I love reading. No secret there, that’s what prompted me to start writing and pursue publication. Living in New Zealand, it used to be difficult to find romance novels and like many others down this end of the world, I started off by reading Harlequin Mills & Boon stories since that was it for choice. Then something happened – I wanted more. I wanted different. I scanned shelves searching for different and discovered a love of paranormal way before it became fashionable. Ghosts, genies, shapeshifters and time-travel. There weren’t that many vampires around at the time.
I discovered Romance Writers of New Zealand and a specialist romance store right here in Auckland. I pounded away on my keyboard and wrote, targeting Mills & Boon like many of my fellow writer friends. I received rejections and realized I didn’t fit. I looked further afield and discovered ebooks. I researched the publishers and purchased some of their ebooks. I purchased more, submitted a story or two to epublishers and found a home.
That’s a brief potted history. I was thinking about the way my book buying has changed. I now purchase loads of ebooks since I’m comfortable ordering online and can get my “different” fix this way. I have a PDA to read my ebooks or use my laptop and don’t have a problem reading from the screen. I don’t hanker for the smell of paper. In fact ebooks are awesome when it comes to storage. What hubby doesn’t know won’t hurt him!
Part of being a writer is keeping up with the market. That’s expensive, and I can’t afford to buy every book I need to read. The library I belong to is very romance-friendly. I was ecstatic last year when I found they’d started to order in a lot of erotic romance. Over the years I’ve seen lots of blogs, articles etc about how people shouldn’t use libraries but should buy books and support authors. I don’t subscribe fully to that wisdom. My local library has copies of most of my books, and I’m happy with this. I mean they’ve purchased them initially so I do get one sale. My books aren’t readily available in New Zealand but readers are able to check out my books from the library and I’m building a local readership. For me, that works. These days lots of peope don’t pick up a book at all, so yes, if having my books in a library encourages people to read I’m all for it.
When I was in Hawaii recently I discovered most of the books I wanted to buy were trade paperback, and at $14 a pop my suitcases weren’t crammed quite as full of books as I’d envisaged before leaving home. I couldn’t afford it. Once I get through my to-read pile I’ll check the ebook sites online because a lot of the books I want are out in this format now. Ebooks are certainly cheaper for me down here in NZ. A mass paperback sells for between $15 – $20 and a trade paperback is around $30 – $35. This makes ebooks for around $8 (with the exchange rate) a much better deal.
I’ve also been known to visit the local secondhand bookshop but they don’t have many recent releases available, apart from Harlequin category books.
My biggest, bestest advice. For those of you who live in New Zealand or Australia I’ve discovered Fishpond (links below). Fishpond is our local version of Amazon and very good value since they’ve started discounting books. I shop there quite often these days.
So where do you buy your books? Have your book buying habits changed over the years like mine?
No Thursday Thirteen for me today. I’m deep in the writing cave dealing with my Brava contest entry (the part I intend to enter is done but I’m still fiddling with word choice etc) and also tackling some editing.
Mr. Munro had a late start this morning and after our normal dog walking exercise, we went for a bike ride. He’s much faster than me so said he’d take the longer route and catch up. I felt very smug when he didn’t catch up with me until the end part of our ride. After all that exercise and a quick shower, I dragged my weary body to the coffee shop and started work. It was a productive day.
Mt Ruapehu, one of the volcanoes in the middle of the North Island erupted with no warning last night. Two climbers were taken to hospital, ski lodges and the ski field have closed. The railroad and roads have also closed. It’s bad timing since school holidays started this week.
The volcano has been fairly quiet over recent years, apart from the big lahar that came down a few months ago when the ice wall of the crater lake broke, releasing all the water. That one was forecast but the scientific instruments were strangely quiet during this eruption. This eruption produced small lahars. I’m fascinated by volcanoes and one day will find a way to use a volcano setting. Yes, I will.
I’ve been editing this week and yesterday I typed in all the amendments I’d made on my manuscript. Actually yesterday was momentous since I also decided that maybe I would enter the Brava contest. I have a story idea but haven’t written a word yet. Yes, I’m cutting it fine but nothing like a deadline to get me moving. Guess what I’ll be doing today.
I love animals and I’m a sucker for any story relating to animals. I watched a news story with interest today about residents of Capetown in South Africa running a raging war against baboons. The protected baboons are adept at opening cars and house windows. They are breaking into both and creating chaos, especially when they hit the “motherlode” – the fridge. Here’s the full story here
This reminded me of my own baboon experience, which happened during our overland trip through Africa. We were staying at a game park in Nigeria. The place was run down since they didn’t get many tourists but we stayed in these nifty huts, which was a change from camping. They also had a river with hot pools in it. After lots of cold showers and cold water washes, hot water was good! Anyway, they also had this small camp store that sold chocolate. Mars bars in particular. We hadn’t seen chocolate for weeks so just about everyone indulged. This camp had baboons and we had to make sure we locked our huts and didn’t leave any food about for them to steal. Between the camp store and our huts there was a dirt road. The baboons patrolled that road and let me tell you they could spot a Mars bar wrapper at one hundred paces! A few of our group were mugged by the troop of baboons and had to make a run for it, leaving their chocolate behind. I wasn’t game to purchase chocolate after that and everyone kept a wary eye out for those baboons. Not a creature you want to fool around with, that’s for sure.
