What happened to my library?

I was 17 when I first got on the internet. My first internet account was a dial-up shell account, meaning that I ran all programs through a terminal. For you folks that got on later and only know the World Wide Web, you cannot appreciate what the Internet used to be.

It was a library. It was our public repository of knowledge, and it already had an amazing collection of articles and fiction. Using databases with names like Gopher, WAIS and VERONICA, one could find all kinds of articles. Or, if you wanted to talk to folks in the “forums” of the day, you used NNTP, which is also known as Usenet News.

This was all very complicated, and not at all user friendly, and when the next wave of engineers showed up with graphical browsing on the WWW network, almost all of us embraced it as being better.

At first, it was better. After all, HTML was so easy that even a brain-dead pot junkie like me could figure it out, and I can’t understand any other coding methods. (Well, aside from BASIC, and that’s a threaded language, where almost all programs are now object oriented.)

WebLit Review: Tattoo

This review is based on 5 chapters, of which 7 are available. Before I begin, I want to stress that I DO like the premise of Tattoo, and the episodes are  interesting once each  problem is fleshed out and the action begins. But Tattoo fails to satisfy on several levels, and blame for this lies mostly in one-dimensional character development.

The premise starts with an evil twin stealing Glory’s magic book, though she is never seen doing so. The conflict between the two sisters is realistic enough, and the first few pages had me squirming for this realism. But once Lori steals Glory’s book and kills their mother, she’s a classic MacGuffin. Glory MUST find Lori…but first she has to (blank). Blank represents each task that Glory sets herself up for, and again, Lori never shows up. She’s the one-armed man to Glory’s Dr. Richard Kimble.

Haunting Sins reviewed: 4.5 stars…

Only a few weeks after reviewing Touched, Amber McKenzie’s first story, Becky Sutton, AKA: Shutsumon, wrote a short review for Eddie’s First Circus. I’m delighted to see that she rated it 4.5 stars out of 5, and this part of the review made me smile till my cheeks ached:

This is young adult dark fantasy done right. Serious when it needs to be serious and funny when it needs to be funny. There may be superpowers in this universe, but they don’t solve everything.

You can read the rest of the review here.

The first sentence in the above quote makes me grin because I didn’t set out to write anything as YA. In fact, I’ve often thought of myself as being anti-YA. But I suppose given the protagonists and the  scope of the story, I slipped up and wrote some YA “accidentally.”

(And after reading the review, it dawned on me that Dating in the Post-Zombie World might also qualify. But I’m still just calling it horror. On the other hand, most of Wendy’s books qualify as YA…no, I’ll deny that if anyone points it out. Even if one of the main characters is a YA, it doesn’t mean the books are YA, right?)

The third sentence could sum up a lot about my philosophy when it comes to dark fantasy. Even if my characters have cool powers, it doesn’t make their lives easier than normal people. Maybe that’s not a sentiment for great fantasy fiction, but to me, it does make for more realistic dark fantasy fiction.

Becky compares my writing to marmite, in that you either like it or hate it. (Or she could be implying that I’m cheap and will spread for bread…naaah!) I agree with her comparison, and I’m glad that she likes my writing style enough to read and review several of my stories. I send my thanks to Becky for another good review. It’s a big help with promotions, and I really appreciate it.

Blind Rage is on sale…

Yes, after many delays due to conflicting projects, I’ve finally issued a corrected version of Blind Rage that I feel okay with selling. You may recall that shortly after the story was finished, I oped not to put out a retail version because I’d found too many typos during the PDF layout stage. Instead, I released a free version and swore that I’d make time to edit the book over.

I’m happy to say that almost all of the errors were punctuation, like missing quote, periods or commas, or periods where there should have been commas. Only two real errors popped out at me, and I corrected both as well as adding two words in an early chapter to further clarify a statement.

And you don’t really care about that. Okay, so if you want the corrected file for free, you can download it in these formats:

Microsoft LIT – Palm PDB – Adobe PDF – Mobipocket PRC (Also works free on Kindle)

Or if you like the story and think it’s worth some money, you can buy it for $0.99 cents:

Amazon – Mobipocket – Smashwords (In 5 formats, including Sony LRF)

In other Amazon news, I was recently given a 2 star review on Zombie Punter because it was “VERY gay.” I would like to ask anyone who has read the book with an Amazon account to add your own honest reviews of the e-book at the Kindle storefront. You don’t even have to mention the other review, but I’d appreciate it if the low review wasn’t the only one. So, can someone help me out there, please? Kthxbai.

Interview: Ergofiction #4

Wootecia! I got a second interview this month, this time with A.M. Harte, one of two lovely editors at Ergo fiction a portal of all things WebLit. Anna asked some real tough questions, forcing me to think hard to give concise, short answers. But I’m pretty happy with the end result.

Head over to Ergo fiction to check out the interview, and if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments or here on my blog.

I want to thank both the editors at Ergo fiction for having me as their guest. It was a fun interview, and I hope it shows when folks read it.

