Announcement

… of some kind. If you take a closer look at the left side of the blog, you might realize I have added another link to the ‘posted at Feedbooks’ category.

With “Twin Sisters” I’ve now published my second story, others will follow – both in English and in German. “Twin Sisters” is a story about murder and revenge, quite bloody, but shorter than “Phoenix Song”.

My next project now is to overhaul my very first long story, a German one. Within a week or a week and a half at the outmost it should be ready for publication, too. After this one (a fantasy story), I might edit the large number of slash stories I wrote, both in English and in German, and publish them in two collections.

Keep an eye out for the list, if you’re interested in my stories.

Phoenix Song published

Yes, I have done a final step with a story I wrote some time ago – Phoenix Song.

Unfortunately, it’s not as great as the title of this post suggests: I merely published the story as a free e-book at Feedbooks.com. So, no big contract and no heaps of money coming in … but people will have a chance to read my story, all the same. No editor to go over the whole thing again, either, so there might be quite some typos left.

On the whole, I was positively surprised, though, with how easy it all was. I registered over there (have been downloading books from the site before – they have a great number of free e-books, both classics and new ones) and soon afterwards, I could start publishing my first story. I will, however, publish other stories over there as well – once I’m done with them. A few short stories are ready for publishing, so they should be up in a few weeks at the outmost. Others are still ‘work in progress’, so they will be published once I’m done.

You might have spied that new and currently rather short list beside the posts. This is where I will post direct links to my stories, once they’re published at Feedbooks, so keep an eye out for updates!

E-Books

… and me. Up until very recently I thought I would never own an e-book-reader or think about getting one. I love books, you see, the real ones. I love the feeling, the smell, the whole thing. There’s nothing better for me than curling up on my couch with a good book and some lemonade, tea or hot chocolate (depending on temperature and general weather outside). But now I might also curl up with an e-book-reader.

I have quite some .pdf files on my computer’s hard disks which I created myself. Most of them are either my own stories or fan-fictions I have downloaded and converted from various sites for easier reading. Up until now, I have only been able to read them at my computer, so I was looking for a way to read them somewhere else, too. Most of those files I printed out, though, are A4 format, which is quite big, so not exactly a good idea for reading on your way somewhere. Over the last couple of weeks (two months or so), I therefore researched e-book-reader and realized that all of them can also read .pdf files. So, with the money I got as a present from my parents for Christmas, I went to the nearest electronic market and took a closer look last Friday.

I had set my eyes on a Tekstore model – least expensive and they have colour for graphics, not just electronic ink in black, white and grey. Tekstore was out, though, so I experimented a bit with the cheaper Sony e-book-reader, the PRS-350. Unlike the Oyo, offered in Germany by the chain of Thalia bookstores (which I tested in one, some weeks ago), the Sony reacts rather fast. Flicking through pages is rather easy, too, with the touch-screen. So, to make a long story a bit shorter (and not a bit too early), I bought it.

It has turned out that some of my .pdf files (the ones I found through Forgotten Books) don’t work all too well with my new reader. Most of those I did myself, though, are fine (even though I might recreate some for it). But then I did some internet research and now I’m really loaded on free e-books, as I found some pages where you can legally get old classics (books that have been around for 70 years and more) for free. I have by now loaded a couple of books I always wanted to read (including Varney the Vampire and the Fu Manchu novels by Sax Rohmer), a couple of books I have read before, but will want to read again (like S.S. van Dine’s Bishop Murder Case and Greene Murder Case) and quite some books I had never thought about reading before (like The Mask of Zorro). There’s so many more books waiting for me, once I have made my way through those I already have…

I have also returned to the old custom of reading in bed. The reader is much easier to handle in bed than a normal book. No 50 pages loss when I’m turning a page, rather lightweight and easy enough to hold with one hand. I still need light (e-ink screens have no light of their own, which is good for energy saving), but I can read much easier – especially as I can also set various font sizes, if I find the regular one too small.

I still love real books and will never completely leave them behind, but an e-book-reader also has its merits.

NaNoWriMo

…and how I missed it. I have only heard about the NaNoWriMo this year when one of the people over at the Pub mentioned it. And I only investigated the site today, too late to enter the contest this year.

50,000 words (about 175 pages of story) are a long endeavour for me. I have not written any story high above 100 pages in my life – and the longest I’ve written was written in stages, it actually consists of three stories connected by common main characters. When I brought that story together, I changed a few things back in the first story to make sure it all fit together well.

The idea of writing 50,000 words in 30 days (about 1670 words a day) is a bit scary for me. It’s overwhelming, to be honest. Yet I know I can write that many words a day, I know I can write a long story. I have penned out whole novels, but I somehow can’t manage to write them. I have a very strong personal critic in my head. And, just maybe, NaNoWriMo might be exactly what I need to exorcise it. Because this is not about writing the perfectly polished novel – nobody can do that in a month, not even the most productive novelists out there. It’s about writing a mass of text, about letting it all out. It’s about quantity, not quality. And that’s what could help me to finish my novels. If I learn to ‘let it all out’ for the first draft, I know I can write my novels without being afraid of not being ‘good enough’ to write.

