I’m cautiously optimistic about this soon-to-be released ebook reader. I like that I can use it on my computer and on my mobile devices. I like that it will work with pdf and epub files, and mostly I like that it is free.

I do have a few concerns, however. According to the Publishers’ Weekly article I linked to earlier, people will be able to purchase ebooks from the e-reader’s affiliated store. But I hope that, if I want to take advantage of the programs already offered by Fictionwise or Books on Board, I will be able to do this and still have the software working. I also question the need for some of the features the PW article mentioned. Apparently, this ebook reader will read plays with different TTS voices for each of the roles. Aside from students, who is actually going to use this feature? Wouldn’t the coders’ times have been better spent making sure the device could, oh, I don’t know, read as many varieties of formats as possible rather than giving us silly features that we can honestly live without?

Also, the article states that this reader, which doesn’t have a name, will be useful for sighted as well as blind people. I wonder if this is true, and I also wonder who the larger number of downloaders will be.

So, in the end, I’m excited about the November release of this software. I don’t expect it to be the miracle that the blind have been waiting for, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction, and I hope that it will be as awesome as advertised.

So, let’s just talk about one of my particular bowls of petunias one more time. I am, of course, speaking of ebook accessibility, a subject about which I feel somewhat strongly, by which I mean it is the one topic guaranteed to make me want very much to punch people who disagree with me in the head.

Anyway, the latest development on this issue is that a journalism student at the University of Arizona is suing his university because the university is putting in place a pilot program in one of its classes where sighted students get to use the Amazon kindle. Darrell Shandrow, our blind plaintiff, naturally, does not.

I feel like I’m repeating myself, but it’s necessary. Equal access to books should be a right, not a privilege. It’s wonderful that there are resources out there for students like Shandrow, but you know what? They’re not enough. If everyone else in the class is using Kindles to read their course work and a blind student is not, I consider that to be a case of separate and unequal treatment. Presumably the kindles will be used for a specific purpose, and it will, at the very least, take longer for a non-kindle-using student to keep up with his classmates during class if they use another format.

There was and still is an ongoing conversation between Shandrow and several of us blind folks on twitter about this issue. Some people consider him to be an accessibility evangelist, whatever the hell that even means, and think he has been going about his crusade in a beligerent and undiplomatic way. Naturally, I am not one of these people. Being a university student myself, I can see the benefits of using the Kindle. I have also stated, more than once, that my money is as good as a sighted person’s. If this lawsuit is the only way in which Amazon will recognize this fact, then I want someone to sue, too!

Talking of ebook accessibility seems to step on a lot of toes in the blindness community. Even writing this, I find myself wanting to backpedal a bit to make sure that the people who volunteer their time for Bookshare or the folks at Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic know I’m not impuning what they do. I think any service that provides books in ways that blind people can read them is to be commended. Further, if we ever do get an Amazon Kindle that is completely accessible, the need for such services will hardly diminish. But those services are hardly enough. The day I can read any book I want, the same as my sighted peers, the instant I want to read it, will be the day that I consider myself as having equal access to printed materials as sighted people. Telling blind people we should be content with what we have is, I feel, a lot like telling black folks they should have been happy with separate schools, rest rooms, etc., or telling GLBT folks that they shouldn’t be so goddamn uppity and be happy with the domestic partnerships they can get instead of campaigning for marriage equality. Maybe that’s a bit of a harsh statement, but I won’t apologize for it. Too often, I feel that in general, disabled people are under more pressure than other minorities to be nice and not rock the boat lest we appear ungrateful for what we do have.

Well, being nice isn’t going to get us the services we need. I hope Darrell Shandrow’s lawsuit is successful, and if it takes a bunch of other blind people suing a bunch of other companies in order for these needed changes, then I hope they come through and do so in an unapologetic fashion. Because we shouldn’t apologize for wanting what we by rights ought to have.

I’ll be interviewing several of my favorite epublished authors about their thoughts on epublishing as a whole. Each of the authors I’ve spoken with has generously agreed to give away one of their books to people who comment on their interviews. I’m also giving away a $25 gift certificate to Fictionwise. at the end of this week, so there will be lots of opportunities for fabulous prizes.

