A little bit of this and a little bit of that

I'm starting to do much better now.  I'm on a different medication and it's finally starting to kick in.  I'm back to car dancing again when a song I like comes on the radio.  That's where the upper half of me moves to the beat of the music when stuck at a traffic light.  I think people in cars around me wonder at the crazed woman next to them, but I have fun.  My coworkers are starting to notice a change.  I'm back to being the 'fun' one again.  I really missed being me.
 I did do myself no favours though when I started running real low on the new medication and rather than going back and getting my prescription renewed, I started taking less, missing a day here or there and/or taking the medication I was taking.  But they say we learn more from our mistakes and I learned a LOT from that STUPID mistake.  If I didn't know how much better I was doing before that I certainly found out then.  So a very strong word of advice from those who suffer from depression.  Medication really does work and DO NOT be afraid to take it.  I know part of our brain will tell us it's all in our head - and while technically it is, the right medication can really make a difference is us being the people we are supposed to be rather than the person that depression makes us.

I would say I'm at least 80% back and the difference between where I am now and where I was even a month ago is like night and day.

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One of the things I'm working on is slowly getting all my most favourite books downloaded to either Kindle or Kobo or IBooks - I do a lot of comparison shopping and whichever deal is best.  Many of them are older books and good luck in finding some at reasonable prices or even at all.  Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas for example is $9.17 for the Kindle book, $8.99 for the Kobo and $8.99 on IBooks.  Hell will freeze over before I EVER pay that much more for an ebook then a print copy.  At this point I will state categorically that I HATE what Random House is doing.  They may have lowered their prices in the US, but it hasn't made it's way north of the border.

I will go looking for my favourite books only to be disappointed again and again thought I have managed to get quite a few.  But every once in a while it's like I get the best gift in the whole world when I find an ebook I've been wanting ever since I joined the world of ereading.

Such is the case with Justine Davis.  I've enjoyed many, many of her books but two stand out a bit more that the others, Lord of the Storm and Skypirate.  I've  blogged about them before and they are two of the best SciFi/Futuristic books I've read and I have read a GREAT number of them.  And in particular, the hero of Skypirate has THE best name of a hero I've every come across - Dax Silverbrake.   I mean is that a cook name or what????   I thought it was the best name ever when I first read the book in 1995 and I still haven't come across a hero's name that beats it. 

I check every few months, hoping either or have been reissued as ebooks and I did so again a week or so ago.  I was ecstatic, ecstatic I tell you to discover that yes indeed, they have been reissued as ebooks.  And not only that - I'm almost giddy with this news - Ms. Davis is planning on bringing out a whole new book in the Coalition series.  I remember reading years ago that she had plans on writing more in this series but the publishers weren't interested.  I've already bought and read Lord of the Storm and Skypirate just came out Oct 16 and you can bet the bank that it will be loaded up onto my tablet very shortly.  The only hitch at the moment is I have Lord of the Storm on my Kobo but Skypirate is only on Amazon at the moment and I kind of want to keep them on the same reading device instead of one on Kobo, the other on Kindle.  Thank the stars that the wonderful *happy dance* world of self-publishing and ebooks has changed the game.  And in many cases the author and the readers are the winners

Buying up a storm

Boy, when I finally got into the e-reader field, I didn't do things lightly. Being the obsessive compulsive type - that's why I avoid horse racing, slot machines which are legal in Ontario now, lottery tickets and other various forms of gambling - I know I have the kind of personality that could get hooked real bad and real quick - I did a cannonball leap into e-books!

And once I discovered how easy it is to download from Chapters - well, I scare me!! As one who formerly said never to ereading, I seem to have grabbed hold with both hands, though I only need one to hold it.

One of the neat things I discovered is I can get some Harlequin Temptations once more!! And I discovered a new author. Well, I'd kind of read a couple of her books in the past but she wasn't really on my radar. But Chapters has some free ebooks and one that looked interesting was Slow Hands by Leslie Kelly. It was free, it was a quick read and it was good. So good I went looking for other books I could download and that's when I found the Temptation books. Boy do I miss that line! So I also got Night Whispers, Wickedly Hot and Her Last Temptation. So far I've read Her Last Temptation and I quite enjoyed it too!