There MIGHT be a contest coming…

Right, I’ll make this short and simple. I want to run a contest, with the prize being a co-starring role in the next vampire book. I’ve seen how my vampires are the most popular creatures in the Mystical World Wars setting, and I’m hoping that because people like them more, they will want to participate in this contest to become a part of the vampires’ world.

I am thinking of making online reviews the contest entries. People can post multiple reviews to make multiple entries into the contest. The same review can also be posted to multiple sites for the same effect.

The book in question will be a murder mystery musical, and it will find Lucas and the Colby triplets trapped on board a cruise ship, trying to solve a grisly series of murders to save their own necks.

My intention of having the contest would be to generate more review, and also to generate interest in my current readers to become more vocal fans. So if I only got five entries, I’d just cancel the contest and forget I ever said anything.

Additionally, I’m trying to gauge how many of you would want to get into a vampire book, so I’ll be watching the comments to see how this goes. If this posts gets high traffic, but few comments, there’s no reason why I should bother holding the contest.

You might wonder why I keep harping on getting new reviews, or on trying to get you folks to talk. Well let me show you a pretty picture:

Those lovely numbers are almost double my normal traffic this week, and they came because I got a whole bunch of reviews all coming in at the same time. Each review pulls down only a few new readers, but because there’s so many new reviews out, the trickles of traffic combine into a veritable flood.

Your reviews do that. That’s why I keep begging for them. And, if it might get you to write more reviews, I’d be willing to hold regular contests for co-starring or guest starring roles.

So, how about it? Do this sound like a contest you’d enter? Or is it like every promotion else I do, not even worthy of a meh?

Lend me your rears…

Hey, let me tell you people something!

Something!

And, let me say another thing: Another thing.

Friends and foes, lend me your rears! No? Fine! Then I stand before you because you don’t trust me to stand behind you! I speak to you not as a countryman, but as a citywoman. I speak in public of a matter most private. But I speak of an important matter of great import, which I will import to you. I import, and you decide. (Then I retort, and you deride).

In the past, for my thoughts, I have been criticized by critics most hypocritical. I have been attacked, berated, castrated, denied, embarrassed, fucked, groped, hit, interrogated, jumped, kicked, lambasted, mauled, nipped, overlooked, punched, quarantined, razzed, stymied, underrated, vandalized, wounded, x-rayed, yelled at and zapped.

But I am still here. I have no idea what I’m saying, but I will say it with conviction! And I will say it until anyone proves it cannot be said! And anyone who says it cannot be said is just a so-and-so saying stuff!

Um…never mind. I forgot what I wanted to say.

These Dreams…

It was my father I first talked to about my dreams. I wasn’t sure who else to approach, and it was such a strange problem to have. It’s just that I don’t remember the vast majority of my dreams. I know, most people don’t. We wake up recalling what we’d just dreamt, but within minutes the clarity and detail is lost.

Except, I had certain dreams that didn’t fade. The memories stayed with me, haunting me. They weren’t bad dreams, but I always felt like there was something important happening. Why else would I remember them?

But this isn’t why I’d come to him. The more recent problem was. I’d begun to experience moments that felt like I was reliving one of my dreams. I would have the exact same conversations, go through the same actions. Of course I already knew what déjà vu was thanks to Monty Python, and this didn’t seem right. I didn’t feel like I’d done the same thing. I felt certain it was my dreams guiding me.

Review: Trail of Madness

Wow, this has been a very good day for reviews! Michele Lee’s Booklove blog has a fantastic review for Trail of Madness, the second book of the Campaign trilogy. Her summary has me smiling so hard my cheeks hurt:

One of the most interesting serial killer tales I’ve read in a while with the most vivid characters, I recommend this one to readers who like the serial killer concept, but want to see something new done with it.

Yeah! Go Jobe and Wendy! (*^_^)* I want to thank Michele for this fantastic review. I cannot wait to see how you react to the concluding book in the trilogy, Redemption Lost. Unfortunately, I do have to wait. But I will, and I’ll keep checking this review if I need to find a reason to smile.

A reader reviews Blood Relations

I got an email from Jonthan Wilson after he finished reading Blood Relations, and I was so happy with his letter that I asked if he could make a slightly longer review. It turns out, he doesn’t have a blog, but he was willing to send along his review by e-mail. So, here’s Jonathan on Blood Relations:

About the only drawback I had was the writing style itself, which I found to be a bit stilted, as if every sentence was forced to be a simple sentence.  As for the story ideas and imagery, it was a refreshing, new take on the vampire gamut of tales.  Ms. Whitten breathed new life for me into the tired old stories I had read about the never-changing vampires with Vicky,  who seemed emotionally unstable or tragically flawed at times.  There was a sexual tension between Amber and Vicky the entire novel, never knowing if they were going to go the final step in their relationship, which made for quite a dynamic interplay. The teasers for the other races got a bit confusing as they were overwhelming at one point. But all in all,  I really enjoyed this, as it was far from what I expected when I picked it up. It was a pleasant, easy read and left me with a smile on my face and wanting more.

Thank you very much, Jonathan. It’s a great review, and I’m glad you enjoyed the story so much. I wish you a speedy recovery from surgery, and I look forward to your next message. ^_^