Category: eBook

It’s Totally Tuesday at Rainbow eBooks

On By Michel McDonaldIn Autobiography, Books, eBook, Kindle, NookLeave a comment

I love Tuesdays because that means that Rainbow eBooks has a sale on all of their new releases, which mine happens to be, new that is and on sale at 15% off.  It’s regularly $6.99, but you can buy it today for only $5.94.

Diary of a Gay Nerd by Michel McDonald – Totally Tuesdays at Rainbow eBooks

If you have a Nook just download the epub file, if you have a Kindle, download the mobi file.  If you don’t have an ebook reader then you can download any file, mobi, epub or pdf.  They all work with PC if you have a PC ebook reader.

My Book Is Finally Finished, but…

On By Michel McDonaldIn Autobiography, Books, eBook2 Comments

My book is finally finished being edited and is ready to be published.  It took me 2 months to write it, but then it took me another 4 months to edit it.  I have been working for at least 8 hours a day to get it right so there are no mistakes.  It is ready, but not ready because I may have made a mistake with the copyright.

I copyrighted it on November 28th 2011 and I uploaded my unfinished book and the cover, but haven’t taken any other action, besides uploading the current revision of course.  I’m not sure if I was supposed to mail it to them or not.  It still says pending so I’m not sure when it will be completed.  I don’t want to take any chances with it so I won’t publish it until the copyright has gone through.

I said I was going to publish it tomorrow, January 1st 2012, but now I have to wait until January 2nd when I can call the copyright office and talk to someone.  This really sucks but my hands are tied.

That will give me another opportunity to read the book one last time to make absolutely sure there are zero mistakes.  It sucks because I have read my book about 20 or 30 times.  I have never read a book this many times before, and since it’s my life story, I have to relive it again every time I read it.  I just want to be done with it and move on.

Anyway, I will update this on Monday when I have spoken to someone at the copyright office.  If my claim has expired because I didn’t mail a printed copy, then I will have to copyright it again and mail it to them and wait for god only knows how much longer before I can publish it.  I’m sure it won’t take that long though, I’m hoping I can upload it on Monday when I get off the phone with them.  I can’t make any promises though.

Now that I am finally finished editing, I can finally enjoy playing Lord of the Rings Online again.  WOOHOO!

Final Edit Of My Book

On By Michel McDonaldIn Autobiography, Books, eBookLeave a comment

My book is nearly completed.  I have finally finished editing it but I have to read it one last time to make absolutely sure that it is right before I publish it.  While I was editing chapter 40, it occurred to me that I may have left something out of chapter 20.  I went back and as I was reading a few paragraphs to find where I needed to add, I found 4 errors.  That means that I am not completely finished.

It only took me 2 months to write it, but it has taken me 4 more months to edit it.  I never knew that writing a book was so difficult.  It really makes me appreciate the hard work that writers and editors do.  I am constantly remembering things that I want to add, discovering discrepancies, spelling, grammar errors and redundancy.  Writing is hard ya’ll!  LOL.

I had a good laugh today because when I finished editing the book, I had lost 15 pages from the ODT (OpenOffice) file.  It was originally 182 pages and now it’s 167.  The epub file on my Book had 289 pages, but edited it has 302.  It doesn’t make any sense to me that I lost 15 pages in the ODT file, but gained 13 in the epub file.

What happened to all of those page numbers is that I had too many paragraphs because I split too many thoughts up.  I combined the paragraphs which made me lose pages.  I also deleted a ton of things, but then I also added some things which gave me 5000 more words.  I think that was why I gained 13 pages in the epub file.

My cover is finished and I have shared it with a few people to get some opinions.  So far I haven’t had too many complaints.  It was my 4th or 5th cover design job.  I liked the first couple of covers, but none of them really stood out as much as the final cover does.  I am really happy with it and that is all that matters.

I uploaded the epub file so that I could read it one last time on my Nook.  I hope I don’t find any errors, but if I do, I can jump on the computer and find where they are and fix them.  I have never read one book so many times on a white screen until now and it’s killing my eyes.

