Well ...

... my Cybook should have finished charging by now. So, Caribbean Mystery, here I come! :)

My Cybook's Stuck

Okay. Not really. It has just run out of power (when I was about to finish Agatha Christie's THE CLOCKS -- duh. I had to finish reading the book on the computer). Connecting the reader to a power source for a few moments finally allowed me to switch it off. It's now happily charging and the afternoon which I wanted to spent reading is now gaping emptily ahead of me.

Double duh.

I might have to resort to desperate measures: I might have to clean my flat. Oh no!

Norbert Davis, The Doan & Carstairs Series

If there ever were books written to resemble a mad rollercoaster ride it is Norbert Davis's Doan & Carstairs series. Not only is one of the protagonists a really big Great Dane, but the cast of characters of each story resembles a bunch of lunatics and, moreover, the novels don't follow any sort of narrative conventions. As a result you can never be sure what's going to happen next, and villains are revealed in the manner of white rabbits drawn out of black hats. Reading those novels leaves you somewhat breathless -- but also wheezing with mirth. They're all wonderfully whacky and fiendishly funny!

The first book in the series, THE MOUSE IN THE MOUNTAIN, published in 1943, is set in Mexico: the book opens with the arrival of a bus in front of a hotel and a group of tourists that board the bus to travel to the small, picturesque village Los Altos for some sightseeing. Yet the private detective Doan -- "He was short and a little on the plump side, and he had a chubby, pink face and a smile as innocent and appealing as a baby's. He looked like a very nice, pleasant sort of person, and on rare occasions he was." -- and his dog Carstairs, a fawn-coloured Great Dane -- "Carstairs was so big he could hardly be called a dog. He was a sort of new species." -- aren't the only unusual passengers on that bus: there are also the Henshaw family with their horrid son Mortimer, the rich heiress Patricia Van Osdel and her entourage (consisting of a starchy maid and a Greek loverboy), and school teacher Janet Martin, who has studied the diaries of one of Cortez's lieutenants and has come to Mexico to explore the places he described. Last but not least, there's their driver Bartolome, "accent on the last syllable, if you please -- chauffeur licensed and guide most qualified, with English guaranteed by the advanced correspondence school, conversational and classic."

Much to poor Bartolome's dismay, the magnificent sightseeing-tour (with comments!) soon deteriorates into a nightmare when they arrive in Los Altos: not only is a minor rebellion going on, and a murder as well as the army on the loose, but to make matters worse, an earthquake cuts the village off from the rest of the world, and nobody can tell any longer who is friend or foe. Strange new characters turn up in the streets of Los Altos, and Janet even meets a descendant of her lieutenant, while Mortimer plunders the crumbled stores in the village. Soon more and more bodies are discovered, forcing Doan and Carstairs to play cat and mouse with the murderer -- and the army!

~*~

Norbert Davis's Doan and Carstairs books make for great reads. THE MOUSE IN THE MOUNTAIN was followed by SALLY'S IN THE ALLEY (1943) and OH, MURDERER MINE! (1946). They're all available for free download from Many Books, or you can buy print versions from the Rue Morgue Press (also available on amazon).

The Cybook in Action

I've been using my brandnew e-reader for several days now and I'm loving it! At the very beginning I still suffered from something like reading-vertigo (due to the fact that I couldn't feel the book and hence my progress in the story while reading it -- rather curious, isn't it? I would've never thought that feeling the book is such an important part of the reading experience!), but by now I've become quite used to reading e-books and watching the book progress bar at the bottom of a page.

I love how easy it is to download and store books on the Cybook. By browsing sites like Project Gutenberg or Many Books, I've already discovered several new-to-me authors -- the most exciting find so far is probably Norbert Davis and his hilarious Doan & Carstairs detective series (Carstairs is a Great Dane) (a really big Great Dane *g*) (I'll write a blog about this series soon), which starts with The Mouse in the Mountain (1943).

Navigation on the Cybook is easy, though somtimes I would wish for some short-cuts (e.g. back to the Library). When you switch on the reader, it takes about 20-30 seconds to boot and meanwhile entertains you by showing the image from the cardboard box in which it arrived:

... still booting ...

