Tag: barnes

My recent reward for watching TV

On By Michel McDonaldIn Android, App, Nook, TV3 Comments

viggle

I bought my HTC One V for Virgin Mobile from Amazon in December and one of the first apps I installed was Viggle because a friend uses it and posted the advertisement on Facebook.  I’m always looking for ways to get rewarded for doing things, like surveys, blogging, tweeting, installing and playing games and whatever else I can do.  Well, Viggle gives you rewards just for watching TV and doing trivia during your shows.

Since December I have been racking up points.  I had over 63,000 points and I was saving it for a really expensive reward, the Kindle Fire or Kindle Fire HD.  The problem is, those are 482,500 and 560,000 points and well, let’s just say if it has taken me 6 months to get 63,000 points, I’m sure it will take me a long time to get the Kindle, so I figured I might as well pick a reward of lesser value for now.  I decided to get the Barnes & Noble $25 gift card for 50,000 points.  This is what I bought.

the hunger games trilogy

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins for $24.49.  I waited for a few days after getting my Viggle reward because I wasn’t positive what I wanted.  I can’t recall exactly what made my decide on The Hunger Games, but I suddenly remembered that I wanted to read the books before seeing the movie.

I wanted to buy many ebooks at .99 cents each because then I could buy 25 ebooks, but I think getting this trilogy was better.  It’s not the quantity of the ebooks that matter because chances are I’m not going to have time for all 25 ebooks, and who knows if I will feel like I made a huge mistake because the books aren’t quality writing.  So I’m glad I bought this trilogy rather than a bunch of books I may not like.  Although I’m not positive I will like the hunger games, but I know it is something that I am interested in so I’m sure I will.

I have started reading the first book, but haven’t gotten too far because I just didn’t feel like reading.  I have to be in the mood to be able to really get into it, and I don’t want my lack of interest in reading to make me like or hate a book.  I will wait until I’m ready to start reading it.  I actually have a few other books that I’m halfway through that I would like to finish before starting another story.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that Viggle is a good app and this is proof that you do actually get rewarded for watching TV.

H.T. Night’s 8-Book Vampire Box Set

On By Michel McDonaldIn eBook, Kindle, NookLeave a comment

HT Night

I don’t normally review books or advertise for books unless I really like a book or I know the author personally or on social network websites, but I wanted to type something up for this particular series.

H.T. Night’s 8-Book Vampire Box Set is available for the Kindle and the Nook for only .99 cents as of this posting.  Amazon estimates it at 886 pages and Barnes & Noble doesn’t actually say how many pages it has.  I bought it on my Nook and it actually shows 1921 pages.  What’s interesting, or odd, is that when I turn the page, it will flip about 2 or 3 pages.  I am on page 98 and I hit the button or swipe the screen to flip the page and it will say 100.  I find that unusual behavior for my Nook because sometimes I might be on the same page number for 4 pages.  So my guess is that this author formatted the ebook very strangely to make it show 1921 pages and flip 2 pages at a time.  I formatted mine to be sheet of paper size 8.5 x 11.  This author probably formatted it at 4×6, I’m guessing.

I read some of the reviews on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble and have seen so much negativity towards not just the author, but their writing style.  I agree it’s a bit odd, but everyone has their own writing style and their own skill level, so I am not going to grade this writer because he had the gumption to write a long fiction novel which is more than I can say.  Actually, more than just 1 fiction novel because I see he has many more stories on Amazon.  I do recognize what some of the reviewers are saying though because I see a lot of strange things as well, but I don’t hate it.  I look at it as like one of those B movies that you see from the 60’s and 70’s and even some of the B movies on SyFy like Sharktopus lol.  I don’t mean to sound harsh towards the author, but that’s what it’s like to me.

I haven’t read the entire series, but I’m sure it won’t take very long to read.  It says in the title that it is 8 books, but when you are in the ebook you only see 4 titles.  In the contents you see that it is sectioned into 8 parts. I click Go to > Chapter > eBookVersion1_split_1 (that is actually how it shows up on the contents), it goes right to page 256 which is the 2nd page of chapter 32 of the first book.  I don’t get why this author didn’t format the ebook chapters properly.  It is split up into 8 sections, but there are actually only 4 ebooks in there.  That’s rather misleading.

