CAuthors

Read An E-Book Week 2008

2008-02-29T01:42:00.003-05:00

How "Green" is Your Reading Material?

"Carbon Footprint", "Environmentally Friendly" and "Green". Have you considered these words when it comes to your reading material?

We're encouraged to buy, use and dispose with the environment in mind. While it's easy to recognize the negative impact of excess packaging and chemical content in many of the products we purchase, it's not so easy when it comes to books, magazines and newspapers.

We do have alternatives other than paper for our reading material. Many books, newspapers and magazines are created electronically. No trees are cut to produce them. No ink is used to put the words on the page. No fossil fuel is used to run presses or trucks to move the books around the country. Heated storage facilities are not required to warehouse e-books as they remain within your computer.

March 2nd - 8th , 2008 is Read An E-Book Week. The week is set aside to educate consumers about reading electronic books and other reading material. E-books are delivered to the end user electronically. They are read on devices such as the new Sony portable reader or Amazon's Kindle. They are destroyed with the push of a delete button, without ever taking up room in a landfill.

It takes 24 trees to produce a ton of printing paper, the type normally used for books, 12 trees are harvested for a ton of newsprint. Up to 35% of books printed for consumers (down from nearly 60% several years ago) are never read. They are eventually returned to the publisher for disposal in landfills. Given that a mature tree can produce as much oxygen in a season as 10 people inhale in a year, a serious alternative to paper books, magazines and newspapers needs to be considered. That alternative is e-books.

Before purchasing your next paper book, magazine or newspaper, consider your carbon footprint commitment. Read electronically.

Read An E-Book Week, March 2 - 8, 2008. For more information please visit www.domokos.com/readebookweek.html

Australian Bandicoots

2007-12-07T20:25:00.000-05:00

THE CENTURION GETS A NOD FOR AN EPPIE AWARD

2006-12-16T15:17:00.000-05:00

Canadian authors, Rita Y. Toews and Alex Domokos, have done it again. Their historical mystery, The Centurion, has been short-listed for the Eppie awards.

The historical Augustus, ruler of Rome, King Herod, Pontius Pilate and Claudia Procula come to life and leap from the pages as they struggle through the politically tense climate of the times. No longer confined to the pages of dull history books, the central characters in the crucifixion are freed to reveal their secrets, and roles, in the event that changed the world.

The Centurion is available at: http://fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook40877.htm

Librarything

2006-12-04T14:55:00.000-05:00

If you haven't been there yet, you simply have to. Librarything is one of the coolest places on the Internet if you're an avid reader as well as a writer. The people out there are different from other communities like MySpace or LiveJournal. The main difference is that this community,
which is over 111,000 strong and growing is comprised solely of... readers!

People who love books, who not only read them, but buy them. You can belong to different groups within Librarything. For instance, I belong to a group of Canadian Readers, an SF reading group, a Writer-readers group, and a What Are You Reading Now? group.

I also added a lot of Zumayans and fellow writers in my library. The titles in the readers' libraries are directly and automatically linked to amazon and if you belong to amazon's associates program, it links your account as well. In addition, you don't need to know html to add a link to the books or authors you mention in your posts. Everything is done with brackets.

The place is cool, I tell you.

BTW, you don't need to "own" all the books in your library (although if you do, you can swap books with other readers), mostly you include those you read. In addition, if you're an author and you have at least 50 books in your library (including them is dead easy), you can belong
to the Librarything Authors list.

CAuthors' experiences with NaNoWriMo

2006-11-30T21:36:00.000-05:00

From the NaNoWriMo Site:

"National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30."

From Judy Bagshaw

rom "NaNoWriMo is coming to an end and I'm still about 15000 words from the goal of 50000. A lot has to do with my crazed life at the moment. House selling, house buying, and all that those entail. It eats into my energies and my time. But no excuses, eh? lol

So, a bit about my efforts. I'm trying my hand at horror for the first time, and floundering in the unfamiliar waters, although, on the other hand, it's been an interesting challenge. I decided from the start of NaNo, that I wouldn't worry about anyone ever seeing this work, so that takes the pressure off somewhat. I chalk it up to being a learning experience.

Now, if I could just reach the goal! -Judy B."

From M. D. Benoit

"I'd been in a writing slump and needed a kick in the butt to start writing again. NaNoWriMo certainly did this for me. But writing seven days a week, an average of 2,500 words a day (I finished in 20 days) took its toll, not only on my tired brain, but on my poor hands and fingers.

I'm not a fast writer, even though this competition is focussed on quantity, not quality, it's very difficult for me to write total crap. So I spent six to seven hours at the computer.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the experience and it did get me writing again. I'm excited about the project, another Jack Meter Case File. -M. D."