I have spent a lot of time on this book and have started feeling bad for my family because of how I talk about them.  But then I look at a picture of my step-dad and realize, I’m writing this because of him.  He never cared enough about me to stop beating me, or enough to not hurt my feelings with his words every day my whole life, so why should I give a rats ass about his feelings?  The arrogant nasty look on his face in all of his pictures is all the motivation I need to keep going.

I didn’t just write this because of him, I wrote it because I want to show what life was/is like for gay people.  What bullying does to gay children, whether it’s the parents doing the bullying, or the children in school or both at the same time.  I want to share my first hand experiences and give a message to the gay teens that it gets better.  I hope that it opens eyes and helps someone who may need advice on how to cope with it.

Anyway, the book will be published after Christmas this year so stay tuned for the blog post announcing it.

Thank you for reading.

Publishing My Book

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBookLeave a comment

I spent this summer writing my life story into a 289 page e-book.  It took a lot of time to write and it has taken even longer to edit because I am not what most would consider to be a writer.  I barely manage writing a blog, I have a difficult enough time thinking of what to write in a greeting card.

I have already copyrighted (pending) my book (title and unedited contents) so that when I am ready to publish it, I won’t have to worry about waiting for the copyright to kick in.

I have already signed up with Amazon and Barnes & Noble as a self publisher, which was so easy that anyone can do it.  I also wanted to sign up on the Rainbow Ebook website as a self publisher because I want to support them as an e-book store.  It’s nice to give back to my community in any way that I can.

As soon as it is completely edited, I will publish it and start advertising and promoting via here, twitter, Facebook, my space and anywhere else that I can advertise it for free.  I may even pay gay and gay friendly bloggers to advertise it for me.

I am not looking to get rich on this book, in fact I mean to do the opposite.  I can only make so much money per year on top of my disability so I can’t get rich off of it.  I am only going to sell it for $6.99 so that I only profit a few dollars from the sale of each book and 10% of those profits will go to charity.  10% from Amazon, B&N and Rainbow Ebooks combined will be split up to go to the Human Rights Campaign, ChildHelp.org and Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors fund.

My book will hopefully raise awareness to so many issues in our society about the way children are being raised to be as abusive, racist and bigoted as the parents who are raising them.  I feel it’s important not just to tell my story about the trauma I went through, but hope that it will help parents to change their hateful ways and views and know what they are doing to their children when they raise them full of so much hatred.

I wanted to be able to publish it before Christmas but then I got to thinking that it’s not the kind of thing you want to read during a happy time of year.  Instead, I will probably publish it after Christmas or maybe after New Years.  Keep in mind that it is still being edited so it is possible that I won’t have it ready to publish until January.

So until then…

Update: I signed up for the free trial of Grammarly and was shocked to see that they raised the price from $20 to $70.  I thought that I would just go ahead and do the trial and get it done as quick as I could but it was catching too many errors that weren’t even errors.  So screw that, if my grammar checker in Open Office doesn’t show me those errors then they aren’t errors in my opinion.  I will read it one more time and fix any errors I think need to be fixed and then publish it when my copyright goes through or January like I said before.

New Kindle, Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Gadgets, Kindle, Nook, Products I Like, Reading, Tech1 Comment

Amazon has done it again.  They have surprised us with new Kindle devices.  Not just a replacement for their popular Kindle but 3 all new Kindles.

First there is the Kindle Fire (pic) which is more like a tablet and some people are calling it an iPad killer.  It’s battery lasts 8 hours which is pretty good for what it is.

The specs on the Kindle Fire is an 80GB hard drive for storing 80 apps plus either 10 movies, 800 songs or 6,000 books.  The Kindle Fire has a 7″ vibrant color IPS screen with multi-touch.

I had never heard of an IPS screen before so I had to look it up and I found some information on it on a message board.  This is what someone said it was.

IPS – in-plane switching…. the liquid crystals are aligned horizontally instead of on an angle. This process greatly increases vertical viewing angles. When coupled with the high brightness and contrast of the glaretype displays, color reproduction is almost perfect. Basically it becomes a 1/4″ professional graphics flat CRT monitor…. which is why the display is primarily for those in professional graphics.

Very interesting.

The new Amazon Kindle Fire is $199 and it is a WiFi only device.

