City of Legends

Ronin in the Temple of Aphrodite is now available as a Kindle eBook at Amazon.com

Don’t believe me?  Check here.

Finally, after much fumfering and threats of jihad, the first two of my books to be made available specifically for the Amazon Kindle, that remarkable eBook reader that is dominating the marketplace, are now available at Amazon.com.

The Compleat Panther Cycles, that darling of the intelligentsia of the digital renaissance, is now available for your Kindle device at a fraction of the tree-killer, massive 700 page volume it normally is.  With all of the poems, forewords, annotations and jaw dropping internal artwork featuring Jillian Ann, it comes in at just (get this) $9.59!!  Amazon retails the hardcopy for $36.00.  That’s almost 75% off!

As such…, last years dynamo of passion unfurled and hurled defiantly into unsympathetic winds, got turned around in record time and is now ready for your paper-free purusal for a mere $6.39, that’s more than half off the cover price!  I actually feel a little cheap at that price, but if they want to sacrifice their margin, I’m good.  The poetry is no less passionate or penetrating or, sadly, ironic. 

In any case, this means I now feel compelled to push on with adding more of my books.  Watch this space for updates.

Not ten minutes ago I got a response from the help desk for Kindle at Amazon.com (slogan:  "Don’t fight us, you will be assimilated"), informing me that once As such… goes live, I will be able to edit the messed-up title, but that once the process is started, you can’t change it until it comes out the other side.

I thank them, then told them they need to work on their "12 to 72 hours" thing.

I am waiting to hear back from the people in charge of, or at least involved in customer service for, Amazon’s Kindle publishing.  I have two issues, but still not so much as a low, plaintive moan to indicate anyone has received, read, reacted to or resolved my emails.  The sad thing is that the party line from Amazon (slogan:  "Look out, there are llamas!") is that the book(s) will be fully processed within 12 to 72 hours.

That’s issue #1, as it is bearing down on 96 hours for The Compleat Panther Cycles and it is, as yet, only listed in a sort of "coming soon" status by Amazon (slogan:  "Home of lots of slightly used Segways!").  Annoying, as I usually depend on my business associates to be a bit insane about deadlines.  But, who knows, maybe the size of that massive volume is slowing things down.  I wouldn’t know, as they are not talking to me.

Issue #2 is the self-service interface for transferring your previous published book.  I overlooked a field and it dutifully warned me to fix it before it accepted.  Good for it!  Thank you, Amazon (slogan:  "Eat hot flaming muppet death, mom and pop bookstores!").  But when I filled in the wayward field, the form reset the title of the book to a generic "New book 1" or something to that effect, which I didn’t catch.  How do I know I didn’t forget it the first time?  Trust me, I was going nuts trying to decide whether to use the short form of As such or the long form of As such…romantic poems of rebirth or the really, really long form of  As such I get dumped again right after putting a woman on the cover of a book, which Amazon (slogan:  "We’re really big and personally know Stephen King, bitch all you like!") would not appreciate as I have found large, detached and quasi-automated corporations do not appreciate irony.

So I immediately fired off a strongly worded request to allow me to fix the mistake caused by their semi-user-friendly interface, but still, after 72 hours, all I can show for the request is that book, as well, is now listed in a "Hey, look at me, I’m about to be available…someday" status, with the silly, generic name.

So I have held off releasing the other two books I was going to release last weekend to them, while I wait for some sign of life from Amazon (slogan:  "Our rainforests burnt to the ground by wildcat land speculators.  Take that, Al Gore!").

Sigh.

I promised a surprise.  Nothing expected.  Nothing about my love life (I have a love life?  Amazing.)

What I am about to announce means I am embracing a shifting paradigm in books.  The amazing part is perhaps how slow I have been, considering my relationship with the digital renaissance and the elements of that movement over the last two decades.  Ah, well, even Odin is blind in one eye.

To the point:  I am working this weekend to bring several of my books to Kindle, the eBook reader that is marketed through Amazon.  This will provide my content of my books, in the layout and form originally presented, available to the audience that is embracing the paperless book movement.  The books will be provided at a lower price than the hard copies, particularly with The Compleat Panther Cycles, and will be the full books, no detail lost.

To assist in the market, we’ve come up with a series of marketing slogans (isn’t this fun?  No.  It makes me feel like a pimp, when in fact, as the author, I am the hooker.)

The books selected to be the first wave of my transition, along with their "clever" slogans are:

The Compleat Panther Cycles 
slogan:  Kindle the legend

As such
slogan:  Kindle the fire

The Morgantown Suite Poems
slogan:  Kindle memories

A Ronin in the Temple of Aphrodite 
slogan:  Kindle a quest

 The slogans are subject to tweaking (I am an editors’ nightmare).  The whole idea is to use the name of the device as the verb.  The final prices will be released when the books go live, sometime in the next three days or so.  I will keep you informed.

Now, back to dealing with some interestingly erotic text messages I just received.  Bad girl.

No, I have not run off and gotten secretly married or engaged.  I am not engaged or even seeing anyone at this time.  I am still Ronin.

I am alive, in modest good health and still fighting the lingering voice impacts of the RSV I had in December.

Yes, I am working on multiple music projects, as well as the new book, loveaddict, due out later this Srping.

Yes, I am working on a master plan to bring all my books to Amazon’s Kindle.  This may or may not include from out of the city and the yet to be released loveaddict.