The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard

The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book this old. And this book has been on my to-read list for a long time. A mentor in my MA program suggested I read some Robert E. Howard and so I got this book but I never quite got to it.

The Hour of the Dragon is Howard’s only novel-length story--the mass market paperback wasn’t even 300 pages. It was featured in installments in Weird Tales starting in 1935. Magic and betrayal, wizards, death and quests what’s not to love about this original sword and sorcery story?

While Howard had great stories to tell, I found myself cringing at the usage and style. Exclamation points everywhere, ill-placed Middle English, impossible names (yet not as impossible as his contemporary and friend H. P. Lovecraft). Every time I cringed, I had to remind myself how long ago this was written. Have tastes in prose changed so much? Or was that just the result of the cheaply produced pulps of the era?

Despite all that, delicious vocabulary crept among the purple prose on which 90’s Sword and Sorcery was built. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to look up a word while reading, and I think it’s a shame that I don’t have to do so more often. Maybe I’m just not reading the right stuff?

What about Conan himself? The character that people could not get enough of in his heyday? I can certainly see the draw to him. He was the strapping giant that no one could beat, he fought on the side of good and didn’t back down from confrontation. Despite being a little sexist by my own 21st century standards, he had respectable morals and philosophies. He also was intelligent. He had a mind for politics, even though he obviously hated them, and could strategize a battle--and Howard could write it well enough to draw out the suspense (this is probably the key to his success).

As I mentioned before, Howard created the original Conan character during the Great Depression. And now, the new movie for Conan the Barbarian is coming out, during this new depression we’re living through. Coincidence? What do you think?

Review cross posted at Wandering Around the Words

Survey results part 4

It's apparent by the results that word of mouth is a HUGE factor in deciding what books to buy. Having a good browsing experience to find new stuff becomes important in such cases, since once you find the book, you are likely to want to find similar stuff.

Favorite feature of the ereaders? Portability across the board. Having a library at your fingertips, handy for when you want to have a few books available while you are traveling, and don't want to carry around bulky books in your carry on.


In contrast, the least favorite features were the cost of the ebooks, the lack of a backlight on the Kindle, and not being able to take the iPad in the sun. Another problem mentioned was the fact that ebook readers are much easier to break than paperbacks.


It's interesting to see that once an ereader has been purchased, people tend to stick with its built-in book store. It is hard to get anything other then Kindle books on a Kindle, and it has such a huge selection it makes sense to buy from them. The iPad can swing both ways. Well, more than that. Every reading format is supported. With programs like Calibre, it makes it easier to buy any format, then convert to the format of your choice. I also like when a company's like Smashwords and O'Reilly offer the book in multiple formats. So you are free to grab the version of your choice.



So that about summarizes things up. Our thanks to the many that participated. 

The Paper Book is Fighting Back...

The new flipback format is trying to play on readers nostaligia for paper books, but trying to compete by reading sideways so it looks more like an ebook reader.

...and, um, I don't think this one is going to win...

At the best it's a throwback to the pulps of the 1950's people who want books are buying them for their longevity, or they are buying electronic. I don't know how they are going to get a Stephen King book in one of these "portable" volumes.

It's only sold 1 million copies in the past 2 years, and with the electronic "revolution" only getting stronger, I don't think this reaction to the decline of paper books is going to compete.

Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction

I knew Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction would be a treasure before I opened it. Hearing it described as a "writers workshop in a bottle" had piqued my interest. Now that I’ve gone through it, I can confirm it’s true. Any writer, beginner or otherwise will find benefit from reading this book. Usually structured around one theme, craft element or one particular way to write; how-to books can be limited on how much they can help you.

Before I go any further, I should probably share that I am an alumna of Seton Hill’s Writing Popular Fiction program. I know about half of the contributing authors, either by studying writing under them or with them. And I can only say how much I absolutely respect their skill and knowledge of writing. That done, let’s move on...

Many Genres one Craft is broken into sections discussing “Craft,” which encompasses everything from Style to Character, Plot and Setting. The section for “Genre” discusses genre itself as well as the contemporary classifications we are all familiar with, including romance and women’s fiction, sci-fi and fantasy, horror and suspense, children’s and they even have an alternative section. Most other how-to books don’t discuss anything beyond those topics, but Many Genres one Craft continues with a section about “The Writer’s Life.” It’s true, if it was easy everyone would do it...and this section discusses how to deal with the self-inflicted curse and joy of being a writer. Probably the most useful section of the book for me was the section on “Promoting.”

Within all the sections, from idea generation to promotion of a published work is the wisdom of those who’ve “been there, done that” and are still publishing because they adapt to change, or newly publishing because they know what they are doing. Many of these contributors fondly reminisce on old times, when publishing was kind to writers. But, as Arnzen says in the intro, “Writing is a tough business and it's only grown colder as the trade has evolved.” And that’s why we need books like this.

