Publish or Perish

Amazon might have brought about the end of store front bookstores such as Borders. Now it might make publishers obsolete.

Who Needs Publishers? article details how Amazon is courting top authors and writers in need of self-publication who previously were locked out of book deals by New York publishers. I should feel bad for the publishers and probably the lost jobs down the road. Publication houses closing, agents losing clients, editors out of work if this trend gains speed.

I'm all for the economy gaining jobs rather than losing them, but I have long been frustrated (as I'm sure many other authors are) of the old gate keeping system that's become more rigid and impossible for new writers or unusual genre fiction to gain any foothold.

The old system could take years if you're a writer. Just getting an agent who thinks your writing is worth his/her time could take even longer (or never happen), but without that agent most fiction automatically goes in the slush pile regardless of its quality.

Yes, there's a lot of crap people write and send that probably shouldn't be published, but Amazon gives these writers a shot not only to self-publish but also bring it to a wide readership. More profits also go the author who did most of the work instead of a long series of middle men.

I'm not hoping for the death of publishing houses, but they need to be more accessible and competitive with Amazon by courting new talent rather than automatically locking the gates on them. If they do this, they risk these authors going to someone who will publish them because they are no longer the only game in town.

Groupon's odd deals

Every morning since I got the Groupon app I check for any deals I might be remotely interested in. Generally I take a pass on the 20 free cupcakes I can get from a bakery (my waist line) or firing up the kiln for a blow glass class (what would I use this skill for?) Today I found a couple of interesting "deals."

Wax your body with chocolate!

This spa will wax you with chocolate, or perhaps it's a chocolate smelling wax? Regardless, will you feel any better as you get the overwhelming urge to munch on your legs while the tantalizing aroma of chocolate wafts around you?

Make your own Clay Beads!

Creating jewelry is fun and creative. Creating your own beads for a necklace sounds cool until you look at the beads. They're clay, which means they'll weigh a ton. They're chunky (okay, some people like chunky) and come in only solid colors (not cool tie dye streaks or faux marble). They also remind me of the plastic beads kids push around on wire toys you find at the doctor's office for some reason.

Kiddie photos

Another photography studio is offering discounts on getting your precious one photographed. Do they guarantee, however, your kid will look as happy as in the sample photo below?

(This is not my kid!)

Meet Namara

Namara is a ragdoll kitten I adopted when she was only 13 weeks old. She was shy at first. When I brought her home she immediately curled up in a ball behind my shoes and was very frightened. After a few days with a lot of treats and cuddling she realized things weren't so bad. After four days of being in a "safe room" she wanted to get out and explore. When she first met Stella, my tuxedo cat, there was plenty of hissing and swatting. In less than a week, however, she also charmed her way into Stella's heart and became her adopted kitten as well.

So is a ragdoll cat that much different from a domestic cat?

She likes to play fetch and will follow you from room to room to the point of almost tripping you. She will cuddle on occassion but doesn't like being held nor does she go limp as the breed usually is famed for (hence the ragdoll name). But she is sweet as she is mischievous. Often she tries to eat things she has no business trying to consume, such as packing foam (today), a ball of yarn (last month) or a spider she found in the bathtub (one week ago).

When we first brought her home

Here she is helping me ship off a package

How Civilization ruined my life

It's not civilization with a small c but Civilization the game, especially Civilization V that eats up my time and transforms me from a healthy, well adjusted person into a turn-obsessed glassy-eyed zombie staring at the screen for hours while I try to conquer the world.

My nasty obsession with Civilization - the first one with crappy blocky graphics that randomly froze in the middle of battles - began in high school. I would play several turns where I'd annihilate a rival civilization and then run to class to take my final exams.

Now I play Civilization V, which isn't a great game but as addicting perhaps as World of Warcraft. It can be very cathartic to drop the A-bomb on an annoying rival civilization if you've had a bad day at work. The downside? You've just blown 4 hours playing the game straight. Will this stop me from playing? Hell no! I still need to kick Napoleon's ass.

Creepy George Washington WANTS YOU!

Message in a Wooden Bottle

Sometimes the right decor can make the room. Some just stare at you with creepy taxidermy eyes or make you feel you've been sent to the crappy side room at Red Lobster complete with fishing nets, hooks and oversized plastic trout hanging from the walls

Today at Target I saw an item that screamed Decor Fail - a couple of chunky and heavy bottles that looked like they were carved from not the prettiest log in the lumber yard.

What exactly can you do with these log flasks except put them next to the carved wooden mushrooms you also bought at Target (in the background behind them)?

Pearl foolishness

While in Las Vegas I visited The Pearl Factory several times mostly in the obsessive quest to finding even a better pearl than the last one. It was gambling with mollusks instead of slot machines. At least I always got a payout.
I ended up with some nice pearls - one of which was a gorgeous 8mm gold pearl which I ended up getting set in a pretty swirly setting. But this left me with a problem. At the end of the trip I had to set 3 loose pearls I cracked open. I also learned that unless you want to pay overprice for a setting at Pearl Factory just set it yourself for a few bucks.
The settings I got off of ebay. The last pic is a ring setting in 10k one lady sold to me for $35 because the original pearl has fallen off of it. I think the results turned out nicely. ;)

New blog, new motivation

Here's to hoping starting a blog will give me the necessary kick in the butt to write and share what I write instead of keeping it locked up in the proverbial desk drawer. On Livejournal I don't post a lot of my original fiction as that's more a venue for fanfiction and obviously Facebook and Twitter are not the places to be sharing writing as well. This also gives me a chance to hopefully get more a sounding board on what I write and do a little self publication. I also will share my own observations and the odd creative endeavor if it doesn't fit anywhere else. ;)