I was more curious than shocked when I knew I was tagged by the lovely Cayce at Fighting Dreamer. So enjoy this post!
THE RULES
You must post the rules.
Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and then create eleven new questions to ask the people you’ve tagged.
Tag eleven people and link to them on your post.
Let them know you’ve tagged them!
Cayce's Questions:
1. If you could go to one place (a real one) you've read about where would it be ?
America. I'm not living in the States, so my biggest dreams would be to visit US.
2. Do you have a favorite author? Who?
Okay, I swear this is a trick question. Suzanne Collins? Holly Black? Veronica Roth? Argh, my head just spins when I think of the plausible answers. Let save it for later.
3. How many books have you read last year?
Eh, roughly 30 books? I dunno, I lost track of the numbers...
4. If you could change the ending of any book, which book would it be and how?
Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves(view my review here). I would make the ending clearer, and the guy less arrogant.
5. Ebook of dead tree?
EBook of dead trees? Am I supposed to read them?
6. What are you going to read next?
Emerald City by Alicia Leppert.
7. What's your most favorite place to read?
Anywhere! As I'd answer in my Feb 24 #FF post, I read everywhere, including in the bathroom!
8. Do you have a pet? What kind?
Nah. I had fishes and tortoises but they all died. Now I just have ants, spiders and lizards. Oh, and the cats next door.
9. What is your newest favorite song?
Now I'm loving Taylor Swift's Safe and Sound. I'm so excited for The Hunger Games movie!!
10. What is your favorite movie?
Favorites are hard to answer. Let me think... Everything Twilight and Dan Brown, perhaps?
11. Coffee or tea?
Coffee! Especially dark coffee with little sugar and no cream. I drink coffee when most of my friends don't.
End
Wow, that was one heck of eleven questions! Never ask me to choose my favorites again, it's killing me!
Now for my questions:
1. Favorite novel/series(Cayce made me choose, so now I'm making you choose too)?
2. First word that came into your mind when you see "shoes".(random, I know)
3. Something you were good at but nobody knows.
4. Guilty pleasure movie.
5. Bad boys or good boys?
6. Style of sitting when reading.
7. Favorite drama!
8. What was the most funniest stuff you'd ever seen/encountered?
9. Hand phone(iPhone, Blackberry etc.)? Fave apps if it's a smartphone.
10. Guiltiest thing you'd ever done.
11. Your family's comments at your obsession of books(you're a book blogger, right?).
My two giveaways, The New Death and Others eBook Giveaway is ending in three days, but the entries collected are just 28. So whoever's interested in getting the ebook, please, enter fast.
As for the Fractured Light eBook Giveaway, I've collected 108 entries. A far cry from TND&O, I know. So would you be kind enough to enter both giveaways?
Feature & Follow Friday
is a blog hop that expands your blog following by a joint effort
between bloggers. First you leave your name here, then you create a
post on your own blog that links back here and then you visit as
many blogs as you can and tell them hi in their comments (on the
post that has the #FF image). You follow them, they follow you.
Win. Win. Just make sure to follow back if someone follows you!
Now to make this #FF interesting we do a FEATURE blogger. The
Feature bloggers are chosen randomly from participants in the Follow
Friday or through twitter and blog introductions. If you are
interested in becoming a Feature let me know! It is also required to
follow the host blog (parajunkee.com) and the Feature blog to participate in the #FF.
Q: Activity!!! Take a picture or describe where you love to read the most...
Anywhere, I guess? I could spend hours reading on my bed, in the couch, at my dining table, and even on my toilet sit(seriously, I'm not kidding) or on the bathroom floor. I just read whenever the mood strikes and will continue to read when the story engages me. The result is my mother's screams at me when I stay in the bathroom for more than an hour. Hehe.
This is a collection of witty short stories and humorous dark poems, published by the author himself. Since it's a collection, there's not much to comment on without giving the contents away, especially the plot.
Overall, it is highly entertaining and thought provoking. I love the witty stories and dark humor which is so dominant in the words, and especially love the poems. I find myself nodding to some of the points in the collection, and laughing at the funny/pathetic events. Good writing, and as I'd said, very funny. People who like short reads and dark humor(I'm repeating the word again!) should try this collection.
The cover is perfect with the content. Death, and brilliant thinking. I just want to LOL at it.
Up until now, there's only 28 entries for The New Death, but more than a hundred for Fractured light, so I was just wondering if you somehow missed the link unintentionally. Well, anyway, here's the link again above. Please, show some blogger and book love!
Feature & Follow Friday
is a blog hop that expands your blog following by a joint effort
between bloggers. First you leave your name here, then you create a
post on your own blog that links back here and then you visit as
many blogs as you can and tell them hi in their comments (on the
post that has the #FF image). You follow them, they follow you.
Win. Win. Just make sure to follow back if someone follows you!