As you read you feel like the contributors are there talking with you. They are not saying “I’m a great writer I know how it should be done,” they are saying “I’ve been writing, and I discovered this.” These writers are not telling you absolutes, they are pushing you to develop your own judgment. As a writer, your strongest tool will be your own judgment: of your own work, and of what you read.

If you read all these essays closely, you may find that some of the advice contradicts other pieces. This doesn’t mean one of them is wrong. One tidbit of hard-won industry knowledge may cancel out another bit of wisdom gleaned off an insider’s insight. But that doesn’t mean one is right and one is wrong. Both pieces of conflicting knowledge are important because they both happened. That’s the way it is.

No one book can tell you everything you need to know to get published. But Many Genres, One Craft might be close.

Dropbox left open for four hours

From MacWorld.com, "Online storage service Dropbox accidentally turned off password authentication for its 25 million users for four hours on Monday" They assert that less then 1% of their users were active at the time. Dropbox is a great utility for storing and sharing files remotely. You have a local copy of the file, and it is pushed to the cloud. Any other devices connected to that account, gets the file from the cloud automatically. Even with the privacy issue that was accressed, I use the service all the time. However, if you are storing sensitive files, it is always a good idea to ensure they are encrypted, no matter where they are stored. 

Survey Results--Part 3

Today I want to show the last two pie charts, because they are so pretty to look at ... Umm, wait. Because they are a great way to show results. We'll save the textual results for part 4, where for instance, you will see what the most and least favorite features are.

Now, let's have some more pie!

For the most part, it seems pretty easy to load up the reader. Seems the companies have done their job.

This one surprised me. When iBooks first came out, highlighting was a feature that was missing. However it was available on the Kindle reader for iPad. It took one or two updates to get that feature into iBooks. It's a feature I just can't do with out. But I guess it depends on the type of book you are reading. For a fiction novel, it doesn't make so much sense, but for a technical book, it makes all the sense in the world. 47% like the annotations, but 61% use it for recreational reading. So perhaps people like to highlight their favorite passages from their fiction books as I like to highlight important parts of a technical book.

Survey Results--Part 2

Purchasing ebooks

ebook Readers

Look for the rest of the resulsts coming soon!

Survey Winners and Results--Part 1

Results are in! Congratulations to the winners, you have been notified via email.

And now onto the Survey Results. We'll be releasing them in installments over the next few days.



Introductions

It would seem that most of you are between 31 and 40:

Even split between brainiacs and the average Joe:

ebooks

People still like to buy dead trees. They really are pretty aren't they? Nothing like showing off your fav books. The folks at Apple know this, as the presentation of your ebook collection is a book shelf. Perfect.

Most people are building their collection as they go. Makes sense. But I sure do love filling up my cyber shelves :)

Not many have replaced their books with ebooks. I wonder if it would have made a difference if you were able to upgrade the print to ebook? Most of my technical books were O'Reilly, and they have an excellent replacement plan. If you have the print, you can get the ebook for a huge discount.

Stay tuned for more results on Monday!

For Immediate Release!

Portland Writing Group Indie-Publishes eBook Anthology

Portland, ME June 17, 2011 It’s all about the technology. Literature has finally entered the Indie Revolution thanks to ebooks, and the Greater Portland Scribists aren’t hesitating to join. GPS has produced Scribings to get their bearings on the technologies that are bringing ebooks to the world. As new authors, they are experimenting with this low-cost, high-yield mode of publication to reach out directly to their audience. Find Scribings on Smashwords.com, and many other ebookstores, beginning June 17th 2011. Look for cards with discount codes circulating the Portland area!

Scribings is a fabulous compilation of speculative tales by four Maine authors. The collection consists of eleven pieces of short fiction, including one piece of flash fiction from each author. These stories exhibit a range of styles and genres from fantasy to science fiction and beyond. Watch young gods learn their place, see what the afterlife is like, meet Dappil, taste the sweetness of revenge, feel the fires of judgment and more.

Over the last year GPS has been blogging about the development of ebook popularity and how epublishing is affecting the publishing industry. Also on their blog are reviews of writing software, book reviews and occasionally a free story.

Greater Portland Scribists is a group of speculative fiction writers from the greater Portland, Maine area. They coined the term “scribists” to pay homage to the scribes of yore, monks who spent hours bent over manuscript pages, writing for as long as they had light to do so. GPS members are Jamie Alan Belanger; Cynthia Ravinski, MA; Lee Patterson and Richard Veysey.

Contact Info:
Greater Portland Scribists
scribists@gmail.com
http://scribists.blogspot.com
facebook.com/GreaterPortlandScribists

Begining of the Week Update

It's June 13th, so that means 5 days until:

• Scribings, Vol 1 launches (see our cover? istn't it georgous?)


• Results for "From the Pulps to Pixles: an ereader Survey" are posted


• The winner of the survey is notified

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Click here to take our survey.

One winner will receive a $20 gift card to the ebook store of their choice and a free copy of our ebook. Five other free ebooks will be given away.