Here is a picture of my Nook showing the cover page with the title that says it is 8 books on the top and saying it’s only “FOUR NOVELS” with each book title under “VAMPIRES & WEREWOLVES.”  That is not 8 books, so where are the other 4?  You can’t sell a 8-book box set with only 4 books and call it 8 books and section it off into 8 sections.  People aren’t stupid.

ht night nook

Well, it’s only .99 cents on both the Kindle and the Nook so with all of it’s formatting and misleading title saying it’s 8 books when it’s really only 4, it is still an interesting story and it’s easy to read. I actually don’t (or haven’t yet) seen any flaws in the story or seen any misspellings or any other errors so I’m not listening to the negative reviews about that. The formatting doesn’t really bother me as much as it would seem. Perhaps the 8 books were combined so 2 books are actually 1 book, who knows. I find the writing style easy to read and the book is hard to put down. I said it was like a B movie, but it’s really not that bad. I’d say it’s a higher caliber.

I am updating my status on this series on Goodreads and here they are.  I have to admit that I do like this book.  Although, I have noticed a few errors here and there, but it is still good.

Goodreads Updates:

6/29 – “This isn’t going to take very long to read. It’s actually quite addicting. I love that I can actually understand everything and I don’t need to use the dictionary on my Nook lol.”

7/2 – “I just finished the first book Moon Dance and I absolutely loved it. It was so easy to read and very difficult to put down. Now I am about to start the 2nd of 4 books in this “8” book series (LOL) called Vampire Moon. (25% done)”

Reading My Book On An iPhone/iPod

On By Michel McDonaldIn Autobiography, BooksLeave a comment

Want to read my new book “Diary of a Gay Nerd: Life After Child Abuse, It Gets Better!” but don’t have a Nook or a Kindle but have an iPhone or an iPod?  Not to worry, that is why I published my book with RainboweBooks.com.

You actually don’t have to have a Kindle to be able to buy Amazon ebooks, or a Nook to buy Barnes & Noble ebooks.  You can download the app for your phone and create an account and start buying ebooks.  That way if you decide later that you want to buy a Nook or a Kindle, you already have an account and books in your library.  But if that is not what you want then you can also use iBooks from the app store.

What you do is simply download iBooks from the app store and install it.  Now go to RainboweBooks.com on your computer and buy my book.  Now download it in .epub format.  Open iTunes and drag the file from your computer into iTunes and a new item will show up called Books.  Plug your iPhone or iPod into your computer via the USB cable.  When iTunes finds your device, simply drag the book file to the device and it will upload it.  Disconnect from the USB and open the iBooks app and viola it’s in your bookshelf.  Open, read and enjoy.

You may notice that the book is going to be well over 1000 pages, but that is because it only shows one or two paragraphs.  The book is actually only 296 pages in e-book format but the iPhone/iPod cannot show the full page and if it did you would need a microscope to read it.

So there are your simple instructions.  I hope you enjoy my book on your Apple product.

Publishing My Book

On By Michel McDonaldIn Autobiography, BooksLeave a comment

The time has finally come for me to announce that my book is FINALLY FINISHED!

Seven months of hard work has finally paid off.  Not only have I learned how to write, but I have also learned how to grammar… wait no that’s bad grammar!  But seriously, my grammar has greatly improved, compared to when I started writing anyway.

The only thing that is preventing me from publishing my book now is an author picture.  I don’t want to publish it until I can get dressed up in my gay uniform, that being my “Legalize Gay” t-shirt that I got from the Human Rights Campaign from when I volunteered with them a few months ago at the gay pride here in Bakersfield.  Although I am not set on that shirt as being the only thing in the photo, I may bring a dress shirt.  Who knows, I may combine them and wear the dress shirt unbuttoned on top of the Legalize Gay shirt.  We’ll see.