Here is our lineup of guests.

• Samantha Kane

• Moira Rogers
• LB Gregg
• Kirsten Saell
• Lynne Connolly

These ladies write everything from historicals to paranormals to fantasies, with a variety of heat levels from the very sweet to the smokin’ hot. Some of them write M/F romances, some write M/M, and some write M/M/F or M/F/F. They also share the distinction of being some of my favorite writers, so you’re guaranteed a good story.

In order to be eligible to win, comment on any of the Ebook Week posts this week. The grand prize winner will be pulled from all the commenters. Winners will be announced next Monday!

Check back tomorrow for our first interview with the lovely Samantha Kane!.

I think that all ebooks need to be available equally to everyone. The Kindle isn’t usable to me, but someday, I think it will be, and when that day comes, I want to be able to blow money just like every other person.

The arguments that have come out of the whole TTS issue from those who oppose it that I find most baffling have been the ones that would like to treat the needs of blind consumers as somehow a separate issue when it shouldn’t be. In the latest post on this issue from Dear Author, a number of arguments have been floated in the comments regarding the blind. First and most egregious is someone quoting a blog by an author who asserts that blind people don’t read her books, so she doesn’t care about our needs. I would like to extend a hearty fuck you to any of the authors out there who seriously think this, because it for damn sure means *this* blind person won’t be reading any of their books.

Secondly, I’ve seen the argument, not outright stated but very much implied, that there are already organizations out there that provide materials for the blind, so blind people and advocates for the blind should just shut up and be grateful for what we can have. Don’t get me wrong. I think any attempt to promote literacy on any level for anyone is a good thing, and my life would be extremely less enriched if it weren’t for several organizations for the blind. But charitable groups, Bookshare, and even the Library of Congress can only do so much. Why should I settle for the books those groups can provide when Amazon already has the platform to provide me whatever I want to read? To me, the attitude that I should sit back and not make noise and be grateful for what I have seems like one hell of a way to keep discrimination happening. Yes, I said the D word.

And I won’t even start in on the assinine argument about braille literacy I read in the comments of that post. Because if you would like me to rant about braille literacy, that would require a whole other thread and it hasn’t got a damn thing to do with the issue at hand.

Jane’s proposed solution, linked to in the Dear Author post I mentioned, would work for me. She proposed that certain Kindles could be registered to blind consumers and we’d have access to everything with TTS. If that is possible, I think that’s the best solution. It would leave the range of reading options open for the blind as wide as they needed to be while still letting blind consumers keep our dignity. It would also allow organizations like Bookshare to partner with Amazon, which could only increase the content available via those services so people who didn’t want to buy a kindle could still have the broad range of reading material open that the sighted world has at its fingertips.

As it stands now, what blind consumers have in the way of ebooks is quite limited. The only platform a blind person has to access ebooks that’s even remotely accessible is ereader, and accessible is, in this case, very much in the eye of the beholder. I can use it, but I don’t enjoy the listening experience, as I’m constantly fiddling around with my cursors. So I’m left with stripping DRM from books, which is illegal, or pirating books, in order to have the portability and ease of reading that I need. And let me tell you, stripping DRM from ebooks is not, as it shouldn’t be, an easy thing to do.

There are so many ways in which the disabled are treated like second-class citizens who don’t have any right to dignity and self-worth. Reading ebooks shouldn’t be one of them, and it’s yunacceptable to me to have an organization like the Author’s Guild try to infringe on that right.

I’ve long felt that New York publishing has done its damnedest to make sure that people like me never actually have a chance to be honest consumers. I guess my money as a blind consumer just isn’t good enough for New York. If it were, then books wouldn’t have the kind of DRM that actively prevents someone like me from reading whatever they want.

As it stands now, if I want to read a book around the time it is actually released, I have to either be in good enough with the author that they trust me with an ARC, or I have to hope that the book I want makes the New York Times bestseller list so that Bookshare will make it available quickly. (I’m not knocking Bookshare as a service, either! They do their best, and they provide a much-needed service for those of us with vision impairments. But they still don’t produce *every* book available. And that’s what I want as a blind consumer. I don’t want half-assed half-measures. I want to read anything available on ebook at anytime, anywhere. If a sighted reader has that ability, why the hell shouldn’t I? I’m even willing to pay exorbitant ebook prices to do it, for the sake of convenience.

