Flametoad

Book lovers rejoice! You have the opportunity to influence the world of literature. Who hasn’t found themselves hating a book that the critics rave about? Clearly you have superior taste in literature, right? Now’s your chance to demonstrate it. The Preditors & Editors Readers’ Choice polls are open for voting, and there are two important categories you need to act upon.

The first is Best Anthology. 12 to Midnight’s very own Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas is in the running. In fact, much to our shock and amazement, we’ve managed to hold the #1 spot for an entire week. However, voting doesn’t close until January 14, so we’re not taking anything for granted. If you read Buried Tales and think it should win, I would greatly appreciate your vote. If you haven’t read it, visit the book’s website or Flames Rising for sneak peeks…then follow the links to pick up a copy of your own.

Speaking for Flames Rising, the other category you should be acting upon is Review Site. Flames Rising has an impressive lineup of author interviews, book reviews, and more. I believe it is well deserving of the award, and if you do too then I’m sure they’d appreciate your vote.

Your vote only takes a minute or two of your time, but it means a tremendous amount to the people behind the books or sites for which you’re voting. Thank you!

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Here we are on the last day of 2009. We made it! Congratulations. After reading a few essays titled “The 10 Best Movies of the Decade” and so on, I thought it might be fun to write my own review of the decade. It’s actually a much more mind-bending task than I first gave it credit. A decade is a long time in the human lifespan. We experience a lot of change within the span of a decade. If I tried to encapsulate an entire decade in an essay it would either be far too short, painfully boring, incoherant, or quite likely all three. So instead I’m just going to hit the highlights in timeline form.

2000

• Celebrated my 1 year anniversary

2001

• Applied and was initiated as a Freemason.
• 9/11
• Started working for Texas A&M University.

2002

• Finished my Masonic “work”, became a Master Mason, then dropped out for 5 years.
• Celebrated my 30th birthday.
• My maternal grandmother passed away.
• Took a trip to Paris with Mrs. Flametoad and another couple.

2003

• Took a January ski trip with Mrs. Flametoad and a different couple.
• Played a convention RPG game called Weekend Warriors run by a pair of dudes named Ed and Jerry. Joined 12 to Midnight as a partner a month or so later.
• I started my Flametoad blog. Unfortunately, I accidentally wiped the database during a later Wordpress upgrade and lost more than a year’s worth of posts.
• Tadpole 1 born in July.
• First 12 to Midnight commercial release, Last Rites of the Black Guard, was released in August. It was followed up with a Savage Worlds edition, plus Weekend Warriors a few months later.

2004

• My first commercial RPG writing credit, Bloodlines, released.
• Sold our first home and moved into an apartment in Houston so Mrs. Flametoad could attend medical training. We were robbed 3 times in the span of a year.

2005

• Returned to Bryan/College Station and bought our second home.
• My maternal grandfather passed away.

2006

• Tadpole 2 is born.
• I drop out of my weekly RPG game, which marks the end of my regularly gaming routine for the remainder of the decade.

2007

• My paternal grandmother passed away.
• Became active in my local Masonic lodge again.

2008

• Took a drastic career change by taking a university job in credit card security and e-commerce.
• Called to serve on my church vestry.

2009

• Celebrated the 20th consecutive annual camping trip with my best friends.
• Celebrated my 10 year wedding anniversary with Mrs. Flametoad with a trip to Cancun.
• 12 to Midnight published our first horror anthology, which included a story I wrote.

Of course these are just a few of the highlights. Life is so much more than bullet points. The milestones in my kids’ lives could fill a book and I could  dedicate an entire post on my history with 12 to Midnight. A decade of life is really too much to comprehend. I was in my 20s ten years ago. I didn’t have children ten years ago. Those of you who are parents understand the significance of that one alone. Our lives are marked by the epoc. We live BC (before children) and AC (after children).

A decade into the future is near unfathomable. Just look at how technology has changed in the last ten years. All I can predict with any certainty is that in ten years I’ll be 47 and Tadpole 1 will be old enough to drive. Will I be living in the same home? In the same city? What will my outlook on life be like with another decade under my belt and looking at 50 on the horizon? Will I still be the same dorky guy? Or will my dorkocity shift in new directions? It’s easy to get maudlin if you focus on the years already behind you, so let’s stay positive and focus on the future.  I hope you’ll stick with me on the journey because if the last decade is any indication then we’re in for one heck of a ride.

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Christmas is near! In celebration I  thought I’d share this Wondermark comic from last year, in which we get a new spin on an old classic.

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Did you know that there’s a hexagon on Saturn’s north pole? No kidding! I love this quote:

“Now that we can see undulations and circular features instead of blobs in the hexagon, we can start trying to solve some of the unanswered questions about one of the most bizarre things we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” Baines said. “Solving these unanswered questions about the hexagon will help us answer basic questions about weather that we’re still asking about our own planet.”

Good idea. It would probably help to actually understand how our own weather works before we spend billions of dollars on cap and trade.