Hell, I’m writing a lot of stuff for my blogs, am I not? And all I write here and over at the other two is published basically instantly, is available to every person with access to the internet. So why can’t I just let the stories out and worry about the style and the right wording and grammar problems later on? I don’t really know.

I will try to write along my own NaNoWriMo this year (and maybe enter the contest next year, we’ll see). Maybe this will help me to exorcise the inner critic and become a better writer.

A few short reviews

After I’ve been ‘missing in action’ for a while, I’m back with a few short reviews of books I’ve read recently. A warning, though: some of the books here are comics or manga!

Gunnerkrigg Court

The online comic/graphic novel by Thomas Siddell is set in a strange and very huge British boarding school of the same name. As Antimony Carver comes to Gunnerkrigg Court for her first year at school soon after her mother’s death, she soon realizes that not everything is ‘normal’ there. For instance, she has suddenly acquired a second shadow…

The story of Gunnerkrigg Court is a strange and very long one (and far from finished) which features robots, demons, strange contraptions and many other things.

Graphically, the series is a healthy mix between Western (European/American) and Eastern (mostly Japanese) influences. The position of the panels is rather conventional, two-sided panels have been missing as far as the story currently goes, but there have been some panels taking up one side completely. The colouring, while also rather conventional, fits nicely with the story, dark colours are dominant (plus the borders around the panels are black), but always broken up by Antimony’s red hair, the white, khaki and lighter green of the school uniforms and the very inspired design of the robots and supernatural creatures that might appear.

Each chapter tells a story of its own and only over time the connecting story behind each little novella emerges from the darkness. The characters show depth and are not easy to see through. New characters join over time, so you never feel overwhelmed by all those new people around. The main characters (Antimony, Katerina, Reynard[ine]) grow in depth throughout the stories, but the same can be said of the supporting characters.

Gunnerkrigg Court can be bought in (currently) two huge volumes at amazon (and other places) or you can simply read the whole story for free at the website www.gunnerkrigg.com.

Black Butler

I’m not completely sure whether or not this manga is also available in English, but I’ll cover it nevertheless. Set in a very twisted Victorian era (where people actually already listen to radio shows, play games on consoles and own cell phones), the story of “Black Butler” by Yana Toboso is centred around the very young Earl Phantomhive and his very unusual butler Sebastian.

Sebastian is a very good butler, actually, with abilities far beyond everything you might normally expect. That’s not much of a surprise, though, because he’s not human. Sebastian is a devil, bound to the young Earl Phantomhive by a contract (about the boy’s soul, no doubt). And the thirteen-year-old boy is not what he seems to be, either. He’s hunting down criminals in the name of her majesty (Victoria, not Elisabeth II. – Victorian era, remember?). And not all criminals are human…

The graphic style of the manga is very traditional: black and white and a lot of raster foil. The artist has a thing for clothes, though, and it shows in her designs. She also has obviously spent a lot of time researching the styles and traditions of Victorian England. Despite the rather cute shojo (girl’s manga) design, there’s also quite some blood and murder and action in the story. (Exactly what I like.)

The story balances out well between everyday episodes (and in a house with a lot of rather … incompetent servants … a butler has a lot of work to do), strong passages driving the story and well-drawn battles (between Sebastian and various enemies, some human, some less so). Within the first three volumes, two stories have been completed (the first one introducing the rather unusual talents of the Black Butler) and a third one has been hinted. I have no idea whether the manga is already finished in Japan or not, but I rather like it so far. It reminds me a bit of Kaori Yuki’s manga “God Child” (one of my all-time favourites) and is done well.

Stolen

“Stolen” is the first Mystery Case Files novel around and set in the town of Blackpool at the English coast (which is a good deal nicer than it’s described in the novels, from what I’ve heard). The novel by Jordan Gray, the first of four novels, is concentrating on the greatest mystery of Blackpool – a train robbery during World War II, during which various people were killed and a huge amount of gold (plus a lot of expensive art) was stolen. The novel also tells me that Ravenhearst, a manor in which two of the Mystery Case Files games are set (so far), is situated just outside Blackpool and might play a more important role in future novels.

I have to admit that for me the style needed some getting used to. Despite the early first murder (much faster than, say, in any Agatha Christie novel), it took me quite some time to really get into the story. The novel presents the characters in a rather quick succession and spins the story along as they appear (or that is how I felt while reading). As a result, I found it hard sometimes to identify the characters or understand what they were doing. The crime story, though, is very interesting and encompasses murder, robbery, forgery and blackmail.

So far, I’m set to give the next instalment of the series a chance, but if things don’t get better, that will probably be it for me.

So, those are three reviews of stuff I read lately. But I also have to admit that I still have quite some novels ahead of me to catch up with my reading. Expect a review of the first Flavia de Luce novel soon, too.