The other thing about the Kindle issue is that some of the comments I’ve read seem to indicate that TTS software is this newfangled invention that has, up until the Kindle, never been a concern. Actually, this isn’t true. I have downloaded Text Aloud, which does essentially the same thing the Kindle TTS reader will do. It’s a shareware program that costs more depending on the kinds of voices you want to use, and it seems to me that the Kindle is just doing something similar. Incidentally, if you want to mess around with what TTS actually sounds like, you can go here and check them out.

Do I think there is room for improvement in text to speech software? Of course I do. Do I think the software will ever get to be so good that reading a book using it will be even remotely comparable to reading an audio book? No, I emphatically don’t. Machines just don’t have the human ability to express nuance and tone for one thing, and for another, no machine is going to be able to do such a simple thing as pronounce every word correctly.

I want the best for authors. I want to support them as much as I possibly can, and I want to make sure they can milk all the royalties they are capable of getting out of the publishing industry. But I think a solution needs to be found that will work for everyone, and especially the consumers. I want *more* access to the books I want to read, not less. Perhaps it’s latent paranoia, but what I don’t want to see happen as a result of this brouhaha is more restrictions placed on ebook formats that will make it even more impossible for me as a consumer to have access to them.

Later today, after I finish a few other things, I hope to have a review posted. But for now, mostly to test my twitter feed, have some linkage.

• Dear Author reports on Kindle 2.0. It has a text to speech engine now. Which still makes it useless for an actual, y’know, blind consumer. But, hey, whatev. It’s not like ebook companies actually want my money or anything.

• Dear Author also had a post about social DRM which was fascinating. Note that the two things these links have in common is the fact that I am in the comments, wanking on my soapbox.
• Not that I care overly much about book covers (the being totally blind thing sort of prevents this), but over in the fantasy blogosphere there’s been some wank about one. Me, I kind of want to read the book now. Because I like both epic fantasy and paranormal romance, and I love well-written strong female characters, and all of those tastes taste great together.
• And also via Andrew Wheeler, a hillarious review of a book I am never likely to read. And, hey, it’s from a Kansas City blog, and that’s… kind of local. I will let the author of the book in question speak for himself.
  

  “Killinger turned to face her. There was a definite interruption in the pattern of his white shorts.” (page 95)

  and

  “Killinger hung up quickly to cut off complaints and because Marja-Liisa had moved his hand to her golden grove and had begun quivering against his fingers and her sighs had become deep.”

  I’d have posted the bit about prunes, but, y’know, some things you just have to discover on your own.

I’ll be posting a more structured review over at The Good, The Bad, and the Unread later, but rfor right now, I’ll simply tell you all to go out and buy Life on the Move by Megan Reilly. I literally just finished it, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to get some flavor of A grade, because I immediately felt the need to go squee over it.

The blurb:

Home is where the heart is. Until the truth comes knocking.

Casey Smith and her dad move around a lot, so packing boxes, driving all night, and moving into a new apartment in a new town is nothing, well, new to her. While it’s weird that her dad is so restless, she’s never really minded before—after all, there’s nothing she can do about it.

But this time is different. This time they’ve moved to a place where she almost fits in. She’s even made some friends, including Ethan, a gorgeous guy who could turn out to be more than just a friend—if only she could be sure she’ll have time to really get to know him.

Just when her life is starting to have all kinds of possibilities, a knock comes on the door.

And everything Casey has ever known is turned upside down.

You can even read an excerpt here.

I didn’t expect to like this book, because while I’m not against YA books in general, they’re not really the sorts of books I read frequently. Besides, the last YA romance I tried was Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, which I hated with the fiery passion I normally reserve for right-wing talk radio. But Life on the Move doesn’t even compare. The characters are nuanced, and they are real, and the story manages to work extremely well despite its short length. And while this book does have a great romantic subplot, there’s so much more to it.