I was going to use my own domain xanapus.com as the hub, but decided to buy a new domain name www.diaryofagaynerd.com with links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Rainbow eBooks, GetGlue, Facebook, Twitter and here.  Of course I’m paying every month for 1 single html page lol.  That doesn’t seem fair since I have a lot of space over here, but whatever.

Oh I mentioned GetGlue, yeah I haven’t really talked to them yet but I sent a tweet to one of the GetGlue people that I know.  I want to offer a sticker for my readers.  I already have the sticker made, I just need to give them the file so they can give it to people when they check-in.  Although I don’t know if a lot of writers offer stickers for books, maybe I’m the first.  Wouldn’t that be awesome if I were?  How cool would that be?  I’m a GetGlue pioneer LMAO.

So I will just focus my energy now on getting that picture so I can publish it.  Hopefully tomorrow, but no promises.

I do have future plans for another book, actually a series of fictional stories about my character Xanapus from the game EverQuest.  Of course I won’t be able to write about Norrath, I will have to make up my own fantasy world.  That will just make it more fun to write if I make things up as I go.  I will probably start the first story with a short story to make sure I know how to write fiction, of course I will be taking a course on writing fiction first.  It was one thing to write an autobiography because I didn’t have to make anything up, a story based on one single character living in a world that doesn’t exist yet is going to be the difficult part.  If I can write a short story with one little tiny quest, then we will see if I have what it takes to write a 200-300 page novel, 8 of them in total to be exact.  Yes, I am aiming high lol.  Don’t hold your breath…

Until tomorrow when I have more news about the book that I already wrote…

My book is almost ready to publish, only one tiny issue left…

On By Michel McDonaldIn Autobiography1 Comment

My book files came back to me a couple of days ago (two beta readers as I like to call them) with highlights of things for me to fix.  I have read my book at least 30 times and I was just getting so sick of reading it and they wanted to read it so I figured they could read it early, but I’d love to have bug reports.

So I went through the highlights which weren’t all that major.  I missed a few capitalizations and punctuation issues.  There were also a few words where I forgot to add a letter, like instead of writing the word “from” I wrote “for”, don’t ask why lol.

As I was getting the paper book put together with all of my corrections made, I noticed a little issue which turned out to be a major issue.  There were grey boxes where spaces were supposed to go.  It wasn’t everywhere, but it was annoying that there were so many.  I was able to delete them as I went, but that didn’t help because it was still messed up.

The paper book got put together and turned in to check for errors, which I’m happy to report weren’t any.  I converted the .odt file to epub and was going to publish to Amazon for the Kindle and Barnes & Noble for the Nook.  It looked great on the Nook, but the Kindle wasn’t doing so good.  Here is what I was seeing…

You see the top paragraph?  It’s not exactly a paragraph is it?  That was what happened because of the square boxes.  Also look at the other paragraphs, they weren’t indented, except for the last one.  I went into Sigil to look at the html code of the chapters and this is what I saw.

That is supposed to be a little paragraph.  Those <.span.> things were out of control.  That is what was causing the text to move down.  So the only way for this to work is to cut all that crap out.  I tried to do find and replace, but unfortunately each one of those lines has its own number so it’s not like I can replace all of them throughout the entire document, they have to be deleted one at a time.  ANNOYING!

I worked for 8 hours to get rid of them and then discovered that if I converted the file to .html, it got rid of all that.  So that was a waste of time, but it was a learning experience.

I fixed all of the capitalization and punctuation issues, but I have a feeling I am still missing something so I’m going to have to read the whole thing again.  It sucks but I don’t want to publish a book that isn’t right.

I said I would get it published by January 1st and here we are nearing February and it still isn’t ready to publish.  I don’t know how long it will take but I will get it out there eventually.

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.

I Finished Writing My Book

On By Michel McDonaldIn BooksLeave a comment

I am happy to report that I finally finished writing my book.  I have edited the hell out of it about 20 or 30 times but it’s finally done.

