I absolutely hate being locked into specific hardware or software in order to read an eBook and its one of the reason’s I’m mostly in pause mode, in regards to purchasing new books. When the next great device comes along, perhaps with some of the features current eBook devices lack, I want to be able to move my books over.

Richard Curtis recently summarized an article by Cory Doctorow in which Cory discussed his dislike for “roach motel devices” — eBook readers like the Kindle that didn’t let you actually own the stories and novels you’ve purchased. I encourage you to read the article, available through the link previous.

After reading the article I decided that since I’m not a fan of these roach motel devices and have been burned by purchasing eBooks in a format that ended up dying, I probably shouldn’t be locking my work into one of them either but a few weeks ago I released a story on my Kindle. The story, ‘The End of the Road’, was first published in Not One of Us and is also available in print anthologies through AnthologyBuilder, so it is available through other means. But I have also decided to make it available for free on my website as well, and I’ll continue this practice with anything else I decide to release on the Kindle (or other locked-in devices).

So if you buy it on the Kindle and want to move it to another device, you’ll just have to come my website and grab the text version.

These last few weeks I’ve been reading novels mostly and in general I’m probably going to stop doing reviews of the various magazines I’ve read. What I will do is call out anything that stood out for me and one story did, this week.

A Memory of Wind by Rachel Swirsky can be read at tor.com. This is a haunting story that has stuck with me a few days after reading. It tells the tale of a minor figure whose sacrifice during the Trojan War has been largely overlooked. Well worth a read — and its free. Also, if you’ll remember my rant about online magazines from a few days ago, if you scroll down on the left-hand side of the page you will see a link to download the story in various formats.

I’m not an impulse buyer in realspace… I plan my purchases and save up for things, all responsibly like, but when I’m on the Internet and I see something I want, I’ll buy it immediately… as long as the site takes payment via PayPal. And there’s little that I dislike more (in my online life anyways) is when I find something I want and they don’t take PayPal. I don’t understand it… most other merchant systems I’ve seen in use are frickin’ ugly and make me want to hide my money in my mattress.

Please, if you want my money (and you do, you know it) use PayPal.

I am curious though why some sites don’t use it. It is not difficult to set up and it lets the purchaser not have to worry about giving out credit card numbers and whatnot. Any legit reasons not to use it?

“A Ragman’s Vow” which is the first story I had published in On Spec has been reprinted in A Thousand Faces #11, a superhero themed magazine. A Thousand Faces has a somewhat unique distribution in that all of the stories can be read online, for free, or a print version can be ordered with the authors and editor splitting profit on the print issues. So if you didn’t read “A Ragman’s Vow” the first time around go to A Thousand Faces and read it, or better yet, order the ebook or print version.

And of course back issues from On Spec are available.

Check out The Anthology Project if you’re looking for something new and interesting. From their website:

The Anthology Project collects the comics of artists unified by their delirious pursuit of compelling narrative and notable artistic work in the medium of sequential art. Its humble intent is only to delight.

Several of the artists involved work for BioWare — which is how I found out about it originally. I ordered my copy today and I’ll let you all know what I think of it when it arrives.

Okay, I’ve put up a new bibliography including my forthcoming stories for 2010. It is an alphabetical listing, with notes on which stories have been reprinted and for any stories with online or eBook versions, links to download them. The images at the top of the page are randomly pulled from the covers of issues that I’ve had work appear in.

Please let me know if you have any troubles viewing this, thanks.

Technical Details
The page is generated via PHP pulling the information out of a MySql Database. This has the advantage that I don’t have to mess with the formatting of the page every time I add a story or novel to the list… I just add it to the MySql table and it appears. It also means that if I need to restructure the list I can do so easily.

The shortlist for the Prix Aurora Awards have been announced.

