Saturday, January 29, 2011

Moving my website--and Googling myself

Because my yahoo site is getting a bit hard to navigate---or maybe because I'm getting much lazier---I'm moving my website to actually use blogger with my new domain name.

So, I'm still working on it, but essentially it's moved to http://www.dawndeannawilson.com/

Someone asked me once why I used my middle name when I write.
Well, because I Googled Dawn Wilson---and there are a lot of us out there.
Dawn Wilson was:
 -- A biology professor
-- A real estate broker
-- A ministry leader / pastor / author
---A bookjacket illustrator [and a darn good one, I might add!]
-- Someone who was in a Mexican prison over a mix up over perscription meds
-- A transgender activist who looks better in heels than I do.

Just interesting, I thought.
Google yourself. You'll be surprised what you find.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

I'm back --sort of

Okay, I'm hoping to be back in the swing of things. I've had that nasty, nasty, respiratory virus / flu thing that's been going around. Thank God I'm about over it, but it's knocked me off my tail for two weeks. I confess, I was kind of surprised by that.

Anyway, I'm trying to smooth out some formatting problems, but I have posted Saint Jude on Kindle. Kudos to Paul for the cool cover design. Hopefully I can work out those formatting issues this weekend.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Top five things that surprised me about my new Kindle

Prologue: I've been majorly under the weather with bronchitis. What I hate is that the first thing you think is that 'well, I'll be able to get some things done --including posting to this blog--and then you feel like so much crap that you aren't able to even keep the dishwasher loaded /unloaded. But I do think that we have turned the corner.

It arrived!
I'm beyond excited to learn more and more about it. I can easily see this replacing all if not most of my books [well, except for the ones I read in the thtub.] 
That being said, there are five things that really surprised me about my new Kindle:

1. How pretty it is:
   That may sound strange talking about a piece of technology, but it is pretty. During the sleep cycle, the computer screen shows these really cool artsy pictures.The first one that came up on my screen was of novelist Virginia Woolf.

2. It knew my name
  Granted, maybe this shouldn't be too surprising in today's technology, but it was still neat to turn it on and have it say "Hi Dawn!"

3. That digital ink thing really can be read in bright light.
   I dont' know what that stuff is, but it is very, very cool.

4. How natural it is
   This has a very natural feel to it---I can't explain, but I actually FELT like I was turning pages in a book. I was sitting on the couch, "thumbing" through it, and I couldn't imagine a time when this was not the norm.

5. How the technology doesn't get in the way
   I could imagine getting completely lost in the story, just like you do with "regular" books,  not more so. 

My prediction is that even those who insist that they "like the feel of books" [and I include myself in that list] will be surprised how it keeps that "feel" of pages without having pages. I  know that sounds strange, but it's the truth.

And as an aside, I had to add this---enjoy

Saturday, January 8, 2011

An ultimate top ten books list?

At least, according to Time magazine.
This was interesting...evidently it was compiled by looking at the top ten lists from 125 of the worlds most celebrated writers...
Link to the full article:
 Time Magazine article on ultimate top ten best books
"There are several lifetimes' worth of promising literary leads here—544 books in all. An 85-page appendix providing enlightened summaries of all the works mentioned is worth the price of admission all on its own. But to get you started, here, in all its glory, is the all-time, ultimate Top Top 10 list, derived from the top 10 lists of 125 of the world's most celebrated writers combined. Read it and— well, just read it.
1.       Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2.       Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3.       War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4.       Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
5.       The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6.       Hamlet by William Shakespeare
7.       The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
8.       In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
9.       The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
10.    Middlemarch by George Eliot

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Getting my first Kindle

Yes, I've taken the big leap.

For some strange reason, getting a Kindle--and waiting for it to arrive-- reminds me of the time when I was a kid when I used to fold down the pages of the Sears catalog for the items I wanted for Christmas. There's something about that anticipation about it arriving in the mail that is even better than getting it in a store. Kind of reminds me of that number from the Music Man about the Wells Fargo Wagon.

I had never thought I wanted an e-reader, and then I held one for the first time.
It was love at first sight.

Special thanks to my family--the Kindle is my Christmas present.
Oh, and I also got a cover, though not the cover I really wanted. The cover I wanted was a Kate Spade one that cost $85. Maybe when I sell enough of my Kindle publication  
This is the $85 cover I LOVE. Something about the pearls and that yellow.