I sent the file to 2 friends to proof read and send me bug reports if you will lol.  Basically, they are beta testing my book for the lack of a better term lol.

The book in doc format is only 181 pages but in epub format it is 289 pages.  I don’t know why there is a huge difference but there you have it.

I have learned a boatload of stuff about myself while writing this autobiography.  For example, I remembered things that I had blocked because they were too painful.  I don’t know how I remembered them but I’m glad I did.

The timeline of some memories were wrong in my head and it took writing it for me to remember when everything happened.

Well, I am just exhausted from writing.  My eyes are killing me from staring into a white screen for 6 to 8 hours a day.  I can’t even imagine this being my regular job.  I mean blogging is my job but I’m not doing it for 6 to 8 hours non stop day after day.  Some weeks I’m lucky if I have 2 posts written.

To celebrate my victory today I decided to play Lord of the Rings Online.  I finally did an epic quest so I can check that off of the list of things I have to do in the game.

The book won’t be published until my beta testers have read through the whole thing and given me their input.  When they do then I will have to read it one or two more times before I send it out just to make sure it’s right.  Who knows, I may even have more editing lol.

I’m pretty sure that it is finished so I do plan on getting it copyrighted this or next week so that I can sell it through Amazon and Barnes & Noble as ebooks.  If they sell enough copies then I will have it printed for those who don’t have a Kindle or a Nook.

Wish me luck!

Nook Replacement

On By Michel McDonaldIn NookLeave a comment

I picked up my Nook on July 1st to load up a new e-book to read and was a bit confused when I noticed what looked like a little bug icon on the screen.  When I turned it on it started doing a system update so I thought that maybe that wasn’t a bug but an asterisk (*) but when the update completed, the symbol was still there.  Then I thought, maybe I have a virus and for some odd reason its showing me a bug icon (LOL).  I haven’t been online with it besides going to the Nook store.  How could I get a virus?

I looked at it in the light and turn it so I can see the screen and I see a little dot on the outside.  What I think happened is that something fell on the screen and that little black bug like image is e-ink from the tiny crack in the screen.  I don’t remember anything falling on it.  I usually have it sitting upright and not laying down on the desk so I don’t know when that happened.  I did have it laying down a few times but it’s not always laying down.

So I called Barnes & Noble and they have me do some troubleshooting.  She has me turn it off then hold the button for 20 seconds 6 times (twice).  Nothing happens because it’s not a software error, it’s a crack on the screen.  I told her that and I guess they have to troubleshoot just to make sure.

Thank goodness I have a warranty to cover this because if I didn’t I’d be stuck with this forever.  She told me that since it is covered on my warranty I’ll get a replacement and it will only take 3 days to get to me.  But before they send a replacement to me they have to take my credit card number so that if they don’t get my Nook within 14 days they can charge my credit card for the replacement.

That was July 1st which was a Friday.  They didn’t actually ship the Nook until July 5th and I’m supposed to get it today, July 8th.  So there is 1 week, I have 1 more week to get my Nook to them.

I had to unregister my Nook and remove everything I put on it like screen saver and wallpaper images and ebooks.  While I was at it I deleted my contacts (which I never did anything with) and all of my shelves.  It’s all ready to go.  It’s basically all in the box waiting to go out.

My replacement Nook finally arrived today and it wasn’t a refurbished one, it’s brand spanking new.  Wow, that was surprising.  I thought for sure it would have a few scratches on the case or there would be some blemish but it’s shiny and new.  It even smells like it just came off the production line.

I waited until now to call UPS to pick it up because I was under the impression that UPS was going to be delivering it.  They sent me a UPS tracking number to track it and it said it was in Bakersfield yesterday.  I figured, I could open the box, take the Nook out and replace it with my Nook, tape the label on it and give it back to the UPS driver to ship out.  But instead, UPS handed it over to the post office to deliver to me today.  So, that went out the window.  I had to call UPS today and they charged me $8.16 on my debit card to pick up despite the UPS label that Barnes & Noble emailed me to print with its own tracking number.  I thought for sure they were paying for the shipping.  Oh well.