And then -- voilà -- the Library. This is the 20-items-per-page display, which I prefer to the 5-items-per-page (see next picture) or the 10-items-per-page. You get to see the covers of your e-books and the first few words of the title. Structuring your Library is a bit of a problem at the moment, because the Cybook doesn't yet support folders apart from the basic e-books, images, music, fonts, system. At the moment I'm sorting the Library by file name and add genre and author to the file name before uploading the book in question (e.g. the file of The Mouse in the Mountain is named Mysteries-Davis-Doan&Carstairs1-MouseInTheMountain.prc), thus creating some sort of systematic order.

When you arrive at the Library, the last book you've opened is highlighted. Then you only have to press the "okay" button and you're taken to the last page you've read. (Or at least you're supposed to be taken to the last page you've read -- sometimes, after several hours of reading, the Cybook is confused about pages. Sometimes, after several hours of reading you also can't place bookmarks any longer. But this only happens occasionally; it's not something that greatly disturbs your reading experience.

A big advantage of the Cybook is that you can change fonts and font sizes. I prefer reading with a relatively small size to make the most of the screen, but the larger ones must be a real blessing for readers with bad eyesight.

Most of the navigation on the Cybook is done with the square silver button on the front and the itty-bitty button inside the silver square: right / down takes you one page forward, left / up one page back. When there are hyperlinks on the page, up / down takes you through the links.

The button inside the square acts as "okay" or "Menu" button, depending on where you are, e.g., while reading a book, it makes the context menu pop up. In the context menu you can change fonts, font sizes, the layout of the page (with/without header, book progress bar, justified text, bold text), you can add bookmarks, go back to the beginning of the book, go to a specific page (well, when you're reading Mobipocket files, which are displayed without page numbers on this reader, you have to make an educated guess), switch to the look-up mode (another interesting feature: if you've got a dictionary on your device, it allows you to look up words in that dictionary), or go back to the Library. Some choices in the context menus will make another context menu pop up, which can make navigation a big awkward.

The buttons on the left side are "Music", "Menu", "Back" and "Delete File" (the latter is not yet activated). All in all, the buttons have a cheap look and feel, and after only one week of heavy use, the silver paint on the square button on the front begins to come off: on the ridge of the right side (i.e. "Page Forward") there's now a small stripe of black, which is only going to become bigger with time. Hmph.

As you can see I've made my peace with the black cover: after the stink of the dye (or whatever produced that horrid, chemical smell) has worn off, it is very comfortable to use. The leather is smooth and soft and very nice to touch, and the sling-thingy on the right is far less irritating when reading than I feared. Yay! In addition, the reader is now somewhat protected and I no longer handle it as if it were made of eggshells. (Though I'm still reluctant to carry it with me in my purse. The only time I did take it with me to show it to a friend, I wrapt the whole thing in some long johns -- well, it was very cold that day and Petra might have suggested a walk, so the long johns would have come in handy. One needs to be prepared, right?)

As I said at the beginning, I love reading books on the Cybook, even if there are a few things that are not ideal about this reader. But I'm definitely sold on e-books now! :)

Surprising Revelations

Relaxing can be quite hard. So this week, I'm reading, catching up on sleep, and trying not to worry / freak out about stuff I need to do. But the latter has proven suprisingly difficult. Hmm. [Note to self: This is ridiculous. Need to relax more often!]

E-books are more fun than I've ever thought. Just imagine: when you're in the mood for a nice, cozy mystery and don't have any standing around on your bookshelves and, drat, it's Sunday or a bank holiday and the shops are all closed, all you need to do is hop online, go to the site of one of the umpteen e-book sellers and buy a book. Or go to one of the umpteen sites that offer free e books. Within minutes you can download the novel of your choice and start reading. It's perfect! It's lovely! It's absolutely wonderful!

So far I've read

• P.G. Wodehouse, RIGHT-HO, JEEVES!
• Lucy Gordon, THE ITALIAN'S WIFE BY SUNSET
• Linda Howard, MACKENZIE'S MOUNTAIN
• Agatha Christie, THE THIRD GIRL
• Agatha Christie, MISS MARPLE'S FINAL CASES
• Shirley Damsgaard, WITCH WAY TO MURDER

And at the moment, I'm enjoying Norbert Davis, THE MOUSE IN THE MOUNTAIN. :)

More detailed reports will follow soon!

Happy Holidays!

