Ok, still pre-conference, but Tuesday the fun begins. Early rising, a bowl of yogurt and cereal and off I go on the Kiss of Death Tour. For those of you playing the home game Kiss of Death is the affectionate pseudonym for the RWA Mystery Suspense Chapter. Each year there is a tour where the participants go look at something and ask a bunch of questions. If you’ve been here before you may recall my visit to Quantico last year. There were guns involved.

This year there were no guns involved, but there were lots of airplanes and related thingies. We visited MacDill Airforce Base near/in Tampa. We first spent some time visiting with a KC135 crew and crawling all over the thing to get a look at this flying Sinclair station. Like the Sinclair mascot the aerial refueling fleet is mostly of my generation. Manufactured in the 1950’s with the last one delivered in 1963. Yes, we might have gone to school together if airplanes did that sort of thing, which of course they don’t.

The three airmen (pilot, nozzle jockey, and co-pilot I think) who gave us the tour were gracious and helpful and answered all our questions. They even allowed us to climb down in the cockpit and in the refueling pod at the rear of the aircraft to take photos and have a peek around. I was unable to take any pics with the Nikon because of the inside/outside temperature differential and the humidity. (Lens fogged) However thanks to my trusty google phone (G1) I do have a number of moderately viewable pics.

Here is the inside of the KC135 Refueling tanker. I think it’s the view out the back pod window.

Looking out the back end of a kc135 tanker

Partially obscured by part of the aircraft or support equipment. It’s tight. The nozzle jockey (It’s okay, I worked at Vickers back in the Seventies as a nozzle jockey so I can use the term) lies on his belly in a cradle of sorts and works the gizmos with a joystick. The author seen in this photo is actually lying on her belly in that very cradle. Yes, the KOD tours are awesome with a capital AWE.

Next we went to see the weather dudes at NOAA. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spent a bit of time with us explaining things like what they do, what the difference between a tornado and a hurricane is (okay, my dumb question - Hey, I’m a midwesterner, I know about tornadoes, but hurricanes are like snow in the desert to me). They talked about their staff, aircraft (I think they said they had thirteen). We listened to the presentation by a couple of meteorologists, a pilot, a director kind of fellow.

Then we followed them out to the hangar and took a look at the aircraft they affectionately call Miss Piggy. Apparently all the aircraft are named after muppets historically. Unfortunately Disney bought the muppets and we all know what happens when Disney stamps their trademark on something. Fortunately Jim Henson had grandfathered NOAA in on their existing fleet and in fact did do some of the artwork painted on some of the aircraft as illustrated here. I think Henson did Kermit, I don’t know if he did Miss Piggy or not.

Incidentally in case you can’t read it the logo for Miss Piggy says aero-nautical but nice.

Cute.

They also had a list of kills…well, thrills I guess is more accurate pasted on the side of the aircraft. It is a list of all the hurricanes that the aircraft had flown into.

My brother the pilot, asked if the interior was configured so that it could be easily hosed down. I suspect NOAA is prepared for that contingency, turbulence being what it is. The interior of the fuscilage pretty much looked like the computer room at work. Racks with computers, network switches and other geeky brand name hardware and lots of cat5 cables.

The list of hurricanes this aircraft has flown into

One funny thing that just coincidentally happened while we were in NOAAs hanger. Seemed that an entire fleet of firetrucks at the airbase made an appearance. I heard someone from NOAA say something about them being there just in case.

Nawww, it couldn’t be that they heard there was a whole hanger full of romance writers hanging on every word the NOAA guys were saying. Could it?

Come back on the 14th when I tell you about the last part of this tour. When we made the parachute rigger blush.

Wildcard characters you can use when searching (displayed at right below)

Note that wildcard search and replace can be very tricky so be careful.

I did a wild card search for sas and it returned every PARAGRAPH that ended with sas. Even <*sas which should (in my mind) have returned each word ending in sas instead returned SENTENCES that ended in sas.  I should have used <(*sas) I think or even better (sas)> for words that end in sas. (looking for the word Kansas if you’re curious).

So a search using wildcards for the word condo would be formatted <(condo)> I think. (Starts and ends with condo).  That should return condo but not condolences.  Helpful when doing a search and replace.  Play with it in a COPY of your manuscript or some other document.

You can get really complicated with this if you want to. You have to check the “use wildcards” box below the search and replace box.

Be very careful and make a copy of your work before doing a search and replace using wildcards or any big risky search and replace.

