Originally written for eBookGuru - The Digital Magazine Devoted to eBooks

I recently came across an article on CNET about the shortcomings of the Kindle and how these short comings represent opportunities for competitors to exploit.

“Competitors will attack Amazon’s market position by launching new features, expanding content beyond books, dominating markets outside the U.S., reducing costs, and improving relationships with publishers.”

I’ve long argued that the Kindle was too expensive and the fact that it is currently restricted to the US market is a major limitation. It’s ironic that one of the Kindle’s strengths - it’s on demand link to Amazon.com - is also what is holding it back outside of the US.

It was also interesting to see the projections for the market, both in terms of the # of consumers, and how the eBook reader market will change in response to this growth.

We are already seeing a lot of competition in the eBook reader space, with form friendly products like Readius to traditional ‘booklike’ products from txtr, Plastic Logic, Onyx, and Samsung. With all this competition it won’t be long before we reach the sweet spot for eBook readers, that magic sub $200 price point. Once that happens we’ll really see sales of eBook readers take off.

With all these new devices, the future for eBooks looks bright, and authors and publishers who have already embraced eBooks stand to benefit the most.

Originally posted on The Writers Vineyard

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

What’s in a name? Good question Shakespeare, thanks for the segue.

When I wrote The Gender Divide*, the title came to me very early on in the process. Thanks to the input of the main characters, the book didn’t turn out exactly as I had originally envisioned but there was never any wavering on the title. It has also gone through two publishers and various test readers along the way and never once did anyone suggest changing the name.

I’ve also written a few other novels that I have to go back and edit before submitting for possible publication and I’ve always been able to come up with a title. I even have a sequel to The Gender Divide* planned with a couple of possible titles already and I haven’t written a word.

However I have a novel that I am almost 40K words into and I still don’t have a title. I don’t even have anything that I don’t like or am so-so about. I have nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch. Hopefully something will come to me in time but until then I am just going to keep working on ‘Novel template (saved).docx’.

Here’s a little snippet for you in the meantime - if you think of a title, be sure to let me know.

“Open the damn door or so help me God I’ll kill you.”

“I could question just how much you mean that, but instead I’ll focus on the impossibility of that statement.” With that Vaughn stood up and walked through the station commander’s desk.

Stephanie cursed. A bloody hologram. No wonder he was so trusting.

“Before you overreact Princess, I wasn’t lying to you earlier. I really am just around the corner. However it didn’t take a genius to plot this one out. Once Carman calms down, I’ll be more than happy to join you in person.”

Carman continued to glare at both of them for a moment longer and then she sighed heavily.

“Shit, I hate this. I know you’re right Stephanie, and I trust you implicitly. It just hurts that you didn’t trust me in return.”

Stephanie resisted the urge to apologize. “I wanted to but I couldn’t risk it. This is too big.”

“I know, but what I said earlier still holds true. You need to let your father know where you are and what’s happening.”

“I can’t. Then he’ll know where I am and he’ll force me to come home.

Vaughn coughed theatrically. “I have a possible solution for that. I have a small program I’ve written that we can upload to the central communication hub. It will access all major planetary comm systems, each of which will send him a message. By this time tomorrow your father will receive a message from every major system telling him that you are all right and not to worry. If you include the necessary markers and code signals it should provide some reassurance for him without revealing your location.”

“You mean a virus.” Stephanie fought hard to keep the distaste out of her voice.

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Princess. It’s benign, as these things go. The ‘virus’ will even bill you for the comm charges. It’s a one-shot deal and will erase itself once it’s done, so no one will know where it came from.”

So much for keeping the distaste out her voice, she thought wryly. Then again Vaughn had always been able to read her better than anyone else, even Carman.

Vaughn glanced around. “There, everyone happy?”

Stephanie looked over at Carman, who nodded grudgingly.

“Good,” he replied. He flickered briefly and then disappeared. Seconds later the door opened and he strolled through. He walked over to Stephanie and pinched her on the butt.

“Ouch,” she exclaimed, slapping his hand away. “What was that for?”

“Just so you know I’m real this time around,” he replied breezily and Stephanie scowled at him. She looked over at Carman, who was struggling to keep a grin off her face.

“You’re not helping matters,” she said grumpily but Carman only shrugged.

“No point fighting the wind,” she replied philosophically.

“Good, now that that’s settled let’s get down to business. Why are you here, and what did you need me for that you went to such lengths to track me down?”

“War,” she replied simply.

Today Amazon launched the Kindle DX. The DX is a widescreen version of the Kindle and was designed to display periodicals and textbooks. At $489 USD it is more expensive that it’s already pricey siblings but that works in the textbook market, where this kind of money is practically a drop in the bucket in terms of what students have to pay for textbooks.

Amazon has struck deals with Pearson, Wiley, and Cengage - the top three textbook publishers - to provide content for the DX. These publishers make up 60 percent of the textbook market and include many major imprints.  Amazon will also be making the device available to students when it launches trial programs with at least five universities (Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia) this fall.