As I said, I’ll write up a more formal review later, but seriously, go forth! Buy the book! You can thank me later.

Heather Graham had one thing in mind—furthering her career. And an exposé on the werewolves in her community would do just that. All she needed was to get up close and personal with one of them, and she could write an article that would give her front-page coverage across the nation. Her career would skyrocket! And Marc McAllister was just the man—and werewolf—to help her do it.

But when Marc realizes Heather’s flirty behavior exists solely so she can exploit werewolves in her newspaper, he decides it’s time to show little Miss Graham exactly how a werewolf behaves. And Marc McAllister isn’t just any werewolf, but purebred Cariboo Lunewulf—wild, strong, aggressive and the quintessential alpha male.

In a clash of wills, bodies and souls, Marc and Heather set off enough sparks to start a raging fire. Drawing the wild side out of Marc hits Heather with a bolt of lust that won’t go away. Unexpectedly for Marc, he may just have met his match in the little spitfire.

But their biggest hurdle may not be with each other, but from another direction entirely.

My Thoughts: Well, I imagine that the fact that I probably b ought this book two years ago and have only now actually finished it says a lot for the meh reaction that I experienced. It’s not a bad story, but neither is it the best thing I’ve read.

The characters were likeable enough, although Heather Graham kept dropping me out of the story because isn’t that the name of a pretty famous Harlequin author I’ve never read? And you know, reading along and thinking, ‘Hmm, Heather Graham. I have one of her books in the TBR. What was it about again? Let me pause and do a google search.” is not condusive to the fact that I am being rivetted.

Anyway, book Heather is certainly not the worst heroine I’ve run across lately, but I thought that the lengths she went to to cover her werewolf story were a bit TSTL. Her storyline also progresses the way I expected it to, with no real depth of characterization.

Marc was drawn slightly better. He was a dominant, sexual man, and I thought that the chemistry between himself and Heather was pretty intense. I also really liked the fact that he really does seem to be primally attuned to his inner beast.

I also liked the werewolves that are featured here. They seem genuinely fierce and primal creatures, not simply guys who like to run around on the full moon and howl. I didn’t really understand the politics of this particular werewolf pack, but that’s OK. It’s not particularly important to the story.

There is some sequel-baiting that was pretty obvious but not excessively annoying, and I’m not entirely certain if I’m going to fall for it or not and read th3e rest of this series. Overall, I think I could like the kinds of stories Lorie O’Clare tells, but this one was pretty forgetable.

Title: Sunfire: Pure Wildfire, Book 1
Author: Lynne Connolly
Genre: Erotic paranormal romance
Grade: B+
Reason for Reading: I was assigned Ms. Connolly’s forthcoming release, Icefire, for review, and I prefer to read series in order.

Synopsis:

Rock meets classical. Paranormal meets mortal. Will anybody get out alive? The members of rock band Pure Wildfire are firebird shape-shifters. Manager John Westfall will sacrifice anything for the power they wield, even his daughter Corinne.

Corinne attracts Aidan in a way he’s never known before. He’ll do anything to release her from Westfall’s trap. He offers her marriage, but Aidan wants more from Corinne — he wants her heart. And he’ll give her his in return.

Classical guitarist Corinne is desperate to escape her father’s control. She loves Aidan but craves her freedom — can she trust him to give it to her? Can she trust the wild man of rock with her heart? There’s only one way to find out. Dive into the wildfire!

My Thoughts: I really enjoyed this book, and the primary reason I did was because of the hero.

Aidan Hawthorne, a name I absolutely adore, is the guitarist for the popular rock group, Sunfire. He also happens to be a shape-shifting firebird, and not only that, but he’s that rarest of all firebirds, the Phoenix. I don’t often go gaga over the heroes in my books, but I think a lot of that is simply because I don’t find a lot of them particularly sexy. Aidan, however, is totally the kind of guy that I would hook up with in real life if he showed up. He’s got a wonderful combination of tenderness and wild masculinity, and I just wanted to smuggle him away and take him home.

