I got an email the other day from Michael Leifer, who is the co-founder and president of ecodads.org. Michael wanted me to check out their new project on Kickstarter: “Fun Education Apps for Kids & Teens.” I get a lot of emails and press releases from people, and often ignore them. But this intrigued me.

So, I went on over to Kickstarter to check it out.

Wow…

I was blown away! I mean, I knew this kind of stuff was possible, and in fact, even recommended to my former employer that we do something similar, but on a much lower level.  What these guys have done is make learning fun.  Not just kids would love this, but I’d be excited to learn this way myself.

What they have done is to create a very professional and interactive textbook that can be viewed on any computer, but meant for iPads and other tablets. It extends the excitement about learning any topic by providing clickable links with further information, videos, vibrant images and it’s just amazing. Why didn’t they have these when I was a kid? Oh, wait… They didn’t even have computers then.

Intended for the California education system, I hope that their project goes national. The Kickstarter project with a goal of $20K has exceeded that amount and there’s still 5 days to go.

If you want your kids to learn in a 21st century way that takes the power of electronic media to the next level, go and watch the video. And please, give the guys some money to make this happen. This is the most exciting kind of text book I’ve ever seen, and once you watch that video, I’m guessing you’ll fee the same way, too. Just click the link above and be amazed.

You guys rule!

I wish I were on this list from the Library of Congress, but no. How many have you read?

http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/books-that-shaped-america/

I found that I have quite a bit of catching up to do.

Did you know that you can get books for free for Amazon Kindle? Many of the classics are free, and some are under $1. I’m guessing you can get many of the books on the LOC’s list very inexpensively.

Last week, my husband wanted to read Harold, Last of the Saxon Kings, and it was 95 cents.  He was thrilled because he’d not been able to get hold of a copy for many  years, and was delighted at reading it.

So, there you go… Get some classics free or next to free and have a wonderful summer of reading fun!

Terry Pratchett is absolutely one of my favorite writers of all time. He has written 50 novels by himself, and his whole creation — the Discworld — and all its inhabitants are nothing short of wonderful!

If you like writers with a killer sense of humor and an amazing creativity that can’t be matched, you’ll be interested to hear his thoughts on Vimes, his new novel Snuff and an older work Nation, his battle with Alzheimer’s, and much more:

My favorite characters are Granny Weatherwax and DEATH, who really does want to try other things.

Who are yours?

I’ve worked with traditional publishing for more than twenty years, and it’s been a real experience. I enjoy writing for publishers, but when it comes time for the royalty checks to come rolling in, they just don’t.

What cracks me up is that the editors and production people make annual salaries, and they have to be paid. But writers? They expect to get them for a song and dance because there are so many of us out there willing to do it for peanuts, just to have their names on a cover. I get that. I remember when I felt that way, but there’s a better way to do it!

Self-publish. When you do it online, it’s not terribly complicated, though you will need some tech skills, mainly with Word, creating .pdfs and if you want a good cover, graphics. You can, of course, hire people to do these things for you, but I opted to do it all. So, you may see this book in your local Amazon.com!

The Tragic Secret of Cyrus Crowe is a story about two fourteen-year-old girls that solve a haunting. I wrote it several years ago, and with all the rigamarole involved with publishing traditionally, I just never had enough time to get it sent out over the past five years. So, I decided to just do it myself.

The Tragic Secret of Cyrus Crowe is available in paperback or with Direct Publishing for Kindle.  If you have a kid between eight and ten, I know they’ll love it!

This just in from Gma Barb on Amazon.com:

“I read this book before giving it to my grand-daughter. I was surprised that it held my interest until the end. The book tells the tale of a pre-teen girl experiencing natural fears of unknown sounds and events when home alone. She becomes physically affected by her fears. Her best friend is understanding but thinks it’s all imagination until she shares in some of the events and they find themselves in a true mystery.

“My grand-daughter then read the book and liked it very much. She said that after telling one of her friends about it, the friend asked to borrow it. Her answer was, ‘Nope, I don’t want to lose it. I think I’ll read it again.’”

Writing a book is tricky. You have so much research, and well… You aren’t sure what you need and what you can do without when you look at it in a big heap.  It can make you crazy and scare you from writing at all.

But don’t let it!

Image via Wikipedia

As you’re reading the first book or just beginning, you won’t know what’s important and what’s not, generally. If you’re writing a biography, you know right off that certain details will be important, such as the subject’s date of birth. No brainer right? Or, if you’re writing an historical piece, you’ll want to include the date it happened, who the major players are, etc. There are just some details that can’t be left out.

But what other details will you use that might or might not be important?

You’ll figure it out as you go along.

I write in the margin of my research books and highlight what I feel is important. It’s something in your brain that just finds interesting and that you feel your readers might be interested in, too. It’s a gut thing, really. But as you read more and more, you just know.

So, don’t worry about it too much to start, but as you’re going through the materials you gather, just pick out things that you know are important and that you FEEL are important. Then, by the time you get to organization, you’ll know.