In terms of specificiations, the DX has a screen that is 2.5 times the size of the previous Kindles. It also features an accelerometer, which is a fancy way of saying the DX will auto-rotate the display mode between portrait and landscape when the user flips the device around. Anyone who has a Blackberry Storm or an iPhone knows how useful this feature is. The DX also supports PDF files, something that has been a big issue for current Kindle owners and would have likely been a deal breaker for the textbook market.

When you add in all the other features normally found on the Kindle, it seems like the DX has finally found the sweetspot for eBook readers - students:

• Bookmarks and Annotations - perfect for taking notes in class
• Built-in Dictionary With Instant Lookup - need I say more?
• Wireless Access to Wikipedia - a favored research starting point for many students
• Read-to-me - while less than perfect, this feature might make it more likely for students to review the material

Other experimental features - such as a basic web browser and an MP3 / Podcast player - also seemed designed with this target market in mind. Now that Amazon has purchased Lexcycle, the company behind the eBook application for the iPhone, students also have the ability to synchronize Kindle books using Amazon’s Whispersync technology.

In short the Kindle finally makes sense.

Originally posted on The Writers Vineyard

I’m very excited. My science fiction novel, The Gender Divide, was just released by Champagne Books on May 1st.

In celebration, I thought that I would share with you a little about how I came to write The Gender Divide.

It all started when I had just finished re-reading Blind Waves, a novel co-authored by one of my favorite authors, Steven Gould (co-authored with Laura J. Mixon). There’s a scene where the two protagonists are skinny dipping. The authors have done a good job of establishing a realistic love-at-first-sight connection between them, and as a result the conversation naturally segues into a discussion on becoming intimate. They share the pertinent details about blood tests and previous partners and then, in an almost offhand way, the female protagonist, Patricia, mentions that she had her cycles turned off during a previous relationship. When that relationship ended, she didn’t turn them back on because she didn’t see any reason to go back to tampons.

Turning off menstrual cycles. A simple and believable enough concept for a science fiction novel, so simple that it’s relegated to one brief paragraph in a 350 page novel. It’s not a unique concept either, as this is not the only novel I’ve read that mentions this. Nor is it treated any differently in those novels. Yet somehow the implications of turning off menstrual cycles intrigued me.

Perhaps it was because I was working for a bio-tech company at the time. Although I’m not a scientist, I quickly learned how interconnected all the systems in the body are. It is difficult to affect one part of the body without affecting other parts. That is why so many drugs have side effects. The company I worked for developed drugs based on compounds naturally produced by the body and even those sometimes had side effects.

It’s natural for a science fiction author to make simplifying assumptions about the future as they develop their story, but this assumption kept nagging at me. I began wondering what would happen if there was an unusual side effect to stopping menstruation. Menstruation starts at a young age and runs for roughly forty years. During that time there is a lot of biological activity that is occurring. What happens if that all that energy is available elsewhere? Where would it go and what effect would it have? What if it affected longevity and women started living longer than men?

From there I began to wonder about the implications of greater longevity for women. How would this disparity in life span impact world politics, economics, the military, and society? As I thought about it, I realized that the balance of power would gradually shift from men to women, resulting in massive changes in all these areas. Most of these changes were interesting to me only in the context of the new world that I was writing and how it affected the people who lived in it.

Enter Ryan Peters. Ryan, the hero in the novel, is trying to recover a formula that allows men to live as long as women. He has already been treated with this formula and is forced to pretend to be his own son to cover his longer life span. This becomes harder than he anticipated when he starts working for Olivia Morgan, his true love from forty years ago.

When I first started writing, I expected Ryan and Olivia to live ‘happily ever after’. Imagine my surprise when this didn’t happen, or at least not as I expected it to. Instead Ryan finds himself drawn to Nicole West, another woman he works with, despite having what appears to be the perfect relationship with Olivia.

I won’t divulge any more details, other than to say that the rest of the story wrote itself, with the help of Ryan, Olivia and Nicole. The result is a story that I hope you will enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing it, a story that Chris Bartholomew at Static Movement Online calls “…extraordinary reading, a book that will live in your thoughts long after you’ve read it…”.

Please visit the novel’s website at http://www.thegenderdivide.com for a full excerpt of Chapter One, links to where you can purchase The Gender Divide, and some more fantastic reviews (4 cups from Coffee Time Romance & More!).

I’ve also added a little spring bonus, to complement the 20% discount that the publisher is currently offering. At the end of the excerpt for Chapter 1, there is a link to my email address. Send me an email and I will send you a link to read Chapter 2 online.Enjoy!

A recent article from ‘Down Under’ talked about the gap in lifetime earnings between men and women. Despite the fact that female workers in their 20’s and 30’s are paid as much as their male counterparts, the article points out that men will earn more than women during their working lives.

A 25-year-old man’s potential earnings over the next 40 years is $2.4 million, compared to $1.4 million for a woman of the same age.