Incidentally I’ve been using MS Word for more years than I can remember and this is the first time I’ve ever gotten wildcards to work.  I’ve got a degree in computers so it’s not particularly intuitive.  (or I might be a moron – you never can tell)

Years ago I was a switchboard operator. We had these books filled with that pressure sensitive paper that bruises the second copy when you write on the first page. You may remember it as the successor to carbon paper duplicate forms. Of course if you do, YOU’RE OLD. Well, maybe not THAT old, but let’s just say the shiny has worn off us both.

So getting back to the point, when ‘whoever’ was ‘out’,  you would write down any messages transcribed in these spiral bound books, then tear off the top copy of the message and give it to the intended recipient.  If it involved poking the message down on a metal spike - well, that made it even more satisfying.

Yes, this was pre-voicemail, pre-cell phones, pre-internet. Difficult to imagine, hard to remember.  Though it was post white-out, it was pre - wait for it - post-it-notes.  Impossible you say?  Not at all.  Once upon a time we had NO sticky notes. The horror!

These days everything changes so quickly it’s difficult to keep up with it all, technology in particular. For example, August 10th,  I completely missed a review on a delightful book “Pregnesia” a Harlequin Intrigue by Carla Cassidy at Smart Bitches Trashy Books. (<-link to the review - go there, read that) I happened to be out of town at the lake, after a very busy week where I was actually forced to do - gasp - work at my job. (Yeah, that’s what I said.)  In fact, I was reading one of Ms. Cassidy’s other recent titles “Last Gasp” a very very good single title romantic suspense from Signet Eclipse,  when someone noticed the author’s name on the cover and told me about the Bitches review.

I finally got to read the review this afternoon when I returned to the land of the internet and quilted two-ply.  It was a excellent example of well seasoned snark.  I always expect to be entertained by the Bitches - They are after all quite smart (it says so right in their URL).  On this day - they out did themselves.

The guest reviewer “Nonnie” gave a long list of reasons why Pregnesia is the best amnesiac pregnant saved by the Navy SEAL book ever (or something to that effect) and OMG the author responded.  Not in the pit-bull-snapping-manner of many publicly wounded authors, but in a kind, funny, equally snarky, yet respectful way.  Yes, Ms. Cassidy found a way to graciously acknowledge the barbs pricking at her work without embarrassing herself in the process.  In fact the very opposite was the case as she showed the audience exactly how grace, charm and wit can turn around something that could have been unpleasant. Ms. Cassidy spun straw into gold.  The whole exchange including all 128 comments (at my last count) was fabulous and positive.

When I grow up to be a one of those rich romance author types I hope I have the good sense and grace to be just like Carla Cassidy.

—-

Incidentally, I did finish Last Gasp about 2am Saturday night and she had me with this one.  I never did figure out for sure who the killer was until the very end.  Highly recommend the book for those who like Romantic Suspense.

I am known as a gadget girl I’ll give you that one.  But as much as an early adopter as I like to think myself, I have been sort of a curmudgeon about this whole social networking thing.  I did the thing.  You know the one, where you say I’ll never go on facebook.  I’m just not interested.  Well, then someone guilted me into it and now I’ve reconnected with a mass of people I thought I’d left behind.  Not intentionally you understand but left behind regardless.

So I finally got curious about this twitter thing.  It was different enough that I think if I hadn’t already acquiesced to facebook I might have missed the boat altogether.  I’m still not exactly sure how to use it but then I’m not at all sure that very many people do.  So I decided to dip my toe in the water.  To find out exactly what all the fuss is about. 

First of all I have to say it is a very egotistical thing to think that anyone is really that interested in whatever 140 character glop of insight I think I have to share.  (Ok, I admit the blog is pretty much the same thing.  You got me there.)

But it does seem to make a pretty good promotional medium.  Assuming of course you can find the people to follow that say interesting things, or convince people who you think may be interested in what you have to say, to follow you.  It’s a bit of a mind bender as well as a tongue twister.

So I signed up for an account.  Yes, one more in a string of accounts.  Last time I checked I had about 75,000 of them out there.  Sorry, that’s a rant for a different day.  So I signed up and began looking around for things that interested me. The trick for me was to do a search on terms that I was interested in.  Writing and writers, crime etc.  So now I follow Harlan Coban and the Boston PD.  Sweet.  

These important bits of information came across today:

VEHICLE v BUILDING: Andrew Square - A car has crashed into Dunkin Donuts, avoid the area. (from the Boston PD)  Ironic no?  The cops HAD to go to the donut shop.  I’m just saying…looks a little bit like a set up to me.

elmoreleonard Live at Border’s B’ham. Peter Leonard to Elmore: Any advice to budding writers? Elmore: Write.

and one after my own heart:

SmartBitchesHave wireless internet, yet am tempted away from 300+ messages by issue of Corn and Soybean Digest magazine. Edamame popularity = good.