BEST NOVEL IN ENGLISH :
THE AMULET OF AMON-RA, by Leslie Carmichael, CBAY Books
DRUIDS, by Barbara Galler-Smith and Josh Langston, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy
WAKE, Robert J. Sawyer, Penguin Canada
STEEL WHISPERS, Hayden Trenholm, Bundoran Press
TERRA INSEGURA, Edward Willett, DAW Books

BEST SHORT-FORM WORK IN ENGLISH:
“PAWNS DREAMING OF ROSES”, Eileen Bell, Women of the Apocalypse. Absolute Xpress
“HERE THERE BE MONSTERS” Brad Carson, Ages of Wonder, (DAW)
“LITTLE DEATHS” Ivan Dorin, Tesseracts Thirteen
“RADIO NOWHERE” Douglas Smith, Campus Chills
“THE WORLD MORE FULL OF WEEPING” Robert J. Wiersema, ChiZine Publications

BEST WORK IN ENGLISH (OTHER) :
WOMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (the Apocalyptic Four) Editor, Absolute Xpress
AGES OF WONDER Julie E. Czerneda, & Robert St. Martin, Editors, DAW Books
NEO-OPSIS MAGAZINE, Karl Johanson, Editor
ON SPEC MAGAZINE, Diane Walton, Managing Editor, The Copper Pig Writers’ Society
DISTANT EARLY WARNINGS: CANADA’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION Robert J. Sawyer, Editor, Robert J. Sawyer books

You can read the full list at the Prix Aurora site.

I’ve met the editors of On Spec, networked with the writers of Women of the Apocalypse, listened to the very entertaining Robert J. Sawyer give readings, shared a table of contents with Hayden Trenholm, had my story ‘From the Sea’ (On Spec) edited by Barbara Galler-Smith, and more! This year it will be difficult to pick which works I’m going to vote for. Voting directions are at the Prix Aurora site.

With two young boys I watch a lot of movies. One particular favorite of theirs is the 2006 Pixar film, ‘Cars’.

I enjoyed the movie the first few times but now when I watch it I do find that my mind tends to wander. I often wonder, for example, what has happened to all the humans. It was probably the 100th viewing that I finally noticed the connection between Cars and the Stephen King short story ‘Trucks’ (which became the movie Maximum Overdrive).

If you haven’t watched Cars the basic premise is that vehicles (cars, trucks, whatnot) rule Earth. There are no humans, just animate vehicles. In Maximum Overdrive there are only animate machines, hunting down humans.

So…

It seems obvious to me that after the vehicles in Maximum Overdrive bested the humans, they would have kept some as slaves, to work behind the scenes. The universe of Cars is set maybe a few dozen years in the future from that of Maximum Override. The vehicles probably have kept some humans around as slaves — after all I really doubt they can do some of the meticulous craftsmanship that is demonstrated in Cars (tires are not quite as useful as fingers and thumbs). The machines might have made the humans build robotic factories for them to enable mass manufacturing and repair and may have done in the human race, but I suspect there are a few of them skulking around in the shadows.

Next time you watch Cars, think of this connection and I guarantee you’ll enjoy the film as much as you did the first time (perhaps even more so).

After writing this I did a quick google search and there are dozens of similar posts about this! Clearly I am not the only one who has made this connection, which must make it true, right?

Since the beginning of the year I’ve set myself some firm word count goals and to my delight I’ve been able to meet and often exceed them. I took a quick look at my tracking and I’ve now written over 75 000 words since January. The bulk of this has been on the novel but I’ve (almost) finished a 12 000 word sci-fi story and the rough draft of a flash story.

If I can keep this pace I should be able to finish the rough draft of the first novel by the end of March and start on the second novel in April.

Of course today I’m derailed from doing any serious writing because both sons are home with bronchitis but tomorrow I’ll be back at it.

JW Schnar, the editor of War of the Worlds: Frontlines Anthology is revealing a few of the authors and brief blurbs about their stories every few days. Yesterday he put up the details for my story “John’s List”. Check it out on his blog over at Things Falling Apart.