The 2nd new Kindle is a smaller priced Kindle with no keyboard.  It is WiFi only, has a 6″ e-ink Pearl screen, 2GB storage for 1,400 ebooks and its battery life is 1 month.

The new $79 kindle doesn’t have a keyboard but it does have a 5-way controller at the bottom for navigating.  With no keyboard I would imagine that it would be a bit difficult to type in the name of a book you are looking for.

I noticed that it allows you to check out books from the library.  That was something that will make it easier on most people who can’t afford to buy a lot of books but don’t want to have to go to the library for their books.  I looked that feature up when I was researching last year and our library is not in the system so it wouldn’t work for me unless they changed that in the last year.

They still have their Kindle with the keyboard which they have 2 versions of, a WiFi only version for $99 and a WiFi and 3G version for $139.  That went way down in price since last year when it was $150 for WiFi only and $200 for 3G.

Now they have a new Kindle touch in WiFi only for $99 and WiFi and 3G for $149.

The battery for both the Kindle Keyboard and Kindle Touch lasts for 2 months which is longer than before.

All of the kindles use the Amazon cloud storage for unlimited amazon content and they have an experimental browser with the exception of the Kindle Fire which uses their new Amazon Silk cloud-accelerated browser.

I remember when e-book readers first came out.  I had just made my new years resolution to start reading in December of 2005.  I saw the Sony reader at Costco for about $500 or $550, I can’t remember.  I do remember thinking how cool it was that they were coming out with them but I didn’t think they would catch on at that price.

I started reading the Harry Potter books in January 2006 and got hooked on reading.  I was reading all the time after that.

Then Amazon came out with their first e-book reader which if I can remember was almost as high as the Sony Reader but eventually they lowered the price down to $250.  Then B&N came out with their Nook after a little controversy with another e-book reader with a color screen at the bottom.  The nook was also $250.

The war was on and every year these 2 rivals have come out with a new version of their e-book reader with a lower price.

The Kindle has dropped from a high $500 all the way down to a low $80.  I never thought the day would come and it has.  Before you know it there will be another Kindle or Nook on the market that will be as low as $50 and every kid will have one in school with their textbooks on them.

My question is, what ever happened to the Sony reader touch?  That was a good one and it’s a shame it’s gone because you could write on the screen.  I seriously thought that the Sony Reader would evolve into the Sony Trapper Keeper where you would have all of your textbooks in there as well as a notebook with tabs for each subject and you could write your notes on a notepaper screen and have it turn it into typed text that you could save.  That would’ve been awesome.

Maybe that will be the next evolution for the Kindle or the Nook, or who knows, maybe even both.  It would be much easier for a child to carry to school rather than a heavy 20lb backpack filled with books and a notebook or a laptop.

Cirque Du Freak eBooks

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Kindle, Nook1 Comment

I started reading the Darren Shan “Cirque Du Freak” books late last year on Halloween.  I figured it was time to start a new series of books and since it was Halloween, I wanted it to be some type of horror book and I remembered the Vampire’s Assistant started out as a book so I figured it would be a good read.

The ebooks were only a couple bucks and I figured it would be a very good purchase.  I didn’t read them all right away, I read the first 3 then stopped to pursue other books.  But last month I decided that I wanted to finish them once and for all.

These books are small so it doesn’t take more than a day to read them, less for everyone else who doesn’t have dyslexia.  So it usually takes me 2 days at a couple of hours each day to read them.

The first book was very similar to the movie but with a lot more detail.  At first I thought the movie was all 12 books rolled into a movie but after the first book I realized it wasn’t the case because decades have passed in the book where only maybe months have passed in the movie.  But the movie also didn’t get to the war of the scars either and with Darren and Mr. Crepsley leaving the Cirque at the end of the movie, or rather the next day when Darren has had his rest, it leaves it open for more story which I doubt they will ever tell in movie format.

The books were very good to read and since I had most of the characters in my head from watching the movie I was able to visualize most of them for when I read the books.

I hate giving away plots or story lines because I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone but if you do get a chance to read these please do.

I said the books were a couple bucks, well, unfortunately they raised the price.  eBooks are now $7.99 each but you can buy the actual books in a set for only $35 on Amazon.  That’s only a couple bucks per book and it is so worth it.  I don’t know if $8 is worth it since they are so small though.  I’m just glad I bought the whole series when I did lol.