Oh, those are the snarky bits I love to roll around on my tongue.

I have to admit I did secretly preen just a little bit when thirty minutes into my twitter account I was being followed.  And not by creepy old guys but by publishers and agents.  So what if I “followed” them first and they retaliated in the unlikely event that I would prove to be clever and witty on the tweet.  Still I felt a kinship to Sally Field at that moment.  

The thing I have enjoyed the most about twitter is the huge amount of interesting blogs I’ve come across because of tweets publicizing their existence.  Sites I would likely have missed without it.  Here are a few of my favorites:

http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/ He has a pretty large following and an entertaining community.  Reading through the comments on his blog the other day made me wonder how much traffic twitter has generated for him.

Another one I found by following Allison Brennan is Murderati where she and some other authors blog.  http://www.murderati.com/  

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/you-read-harlequin-me-too

I can’t remember who I followed for this one but I’ve seen some interesting posts on Jane Friedman’s blog at Writers Digest http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/  I subscribe to Writers Digest and never saw it.

And some people are just twits with wit.  DanKennedy_NYC for example.  He tweets funny things.

Lee Loflan and Daniel S. Baum are a few others that I latched onto early and have followed with interest.    So follow me on twitter?  You can if you want.  Gretchenjones is my code name.  But you’ll get more out of finding out who I follow than by following me alone.

In 1986 or so I bought my first pc.  A 386sx I believe from Northgate, on the monthly plan.  Northgate has long since gone the way of the albatross, and the 386 it sold me for that matter. 

Back in the early days of home computing we dialed up the internet determined to exchange bits and bytes with other stalwart interweb users.  We waited for hours and hours to download things like e-mail and bulletin board messages, at blazing speeds of 1200… 2400… wait for it…4800 baud.  I’m not sure I remember what a baud is anymore, my bachelors degree is in IT so that tells you how irrelevant they are now (or how bad my memory is, or how little I care).   I’ll add ‘baud’ to the above list of the expired and fading.

So today (my fifth day observing Twitter) I came across a post from Daniel S. Baum.  He pretty regularly amuses me with his tweets.  This one in particular caught my eye.  I approximate how to retweet it properly here. 

RT @danielsbaum The techno-fix to internet distraction to which I was directed is http://macfreedom.com/
I imagine there’s a PC solution as well

 

 
That took me to a website that touted:

Freedom is an application that disables networking on an Apple computer for up to eight hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the internet, allowing you time to code, write, or create. At the end of your selected offline period, Freedom re-enables your network, restoring everything as normal.

This just about sent me into an apoplexy. 

Enter (CUE SOUND TRACK - CHOIR OF ANGELS VOICES) macfreedom.com who will disconnect you and force you to get some work done. 

Er…maybe.

Shoot, this ability to make you disconnect from the network is half the reason I quit PC’s and bought a Mac. 

TO OVERCOME INTERNET CONNECTIVITY ISSUES!

Just in case you’re wondering, I don’t live in a cave. I am aware of the chatter of my writer friends and acquaintences who bemoan their inability to keep the tempting distraction of the internet at bay. They mysteriously lack the ability to keep their mouse-burdened appendages away from their desktop browser’s start button.  More power to them if they avail themselves of this tool.   I too suffer from a browser addiction.  However, I think it unlikely I will ever give in to the extremely minor temptation to pay someone to enforce my parole to the state of incommunicado. 

Hmmm… macfreedom doesn’t disable solitaire now does it?

It’s the last day of February here in Sugar Creek and winter just couldn’t leave us without a last blast of the white.  So far we have about three to four inches of snow and it’s not done yet.  Yes, the snowplows have been trudging up and down our hill all morning and I think Steve has shoveled the walk twice already.  Our MARA meeting was cancelled and I’m debating the wisdom of heading out to Springhill for the Wii hula-hoop battle royale Meg challenged me to.   I’ll probably go but what I should be doing instead is curling up with a good book all comfy and warm in my cave.  

Last day of February (color photograph by the way)

Cozying up with a book would be particularly appropriate since I received my new Kindle2 this week.  I still have my original Kindle but somehow the glass in the cursor window broke a couple of months ago and though it still works,  I’ve been afraid it would quit  on me.  Besides I’m a gadget girl and can’t pass up a new gizmo.  The Kindle2 is definitely that.

As advertised Kindle2 is lighter, thinner and sexier than the previous version.  Here’s two of them side by side.

