some sadistic fuck who gets off on hurting people, but sometimes…and with you there this time….” When she sat down, she pulled her legs to her chest. “Everything that happened yesterday, being with you in the field and letting you see me that way….”
“The last few days have been taxing,” he said, sitting beside her. She reached the edge of every thought but held back, afraid to speak her mind. He kept his distance despite the desire to hold her.
“I’m still trying to wade through it all.” She put her head on her knees. “What were you thinking, after I killed him?”
“I thought you extracted all you could from him and finished the job.”
She turned her head to face him, seemingly agitated. “Then what were you feeling?”
“Satisfied it was over and impressed with your methods.”
Felicia huffed, got up from the bed, and started to walk away. He grabbed her wrist. “Let go.”
He held tighter and stood. “What do you want to know, Felicia? Stop being vague.” “How did you feel toward me?” Her voice was heated, sharp. “You were watching me like a hawk.”
“Mostly, I admired your abilities and thought of little else. There were moments I felt intimidated, other times aroused. Watching you overpower and manipulate that man was invigorating.”
“Why were you intimidated?”
“The way you handled the situation astounds me. I was not needed, yet you allowed me to help.”
She broke from his grip and walked to the opposite side of the room. He stood, silently waiting to see what she’d do. Rubbing the back of her neck, she turned around with wide eyes.
“After all that, you still want me.”
“I have never wanted you more.”
Jenn’s love of writing started the year she received her first diary and Nancy Drew novel. Throughout her teenage years, she kept a diary of her personal thoughts and feelings but graduated from Nancy Drew to other mystery suspense novels.
Jenn often adds a thriller and suspense element to anything she writes be it Romance, Science Fiction, or Fantasy. When not writing, she spends her time reading, observing pop culture, playing with her two dogs, and working on various charitable projects in her home state of New Jersey.
Website: www.jennnixon.comIn the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, a challenge for the first privately funded team to transport a robotic spacecraft to the moon and send video, images, and data back to Earth, there are some big players with a lot of manpower. Competitors in the challenge, launched in 2007, include Moon Express, a lunar transportation and data company based at NASA's Silicon Valley research park; Synergy Moon, a nonprofit initiative with working groups toiling away in 15 countries; and Earthrise Space, which has a NASA contract to provide data from its first mission to the moon.
J. A. Konrath tells us to Tend Our Garden.
Your ebooks function much like a garden.
One rare occassions, a plant will thrive with little help from you.
Others may whither and die no matter how much help you give them.
Hugh Howey talks about how to follow someone, but I don't think he's really talking about espionage.
One of my favorite movies of all-time is The Zero Effect. If you haven’t seen it, you really should. Absolutely brilliant. One of the best scenes has Daryl Zero (played by Bill Pullman) explaining the trick to following someone without getting caught. It’s simple, he says. You just get where they’re going before they do.
Over at Marketing for Romance Writers Blog, Emerald tells us how to get the most out of their Facebook page.
So far in this series, I’ve talked a lot about things I do from the moderator side of the MFRW Facebook group. I’m shifting gears a little bit today to offer some recommendations for potential and current group members to get the most out of being a member of the group and using Facebook to help market your work.
I have a special place in my heart for the nerds in the world. The socially awkward, the ones too smart to tie their own shoes. So of course I have to write about them. This is a first in a series called Nerds Saving the World.
License to NerdMadison West walked down Main Street, Mill Hall, towards the one person who could help her. The one person with such a unique skill set, that no one else could duplicate. A skill set acquired doing things even she didn't have enough security clearance to know about.
Who would have thought he could be in small town New Jersey? Why wasn't he doing something for the government instead of helping his brothers run a two-bit detective agency? That, Madison thought, was probably a story for another day.
Right now, she needed him for a case. Her last case, she reminded herself. She was not going to work for the government anymore.
Not that he would know her real agenda. No, she had to play this as if she was just looking for Charlie.
With the sun in her face, she strode down the sidewalk looking for Quincy Detective Agency. She found it in a brick building that stood apart from those on either side, creating two alleys. She ducked into one of them to think once again about what she would say to Peter Quincy when she saw him for the first time in, well, since she married her husband.
Dear Author has a post about Ellora's Cave not paying their authors royalties in a timely manner and contract changes at Samhain.
The rise of self publishing hasn’t just affected traditional print publishers. In fact, with the rate of ebook adoption slowing many observers suggest the numbers indicate we’re reaching a plateau. One of the less publicized victims of the sea changes occurring in publishing is the digital first publisher.
I was supposed to have two interviews to post on her this week, but I can find no evidence that I e-mailed them back with their dates.
So the lack of posts are my fault. Instead I may give you a sneak peak of my next book out, License to Nerd. I'm hoping to get it out before the end of May.
Last week my author rock stars were up to their usual shenanigans.
J. A. Konrath wrote about Ug and Zug's One Stop Wheel Shop.
Hmm could this be a metaphor for publishing?
In the year 3330BC...
After painstakingly hand-carving a wheel out of redwood--a process that took three months--longtime employee KOR rolls it over to his corporate masters, UG and ZUG, to show off his work.
The Passive Voice has a great mashup of stories including Amazon and Cosmixology, and is the future of books paper?
Marketing for Romance Writers Blog wrote about loglines this week.
This post is syndicated from Whitley Gray: The Logline--Who Needs It? How Can I Write One?
This is right up there with synopsis and query and cover letter. It’s the secret weapon that says you know what your story is about and can sum it up in one sentence. It’s the jewel you can memorize and blurt out at any time.
This week Hugh Howey blogged about goals versus dreams.
My goal was to write and complete a single novel. My dream was to be an international bestselling author.