As you might know, in Germany Santa Clause or the Christkind (Baby Jesus) brings us our presents on Christmas Eve. Therefore, if you go to my website, you'll find a special Christmas present for the subscribers to my newsletter in the Members Section: the first three chapters of BEWITCHED as a pdf file, available for downloading. -- Enjoy & happy holidays to all of you! :)

Thanks bunches!!!

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A big thank you to all who came and cheered me up when I was in revision hell! And another big thank you to everybody who offered advice on scenes, looked up words and adviced me against garbled animal methaphors! :) It was all very much appreciated! *mmmwah*

Introducing the Cybook

So last week I finally got my Cybook Gen 3, the new e-reader from Bookeen. Since this is my first e-reader EVAH!, I was extremely excited and documented each step of the unravelling of the FedEx package:

The FedEx package:

If you open it on one side and peer inside,

that's what you see:

And here's the Cybook box itself (pretty cool, eh?):

And inside this box, there's another white box.

And when you opened it, you're presented with this view:

The leather cover for the device

(they actually sent me the wrong cover: not chocolate brown, but executive black - grrrr)

And here's the Cybook itself in its pink protection foam bag:

And here it is! The Cybook!!!

(There's still the protective foil on the screen, hence the reflection.)

Like the Sony, the Iliad and the Kindle it uses the e-ink technology, which makes reading the screen so comfortable and comparable to reading a print book. The Cybook is slightly smaller than a normal massmarket paperback and the mantle of the unit is made of plastic -- a lot of people have commented that this makes the device look cheap. Still, the overall design is rather nice (especiall when compared to the butt-ugly Kindle!!!), even if the main navigation button at the front is perhaps not ideally placed.

The Cybook is very light and very thin. It reads txt, html, pdf, and prc (Mobipocket) files; as well as jpg, gif, png and MP3 files (i.e. you can listen to music while reading). The internal storage memory is 64 MB. However, storage size can be extended with a 2 GB SD card. The device is charged via USB (either by connecting it to the PC or to a USB charger), and the battery, according to the Bookeen website, will last up to 8000 page turns (i.e. screen refreshes).

You can upload books to the Cybook either via USB (the computer treats the Cybook like a storage device) or you can put them on the SD card. The whole uploading process couldn't be easier, really!

So far I've read 1 1/2 books on the Cybook and I have to say it makes for very comfortable reading indeed, I haven't experienced any sort of eyestrain whatsoever: the screen isn't really white, but more grayish in colour (like a newspaper) and the resulting contrast between the black letters and gray background is rather nice. Still, as a first-time e-book reader I found it somewhat strange to read without being able to feel how I'm progressing through the book. Funny, isn't it? I would have never thought that this aspect of reading is so important to me. But I'm sure in time I'll get used to reading on the Cybook without suffering from a slight vertigo. :)

Some negative points:

• The organization of the library: at the moment library folders are not supported, thus in order to find a book you have to click through the pages of the library (now imagine if you're using your SD card and have thousands of books show up in the library!)
• A minor irritation: the Cybook doesn't always turn the page when you press the relevant button
• Another minor irritation: you have to press the SD card really far into the card slot to make it lock. (At first I actually thought my device wouldn't take the card, but after some minor panic attacks, I tried again this morning and it worked like a charm when I used my fingernail to push the card in)
• A major irritation: Bookeen's customer service. Or rather, their momentary lack of customer service: they don't seem to answer e-mails from customers (or at least not on a regular basis), and what's worse they don't keep customers informed, e.g. about changes in shipping dates. And even though the Terms of Trade on their website explicitely state that in case one of the products is not avaible and has to be replaced by another, they will send an e-mail to the customer, we did not receive any sort of prior information about the exchange of the brown leather cover to the black one. Indeed, there wasn't even a note in the Cybook box to explain the switch. Hello? You can't just send a completely different product to your customers. On Saturday I sent an e-mail to Bookeen to complain about this switch, but who knows when or if it will ever be answered... Duh.

Update: I've just got an e-mail from Bookeen about the cover. Good!

DONE!!!!!!

I iz happy now. :)

I even think my readers might actually survive the experience of reading my next book! Yay!

Of course I now feel as if a load of bricks had dropped onto my head. But nothing new there! He.

How to Kill an Eeeeeevuhl Plant, Part 2

Remember the eeeevuhl plant? Well, I've decided not to kill it with a sword after all and not use a spade either (the sword wouldn't have only been a deux ex machina, but also completely ridiculous -- hence no sword). Instead, I now use a machete (and salt and lime water) to get rid of the nasty thing. :)

Page 303 -- wheee! There's a light at the end of the tunnel!