Now to make this #FF interesting we do a FEATURE blogger. The
Feature bloggers are chosen randomly from participants in the Follow
Friday or through twitter and blog introductions. If you are
interested in becoming a Feature let me know! It is also required to
follow the host blog (parajunkee.com) and the Feature blog to participate in the #FF.
Q: I like unique names for characters and am looking forward to
coming up with some when I start writing. What's the most unique
character name you've come across?
Lenobia and Llona(it's pronounced as Eo-na). And of course almost every name in the Inheritance cycle by Christopher Paolini(Eragon, Saphira, Arya...). Renesmee and Carlie. And my friend's name, Joelle.
Since GFC is going away, I suggest that you use RSS or Atom. You could
also subscribe through email, or better yet, sign up on Linky Follow!
IRON KING, IRON DAUGHTER and IRON QUEEN by Julie Kagawa
I know it's a lil' late tp start on the series but I could find the will to ask my friends for it and when I do, they keep forgetting to bring the books. Anyway, I'd finished IRON KING two days ago. Now I'm reading the second book. : D And the covers are gorgeous!
Bought
LENOBIA'S VOW by P.C Cast
Yay, the latest House of Night novella! I actually just bought that today. Hehe, did I mention that I'm reading it and so far so good?
Feature & Follow Friday
is a blog hop that expands your blog following by a joint effort
between bloggers. First you leave your name here, then you create a
post on your own blog that links back here and then you visit as
many blogs as you can and tell them hi in their comments (on the
post that has the #FF image). You follow them, they follow you.
Win. Win. Just make sure to follow back if someone follows you!
Now to make this #FF interesting we do a FEATURE blogger. The
Feature bloggers are chosen randomly from participants in the Follow
Friday or through twitter and blog introductions. If you are
interested in becoming a Feature let me know! It is also required to
follow the host blog (parajunkee.com) and the Feature blog to participate in the #FF.
Q: What would your prefer: reading your favorite book over and over
again until you got sick of it OR reading 100s of mediocre books? And
why?
Read my favorite book until I get tired of it. If it's your favorite, you should not get tired of it easily. And why read a lot of books you don't like if you can't read your favorite? Life is too short for that.
I'm participating in the Emerald City Book Tour. My post is to be posted on 9 March, along with A Casual Reader's Blog. I'm not sure if the post will be interview, guest post or giveaway(fingers crossed) yet, but I'll keep you in the know when I get more info.
Llona Reese is used to living on the run. After the Vykens killed her
parents, she knew they would eventually come for her too. But she never
felt ready to face them until now. Defying the Auran Council and
everything she s been taught, Llona must learn to use her power over
light as a weapon if she wants to survive.
Here is another giveaway: FRACTURED LIGHT by Rachell McClellan. It
will start on 5 February. Be sure to check back to enter this giveaway.
This a an international giveaway. My review of Fractured Light is here.
At the same time, I'm having THE NEW DEATH AND OTHERS by James Hutchings giveaway. This giveaway has started and be sure to enter. It's open for international. Read the interview here and the guest post here.
Author James Hutchings has been kind enough to offer a giveaway, guest post and author interview(read the interview here) for me. (Rafflecopter signup for giveaway is at the bottom of this post)
---
Guest Post
Many writers, whether
published or just starting out, are very nervous that someone else will steal
their work, whether that be another writer using their ideas in their own
stories, or someone making pirated copies of their books. When I put out a
collection of my writing, I specifically gave permission for anyone at all to
copy my ideas, or even to cut and paste whole stories. I also contacted the
Pirate Party, a worldwide network that wants to lessen copyright, and told them
that I was giving anyone permission to put my ebook on file-sharing sites. In
this post I hope to show why I went against common wisdom.
Creative Commons
I used a free service called Creative Commons. Creative Commons
is useful for people who want to give the general public permission to use
their work, but with restrictions. In my case I didn't mind people using my
work for non-profit purposes, such as posting on a blog, but I didn't want to
allow anyone to make money off it. Similarly I wanted anyone who used it to
give me credit. I could have just listed these things myself. However I'm not a
lawyer, and perhaps I would have worded it wrong so that someone could twist
what I said to do more than I meant. Also I could have been unclear about what
I was allowing and what I wasn't allowing. Sure, someone could email me and
ask, but the whole purpose of having a written statement is so that people
don't have to ask.
Creative Commons has a series
of different licenses, which give permission to do different things. They're
all legally 'tight', and they're all summarized in plain language. So all you
have to do is go to their site and answer a series of questions, to get to the
license that does what you want. In my case I used the Attribution Non-Commercial
License.
Why?
That's what I did. But why?
Common sense would suggest that I'm giving something away for free that I could
be selling. However I believe that, in the long run, I'll be better off. The
main reason is that I've seen how many people are, like me, trying to get their
writing out there. Go to Smashwords and have a look at the latest ebooks. Then
refresh the page ten minutes later, and you'll probably see a whole new lot.
