A Golden Web, by Barbara Quick, grabbed my imagination immediately and I couldn’t put it down. I have a soft spot for historical fiction—it was Lament for a Lost Lover by Philippa Carr that sparked my avid love of books in the 8th grade. Sure, I enjoyed reading before that, but Carr’s book showed me what it was like to get lost in a story, in another time and place. A Golden Web was just like that for me. Quick’s meticulous research pays off—her story comes alive in 14th century Italy, with intriguing imagery that makes you feel like you’re right there. And, since I’m a sucker for romance, the book is a total winner in my estimation.

Read my full review at Story Circle Book Reviews.

Just posted another book review, this time for Kimberly Derting’s The Body Finder. I loved this book—it was a real page-turner! I’m totally impressed with The Body Finder as a debut novel. The writing was crisp, the dialogue was realistic, and each subplot was wonderfully woven into the whole. I highly recommend The Body Finder for young and not-so-young alike!

Read my official review at Story Circle Book Reviews.

My latest Story Circle Book Review is posted: Hellie Jondoe by Randall Platt. It’s a warm, fun story about a young orphan discovering that you don’t have to be alone and that, sometimes, a family is of our own making.

Read it here.

Today at the Stories from the Heart conference I co-presented a session called “Writing Promptly” with my dear SCN-sister Jude Whelley. We had a blast! Our session focus was a two-fold play on “prompt”: first, promptly and consistently getting down to the heart of your writing; second, using prompts to help you get un-stuck. It was the end of the day so we tried to keep it light and fun, and I think we succeeded. Of course, it helps when you have a room full of energetic and talented women who are fully present and raring to go!

One of the points we tried to make very clear is that you can still get a significant write done with only a few minutes—you don’t need hours of prep work and hours of slaving over your keyboard. If you’ve got a spare 10 or 15 minutes, take it! Make the most of it! My personal example of making the most of your time was showing my favorite writing tool in the world—my Livescribe Pulse pen. And wow, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many faces light up with envy and desire for a technical device!   Several of the ladies urged me to share more info with our community about the Livescribe pen.

Here are a few ways the Livescribe Pulse pen has transformed my daily writing:

1. Portability: On a typical day, I can’t grab hours on end to write. I write when and where the mood strikes and my schedule allows. So I carry my Livescribe and the lined journal with me everywhere I go. As long as you don’t have a tiny purse, you shouldn’t have a problem adding these items to your stash. Why is this any different than other pens and journals? See reason #2.
2. Conversion from handwriting to computer text: Every night I dock my Livescribe pen. So everything I wrote down that day with my Livescribe gets pulled into my computer. From there I can view the pages in the Livescribe Desktop, or even use a plug-in to export my writing as text for editing in my word processor. I have literally written entire blog posts long-hand with my Livescribe (because that’s all that was handy) then exported the text into my blog.
3. Audio recording: I recorded the keynote speech because the speaker referenced several quotes I really wanted to remember. Here’s how cool this is:
   • I take my standard written notes—my reactions to her quotes and statements, notes to expand on my own writing ideas, quotes or writers she mentions that I want more information on, etc.
   • In addition to that traditional note-taking, the Livescribe Desktop will now show my writing synced with the audio. So suddenly my own notes are shown in complete context of the associated audio.
   • Then, because a keynote is well over an hour, I can tap the bookmark button to break up the audio replay into intuitive chunks. For me, that means a new bookmark when the speaker said something I know I’ll want to come back to again. Now I don’t have to wait through an 87-minute audio file for the 2 minutes I want—I just use the skip buttons!
4. Versatility: One reason I love the Pulse pen is I really want that familiar, tactical response of handwriting my notes, but  the convenience of the digital capture. Livescribe provides several paper formats, including traditional 8.5×11 inch spiral notebooks, lined and unlined journals, small flip note pads, and more. I can also choose from black, blue, or red ink. The paper products aren’t terribly expensive, especially if you already have a fondness for artful journals. And the refills are totally affordable.

Learn more at the Livescribe web site.

Okay, so I know there are probably a few of my SCN sisters who are ready to buy. Please, if you’re going to purchase a Livescribe Pulse pen, use the links below. SCN is an Amazon affiliate and will get a portion of the sales using these affiliate links. So it’s for a good cause! These are some basic options. Amazon doesn’t always have the full line, so whatever you don’t find on Amazon you’ll find on the Livescribe web site.

• Livescribe 4 GB Pulse Smartpen
• Livescribe 2 GB Pulse Smartpen
• Livescribe Lined Black 1-2 Journal – 2 Pack
• Livescribe Paperblanks Black Moroccan Mini Wrap for Pulse Smartpen (Brown)
• Livescribe Flip Notepad for Pulse Smartpen (Black)
• Livescribe Pro Charging Cradle for Pulse Smartpen
• Livescribe Single Subject Spiral Notebook, 4-Pack, Nos. 1-4

Happy writing! And remember, we all have a story to tell.

