Kindle Me This, Riddler!

Short and sweet today.  Sorry, it wasn't as short as I figured . . . I'm going nutso with being housebound.  Ain't that the truth!  This snow stuff will be the death of me. Oh, so very tired of it.

One of my Christmas presents was a Kindle and I'm enjoying it, BUT I have noticed how easy it is to turn it off and forget about the story I'm reading.

With electronic publishing, there are no 'pages'.  There are increments, so you can figure out what % of the book you've read and how much is left.  Which is fine and dandy, except if you are like me and want to read to a chapter break (or cheat and read the ending).  There's no way to know where the chapters begin, since the font sizes can be changed, therefore the 'page' numbers would be changed.  So you read an ebook until you get bored or find a chapter break. 

I'm finding that it is easier to get bored and stop reading in the middle of a sentence.  It was evident when I forced myself to read all of TREASURE ISLAND, but I'm having a seriously difficult time working my way through ALICE IN WONDERLAND.  Ugh! I'll make it, but it will take longer than anticipated.

But I'm also finding it easy to stop reading Book 4 of the Ranger's Apprentice, a middle grade series that I'm reading.  One, the female protagonist is acting in a TSTL (To Stupid To Live) way.  Technically, children protagonists can act stupid because kids tend to react first instead of thinking, but this was more than I can stomach.  Yes, there is a bunch of eye rolling going on with this reader. Two, there is a lot of war planning in this story.  Guys might like this, but it's getting a little old.

So with my new knowledge, I edited GNOME and proceeded to beat my head against the keyboard.

Most stories have to have some slow parts, they can't all be action, action, action. And since this is the first book in a series, I have to show a little bit of the 'real world' before my character is 'called to action'. Of course,I managed to frustrate myself through the first three chapters.  After that, things pick up and I really enjoyed editing this story. I cut a lot of little stuff, but added other stuff.  Overall, the word count stayed at about the same place: 41,000 words. Roughly half of an adult novel.

But the story is in the hands of a CP (crit partner) and I expect her to find all sorts of errors, missing words, incomplete thoughts, etc.  And when she's through redlining it, I'll give it another round or two of edits before publishing.

All-in-all, reading on a Kindle has made me aware of my own ability to tell a story.  It's a good reality check. One I intend to remember with the consecutive stories.

Oh, and I gave my 89-year old mother a Kindle and she's getting used to it.  At least, she's reading LITTLE WOMEN and seems to enjoy it.

Time to work on my Writer's Digest prompt for February, judge a few contest entries, and then write my Easter bunny story.

Later, Peeps!