If you weren’t aware of the story, here is a synopsis from the Cirque du Freak Wiki:

The Vampire’s Assistant is a fantasy-adventure based on the first three books of the series, The Saga of Darren Shan, by author Darren Shan about a teenager who unknowingly breaks a 200-year-old truce between two warring factions of vampires. Pulled into a fantastic life of misunderstood sideshow freaks and grotesque creatures of the night, one teen will vanish from the safety of a boring existence and fulfill his destiny in a place drawn from nightmares.

16-year-old Darren was like most kids in his suburban neighborhood. He hung out with his best friend Steve, got decent grades, and usually stayed out of trouble. But when he and Steve stumble upon a traveling freak show, things begin to change inside Darren. That’s the exact moment when a vampire named Larten Crepsley turns him into something bloodthirsty.

Newly undead, he joins the Cirque du Freak, a touring sideshow filled with monstrous creatures from a snakeboy and a Wolf Man to a bearded lady and a gigantic ringmaster. As Darren flexes his newfound powers in this dark world, he becomes a treasured pawn between the vampires and their deadlier counterparts. And while trying to survive, one boy will struggle to keep their brewing war from devouring what’s left of his humanity.

There is a lot more about the story than in this synopsis but you can find out about it by reading the books.  This synopsis says the movie is based on the first 3 books but that isn’t exactly the truth because so much happens in the 2nd and 3rd book that you never even see in the movie.  If I were you I would just get the books and find out for yourself.  I double dare you.

Good Reads

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBookLeave a comment

I was talking to my favorite e-book author Marguerite Labbe a couple of days ago on Twitter, don’t you just love how I name drop?  She told me about a website called Good Reads.

I joined the website immediately upon her tweet and started adding only the books that I have read and the book I am reading right now.  What I like especially about the Good Reads website is that my list of books can be sorted.  I have been a member of aNobii for years and their website is nice and all but you can’t sort your books.

Like, if you want to sort them alphabetically or by date read or bought or whatever.  I think that has to be my favorite feature only because I have been wanting that for such a long time.  I’m keeping aNobii which means I’ll have to keep both sites up to date whenever I buy a new book.

You can also add your books into shelves, like if you are reading a series like the Sookie Stackhouse series, you can put them in their own shelf.  I read a lot of series books like Xanth, Cique du Freak, Sookie Stackhouse etc. so that is handy.

Your friends can join you so it’s very much like Facebook, but for readers.  You can see on your home page what your friends are saying and what books they are adding to their shelves.  I think that’s a very cool feature.

There are also groups that you can join.  Think of it as a book club but with a message board and with thousands of people.  You can discuss a certain book you are reading or have read with the people in the group.  If you are a member of a book club in your town then you already have people to talk to but I am not in a book club, mainly because I don’t want to be told what book I have to read because I’ll bet you it’s never anything I want to read.  So this way I can read a book that I want to read and then talk to people about it.

It’s a great website and if you are an avid reader I encourage you to join.

Nook Update v1.5

On By Michel McDonaldIn eBook, NookLeave a comment

Nook had a software update yesterday from version 1.4 to 1.5 and I am so happy.

I got the email yesterday from Barnes and Noble saying the new update is finally here so I quickly turned my Nook on, went to the Daily and as soon as it connected to my WiFi network, it began downloading immediately. It took about 10 minutes or so to download and I was very thrilled with the results.

They said that the page turns are 50% faster and boy is it ever. I loaded a book and turned the page and it was instant. I mean, you still see it flash like before but it shows the next page really fast. Page turn speed was never really an issue for me but considering it’s faster I’m probably going to notice it more now and appreciate the new speed.

One of the things that I’ve wanted since I got my Nook is an easier way to store my books. For example, I wanted to be able to have folders for all of my books so I can find them easier. Like a folder named Xanth so I can click on that to find the next Xanth novel at the top of the list instead of having to scroll through pages and pages of books.