On Sunday I participate on a blogging panel at Stories from the Heart V. Our primary goal is to help lifewriters get started with blogging as a tool for sharing your stories. In an interactive session, we’ll all share how we got started, what worked for us and what didn’t, and tips to avoid some of the pitfalls we discovered. Then we’ll open it up for Q&A—anything goes!

Here’s a listing of my lovely and talented co-panelists:

• Becky Lane at Seasonality
• Kara Flathouse at Eskimo Kisses and Air Hugs, Eskimo Kisses Home Grown Kids, Eskimo Kisses Home and Garden, and Eskimo Kisses Crafty Corner
• Judy M. Miller at The International Mom’s Blog
• Linda Hoye at My Own Velvet Room
• Nita Lou Bryant at Cafe Nita Lou, Electric Nita Lou, and Holiday Hints from Elf Nita Lou
• Rhonda Esakov at Rhonda’s A ‘Muse’ing Rambles

Kendra over at WomensMemoirs.com posted an article recently that grabbed my attention. In A Merry Kindle Christmas, she pointed to Amazon’s announcement that, for the first time ever, e-books outsold print format books on Christmas Day. Wow! So Kendra’s point to her writing readers was that, while the digital publishing world is still undergoing significant shifts and changes, it’s probably time for authors to seriously consider digital as a viable publication option. Then I saw the link to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform, a site that I didn’t even know existed. After clicking over to that site, my little tech-writer-desktop-publisher heart was swept away! I can’t resist an opportunity to muck around with page layout, text structure, and bookish things in general, so I decided to embark on a little experiment: how do I publish a Kindle book?

I was on a mission! I coerced a copy of friend Spencer Baum’s new book, The Demon Queen and the Locksmith, figuring if I was going to do the work it might as well pay off for someone.  So, with his Word and PDF source files, I set off to work… Here’s a very high-level summary of my afternoon playing with Kindle formatting.

Kindle books are simple HTML pages

I was actually surprised at how little proprietary code or markup is required to create a Kindle book. It really is a simple HTML document. In truth, it’s somewhat limited by that fact, as only basic tags are supported. You can’t even use tables, though the DTP site says you can use basic CSS (which they don’t elaborate on, unfortunately). I should offer a caveat here—I’ve been mucking around with HTML code for more than 10 years, so I have a very high comfort level with opening up a file and tweaking the markup. If you’re not familiar with HTML, this could be a frustrating time-sink for you.

Tools and process are important allies

The DTP site offers suggestions for several HTML editors and whatnot, but my personal magic combo is Microsoft Word and Adobe Dreamweaver. To get started, you only have to save your Word document as a web page. Word is notorious for inserting gobs of ugly extra formatting code, so if your version of Word offers a plain HTML export, take advantage of it. However, if you can’t figure out how to make Word strip out all that ugly code, Dreamweaver does a mighty fine job of it. In Dreamweaver, just use the Clean up Word HTML command and 90% of the crap is gone in moments. You will make your job hugely faster if you strip the Word tags before you do any other formatting.

One custom tag to remember

Since the files use basic HTML for formatting, you don’t need to know any special markup tags. However, there is one that I used frequently in my experiment:

<mbp:pagebreak />

This forces a page break, which is very handy for the front matter and at the end of a chapter.

Images need some massaging

The Kindle is a black-and-white screen, so I encourage you to tweak your graphics before including them in your Kindle package. For example, the Demon Queen uses a black cover with red, white, and gray colors. If I had uploaded that color file, the resulting Kindle image would have had very low contrast. So I used PhotoShop to convert the file to grayscale, then I increased the brightness and decreased the contrast so the image looked better on the Kindle screen.

Upload and preview

Always, always, always preview your work! There are a couple of ways to accomplish this—if possible, take advantage of both. If you have a Kindle, you can send your file directly to your device using email (check the settings of your device—it’s likely something like name@kindle.com) or via the USB cable. Keep in mind that email delivery of documents carries a small fee (details here on the Amazon.com site).

You can also preview your file on the DTP site by creating an item on your bookshelf. In my case, since it wasn’t my book to sell, I didn’t bother filling out all the metadata and purchase info, I just skipped directly to the “Upload & Preview” tab. I uploaded several different versions with ease, then just deleted the project when I was done testing.

Resources from the DTP site

Here is the only info I needed to create this first Kindle file. I’m sure there are tons more tricks and tips, but it was actually quite simple (again, considering my familiarity with HTML coding) to create a simple Kindle book.

• DTP: Supported HTML tags
• DTP: Custom tags (including that ever-so-important page break)
• DTP: Using full-screen images
• DTP: Formatting tips (with very basic CSS info)
• DTP: Upload and preview

I met the quintessential German grandmother on the train from Frankfurt to Hamburg. After boarding I noticed her stand up and wave to a young girl and woman on the platform. She waved heartily then made a sweeping motion, as if to say, “Go home! I’m on board the train, no more fuss is required.” Then we settled into our seats with smiles and awkward attempts to arrange luggage without smooshing one another. The attendant stopped by to check tickets, at which point I asked, “Sprechen sie English?” As soon as those words escaped my lips, the woman reached over, gently tapped my arm, and asked in heavily accented English, “No German? May I try my English for you?” I thought “Heck yeah!” would be rude so I settled for an enthusiastic, “Yes, please, thank you very much.”