Kindle2 and Kindle

Kindle and Kindle2 side by side

You can see that they are approximately the same size from the front, but are a completely different user experience.  The new Kindle2 is considerably thinner than the old version. I didn’t notice a real difference in weight but the battery life is supposed to be much better on the new device.  

There are of course new features with the kindle2.  The one that has garnered the most attention recently is the text to speech reader that is built in to the new version.  The author community is up in arms about it because they see it as an infringement on audiobook rights.    Specifically the Authors Guild says: “What the guild is asserting is that authors have a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2’s version of books.” - ROY BLOUNT Jr. President of the Authors Guild. (Quote from the NYT Opinion page - Feb 24, 2009 - see link).  

So one of the first things I did when I unpacked my new device (after plugging it in of course) was activate the Text to Speech feature.  I have a sample of it so you can see what all the fuss is about.

Kindle2 Speaks, Demo of Text to Speech feature from Gretchen Jones on Vimeo.

So now that you’ve had a chance to take a listen - you tell me - is this more audiobook or robotic recitation of words on page?

Next task is to identify what is the relative added value of the addition of this functionality?  Yes, it will allow me to continue “reading” the book in the car without risking life and limb.  Is it something that I would use instead of an audio book on a long car trip.  That’s unlikely I think.  It’s just not easy enough on the ears.  It’s not Stephen Hawkings reading me a bedtime story, but I’m not going to be having any fantasies about the “man” behind the voice that’s reciting it to me either.

Earlier in the week I participated in an e-mail thread that covered a lot of this debate and the thing I really fouled up on was not taking into account the true “value” of audio rights to the author.  Apparently this is quite the money-maker.  I wouldn’t know being unpublished, and you know that contract details are generally held close.  I would expect that the additional overhead associated with production costs, fees to talent etc. would make the margins tight.  Perhaps they’re priced high enough to absorb the extra costs and add a cushion of profit as well.  I really don’t know.

In fact I think that most of the books I read don’t have audiobook versions available on them.  I guess that says something about the genres I read.  No apologies.  

Even so, I don’t think you can argue that this is anything near the same experience as an audiobook.  In fact, I would argue that the audio would be a poor substitute for the printed word. This is an interesting advance in technology and it may very well push us to think about how we license and market publications, but I don’t think right now text-to-speech on the kindle2 is the “killer app” that some would like to believe.

Let me know what you think.

–UPDATE–
Apparently Amazon is crumbling under the pressure. They have decided to modify the feature so that publishers and authors can determine whether the kindle will read their book aloud or not. See link for details.  Amazon Backs Off Text-to-Speech Feature in Kindle

Those of you who know me well understand that I am a compulsive book buyer.  I buy books and sometimes forget to read them, or at least procrastinate about it.  I think sometimes that osmosis will do the trick and by buying the book that I’ll learn something without even opening it. Talk about magical thinking!

Well, after Thanksgiving I was heading over to Sunny’s for a girls weekend and picked up a couple of those - write a book in 30 days - books.  It’s not as crazy as it sounds.  I don’t really expect to do it in 30 days but maybe glean some technique or insight that will help me with my mondo problem (cue scary organ music here)…PLOTTING. 

Plotting is the classic “how to eat an elephant problem” for me.  The job is so large that I don’t know where to start and once I do there are some parts that when you get it all cut up you just go “eww” I’m not putting that in my mouth, or all spread out over the driveway in big gory hunks it just doesn’t look so much like food anymore. (Sorry about the imagery there.  Note to PETA - Just kidding - No elephants were harmed in the blogging of this topic nor do I condone such behavior).

So I went through the first of the two books and wasn’t really inspired.  I liked the “workbook” aspect of it but I always hate to write in a book like that.  It will somehow ruin it for me the next time I want to use it.  I forgot about the other one until late last week when I was doing an archeology dig in my office and came across it in a bag with a couple of others and some office toys like this Travel Operation game.

(Odd, I’ve never thought of that as a charlie horse hmmm…) 

Unexpectedly it inspired me and I began working through the chapters.   The author provides good examples and the worksheets are exposition prompts, which I prefer over lists (in case you couldn’t tell from my verbose posts here). 

I managed to get an actual outline  draft, brief and concise.  That was a major crazy success and I really feel like I can go forward from here.

The book is called: First Draft in 30 Days by Karen S. Wiesner for those of you who are interested. I thought it was helpful. Still is.  Unfortunately I’m not terribly good at follow through so we’ll see if I get all the way through it.  But I’ve already gained a LOT of insight into my characters and story prompted by her useful format and questions. 

First Draft in 30 Days

So I turned the page and was stunned to see what looked to me like a use case or workflow diagram of sorts. 