They finally gave me that feature, although it’s not exactly a folder but it works just as good. You can create shelves then add specific books to those specific shelves. It works in the “My B&N Library” and the “My Documents” libraries. When you are in the Library, look at your touchscreen and click Shelves, click go to shelf and you can see the shelves you have created.

You have many shelf options like creating a shelf, reordering a shelf, renaming a shelf and removing a shelf. I like reordering because you can alphabetize your different shelves either by author or by book name like Xanth would go at the bottom or you can rename the shelf to the authors name and then it would be in the P’s for Piers (or A’s for Anthony, if that’s how you alphabetize).

I have a shelf called Sookie Stackhouse and I see all 3 of the Sookie Stackhouse books that I bought from the Nook store in that shelf. It shows the one that I am reading on the top of the list and it even shows what page I’m on. How cool is that? It says I’m on page 28 of 200. I guess that’s how they make the cross-platform feature work. Since it shows what page you are on in a certain book in the library then that is how it lets your other gadgets know what page you are on so when you load your account on your iPhone or Blackberry (or whatever gadget you have) then it knows what page to automatically turn to.

The email talked about a longer battery life and that I can configure it so my battery lasts longer. Well the battery for me is a real issue because they said that it lasts 10 days with WiFi turned off. Well, it really only lasts me a couple days with WiFi turned off. I don’t know where they got this 10 days crap but that is so way off. Hopefully it will last longer than 2 or 3 days now but I have to figure out how to configure it the way they said you can. And what am I supposed to configure to make it last longer? Am I supposed to make the screen’s brightness 10% so I can barely see it to get 10 days worth of battery life?

They graduated the web browser from Beta to regular browser but to me it’s the same. I don’t see much of a difference. I do use it from time to time only because I can. The only thing different is that it no longer says Beta on the icon but if you load the browser, the website that shows up still says it’s in beta so they’ll have to fix that too.

I wish they would add more games, that would’ve been nice but I see they didn’t. I know they can’t add animated games but I’m sure there are more games that don’t require a lot of animation. Sudoku is a good paper puzzle game which I’m sure is the reason they added it. Well, crossword puzzles are the same, it’s pen and paper. Anything would be nice than just Sudoku and Chess lol. I don’t even play chess.

Well, I’m very happy to have this update because I love how fast the pages turn and I love that I can create shelves now. I think it would be great if they gave us little updates every so often instead of making people wait for a major update like this. But I’m not complaining because I’m thrilled with what I have now.

Dreamland Crocotta by Karl Pfeiffer

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Kindle, TechLeave a comment

If you are a fan of Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters Academy, then you are familiar with GHA season 1 winner Karl Pfeiffer.  He’s not just a famous TV personality but he’s also a writer.  He has written this short story called Dreamland Crocotta.

I didn’t know that he was a writer until he mentioned it on Twitter.  I found his book in the Nook store by searching for his name and he confirmed that this was his book.  It was only $1.99 but well worth the price for the 19 pages that it has.  It seems to only be in e-book format but sold on many different websites.

He used Smashbook to publish it but it’s sold on the Barnes & Noble website (through the Nook or the website), Kobo books (for the Kobo Reader) as well as the Diesel eBooks website.  If you have a Kindle, you might be out of luck as far as buying it through the Kindle store but you might be able to convert it to Kindle format in Calibre.

Synopsis:

“A short story. Overcome by insomnia and depression, Mitch Haloa passes his days alone in his neglected home until he begins speaking to a mysterious voice that creeps within the forest behind his house; A voice that soon haunts his every thought, that prods at the cracks in his already fragile reality; that calls for Mitch to lose himself, to leave one darkness in favor of another…”

It is listed in these categories: creature, dark, horror, insomnia, paranormal, psychological

It is pretty dark but as you read it more you will begin to understand Mitch’s plight, why he is so depressed and why he is hearing voices in the forest behind his house.  You will start to understand a little better why his life has turned in this dark direction.  It may be a short story but it is worth the read.  I applaud Karl on his efforts and look forward to more of his short (or long) stories.

(y) (y)

On a side note, Karl is who got me into wanting to learn how to make those Hemp beaded chokers.  When I first saw him on Ghost Hunters Academy I saw his choker and thought it was so cool.  It wasn’t until he was on Ghost Hunters International that I remembered his chocker.  That night I got on Google and started researching them; what they are called and where to buy them.