I’m running a new contest in conjunction with Sierra Dafoe over at my website. Check out my contest page for details.
It’s World Cup time for rugby. Currently teams from around the world, including USA and Canada, are playing for the right to call themselves World champions. As usual New Zealand hopes are high. We’re the top-rated team in the world, yet we haven’t won the rugby world cup since 1987. Yep, nothing like a little pressure on our boys. We have a great team this year but can we do it…
Before we play a game it’s tradition for our team to issue a challenge by way of the haka (a traditional Maori challenge). Here’s a video of a haka done in South Africa. This particular version was controversial because of the final throat-cutting action. I thought it was great and some people were a little too PC, but there you go.
The next All Black game is against Scotland early Monday morning, New Zealand time. Go All Blacks!
It’s been great to get back to work on my writing again, although I did do a little while I was in Hawaii. This week I sent off my Cavemen sub, and I’ve started a new Middlemarch story titled Cat and Mouse. I’ve been writing during the mornings and editing in the afternoons. I’m editing another Middlemarch story called Assassin. Hopefully I’ll get quite a bit done during the weekend since Mr. Munro is working.
My bookmarks arrived today, and they’re very pretty. Frauke from Croco Designs designed them for me and Printing for Less did the print job. I must say I was really impressed with the ease of ordering and efficient manner in which my job was carried out. I highly recommend both Fruake and Printing for Less.
I’ve read some wonderful books during the last three weeks. When I couldn’t pick which book to read first I decided to read in my books in alphabetical order as per my PDA. The system worked really well so I think I’ll use this method again. These are some of the books I enjoyed most of all. Alien Overnight by Robin Rotham, Fire and Rain by Lauren Dane, Gift of the Godess by Denise Rossetti, At Her Command by Marcia James and Dangerous Lover by Lisa Marie Rice.
Does anyone have a good read to recommend? One or two more books added to my to-read pile won’t make much difference since it’s a huge tower already!
When I saw one of the excursions possible from the ship was a visit to a seahorse farm I cast my vote immediately. I told Mr. Munro we should visit and he agreed since we both love nature, animals and the like, and it was something we can’t do here in New Zealand. I fell in love with seahorses during my visit to Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater world in Auckland. Our claim to fame – I believe Kelly Tarlton’s pioneered the giant perspex tubes that you see in aquariums World wide.
1. Seahorses are generally monogamous and they can’t live alone. They must have a mate.
2. The seahorse is the only animal in the entire animal kingdom in which the MALE has a true pregnancy.
3. The MALE stays pregnant most of its life.
4. Seahorses inhabit the coral reefs and sea grass beds in all the oceans of the world.
5. They’re an endangered species.
6. Over 30 million seahorses are taken from the wild every year for use in Chinese medicine.
7. Over 1 million seahorses are taken from the wild for pets. Most die.
8. They will eat only live foods such as brine shrimp and are prone to stress in an aquarium, which lowers the efficiency of their immune systems and makes them susceptible to disease.
9. A seahorse has highly mobile eyes to watch for predators and prey without moving its body. It has a long snout with which it sucks up its prey. Its fins are small because it must move through thick water vegetation. The seahorse has a long, prehensile tail which it will curl around any support such as seaweed to prevent being swept away by currents.
10. Ocean Rider in Kona, Hawaii started up to breed seahorses so they weren’t taken from the wild for the pet fish trade.
11. As mentioned in No. 8 above seahorses eat live food in the wild. Ocean Rider’s first challenge was to get their seahorses to eat dead food. One brave little seahorse – I think his name was Jack but I can’t remember for sure – tried one and all the others copied him. They moved Jack from tank to tank to train all the other seahorses.
12. Check out Ocean Rider for details on buying and caring for seahorses and register for their bulletin board to get into contact with other owners.
13. A pair of Mustang Seahorses of medium size costs around US$300 for a pair. Mustang seahorses are good for first time seahorse owners. They are tropical, colorful, bold, gregarious, social, hearty and healthy! They all feed EZY on frozen mysis enhanced with Vibrance® right from your hand!!
Ocean Rider has been breeding the Mustang since 1998. They first offered Certifiticates of Authenticity and High Health for the Mustang in 1999. All Mustangs are now shipped with these Certificates.
And finally, here are a few photos from our visit. It was a bit hard to photograph the little blighters but we did our best! These are the tanks and that’s me with my floppy hat.