I scheduled the pick up with UPS and they are going to come get it on Monday.  The cut off date is Thursday, that will be my 14th day so if they don’t get it by Thursday then I may see a charge on my checking account.  But I’m sure once they get it, they will remove the charge so I’m not worried in the least.

I am very satisfied with my Nook and with the way they handled my situation.  I highly recommend anyone interested in buying an eBook to get theirs from Barnes & Noble.  It doesn’t matter which Nook you buy, know that if anything happens, even the slightest problem, if you have bought a warranty with them you will get a new Nook.

So now I get the fun task of hooking this new Nook up to my computer with the USB cable so I can put my books back in there and my screen saver to match my skin.  Fun times…

All-New Nook – The Simple Touch Reader

On By Michel McDonaldIn NookLeave a comment

Ok now I’m really jealous.  I bought the 2nd generation of the first Nook with the color display at the bottom.  Then a few months later they came out with the Nook Color and now this.

This Nook seems a lot cooler than my Nook because it is e-ink that is touch screen with a battery life of 2 months.  My nook is supposed to be 2 weeks but I’m lucky if I get 1 week.  This new Nook is cheaper at $139, mine was $150 and the Nook color was a whopping $250 which is also what the first gen of the original Nook was so if you waited this long then good for you, you saved a buttload of money.

Edit: The price went down to $99.  They also have the Simple Touch with GlowLight for $119.

If only I had waited a little bit longer.  But that’s ok, I’m very happy with my Nook so I will just wait for it to burn out and hopefully by that time when they come out with their 10th generation of Nook it will be $25 so I can buy as many as I need lol.

The newer features that this Nook has that mine doesn’t which really makes me jealous are the NOOK Friends and the Borrow Library Books feature.  Although, that really doesn’t affect me anyway because your local library has to have that feature available which ours doesn’t so it doesn’t matter for me anyway.  My Nook doesn’t have the Nook Friends feature which upsets my friend Sue because she is unable to add me to her friends list for some reason.  All I can do is add her as a contact but I have yet to use the lend feature anyway.

Check out the Nook Color and the newer Nook Simple Touch at the Barnes and Noble Nook website for all of the other dimensions and features.

Borders Sad Chapter 11 News

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, News1 Comment

I was watching Attack of the Show today and they spoke for 10 seconds about Borders filing for chapter 11 and closing some of their famous book stores but they didn’t go into as much detail as this email that I got today did.

Click the image to see it full sized to read the sad news.

My guess, and this is just an uneducated guess, is that they are doing poorly because of the rise of eBooks via the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook. Borders does sell their own eBook reader called the Kobo as well as many other e-book readers like the Sony and Velocity Micro Cruz (which I have never heard of).

The main reason I bought a Nook was because of its online store ability as well as it’s ability to allow me to upload epub files from other websites which the Kindle would not allow. The Kobo and Sony readers were in my pro and con list but unfortunately didn’t meet my criteria due to the lack of an online store which I’m finding out now that the Kobo has. I don’t think it had it when I was making my decision.

Well as far as I knew they were doing great because we’ve been to the Borders over on Stockdale Hwy here in Bakersfield and they are always busy, then again it could’ve been that day but who knows. I’m almost positive that this is just a temporary economical setback and that they will eventually recover from it and be as strong as they always have been because they are a great store to go in to.

It is sad news to hear because I love to read and I think it’s very important for parents to teach their kids the joy of reading at an early age so they enjoy reading in their child, teen and adult years as much as I love to read today. Maybe knowing that they aren’t doing so great people will make the trip to their local Borders store hoping for a sale which might end up boosting their business causing the opposite of what is happening now.

Don’t let your local Borders store go out of business, go shop there for some books, movies, video games, toys and whatever else they sell. Install the Borders app on your cell phone and start buying e-books from them too.  Show them that you want them to stay by giving them some sales and keep those people from being out of a job. Times are tough and the last thing we need is for more people out of work.