While the reasons for this are not really surprising (maternity leave, part-time or flex hours) I found it interesting as the main premise in my novel, The Gender Divide, is that women life four times as long as men do.

Consider the impact of this $1M difference, reversed and magnified by the extended life span of women and aided by the miracle of compound interest, and it is easy to see how the world I envisioned in The Gender Divide came to be. A world where women are in control at all levels; where they are the CEO’s and other senior business people; where they are the venerable politicians.

It was envisioning this world that prompted me to write The Gender Divide and I really enjoyed the process of trying to imagine the political, economic, and social ramifications resulting from this change.

If you are interested in learning more, The Gender Divide will be available in May from Champagne Books. I hope you enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Here is the new cover art for The Gender Divide (click to see a larger version).

It is very different from the old cover art, so it was a major adjustment for me but it is growing on me. In many ways it is much more sophisticated than the previous cover art and I think that it makes it clear that The Gender Divide is a science fiction novel first and foremost. There is a strong romantic vein but I’m not sure I’d want to read a novel that doesn’t have an element of romance to it.

I hope that you like it as much as I do. If you do happen to have a copy of The Gender Divide with the old cover (when it was published by Shadowmere Publishing) you are now the proud owner of a collectors item. Just like me and my eleven copies.

UPDATE Apr 5 - The Cover Artist is Trisha FitzGerald-Petri and here are her links.

www.myspace.com/trishafitzgerald
www.myspace.com/bookdesign

Originally posted on The Writers Vineyard

It is quite remarkable how quickly time passes. It seems like only yesterday that I received the wonderful news that Champagne Books agreed to publish The Gender Divide. First edits came and went and just last week I received the Advance Reader Copy for final review.

I’ve spent most of the weekend re-reading The Gender Divide. I had read through it once already during the first edit but I still enjoy reading it. Admittedly, I am biased but I am also the first to be critical. In fact I have to restrain myself from making changes that I know aren’t really needed except in my own mind.

I thought that I would share a small snippet from the novel, one of my (many) favorite scenes. I hope you like it as much as I do. Enjoy.

“We should leave,” Ryan said, rising from the sofa. As if on cue, both the front and the back door crashed in.

Instantly, Ryan launched himself forward, grabbing her, and smashing through the large picture window behind her. The glass gave way with a crash and they were airborne for a few seconds. Nicole braced herself for the landing, but Ryan twisted in midair and as they landed, they rolled, using their momentum to get away from the house and into the open.

Nicole felt an instant of panic as the curtains tangled around them, blocking her vision and hindering her movement, but it passed as the curtains parted like wet paper towel under their combined efforts. She dropped the tattered remnants and looked around in surprise. They were still alone on the front lawn and she looked at Ryan breathlessly.

“What was that about?”

“I don’t know how many of them there are, but I’m sure they’ll outnumber us. The only way we can make it out of this is if we fight as a team. We can’t do that effectively in the cramped confines of the house so…” He shrugged as he scanned the grounds visually and his eyes glazed over as he linked into something, likely his air car. A few moments later, his eyes cleared as he confirmed her guess.

“I just linked to the scanner in my air car and it looks like there’s an even dozen of them. From what I can tell, only two of them have enhancements, probably the team leaders.”

Nicole felt panic wash over her again as she considered the odds. Ryan must have sensed it since he turned to her and grinned tightly.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. Most people, enhanced or not, aren’t as trained as we are. We faced this all the time in the military. This is a typical example of a team that looks good on paper, but it takes more than numbers or enhancement to make it work. It takes training and teamwork. It’s not going to be easy, but we can do it.”

“But?”

Ryan laughed a short, bitter bark.

“Well I started jamming communications, but they might have called for reinforcements earlier. I put in a call for some reinforcements myself, but I don’t know if they’ll get here in time.”

Nicole bit her lip as she considered this. Even as she did, figures began emerging from around the sides of the house. “Would it do any good to call the police?” she asked as she instinctively assumed a combat stance, her back to Ryan’s.

“No offense, but most of the police are females. Not only that, but technically we are in the wrong here.”

Nicole sensed he was about to say something else, but their assailants had finished gathering, and they headed towards Ryan and Nicole in a headlong rush.

NOTE: This was originally posted in The Writers Vineyard.

Originally posted on The Writers Vineyard

The new version of the Kindle was announced today so I thought this would be an appropriate topic to blog about.

In many ways, the Kindle is a massive success. Demand far exceeded supply of the old version of this eReader and the new version is only better. (more…)

I recently read about a psychological study performed by researchers at Indiana University. The study tested …

“The ability to judge another individual’s romantic interest level”

The participants observed videos of men and women speed dating and attempted to gage the level of interest of each person based mostly on non-verbal clues. (more…)

Ciara Gold, one of my fellow authors at Champagne Books posted a link to an interesting article about how women’s brains react to male sweat. (more…)