The US governement is currently negotiating an international treaty on copyright (ACTA- Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) that “allows for criminal action to be taken against copyright infringers and gives governments broad powers to require ISPs to spy on their users.” But guess what? It’s seeeecrit! See, if they actually told people what’s in the treaty, then the sneaky criminals might be able to circumvent it. Or something. Anyway, it’s a matter of national security* so you can stop asking questions, got it? Only, a couple of senators aren’t buying it and have written a letter (pdf) to the US trade ambassador asking for full disclosure. If this were happening under the Bush administration, the intertubes would be quivering with moral outrage and acusations of tyranny from the Left. Yet, with a Democrat in the office, not so much. Hmph. via (BoingBoing)

The New York Times has an interesting article about a hospital that had to close a dialysis clinic due to being overwhelmed by poor illegal immigrants. It definitely sucks for the immigrants who are too poor to afford dialysis. It also sucks for the hospital, which lost $3.5 million on the clinic last year. It sucks for the poor among our own citizens who have now lost access to this resource.

Whether or not you realize it, there’s a fight going on in Congress over the definition of “journalism”. Actually, calling it a fight might be putting it too strongly. I’m not sure if anyone is actually pushing back. At stake is a federal media shield law being pushed by the big media outlets. However, recent amendments seek to limit the definition of who is a journalists to those in print and broadcast. It has been said that “freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press.” The growth of the internet has reduced the cost of “the press” to next to nothing, which has given rise to a new form of citizen journalism. These amendments would turn a blind eye to the new reality of the 21st century, create special protections for those with the money to run old-school news outlets, and hang citizen journalists out to dry. Nice going.

Over near Detroit, we have an example of what happens when power is left unchecked. It seems that some law enforcement divisions are abusing their power to seize property and using it as a way to make money–even with the person is clearly innocent or the charges dropped.

On a lighter note, how about a bed designed to look like the Millennium Falcon?

Did you know that The Gamers: Dorkness Rising is now available on Netflix instant (streaming) viewing? Well now you do!

Happy Monday.

*Because obviously the security of our nation hinges on our ability to keep pirated copies of Transformers 2 out of the hands of terrorists.

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Old school book publishers have a love-hate relationship with ebooks. On one hand, it costs less to produce an e-book than it does a paper book (although not THAT much less). On the other hand, even with ebook sales experiencing impressive double-digit growth this year, profits from those sales account for a small percentage of overall publisher profit. While some bookstores are trying to figure out how to get into the ebook distribution chain, others are still floundering. Publishers can not afford to price e-books in a way that undercuts bookstore sales and thus upsetting their life-line to the buying public. That is why we see such a disparity in the pricing of both e-books and p-books. For instance, the other day I got a “daily deal” e-mail from Buy.com that included the following book. (Advance appologies to Facebook readers, who probably won’t see the screenshots. Please visit flametoad.com to see this post in all its illustrated glory. Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.

Screenshot of Angel Time at Buy.com.

The book is Angel Time, a new release by author Anne Rice. I was a fan of Lestat back in the day, but I couldn’t get into Tales of the Body Thief and haven’t picked up a book of hers since. However, I’ve been curious to give her another try ever since I read that the rediscovered her faith. Angel Time is an attempt to apply her talent to her faith in the creation of a story that is both thought-provoking and entertaining. We’ll see.
Being a new release by a well-known author, Angel Time was published as a hardback. However, you’ll note that in this screenshot that it is heavily discounted. At the time I grabbed this image, I could get the hardback for $12.99 and free shipping.

Screenshot of Angel Time at Fictionwise.

Now let’s compare that with the ebook at FictionWise. When I first got my Sony ebook reader, Fictionwise was my store of choice. The Sony store sold books in their own proprietary format, and I only wanted to buy books that could stay with me as I upgraded hardware. However, it didn’t take too long to realize that most of the popular books by bigger publishers weren’t available in Fictionwise’s multiformat file. The most popular books were locked behind DRM in their ereader format. This book is no exception, and it’s $7 more expensive than the hardback. (Or “only” $4 more if you join the club, which I had done.)

Screen shot of Angel Time at Books on Board.

After becoming disillusioned with Fictionwise, I switched to Books On Board. BoB sells books in the “universal” epub format, although they use a layer of Adobe DRM on top. Far from ideal, but I figure one problem at a time. At least they have it for $15, “only” $2 more than the hardback. BoB is nice about disclosing just what you’re getting, and in this case we see that the publisher has thoughtfully disabled copying, printing, and lending features. At this point, I’m left with weighing the extra expense and loss of features/benefits in using an ebook against the domestic tranquility of not invoking Mrs. Flametoad’s ire by further contributing to the teetering stacks of books already lining our study.

Screen shot of Angel Time at Amazon.

Amazon, at least on same level, gets it. The hardback is $15.17 and the Kindle edition is $9.99. Amazon has come under a lot of fire from publishers and competitors about their selling ebooks so low. However, until their utility improves and one is able to do more of the things one can do with a paper book (such as lend it to a friend), as far as I’m concerned ebooks should never be priced more 80% of the price of the most inexpensive paper version. Nothing ticks me off like seeing a DRM-crippled ebook selling for more than the cost of the same book’s paperback edition.

I think the moral of the story is that Buy.com had a really good deal on the hardback. They might even have been treating it as a loss leader. However, when I read about publishers lamenting the dangers of ebooks undercutting hardback sales, I look at this kind of thing and have to wonder.

Update: Speaking of publishers lamenting ebooks, Teleread documents a move by publishers to delay the release of ebooks to keep them from undercutting hardback sales. Undercutting.

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