Page 253 -- Chapter 17

.... starts with "It was a long time until he composed himself."

I successfully dealt with the evil sorcerer last night and worked on my hero's inner thoughts in Chapter 16 this morning so that he longer looks like a "wafflling jerk" (my editor's words) (hmmm, what exactly does "to waffle" mean? Need to look this up). I guess I've managed to make him look like a pigheaded mutthead (mixed animal metaphors, ahoy! Laura will love this! hehe) instead.

Now I just need to work on the boundaries and definitions of blood magic and Bob will be my uncle.

If I'm really lucky, I'll even manage to get to the love scene in the snow today! Whee!

Btw, does anybody know what duvets were called in the early 19th century??? Is "featherbed" a mattress, or can it also be used for a blanket (filled with feathers)?

Revisions Interim Report

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I've reached page 232. Not too bad, I guess. At the moment I'm working on the evil sorcerer. In the original manuscript I had a buy-one-get-one-free evil sorcerer, now there's just one evil guy. (Why I invented the other man in the first place is beyond me, really.) (On the other hand, there are several things about this ms that are truly beyond me!)

But remember that last scene* I wrote before handing in the ms back in March? It's not as bad as I thought it was. Yay! Miracles do happen!

* This is the blog post the people at Rambert were channelling when the put up a blog on their website. Now somebody only needs to tell them that it's no fun if they're not updating said blog on a regular basis!

Wheee!!!

My Cybook has just arrived! *doing another happy dance* At the moment it's charging, so I'll have to wait until this evening to upload stuff and download the books I bought in the past few days from Fictionwise. The reader looks really cool, is very thin, and extremely light. I can't wait to try it out!

BUT --

Bookeen's customer support is beyond the pale: when I ordered the Cybook, my order page on the Bookeen website showed 5 December as shipping date. It finally shipped yesterday, after the original shipping date had vanished from the website without any sort of explanation.

In addition, I received a black cover for the reader, whereas the cover I ordered was chocolate brown (it's also a different model, so I assume they've run out of their own covers and got additional stock from M-Edge). Again, no explanation.

I find this unacceptable.

Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's

On the website of PJSM Prints, which Pratchett uses for updates and news about his work, he has announced that he has been diagnosed "with a very rare form of earlyonset Alzheimer's." I'm in shock and I actually cried when I heard about this. As you know, he is one of my favourite authors. Heck, he is a genius!

Wheee!

I've just got an e-mail from FedEx that my Cybook is on the way to me. It's scheduled to arrive tomorrow before midday. *doing a happy dance*

Dropping somebody a curtsy ...

... is apparently not 19th-century speech, but it turns up in (historical?) novels written in the early 20th century, e.g. in Georgette Heyer's THE RELUCTANT WIDOW.

Well, since Heyer used it, I guess my Amy can drop people a curtsy, too. :)

Meh

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I'm stuck in the middle of the $%&U)"§=! love scene. Which is on page 160. Of a 316-page manuscript. Which I have to hand back in complete with revisions next Monday. ARGH! ARGH! ARGH!

Let's Make Love

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I'll be working on the love scene this evening. Earlier today I managed to nice transition from "oh-gosh-we-really-lust-after-each-other-but-we-can't-indulge-in-passion" to "oh-gosh-we-really-lust-after-each-other-so-let's-rip-our-clothes-off". Well, at least I hope it's a nice transition and better than the original passage. I do wonder, though, whether people will understand that it's the love potion at work. Hmm. *scratching my head*

"Come to my room later, " she repeated. She thought of the pleasure they had shared at the Temple of the Muses--his hands on her breasts, her bare thighs. The flames flared up, burnt her inside out. Compared to this scorching desire, the reasons why they shouldn't indulge in pleasure seemed trivial. If she could not have him--tonight--she would die, she was sure of it.

"Amy ..." His voice sounded as tormented as she felt.

"Don't say no." Stepping forward, she leaned into his body and her hands curved around his waist. "I wouldn't be able to bear it," she whispered. Shivering, she pressed closer against him, his warmth, felt his muscles bunch. "I need you. I need you, I need you, I need--"

Strong fingers lifted her chin and his mouth closed over hers in one of those hard, intense kisses which always made her bones melt.