What’s that you ask?  Well, at my day job I’m in the software development business.  One thing that people do during the process of collecting requirements and designing software systems is to do all sorts of different charts and diagrams that describe the system and user interaction among other things. 

Basically the user does W the system responds with X which prompts the user to do Y and the system does Z.  In a way it’s like a catechism, address and response, a conversation with the user.

Now apply that to noveling and what have you got?  A roadmap of how you want the reader to experience your book.  I know, sounds crazy. (Admittedly not an original thought but without the visual prompt I didn’t “get” it.)
 

Don’t have a good sense of it yet?  I’ll give you an example:

The idea that you would plan what you want your reader’s reaction to be at a particular point in time was a big light bulb moment for me. 

I have heard people ask “what is the point of this scene?” Now for some reason instead of my answer being “for the nice people to read” I get it.  It’s to elicit a specific response from the reader.  Intellectually I knew that, but emotionally?  Not so much.

Here’s a better example:

Think about it.  Here is about half an episode of Lassie from the time Timmy falls into the well until the HEA.  At each critical point we identify how we want the reader to respond to the material we’re presenting.  Yes, it’s manipulating the reader in the most fundamental way.  The way they want to be manipulated.  Then you actually have a target to shoot for. A scene goal and it didn’t hurt hardly at all.  

So now we have a new concept, we (the imperial we by the way) are selling the reader their own manipulation.  And the suckers want to buy it,  It’s what they crave.  (By the way I’m including myself in the suckers group as an avid reader, so technically that makes it self-deprecating humor and not a slight at the emotional proclivities of my future readership).

I will still have to find the tipping point between construction of the plan and construction of the book.  How do I determine exactly how far to take the plot before I reach the point where the cost exceeds it’s value.  But that’s a blog post for another day.

So now I have a goal, delivery of first class manipulation.  That’s what I’m going to give them.   

Well, one can hope…

Now there is one diagram you don’t want to see.  I’ve used it below as an example of the action/reaction you don’t want.

Lucky for me your computer is too expensive for you to throw against the wall.

By now most of you (my single reader) may be familiar with one of the tools that bloggers use to avoid spam posts.  With the recent upgrade to Wordpress finally applied I was able to implement an anti-spam plug-in to help me avoid having to delete 30-40 spam comments per week.  Then the question was which one?  





There are many plug-ins (little small applications that you “plug-in” to your parent application - in this case Wordpress) available that will help prevent spam.  Many have some kind of interactive form that the commentator fills out, typing in some nonsense string of characters 
from an image.  This is a pretty common way of outsmarting the “bots” that automatically post comments from people like my friend carogloppyfag.  (True spammer username).  





So I browsed through the list of them on the Wordpress website and came across something interesting.  WP-reCaptcha is a plug-in based on one created at Carnegie Mellon university.  But it uses it in a creative
way.  To save old books newspapers and magazines.

Out there in the world there are efforts underway to digitize old books, and other print media.  There are tireless individuals out there scanning 
page after page of printed text into computers (there’s probably a dirge playing from speakers in the ceilings as they work.)  
Their goal is to turn those scanned pages into individual words that can be searched in a database.  You see, if the picture of the page isn’t broken up into individual words assembled from individual character’s (made up of bits and bytes on magnetic or optical storage somewhere) you can’t search the text.  You have to be able to discriminate each word.  This allows me to search the internet and pick up links to scholarly works on the topic of “ignis fatuus” on Google.  





Sometimes the OCR software is successful in “reading” the page into individual words and sometimes it isn’t.  Think about all the different print fonts and headline text things that might be difficult for a machine to discriminate.  If the letters are old and faded and the paper water stained “fatuus” might look like “fotws” 
or even “potws” to the OCR reader.  





So what the clever folks at recaptcha have done is come up with a way to use the spam-fighting image text entry forms on all those blog comment forms to allow you and me to decode all the words that the computer didn’t. 
 Keeping my blog comments spam free at the same time.  

They basically take a known word, and an unknown word, and have you type them in on the comment form.  Then they decide based on what you typed in what the unknown word is.  Of course this is done over time, and based on how hundreds, or thousands of people (I don’t really have the numbers) have similarly decoded the image.  Once that image has been decoded they update their database for the book and voila we have a digitally searchable book.  
I think this is a good thing.  

Comment form using recaptcha

It helps me eliminate my spam problem, and I have looked around to see if there are any protests against this based on copyrights infringement, but haven’t found any so far. 

If you’d like to know more about this effort, checkout http://recaptcha.net.

 If you have a Wordpress site you’d like to update with this plug-in it’s called wp-reCaptcha 
and can be found on the http://www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins search page.