I have fallen madly in love with my new Kindle Paperwhite! Okay, I was more than ready for the plunge. Having been without an e-reader for several days, I may have been slightly desperate. But all kidding aside, this Paperwhite is truly the cat’s meow.
Let me tell you why. It has cured me of my extreme fear of touching an electronic screen. The ease with which I can manoeuvre through the functions is amazing. I was able to create collections and file almost all of my books in next to no time. That type of thing took forever with my old Kindle. Watch out Emma, Subway Surfer here I come.
But here is the real kicker. This new version has its own email address. I can send Word documents to my own Kindle via email and when I open them up they are almost perfectly formatted for reading. Wow! At first this may not seem like such a ground shaking thing but let me elaborate. While traveling, if I would like to review a manuscript, I can’t always whip my laptop out everywhere I go. But a jazzy-looking Kindle is ideal. It is truly no bigger than a small paperback and barely a quarter of an inch thick.
And there’s more! (Oh my goodness – I’m starting to sound like a late-night info commercial for Kinsu knifes.) I have discovered that reading on this new e-reader is the perfect way to do my final proofreading. Two weeks ago, my editor and I finished line-by-line edits for Maelstrom. I let it sit for a week, emailed the Word document over to the new Paperwhite and started doing my final proofread. I see things on the Kindle screen that I would never pick up on my laptop or even on a hardcopy. There is something about such a different way of looking at this material that makes typos, extra words and even little bits of strange spacing jump out at me.
I’m glad I live in a semi-isolated area. If I was spotted yesterday, strolling up and down my deck with my e-reader in hand, reading aloud, suffice to say observers may have thought I had lost my marbles. But no! I was proofreading. And why sit when one can be in motion?
I am now busy with formatting and looking forward to a fall publication date for Maelstrom.
I’ll leave you today with a photo I snapped from the deck last week when our drop-in bear decided to scoot his way up the Mountain Ash tree. As branches cracked and snapped around him, he merrily chomped away on the bright red berries. That is, until Bruce pitched a well-aimed rock at him, shouting all the while, “Get out of that tree you crazy bear.” We were both amazed at the easy leap said clumsy-looking bear took from that tree to the ground, ambling away as if he had not just suffered the indignity of being beaned by a rock in the hindquarters. Not even five minutes later, he was back harvesting salal berries right behind the kitchen. It takes a lot to deter a bear from eating at this time of year.
Reminds me of this photo I snapped of a squirrel right outside the back door. He was far more interested in eating than in running for safety. Getting a full belly is currently the prime directive in the animal world.
disappearinginplainsight 