And these are my fingers holding a seahorse. They’re just so danged cute. Ah, that would be the seahorses, not my fingers
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It’s my sister’s birthday today and I went over to meet her for morning tea. Happy birthday, sis!
I have a release date for WANDERLUST. It’s coming out on April 18, 2008. Once I get myself organized I’ll put up an excerpt on my website.
And finally here’s a few more trip photos. The first is of the Pride of Aloha, the ship we cruised on. It’s very pretty with its lei of flowers. The ship is moored off Kona on the Big Island. This was the only place where we caught tenders from the ship to get to shore. We moored at a wharf on all the other islands.
This is the view from our cabin porthole when we sailed past the Kaua’i Coast.
And this is me aboard the ship at one of the happy hours at the poolside bar. There were 2000 passengers on board the ship. I don’t know where they all hid because I didn’t see them! The only thing we ever needed to queue for were the lifts. After the first time waiting we gave up and hit the stairs all the time. Hmmm, come to think of it that was Mr. Munro’s idea. The sneak had me in training for that hill climb and I didn’t realize!
Mr. Munro suggested it. “We should climb Diamond Head,” he said. “We’ll go as soon as we wake up.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed. “We need some exercise after eating all that food on the ship.” Right about now my inner self should have been shouting, “No! No! Bad idea.” Sadly, my inner self appeared to have had one margarita too many and was on holiday.
We started out, walking along the canal, heading toward Diamond Head. It’s the big hilly volcano thing in the photo below. About halfway there my inner self decided catching a bus would have been a good idea.
“It’s not much farther,” Mr. Munro said.
He lied but finally, finally we arrived at the park. We purchased our tickets.
“Where do we go?” I looked around and frowned. I looked up and up and up. “Surely not up there?”
“Nah,” Mr. Munro said. “This way.”
He lied again. It was all the way up there. We had to go past people with sharp elbows, people who dawdled and the cheerful people who had already climbed to the top and were coming back down. They were disgustingly cheerful because they knew how much I suffered…
We passed puffing, red-faced people. We climbed 99 stairs, walked through a tunnel and squeezed under an obstacle and up a hole. We huffed and we puffed. Or rather I did. Mr Munro never huffs or puffs because he’s fitter than me. Finally, finally we stood on the top to look down on Waikiki.
“I need a beer,” I said. “A big beer.”
This is me recovering my puff at the top of Diamond Head.
And this is me at the bottom. No beer but Mr. Munro bought me a shaved ice instead.
We had a wonderful holiday. Here are some totally random thoughts about holidays and Hawaii.
1. American toilets flush differently to ours. I forget and it’s always a little startling remembering during the first visit. I’m always relieved when the water stops gushing upward. I worry it’s not gonna stop!
2. The ocean is such a pretty color – a clear turquoise blue – and it’s very clear. Warm to swim in too. Not like at home.
3. Jeez, I hate the American system of tipping. I’d rather be charged more so that employers can pay a better wage. I’ve travelled a lot so I know about tipping and it really cheeses me off when service staff calculate the tip for me because I don’t have an American accent. Even worse are the staff who don’t do a good job and still expect a tip. New Zealand is so much easier.
4. Without exception the staff on the NCL cruise were smiling and pleasant the entire time. Nothing was too much trouble. I don’t know how they kept up the smiling faces. I had no problem tipping them at all. When we’ve saved up enough for our next cruise we’ll be booking with NCL.
5. My favorite place was Kona on the Big Island. Lush and green and very pretty. I’d love to visit again one day.
6. Ice cream is good for you.
7. Ditto with Margueritas. Two margueritas are extra good
8. I missed our wee dog.
9. Two weeks is not a long enough holiday. I want to win Lotto…
10. In New Zealand we’re used to hearing world news, reading it in our papers. I like to know what’s going on in the world but the news in US seems to consist of just local stuff. What’s up with that?
11. US Custom staff need to take a few chill pills. I understand security and the need for it but 99.9% of travellers are not criminals.
12. I love Borders bookstores and I know the location of just about every single one in Hawaii.
13. Coffee in Australia and New Zealand is far superior.
14. On this holiday we tried activities that we don’t have or can’t do in New Zealand. We went in a submarine and dived down 130 feet. Saw lots of fish, a turtle and eagle rays. We visited a sea horse farm. We went to a shooting range. We drove a Mustang. We also visited the volcanoes but we have those at home.
15. In New Zealand the price on the article to purchase is what you pay at the checkout. Tax is included and it’s much easier!
16. Each Hawaiian Island has a distinct character and they all have a wet side and a dry side.
17. State and National Parks are very well administered. The US has some great wilderness areas to visit. If you haven’t checked out the ones nearest to you, you’re missing out!!
18. A cruise ship has lots and lots of stairs. Good for exercising the butt.
19. The end of a holiday is the time to start planning the next vacation. Look out San Francisco 2008.
That’s all I can think of right now. I’m sure I’ll think of more once I sign off.