I was also pleased that, given how much I loved Aidan, Corinne worked for me as a heroine. She could have simply been one more martyr heroine, but she wasn’t. I loved watching her slowly realize just how much manipulation her father had done, and I was relieved that she didn’t choose to remain with him out of a sense of blind loyalty. Corinne also deserves some accolades, because I don’t think I could have remained sane with sisters like hers.

I really liked the romance here. We know from the beginning that there’s attraction between Aidan and Corinne, but they move gradually and at a reasonable, logical pace into love. What misunderstandings and conflicts that arise along the way are natural for the progression of their relationship, and the black moment near the end is quite emotional. The sex was hot, and really did enhance the developing relationships. The only caveat I had about the sex scenes was one near the end, where there’s some anal action and Aidan uses soap as a lube, which seems a bit uncomfortable and had me wincing in sympathy.

Connolly does tend to sequel-bait fairly heavily, not a huge surprise considering that this is a series about a rock band. For the most part she succeeds, giving us tantalizing glimpses of the rest of the band, but I never fully got a sense of who they were as people. Well, we learn quite a bit about Aidan’s brother, Ryan, but the rest were inigmas to me for the most part.

As for the non-romance plot, for the most part I liked it. My only real issue was that I felt that Corinne’s father was almost cartoonishly evil, and he was dealt with with such swift efficiency that I wondered why Aidan hadn’t just found some other way to end that particular threat.

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a lot, and I’m very much looking forward to reading the second book in this series.

So, I have been telling myself that while Shannon has been out living life to the fullest this weekend, I was going to keep all of you lovely people company. I’m the other half of Team Awesome, except that I have a whole heck of a lot to catch up on because Shannon knows how to give the content like nobody’s business. Also, as she said somewhere below, I keep geting distracted by shiny things. Maybe she won’t be home by the time I remember how to post again and then you all can say that I kept you from boredom the whole weekend long.

I am making an effort to try to be better. I put the pro in procrastination and am working on my follow through! One of the shiny things distracting me is this huge to be read pile. I was going to write out a list but I don’t know how to make it look all shiny and blogtastic, so I’ll mention it the next time around.

The lovely folks at Joyfully Reviewed has a very kickass interview of Lauren Dane whom I love like a kid loves candy. It also helps that she lives in my neck of the woods. Woohoo, go Washington state!

In the interview, she gives the best writing advice ever. It’s especially great for those like me who really really want to write an EBook but are procrastinating out the yinyang or have some serious confidence issues in their writing. “STFU and Write”

I can totally dig that. I have read her Witch’s Knot series and will be gobbling up the next one. I’ve loved that entire series and wish I could have sold the lovely Shannon on the awesomeness that is her books. Reading that interview was a great start to my weekend of which I essentially didn’t do very much. You know how it is…shiny things!

And now for my request. It is rumored that I wish a certain part of a time period which seems to be featured in many romance novels would fall off of a cliff. It’s true. I have tried reading novels set during Regency England. I want to enjoy them. I swear I want to devour such books and talk about the awesomeness that is Regency England. Except I can’t because I really, really hate everything I’ve read. Admittedly, it probably isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things. But there’s only so many virginal heroines yearning to be touched and then getting all pissy when our daring hero looks at them crosseyed. I hate the excessive amount of exclamation points because it really really bothers me. I am not a grammar guru by a long shot, but if I am noticing it then there’s something wrong. The women in the novels that I have read seem so very shrieky and angry and hateful and it makes me want to spit nails. Poor Shannon has had to deal with my rants over the phone.

So I’m asking you all to help me. Please give me some ideas of a novel with a hero and a heroine that I can love and want to take home for ravishment. Please make me love a genre that everyone else seems to squee over while I stand on the outside making a sour puss face. I will make you cookies. alright, so you might not want me baking anything that you’re likely to consume, but still, I will be a happy Jal. And then I’ll review that book and comment you up the kazba.

Alright, I’m done now. I always feel like I need to write some spiffy closing remark to these things. I can’t just stop. How do I end a blog post? Peace out? Catch you on the flip side? Word to my maternal unit? Happy trails on the internet express? Time to fizzle in the hizzle? This is really hard. I’m done now!