I found out that they were hemp and macramé so I started researching that too.  I went to several different websites with macramé patterns until I found a similar necklace.  Then we went to Michael’s where I spent nearly a fortune on hemp and beads trying to recreate his.  Although, it was nearly impossible since I had already forgotten what his looked like, I ended up making my own design.  I also learned how to make the rings and bracelets.  Pretty soon I started looking like a hippy with all my hemp jewelry on.  What I was missing was my tie dye t-shirt and my bald man hippy long hair in the back.

Anyway, I want to thank Karl for broadening my [craft] horizons by wearing his choker on Ghost Hunters lol.  If it wasn’t for him, I probably would’ve never had an interest in adding Macramé to my list of crafts that I do.

Finished One Book, Onto The Next

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, NookLeave a comment

Well I finished reading the 9th Xanth novel today “Golem in the Gears” and that was the final Xanth novel that was sent to me a few years ago. My friend Alyce who sent them to me didn’t ask for them back, otherwise I probably would’ve put more of a rush into reading them. I’m not going to sell them on Yardsellr though because I don’t know that she won’t want them back eventually.

I have a lot of choices for my next book since I’ve been getting tons of free e-books from Barnes & Noble through the Nook store. Every Friday I go into “The Daily” on my Nook and see their “Free Fridays” from the Unbound Nook and BN EReader blog. I think that I have gotten 3 free e-books so far from the Free Fridays. And actually, you can get tons of free e-books as you are browsing for whatever subject. I can’t count how many free e-books I have gotten that way. This Nook sure has paid for itself with all the free e-books I got out of it.

I have a lot of choices for my next novel to start reading tomorrow and I think it will be the 2nd book in the Belgariad which is “Queen of Sorcery” by David Eddings. I read the first one last month and I think that it’s only right that I read the 2nd one this month and then one every month until I have finished the series. I’ve had these books since 2007 and haven’t even touched them.

I have until next week to finish it so I can buy the 3rd Sookie Stackhouse novel which I plan to read 1 every month until the next season of True Blood starts. I figure it would give me a better insight into the show and the characters. Although, the show is a not even the same as the books. They changed so much for the show by adding or deleting characters and story lines. Even if I do read all the books I’m always going to be surprised in the new plot so the show is actually more of an alternate reality from the books.

You know, ever since I bought this Nook I have been reading every single day. I actually skipped 1 day and it was torture to skip it too, I really genuinely wanted to read lol. It’s so unusual for me to read this much but I guess I figured since I spent so much money on all these books and the Nook I might as well read them.

A friend says she is proud of me for reading so much but is that really something to be proud of someone for? I mean, it’s just reading. Well, I guess her reason for it is more because I refused to read for the first 35 years of my life then all of a sudden I decide I wanted to start reading and now look at me, I’m a book-worm. I know it’s not much but in the last few years I have finished reading 32 books, 10 of them in the last couple months since I bought my Nook. I think it’s pretty good since it takes me 4-5 days to read a 200-300 page novel.

Next month after I read the 3rd Sookie Stackhouse novel I’m going to start to re-read the final Harry Potter novel before I go see it in theaters. That should take longer than 4-5 days unless I spend 8 hours a day reading it just like I did back in 2007 when I read it originally. Although, I’m pretty sure I remember everything that I read the first time so who knows if I really will read it again. I’m not much into repeating the same book.

My aunt says that her daughter-in-law re-reads books all the time, sometimes about 5 times because she always misses stuff the first time. I personally think that if you pay enough attention to the details and not try to read it so dang fast, you might not miss anything. That’s the trouble with reading so fast, you are in such a hurry to read it that you miss a ton of stuff. If you read at a normal pace which takes longer then you will get more out of it. The time it took to read it 5 times, she could’ve just read it at a normal pace one time and gotten more out of the experience of the story she’s reading.

It’s not a race. Who are you trying to impress? Because I’m not impressed when a person tells me that they read an entire book in a few hours because I know they missed a ton of stuff that is important to the story line. If you’re going to be a book-worm then be passionate about what you are reading, not about how fast you read.

Wow, I feel like an after school special.