Still alive

Sort of.

Triumph! Triumph! Triumph!

I've actually managed to transform the pre-love-love-scene into something that's actually quite nice: instead of Amy being miffed at Fox stopping, they are now both fighting valiantly against the lust which devours them alive. And gnaws at them like a wild beast. Hmhm. :)

I feel like a fraud

Remember this? Yup, here we go again. I guess I'll have to completely re-write the pre-love-love-scene. Duh. Or perhaps I can somehow get people to read only the first third of the book ... Hmm ...

Drat

I wanna cry: I've now reached the original uh-oh part of the book. And it's still uh-oh. *sob*


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Ponderings on Virginity

One of the things I've been asked to do when revising BEWITCHED is to make it clearer how important her virginity is to the heroine and what it would mean to her to lose it.

Hmmm.

Wouldn't a normal romance reader know how important the intact hymen of an unwed middle- and upper-class girl was considered to be in the early 19th century?? And that having sex with your fiancé would be a big no-no?

Oh my gosh!!!

I love google to pieces! Truly I do! Look here:


View Larger Map

Do you know what this is? This is Blickling Hall, on which I modelled the country estate of my hero's family. Isn't this fantastic? You can zoom in until you almost appear to be standing on the drive. Wow!

Drat

People are being mean to me! :-(

Even more fantastic info

A Cyclopaedia of Practical Receipts: And Collateral Information in the Arts ... By Arnold James Cooley

On Tobacconists

Apparently, women could become tobacconists, too. Here's a snippet from Captain Jesse's The Life of George Brummell:


Beau Brummell By William Jesse

And from A Dictionary of the English Language of 1828:


A Dictionary of the English Language By Samuel Johnson, John Walker, Robert S. Jameson

(See? "Toaster" is an old, old word. But if you'd ever used it in a Regency romance? -- uh-hu ...)


Southern Literary Messenger By Carnegie-Mellon University, School of Computer Science

Hmm. So tobacconists sell snuff boxes as well. But I distinctly remember that in Austen's S&S the horrid Mr. Dashwood buys his snuffbox at Gray's on Sackville Street and that was a jeweller's.

And here's the Irish Penny Journal:


The Irish Penny Journal 

Hu?

But looka, looka here: The Panorama of Professions and Trades --


The Panorama of Professions and Trades, Or, Every Man's Book By Edward Hazen

Now, what do you think? Isn't Google Books the bestest? :)

Where do you buy snuff?

Amy and Fox are buying snuff (as a present for Fox's brother), and my editor wants me to describe the shop in some more detail. Ack! What does a snuff shop look like? Does it resemble a modern tea shop perhaps (well, not the online version *g*)?

So at the moment I'm doing a google book search and have already found all kinds of curious information:



The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer By Richard Burn, Joseph Chitty, Thomas Chitty
Hmm. Let's see what else will turn up ...



The American Magazine
HA! Now look at this (Note: original big picture did strange things to my blog, hence the smaller snippet):


The Table Book By William Hone

And here:


An Apology for the Life of James Fennell. By James Fennell

So now I know where to buy snuff: at the tobacconist's. Now let's do a search for "tobacconist" ...

Remember, Remember, the 5th of December

... because that's the day when my Cybook will be shipped. If all goes well, I should get it at the end of this week. *happy squee* I can't wait! :)

Creature Comforts

Shamelessly stole this from Schrumpfkopf's blog. :) Enjoy the spoils of the raid! (Isn't the penguin at 02:45 totally cute?)

Adding to the Menagerie

Spell? Bentham thought, his wits scattering like a flock of birds before a sparrowhawk.

Squiggles Conquer the Page

That's what a page of the manuscript looks like after I revised the text (the scanner is acting weirdly these days and cut off the top third of the page). Hmm. Perhaps I can sell those pages as modern art when I'm through with the revisions? Hehe.

In the middle of the page you see the bit in which Fox imagines his friend Drew pecked to death by the golden partridge's sharp retorts. In the bottom margin Miss Bourne purrs, her voice sweeter than those sticky molasses. At the top of the margin on the right you can just see the last bit of the rat terrier simile, and running down the rest of that margin is dragon Lady Holland.

Checked the Molasses

As mentioned in the comments below, last night I searched "molasses" in the Online Otymology Dictionary to check whether that stuff was already known in the Regency. Apparently, it was. Yay for me! :)