The Loss of an Icon

Well, to me anyway, and to others I’m sure. I’ve always been a big fan of Anne McCaffrey. I can remember laying in bed as a little girl, snug under the covers, while my mother read me Dragonsong about a far away planet called Pern, where dragons lived, and a young harper’s apprentice named Menoly. I loved it. I thought it was the greatest story ever and I wanted a dragon, actually, a fire lizard.

And I didn’t stop with Dragonsong, I read more and more of her books, going past the Harper Hall Trilogy and into the Dragon Riders of Pern, proper, then branching into the Brainship series with The Ship Who Sang and the Crystal Singer series, and Pegasus. Anything I could get my hands on through the years. And it didn’t just stop with Anne McCaffrey. She was my gateway author. At a time I found JRR Tolkien difficult and dull, I started reading Mercedes Lackey and Frank Herbert, more and more. And I started to write my own stories.

Anne McCaffrey wasn’t the only reason I began to write, but she was a big part of it. I like to think I draw a lot of inspiration from her work, hers and Mercedes Lackey, and Frank Herbert, and a good half dozen others. She was an amazing writer. I loved her tone, her descriptions. That woman could drag you into a story before you even knew you started to read.

And now she’s gone. She passed away yesterday. I’m in shock. I knew she was getting older, knew she had health problems. Her public appearances have been fewer and fewer. Dragon Con was the last one that I knew of. A co-worker who was going offered to take a book with her to get autographed. I wish I had. I wish I could have met her, told her how important and wonderful her work was to me. I’m sure she knew, not of me in particular, but in general how many young authors she’s inspired. I know Christopher Paolini was one of them. I had always dreamed I would meet her at the Writers of the Future gala if I ever won. Now it’s just a dream and I feel like I’ve lost an old friend.

But I haven’t really. Her work is still there, and it will live on and I will cherish each of her books, worn and tattered as they may be from years of love. Thank you, Anne McCaffrey, and farewell. May flights of dragons speed thee to thy rest.

Reduced price on Galileo’s Stepdaughter

In anticipation for the sequel, Galileo Resurrected, I have dropped the price for Galileo’s Stepdaughter to 2.99.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Smashwords

Enjoy!

Barnes and Noble’s Nook “Tablet”

Yes, this is what I was waiting for. Barnes and Noble announced today that they are releasing a full color tablet on November 18th. Huzzah! This is me doing my happy dance.

It’s a nice tablet. No, it’s not a full tablet, but neither is the Kindle Fire, and it definitely one-ups the Fire. It’s got a 1GHz dual-core processor like the Fire, but it’s got a full gig of RAM, which you need with a good processor. The Nook Tablet (really, tablet, that’s all you’ve got?) is also on Gingerbread. Touting 11.5 hours of battery life for reading and 8 hours with continues HD video, it looks pretty sweet. Plus it weighs less than a pound. Oh and it’s 50 bucks more than the Fire, but I’m okay with that. No, really. I was looking at an Archos 80 G9 for about $320, so it’s not that bad of a deal. In fact, it’s nice.

All in all, I’m excited. I get to support my favorite bookstore (I’ll be buying my tablet locally as well) and it’s a nice piece of equipment for a great price. And, eventually, I imagine I’ll be able to flash it and throw Honeycomb on there, or if I wait long enough, I’ll be able to buy one with Honeycomb. Nice one B&N!

OH, FYI, one drawback, their “Online chat” is pretty worthless. I jumped in to see if one of their reps could answer a few questions for me and it was pretty much like talking to a computer. So done with that. Not sure how their customer service will fair over the phone, but then, if I flash it, I probably won’t have to worry about it.

Nook Color 2 Coming Monday?

Three days ago, Barnes and Noble let loose an extra-mysterious missive to the general public.

Many are speculating this is the highly anticipated Nook Color 2 announcement. From everything that’s going on, it seems a safe bet. It could, of course, be something completely different, but I’m going to keep my fingers crossed for a brand new Nook Color tablet.

However, for it to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire, it needs to do a few things.

For one, it needs to be reasonably priced. At 199$, the Kindle Fire is hard to beat for what you’re getting. 8 gigs of onboard storage, Android marketplace, 7 inch screen, access to Amazon’s cloud computing services, dual core processor. It’s pretty sweet. However, it doesn’t have external storage. The Kindle Fire has no USB port or SD slot for all the extra things you want to download. In this day and age 8 GBs just isn’t much. Between Kevin and I, that’s our entire music library combined. It’s actually probably more than 8GBs.

Add to that the Kindle Fire is being touted as a tablet perfect for watching movies and you’ve got a problem. 8 GBs is what? 8 movies top? Not a lot of space there folks, and lets get down to the real nitty gritty. It says 8 GBs, but it’s actually only 6 available gigs. So it’s great for storing a few thousand ebooks, and a few hundred songs, but what happens when you start downloading pictures, more music, apps, etc? Cloud storage, right? What happens if you don’t have wifi access at that moment?

Exactly.

So the Nook will probably have an external storage port of some sort, so bonus there. It needs to be priced around 200$ to compete with the Fire. It also needs to have a dual core processor. The Kindle Fire will run with Android 2.3, so the new Nook Color 2, should have 2.3 or better. If they really want to one up Amazon, it should have Honeycomb, 3.0. Considering I’m already looking at the Archos 80 G9 for about 300$, I would buy the Nook Color 2 if it’s similarly priced to the Archos, but that’s not everyon, obviously. I will be checking on their announcement Monday to see what all the hub bub is about and report back.