The Shame Game

Over at Dear Author there's a thread that just won't die... almost 400 posts at this point I believe and it's the best example of the good and bad of blog discussion. Thankfully none of the women have come out and cursed at each other but a fella named Tom tried the paternal 'shame game' that didn't work.

I love the shame game. It's this thing that men do when they aren't right but want to shut down conversation. It's "you should be ashamed of yourself young lady..." It's the scolding and the admonishment and in Tom's case, calling the women harpies and saying they're beneath him.

Because he can't make them agree with him.

I'm pathetic. A little part of me squee'd when he tried it. He didn't get as trashed as I thought he should have but I loved seeing it and loved the few responses he got. And none of those responses were the ones he wanted.

Heh.

Smashwords Has Disappointed Me

And now my books are no longer available there.

PayPal has decided to come down on online book retailers and stop the sale of certain "pornographic" materials. Well, what they really have done is enforced their TOS and now they're telling the retailers, take down the objectionable content or you can't use us anymore.

PayPal has every right to do so.

Smashwords has agreed to take down the content and I disagree with their decision. They're choosing censorship as their best option and I can't get my head around that at all. because once they start dictating what they deem 'pornography', who's to say that they won't decide anything outside of one man/one woman isn't? In fact, isn't that the backlash we're seeing now in American politics?

I might not like certain types of stories and I wouldn't buy them or read them but I'd defend any adult's right to read or buy it for themselves. Smashwords apparently would not.

I cannot in good conscience keep my books on Smashwords while they allow PayPal to dictate their policy.

Recs Please

I lovelovelove books with cooking in them. Books where food matters and is described in loving detail. Where cooking matters and is described in loving detail. Whether romance, women's lit, non-fiction... it's a deep in my heart reading need.

I need more books of this type. Anyone? Please?

Winter at My House

It's that time of year when everything seems dead, or at the very least, asleep.

This year winter at my house is a roller coaster ride of iced over car windows alternating with turning the car A/C on in the afternoons. It's not unusual to go from 20°F at night to almost 70 as a daytime high. It's overcast more often than it's sunny, and it's been raining so much I feel like Selma is challenging Seattle for the title of the rainiest city in America.

The winter darkness is brightened by the orange-red breasts of a flock of robins. A veritable herd of robins, come to winter in my neighbourhood. Everywhere I look, there are robins.

Back in Ontario, where I grew up, robins were solitary birds except for their mate. Together they raised two or three families and they never flocked together as starlings do.

Here in Alabama, robins flock. And they sing. Their song drifts through my open windows and lifts my heart out of the winter doldrums. They've created a game at the back of the house, where the wilderness borders the yard. They fly through the seemingly impenetrable bushes and branches, zipping through tunnels visible only to them, circling around to do it all again. Somehow they avoid collision, both with the woods and each other.

I wanted to share this with you because every year I'm fascinated all over again by these 'common' birds, who are really so very special. And when the full beauty of a southern spring is upon us, they will leave, off to northern climes to replenish the robin population.

I'm glad they spend their winters here. They are a small joy in the dark time of the year, when things can become overwhelming. God's choir, come to cheer us up. :-)

Song of Life

So this morning I was sitting on my bus and I opened my Kindle, ready to start a new book. I had a Molly Harper book that Carolyn had downloaded but then I saw Song of Life, Carolyn's newly released book.

I'd read the book back when Carolyn first wrote it (we always read each other's writing) but I hadn't sat down and read it fully after editing and everything it went through professionally.

Holy shit, Carolyn can write!

Seriously, it is that good. It's just so well written and so much better than the usual shit and I want people to read it. I really do.

So here's the thing. I'll give you a copy of the ebook if you'll leave a review on Amazon. You don't have to promise to do it in the next week or even month. You don't have to promise 5 stars.

This is just a book that deserves to be read and truly deserves an audience. So that's the deal. A free copy for a promise of an Amazon review. Let me know. I have a feeling you will be very grateful cause damn that Old Fart can write.

Make 'Em Laugh

I'm going through a funny paranormal glom right now. I've read 2 Linda Wisdom books and 2 Molly Harper books and I'm about to read another Molly Harper book... and I've discovered a few things about them.

Linda Wisdom is a better writer for a number of reasons. Molly Harper is a damn sight funnier but her books lack.

Linda Wisdom writes/wrote a number of books about a group of witches who have oodles of power, complicated love lives and stuff. The stuff is tightly plotted, involved and has funny stuff going on.

She is funny. Her witches are smart and smart asses, her romance is hot and her humor makes me smile.

Molly Harper, on the other hand, makes me laugh out loud. Now I do a lot of reading on the bus going to and from work and I unashamedly giggle, chortle and belly laugh while I read. Yet, her books feel emptier somehow.

I feel like Molly H. is missing something. In Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs, I thought she was missing a plot. (Seriously funny book with no real plot at all.) Naked Werewolf had plot but still felt lacking.

It's interesting to read and fun to compare how I feel about the authors after I'm done. I do know that I like both but Wisdom is becoming an auto-buy for me while Harper still isn't. Yet I do love the laughing out loud she offers.

It's Me Again ...

Do you see the look on my cartoon face up top? Would you call it surprised? Horrified? Stunned?

Do you see the look on the Lori character's face? Would you call it snarky? Shifty eyed? Or just plain evil? It's obvious she's had a nefarious idea and is figuring out how to get rid of me so she can carry it out.

Lori is always one step ahead of me and I know this is her usual look nwhen she's writing her outrageous tales of how we met and other derring do's.

Shifty little bugger, isn't she? But definitely a loveable one. ♥♥ :-D