Books, great reads, Out of the Box Blogs

Bad Week Lol! Not another rant! 

Les

I know we have been ranting a little guys. Ok maybe a lot, but these are things that bother a lot of readers, so we decided to share our point of view.

Anyway, I am currently reading a book about a dragon shifter. It is quite interesting especially since he just married a wolf shifter. I have never found a dragon shifter book, but I will let you know as it progresses.

I am kinda excited about this!!!

After this book, I have a book our fellow blogger and author sent me. It looks great, so I will be reviewing that one too.

Peace

Les

Out of the Box Blogs

My Love/Hate of Ebooks

debra

First of all, I have a love relationship with my Kindle Fire and my ebooks.  Sometimes, I am a mood reader which is why I keep a couple of books going at a time.  With my Kindle, I can take it with me and have many books available if I am in a mood for something particular.  I enjoy the portability of having lots of my books available to me while only carrying a few ounces of weight.  However, I also have a hate relationship with some ebooks I have gotten over the years.

I started reading ebooks before ereaders were common place among us.  At that time, I downloaded the books from ebooks sites generally in PDF formats.  I still have them, have converted them using Calibre and moved them to my Kindle.  When I got my first Kindle (keyboard generation and still my favorite although it died), I got a lot of inexpensive ebooks from new authors or authors who had not been traditionally published and had opted for self-publishing. Before continuing, I want to say that I have found some authors this way that I love and am very happy with.  However, I have also noted many problems with these types of ebooks.  My pet peeves:  bad grammatical errors, spelling errors, etc.  Kid you not, I purchased an ebook from an indie author that had a sentence in it wherein the lead character went to one of the tropical island paradises and the author mentioned the name of the capital city.  Immediately after the capital city’s name was a set of parenthesis with a question mark in them, so we had the name and then (?) behind it.  My only thought was that I did not have a problem with the author in their draft not being sure of the name of the capital and leaving herself a note to check it out, but then it was published with the question mark still there!  Really?  I don’t remember now if I checked to see if the name of the capital city was accurate, but at that point, I did not care.  More than once, I have screamed, “Where is the editing in this book?”   I certainly do not mind the occasional error—it happens.  Nobody is perfect.  But repetitive errors in the same book are not acceptable to me when I pay hard-earned money for a book.

I need to stop ranting now.  Seriously, I love ebooks, but I feel that the industry has a lot of work to do.

To Be Continued.

Happy Reading,

debra

Books, great reads, Out of the Box Blogs

Whiny main characters RANT

Les

So, have you ever read a story where the main character is a girl who does nothing but whine? I know you have. Nothing gets on my nerves more than a main character talking about how they can take care of themselves, and then BAM they get into trouble and they are crying for help. Either stop talking crap about how brave and capable you are, or grow a pair and save yourself. Why do they make girls like this? Rarely do you read stories of guys like this. Don’t get me wrong I have found a few, but not as many. This by the way makes me even more angry. 

Ok rant over. Comment, and tell me what you think or if you think I am wrong. 
Peace

Les

Books, great reads, indie author, Reviews, scifi

The Unspoken Agreement

Karen

I have always felt there was an unspoken agreement between an author and us readers when we purchase a book and frankly lately I think the rules have been out the window. So I’m curious, is it just me that feels this way, having these expectations of my writers? Do I need to adjust to a new way of writing? Or are some books just not playing by the rules? Allow me to explain.

When I buy a book it’s like the author and I have made a contract. A simple one, I will give money to your seller and you will deliver a story. I don’t have to like it but it must follow the guidelines of all stories. Sound simple? Apparently not. This is how I view a story: A beginning, if it’s the first time we are meeting everyone with character and world building when appropriate. Then a middle, this is where your plot comes to life, the climax of the story as it is, whether it’s bad guys seemingly defeating good guys, or a big fight, big reveals, this is when we get the meat of the story. The all important end, the big finish, where you frankly actually finish the book. No cliffhangers (I will discuss this), no unrelated twists, just bring it home. Make it complete.

What I feel like has been a trend in some writing lately…

The Cliffhanger. Why do authors do this? Especially with book one? I have yet to meet a reader that loves this, so why do it? Is it because you just couldn’t think of an ending? Is it because you want me to be forced to buy your next book (doesn’t work with me, you cliff hang I abandon)? Or is it because you knew from the beginning that you would write three books so it doesn’t matter to you? Well that sucks. Let me tell you there are many extremely successful series out there that have 8,10,20 books and you know what, no cliffhangers! Every book is a complete story by itself. We feel satisfied when we read it, like an episode on tv.

The Plot. Ever read the back of a book, then read the book and the blurb has nothing to do with the story? I bought the book because this is what you told me the story is about. Can’t always blame the publisher, indies are also committing this crime, it’s kind of like false advertising. See this whale??? Sorry we are sending you home with a guppy. I might have been interested in your original story, I like guppies, but it’s just not going to sit right with me the whole time cause all I can think about is that whale. Blurbs should match the story and the plot should follow that. Having a plot is good too, some now don’t even have a plot.

The beginning. World and character building are paramount. In fact too often characters are left with no personality, shallow as it were, and books can fall very flat. But some authors swing too far the other way making whole books out of world and character building. That’s great if I already have book 2 and 3 but if this is all I have, then I don’t have a story, just a really long resume. And 200 pages of that gets boring. I know a lot of authors say they are setting up the next book, but I’m not buying, you got to sell this book to me, not the next one.

So the big question is, are my expectations to great?