“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.
Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”
― William Faulkner
Category: Random Ramblings
Waterstones Is Training Delivery Owls. I Wonder If Artemis Can Get a Job?
Apparently Waterstones decided that if they can’t top Amazon in anything else, they will top them in crazy!
I thought it was pretty far-fetched when Amazon announced their new Prime Air program a few days ago, where they intend to deliver packages by drones, but it didn’t brighten up my day as Waterstones response today did.
Clearly, they’re not serious when they say they intend to train an army of owls to deliver books to their costumers, but take a look at the blog post anyway. The FAQ is hilarious!
Q. Isn’t this just what they did in Harry Potter?
A: Yes, this is exactly what they did in Harry Potter. You’re asking that as if this is a bad thing.
Maybe Artemis can get a job. He would have to deliver something small, like book marks, though(he’s tiny!)… Then again, he freaks out every time he sees paper towels, or anything that bears even the slightest resemblance to them, so maybe entrusting mail to him wouldn’t be the best idea…
The Joys of Hidden Formatting
Nothing like having friends point out when you messed up. Isn’t it wonderful to get a message from a friend currently reading your book with a copied excerpt looking like this:
“So the illusion broke,llided itt lunged for her.ng the enormous, flaming creature. clearly again. when you attacked Nadesha?” She asked slowly.”
Excerpt From: Louring, Michelle. “Resounding Echo.” Michelle Louring. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.
Of course the first reaction I had was to frantically look through all the different copies of the manuscript on my hard drive, hoping that the mutatilated sentence above was the result of Smashwords’ brutal Meatgrinder software. But alas, to my horror I located the same paragraph in the Kindle file I prepared by myself.
But strangely, it wasn’t to be found in my original Word document.
That is, until I pressed the formatting symbol…
Isn’t it nice to know that your writing software is hiding terrible secrets from you? And even nicer that those secrets only get exposed when you decide to upload the document for the world to see!
…I really have no idea how this happened. But I do know that this error is probably in every single ebook version of Resounding Echo available at the moment.
I can only console myself with the fact that hidden formatting doesn’t show up in printed books!
Night Elf Approved
Night Elves are the best salesmen in the world, as proved at Genki 2013. Enjoy this selection of Night Elf approved items, presented by Simone the Night Elf Druid:
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Pepsi:
Bottled Water:
Books by Michelle Louring:
Sonic Bags:
Furry tails:
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SUPER GLUE
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Give a big hand to Simone and visit her at Skymone Cosplay!
Mighty, Mighty Artemis
One of my friends told me that my owl was ridiculously photogenic… Looking at this picture, it seems that he also thinks so himself! Clearly, he doesn’t think I have any business being in HIS picture. Insolent human…
You can just see the plans for world domination in his eyes.