A Fountain of Fondue

♥ A follow up to this post about Romance Diva's "Not Going to Nationals" Cyber Conference... Portia Da Costa and Madelynne Ellis' Q&A has been rescheduled for tomorrow, Friday the 13th. Thanks for the update, Portia!

♥ An update on this post about Madelynne Ellis' A Gentleman's Wager and it's sequel Phantasmagoria...

•Amazon is showing 04/01/2008 as the date for the re-release of A Gentleman's Wager and 03/06/08 for the release of Phantasmagoria. I'm hoping that those dates were inadvertently reversed because I would really like all of you to read the first book before the second comes out. But, in case those ARE the correct dates, remember that A Gentleman's Wager is now available as an audio download from Audible.com.

•And, in case you've not read the comments for that same post, let me repeat what I said in them about the amazing Portia Da Costa...

For those of you that don't already know, Portia's book, Continuum, is a Black Lace classic. A woman's contemporary Alice in Wonderland-like erotic journey. I don't read much BDSM because I don't like how many authors dehumanize the subs, but that's seldom true with the Black Lace authors. And I can tell you that Continuum will stay in your head (and other parts) LONG after you finish reading. I'm talking a serious danger from dehydration here, okay? In fact, it's been quite awhile since I read it, but it STILL pops up in my head from time to time. It's a solid Lava Cake with a full 9" Flame Height- I STRONGLY recommend you consider it a MUST-READ! Continuum was just re-released in February and is available right now from Amazon. It's not available in audio format yet, but her Entertaining Mr. Stone is. She's also started releasing books with Phaze.

♥ Man, it's either feast or famine with audio books- some months I can't find ANYTHING to buy. But right now, I've got a nice long TBLT (to be listened to) list between Audible.com and AudioBookStandDL.com. I'm lovin' it! And for $9.95 per YEAR, I get member pricing at Audible plus they send discount emails out from time to time (they also have monthly plans that allow you to earn credits toward free books). AudioBookStandDL (Brilliance Audio), however, has ridiculously high prices.

I don't understand why the downloads from AudioBookStandDL/Brilliance Audio have to cost MORE than printed hardcover books- their cost for downloads must be negligible, so it's almost all pure profit for them. But, what can I do? If they have an audio book I want bad enough, I'll buy it no matter the cost. Case in point: Karen Marie Moning's Beyond the Highland Mist. Starting with that one on July 20th, her entire Highlander series is being re-released in audio format. If I pre-order the audio CD from Amazon, it's $16.47 but the audio download is still showing $24.95. As I said, download costs are negligible, so why is it so much MORE?! That's just WRONG!

♥ Speaking of Karen Marie Moning, her site has been redesigned and is looking GOOD! The best part is that her message boards have switched over from that confusing tree format to a standard vBulletin board (I wish Yahoo Groups would follow suit- GAK!). Now, maybe I can follow along with the kick-butt theories some of her Readers have come up with in the Fever series discussions.

♥ A few more sites of note this week...

•Lynn Veihl (Paper Back Writer) is doing a series of "Left Behind" writer's workshops on her blog this week and blackmailed invited Shiloh Walker to do the same.

• Dear Author's Jane has joined up with Sybil, Kriste J, and Wendy as volunteers at RWA National and they are reporting on the conference from the perspective of Readers (Jane's posts are in a separate section of the main site). My favorite so far? Jane blogged "Sherrilyn Kenyon has a big ass swan on her head and her fans dress up like her." but Wordpress shortened the title on the sidebar to read "Sherrilyn Kenyon has a big ass" Needless to say, catty bitches that we are, that post was read a LOT. *snort*

• Candy and Sarah, the Smart Bitches, are also in Dallas this week- be afraid... be very afraid.

• The mother of all blogs is Blogging National. It provides links to the official RWA blog AND the authors who are also blogging about the conference.

♥ Last Friday, Sybil asked "What is the last historical you read that BLEW YOU AWAY?" I, of course, threw some pimpage in there, and there are a buttload of other books pimped that I want to check out. With any luck, at least a few of them will be available as ebooks like Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels (Fictionwise) that Chantal recommended the other day. Either way, this woman can't live by Paranormals and Urban fantasies alone- I luvs me some really good and spicy Historicals, too!

♥ The subject of epubs and ebooks came up a couple of weeks ago on Devon's blog and it occurred to me that maybe other people are not familiar with Fictionwise and their Buywise Club. First of all, Fictionwise is NOT an epublisher. They would best be described as the Amazon.com of ebooks (they've recently started carrying some audio books, too).

The advantages of Fictionwise are that I can be reasonably sure the transaction is secure (SOOO not true with a lot of epubs), the price is often lower than buying direct from the epub, and, since I'm a member of their Buywise Club, I get a buttload of free books! AND, they keep your library available for download indefinitely! Plus, their reader rating system is a very useful tool.

Seriously, grasshoppers, the $29.95 yearly menbership fee has paid for itself many times over between the discounts and rebates. You don't have to be a member of their buying club to make purchases, and you will still save money if you aren't, but if you buy more than a few ebooks a year, the Buywise Club is the way to go.

♥ On a related subject, I noticed that some epubs are again offering PayPal as a purchase option. For a while, PayPal had decided to be some kind of moral watchdog and wouldn't allow their services to be used by non-PG13 sites. PPFFFT! The problem is that, at least at some epubs, transaction security is questionable and I don't feel confident giving them my credit card info. I've received letters from two different smaller epubs informing me that their computer security had been compromised. Yet another reason to use Fictionwise, particularly for ebooks from epubs that don't offer the PayPal option.