She sighed, “A vunderful trip, it was. Where do you come from?” I tell her I live in Houston, Texas, and she replied, “That’s where your President Bush comes from, yes?” I hoped my cringe was only internal as I nodded yes and qualified that with, “But that’s a different part of the state.”

The trip from Houston to Frankfurt was largely uneventful. Thank goodness for mileage upgrades! 10 hours in the air crammed into coach seats would be bad enough, but we were on the tarmac for almost an hour waiting for takeoff (thanks to some very wacky Houston weather). I have only two complaints for this leg of the trip. Just as I managed to doze off (what would’ve been about 2 am my time but was close to sunrise where the plane was) we hit some seriously bumpy turbulence. And it lasted for about 25 minutes. Minor turbulence doesn’t bother me, but this was “rattle your butt off the seat” turbulence, so I didn’t get back to sleep.

And I'm on my way!

Sunrise over the Atlantic

View of fresh snow flying into Frankfurt

The second glitch was the fact that I packed my coat into my checked bag because I didn’t want to have to mess with it on the plane. I figured I wouldn’t need it until I exited the airport anyway. WRONG! In Frankfurt, Continental doesn’t use jetways, so I got to freeze my bejeppers off from the plane to the terminal bus. Thankfully I wasn’t the only schmuk who was surprised by this turn of events, so I wasn’t alone in my embarrassment or teeth-chattering.

Once in Frankfurt it was smooth sailing to the baggage claim, customs, and train station. Got my tickets from a friendly German lad who spoke very good English and explained to me that a 3-day pass would be cheaper than 1 round-trip ticket from Frankfurt to Hamburg. Sold! He directed me to platform 1, so I schlepped my gear down the stairs and waited. Then, like a typical American who doesn’t ride a train every day, I just hopped on the first one that pulled up. Doh!

The train had traveled maybe 100 yards before I realized I had gotten on the wrong one. Thankfully the travel gods were looking out for me–I still got to the main Frankfurt station, it just took a little longer because I was on a local train instead of the express. Whew!

Frankfurt central train station

Once on the train to Hamburg, it was a straight shot without any train changes so I was able to just chill out. I was hoping that by taking the train I’d get to see some of the country. What I didn’t take into account was that the sun sets around 4 pm here this time of year. So I got to see about 1 1/2 hours of the country. And I knew this before coming but the reality of it was somewhat of a jolt. Germans really love their beer.

Mmm, beer! Beer gardens everywhere, even (especially?) in train stations. This is Hamburg Hauptbahnof

Stay tuned for more adventures in Hamburg!

Ever wonder what I do at work these days? I just had the pleasure of being interviewed for the Social Nerdia Blog Talk Radio show. I’m so lucky to have a job I am passionate about. Check it out!

Click here to go to episode 32, featuring me.

At the end of September I had the opportunity to visit Colorado Springs for a work event. I’ve been through CO Springs on my way to Denver or Fort Collins, but have never stayed and played. Granted, I was only there for 3.5 days, 2.5 of which were chock full of work. But the day I took to poke around the area was wonderful.

The Houston summer this year really kicked my butt. Hot. Humid. Icky. My skin is so pasty from lack of sun exposure after this brutal heat that I glow in the dark. So hitting a lovely autumn weekend in the foothills of Pikes Peak was such a gift!

Most of my sight-seeing consisted of visiting Garden of the Gods and driving the Pikes Peak Highway. I didn’t get out and walk around much at Garden of the Gods because it was crazy packed. I literally could not find a single parking space! I’d love to spend an entire day just wandering among the rock formations here. The last photo in this group is a shot taken from the Pikes Peak Highway.

Then I headed out of town, through Manitou Springs, and up the Peak. Manitou Springs, it turns out, is a lovely bustling artsy and shopping destination. The gorgeous setting obviously helps loosen tourist wallets.  I thought about stopping to shop but, again, couldn’t find a parking space. Good thing, as my husband would have teased me relentlessly about finally getting to the mountains and stopping to shop.

On a whim, I headed for the Pikes Peak Highway. I was a little bummed that I had to pay ten bucks to get through the gate, but hey, it’s all for upkeep of the road and environs, so hopefully it’s money well spent. The temperature at the gate was 73 degrees; the temperature where I had to turn around (still 3 miles of road left) was 41 degrees. And I tried to snap one of those “point your camera at yourself and hope you’re in the shot” self-portraits when I got to the end, but gave up because the wind was howling around me. And the aspens! Oh, the aspens! Yowza! It was awesome.

But ya know, I’ve lived in Texas too long—I think I’ve become a Flatlander. *gasp* Driving the road above the timber line seriously weirded me out. It was like I could just drive off the edge into oblivion. It felt very vulnerable.

All in all, a wonderful trip. I can’t wait to get back to the Rockies!