The problem that new writers face isn't that people want to steal your work;
it's getting anyone to show an interest in your work at all. If someone passes
on a pirated copy of my work, it might get to someone who's prepared to buy it
- and that someone would probably have never heard of me otherwise. Even if
they don't want to pay for what they read, I might come out with something else
in the future, and perhaps paying 99c for it will be easier than hunting it
down on a file-sharing site.
Science fiction writer Andrew
Burt tells the story of someone who disliked his book, and to get back at him
decided to put a copy on a file-sharing site. The effect was that he got a
small 'spike' in sales immediately afterwards.
I also have some less selfish
motives. Many people would assume that the purpose of copyright is to protect
authors and creators. Leaving aside the fact that someone else often ends up
with the rights (how many Disney shareholders created any of the Disney
characters? How many shareholders in Microsoft have ever written a line of
code?), that doesn't seem to have been the intention in the past. The US
Constitution says that Congress has the power "to promote the Progress of
Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors
the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Note
that protecting 'intellectual property' isn't mentioned. The authors of the
Constitution seemed to see the point as getting ideas out there where people
can use them: almost the exact opposite of keeping them 'safe' and 'protected'.
The original idea of
copyright seems to have been a sort of deal: you have an idea, and we want you
to get it out into the world where it will do some good. To encourage you to do
that, we'll give you a monopoly on its use for a limited time. After that,
anybody can use it (it will enter the 'public domain').
A lot of people don't know
that copyright used to give a lot less protection than it does now, especially
in the United States.
In the US,
it used to be that works were copyrighted for a maximum of 56 years. Today
copyright in the US
can last for over 100 years. In fact Congress keeps extending the time. In
practice, they're acting as if they never want ideas to go into the public
domain.
This is great for the owners
of 'intellectual property'. But it's hard to see how this "promotes the
Progress of Science and useful Arts," or how forever is a "limited
time." In a sense it's a theft from the public. Anyone who publishes work
has accepted the deal that the law offers, of a limited monopoly in return for
making their idea known. Congress has been giving them more and more extensions
on that monopoly, but doesn't require them to do anything to earn it.
It probably doesn't matter
that much that Disney still owns Mickey Mouse, or that Lord of the Rings is still under copyright. But remember that these
laws don't just apply to the arts. Similar laws apply to science as well. So a
life-saving invention could be going unused, because its owner wants too much
money for it, or because it's tied up in court while two companies fight about
who owns it.
Conclusion
I'm far from an expert on
either the law or the publishing industry. However I hope that I've given you,
especially those of you who might be thinking about publishing some writing, a
different take on the whole issue of whether authors should worry about their
ideas being stolen. At least I hope I've shown you that there's a different way
of thinking about it, and that that way doesn't require you to just give up on
making money; in fact that it might be more profitable as well as better for
society.
---
bio: James Hutchings lives in
Melbourne, Australia. He fights crime as
Poetic Justice, but his day job is acting. You might know him by his stage-name
'Brad Pitt.' He specializes in short fantasy fiction. His work has appeared in
Daily Science Fiction, fiction365 and Enchanted Conversation among other
markets. His ebook collection The New
Death and others is now available from Amazon, Smashwords and Barnes
& Noble. He blogs daily at Teleleli.
An electronic Pope faces a difficult theological question...
A wicked vizier makes a terrible bargain...
44
stories. 19 poems. No sparkly vampires. There's a thin line between
genius and insanity, and James Hutchings has just crossed it - but from
which direction?
We have a new button, so update your blogs if you are used to doing this meme!
Feature & Follow Friday
is a blog hop that expands your blog following by a joint effort
between bloggers. First you leave your name here, then you create a
post on your own blog that links back here and then you visit as
many blogs as you can and tell them hi in their comments (on the
post that has the #FF image). You follow them, they follow you.
Win. Win. Just make sure to follow back if someone follows you!
Now to make this #FF interesting we do a FEATURE blogger. The
Feature bloggers are chosen randomly from participants in the Follow
Friday or through twitter and blog introductions. If you are
interested in becoming a Feature let me know! It is also required to
follow the host blog (parajunkee.com) and the Feature blog to participate in the #FF.
Q: Define what characteristics your favorite books share. Do they
all have a kickass heroine or is the hot love interest the Alpha Male?
Kickass heroines? Not quite, since Carmen is not so much a kickass heroine as Rose . Neither is Lena or Mara. Hot love interests? Dimitri, Jeremy King, Patch, Four and Gale are hot, but not the one in A Blue So Dark and Incarceron. Story or plot? Perhaps. The novels I love such as The Hunger Games and Vampire Academy has amazing story and relatable characters. Notice that even since it's more than few years since The Hunger Games and Vampire Academy were published, people are still talking about them, and fans still get hyper at any mention of the series. These are the titles I hope to read and love.
I'd just finished reading this and I loved it! I can't wait to buy it when it's out.