From Beverley Bateman

"I signed up for Nano on a whim on October 31st because I heard about a lot of people doing it and I thought - why not give it a try?I was a little nervous because I wasn't sure I'd be able to write that many words.Unlike Dom, I'm a fairly fast writer and I don't worry too much about the editing part.Like many have said - you can edit or revise what you have written but not a blank page.I wrote quickly at the start because I thought I might not follow through and the better the headstart the better chance of finishing.I wrote about 2500 - 3000 words a day and wrote about 2 1/2 to 3 hours a day.At night I sometimes did a little editing but that doesn't count for Nano.I did miss 2 days of writing because life interfered but I still finished around Day 20 which was wonderful because I don't know if I could have kept up the pace. I wrote a total of just over 53,000 words and now I'm doing the rewriting, editing and revision and hope to actually mail it off to an editor by the end of the year.
Good luck Judy - still one day left. I'm sure you'll finish." --Beverley

Snow in Victoria

2006-11-27T23:04:00.000-05:00

This is my first post as a blogger. All I want to say for today is that Victoria, British Columbia, which is supposed to be warm, if wet, all winter, has a foot of fresh snow and the temperature is about 22F. If you can convert that to Centigrade, you're a better woman than I am. All I know is that it's COLD, especially with that wind blowing. The sole advantage is that since I cannot drive anywhere, I am sitting at my computer and getting a LOT of writing done.

From Eva Kende

2006-11-27T15:30:00.000-05:00

I am from Canmore in the Rockies where the temperature is -25 with wind-chill -34 and intermittently snowing for the past 5 days, so we are hunkered down, taking minimal trips into town for the most essential services. It’s nice to be retired and not have to go out when you don’t feel like it.

I was born in Hungary, but have lived 76.9% of my life in Canada. (If you are good at math you can figure out how old I am ) I definitely view the world with a set of Canadian values, although I love my birth-land and worry about the direction it’s taking. Those who watched the events of late September and October 23rd on the news are aware that all is not well there.

It’s hard to understand, without some historical background, just what is going on there. I believe my newest book, a memoir, Snapshots… Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain, would furnish some of the conditions that created and continue to influence the present in Hungary.

In the meantime, my first book Eva’s Hungarian Kitchen went into its 6th printing. Wow! I will never forget sitting at my kitchen table 23 years ago, calculating if the book is worth publishing and would I be able to sell the first 5000 and break even. Obviously, it was worth it, but the fact that it has such a dedicated following more than two decades later, floors me.

Eva

www.telusplanet.net/public/ekende

M. D. Benoit's World

2006-11-26T08:57:00.000-05:00

I've put together a slideshow of my published and upcoming works.

You can also visit me at MySpace or on my blog, Life's Weirder Than Fiction.

Another Newbie Blogging

2006-11-26T01:18:00.000-05:00

Okay I'm a virign at blogging.
Thsi is my second attempt. The first one didn't go through.
I'm mostly curious to see if this one goes through.
I wrote Medical Romance for Nano and I'm working on a Romantic Suspense about Internet Chatrooms.
I have two books coming out next year - a Romantic Suspense and a Horror Romance that I co- authored with a very twisted man.
My last book published was JUST LIKE YOU - a medical thriller about cloning.
You can check it out on my website.
www.beverleybateman.com

Catalogue Your Books Online

2006-11-24T07:49:00.000-05:00

Library Thing is a nifty website that permits you not only to catalogue your personal library, but to see who has the same books as yours, read reviews, swap books (if you're in the States), chat about a topic that interests you, discover new authors. So far at Library Thing, there are 105,885 members, 7,340,608 books cataloged, 1,414,098 of those being unique works.

Have a look at my own library and while you're at it, check out my own two SF Mystery Novels, Metered Space and Meter Made.

newbie at blogging

2006-11-23T15:16:00.000-05:00

I'm a new blogger, so just trying things out here.
I guess I could do a little bit of shameless self-promotion (since that's the purpose of this blog...lol) My latest novel, Big Fat Lies, was released in late August and is doing well. It's a romantic suspense, set on a Caribbean cruise, and as the book's tag line says, "a cruise can get complicated when it starts with a big fat lie." You can see more about the book and read an excerpt and reviews at www.judybagshaw.com The book is available from Draumr Publishing www.draumrpublishing.com

CAuthors has a Fictionista

2006-11-22T13:19:00.000-05:00

CAuthor member, Rita Y. Toews, was one of the Fictionistas in the unique reading series touring western Canada.

In response to the growing number of books aimed at smart, savvy women, four western presses teamed up to provide an alternative to "chick lit". At the event, sponsored by McNally Robinson in Winnipeg, Rita provided an entertaining read from her co-authored mystery novel, Body Traffic.

Marc Horton, writer for The Edmonton Journal wrote the following about Body Traffic: "Rich in character and with an honestly rendered sense of place, Body Traffic is a multilayered mystery that travels well from the mean streets of Kiev to the equally mean streets of Winnipeg."

Anyone looking for a good mystery can check out the book at: www.domokos.com

Instructions for posting at Bloggers

2006-11-22T07:55:00.000-05:00

1. go to http://blogger.com
2. At the top right, type in your username and password (the one you picked when you accepted the invite)
3. You are now at the Dashboard
4. Click on CAuthors under Blog Name
5. You get four tabs. If it's not active, click on Posting, then Create Post.
6. This will bring you to a writing pane.
7. Write a title (You can leave the link line blank, or insert the link your post refers to)
8. Start writing in the writing pane.
9. Save your work often.
10. When you're satisfied with your post, click Publish Post
11. If you want to change something after the post has been published, go back to the Posting tab, click Edit.

First Post

2006-11-22T07:29:00.000-05:00

This is the first post of a new blog, CAuthors, which is set up for Canadian Authors, emerging and established, to present their work, tell their news, add press releases, discuss other people's works, write reviews, etc.

It is intended to be used as a shameless marketing vehicle.