ByGD
It’s a big week in the run up to the release of Tawna Fenske’s interactive romantic comedy The Great Panty Caper. First up, the cover reveal!
I got all hung up on the question, “What does a cover reveal even mean when you’re talking about an e-book?” and forgot to pay attention to the rest. So that you don’t get as confused as I did, here’s what’s happening:
ByGD
You know how people always say you should do the things that scare you? There’s a lesser known corollary that sometimes you should do things that aren’t like you. Daytime TV is full of makeovers – Goth girl in a pink dress! – eighties movies are full of dorky characters transformed into love interests. People love makeovers because they hint that inside each of us is someone else, someone more than the ordinary us. Sometimes we just get tired of inhabiting our own skin.
There is opportunity for profound growth when we realize how much of who we are is by choice, even if we find out we like the choices we usually make, thankyouverymuch. I like to test my idea of who I am on a regular basis. Sometimes I just like to see the look on my friends’ faces when I do something completely unexpected.
So, I’m going to break online character. I have always been an enthusiastic supporter of the books and music I like, and I rarely review or interview an artist I don’t think is good or at least interesting. But usually I like to keep a journalistic veneer on the proceedings. Until now. Read More
ByGD
Adult-Choose-Your-Own-Adventure
I have continued to wander the wrong side of the literary tracks with an exploration of choose-your-own-adventure e-books, a genre I discovered in a Wall Street Journal article about e-book data collection. I was simultaneously thrilled and creeped out by the data that Amazon can now collect on the reading habits of its customers – on my reading habits.
More frightening than the loss of privacy (which is really inevitable at this point) was the potential influence of that data on the creative process. It’s not at all challenging to imagine a future world where books are focus-grouped in a process that would have prevented most of literature’s greatest works from ever seeing the light of day had they been subjected to it. Read More