And for when I get tired of these books, and feel the need for something different, I downloaded The Lost Enchantress by Patricia Coughlin. I've been eyeing this one for a while, but the price was a bit too high. But it's much lower on an ebook. The same with The Treasure Keeper by Shana Abe!



Or if I'm not in the mood, I now have Hotter After Midnight by Cynthia Eden! Or say I'm feeling like a nice good RS. All I have to do is turn on my Kobo and there I have it!






And just this morning, while still in my ratty old, yet very comfy bath robe, I discovered that I could instantly get Sugar Creek by Toni Blake, a book I've been waiting for a while for now! I was checking out other books by her and discovered a small novella type book, You Send Me, only available as an ebook, which of course I got, at $2.59, who could I not. It was then I discovered Sugar Creek as an ebook. It's not on the main page as that format.



I think I must stop though. This is just too easy! when I can buy a book at 6:30 am - in my bathrobe, I must learn control.

There are still a few glitches. I downloaded Calibre and while that helped, not all the kinks are worked out yet. But at least I can read the two other books I ordered not from Chapters. When all the bugs are worked out - then I REALLY need to watch out. I already have a cart waiting for me.

Adventures with an E Reader

I am afraid of small electrical devices. I am!! My cell phone is 4 years old and I don't know if it has texting capabilities. It doesn't matter - I don't plan on texting. I have a couple of devices to plug an IPod into. But they shall remain podless as I fear IPods. So as little as six months ago, I made a promise to myself I would never be an e-reader. But never make promises to yourself as you are likely to break them.

I mentioned in previous posts that I decided on, ordered and picked up a Kobo. I picked it up last Friday. On Sunday I overcame my fear enough to take it out of the box. And the next big step was last night when I decided to give 'er a go and get it up and running. Surprisingly, it was pretty easy. So them came the next test; ordering a book from Chapters.

I don't know what I did, or how I did it, but IT WORKED! With tons of books to choose from, I decided to go with Haunting Beauty by Erin Quinn. I had just started reading Haunting Warrior, the second book in the series. I soon realized it might be best to read the first book before going any further and voila, my first ereader book ever was chosen.

With that success behind me, I decided to go another step further and order books from an epublisher since the reason I went with a Kobo was to have the ability to order outside the box books that aren't always as easy to find with the NY publishers. I checked out a couple of sites and ended up at Liquid Silver where I downloaded a couple of books.

I went with A Hearing Heart by Bonnie Dee. I've read a few of her books and really enjoyed them and this one sounded intriguing. I read a review for it somewhere - can't remember where now - and the price was right. And it's a Western!!

Oh! Oh! I remember now. Aztec Lady did a review for this one on Karen's blog. Or then again, maybe it was Jayne's review at DA.



And for my third choice, Containment by Lucinda Thorne. It's a SciFi/Futuristic and I'm all over them and the story sounds interesting. I shiver at the thought of all the SciFi/Futuristics they have with E Publishers.

However, this is where I ran into a "glitch". I downloaded them in PDF format to my laptop, plugged in the Kobo and then was stuck. I had heard that it's a simple matter of dragging and dropping. The dragging part was easy, but the dropping - not so much. I couldn't figure out where to drop!! I have Kobo files but it wouldn't let me drop and I'm not sure whether the Kobo files were on the Kobo itself or on the part that was loaded on the computer when I set it up. Where ever it was, it wasn't on the Kobo. Nath is the only one I know with a Kobo and after a flurry of emails back and forth, we were both confused. And by that time, my brain had just about shut down for the night for thinking and concentrating. I know it's probably a simple matter, and once I get it figured out, the world of ebooks will be my oyster. But for the moment, I'm stymied.

Now for using it for reading. I like it!! I really like it! I'm anal about keeping my books in good shape and if a book has words going to the real inside of a book, it can drive me nuts trying to read it without doing some kind of spine bending. I really like that you can read it one handed or no handed; prop it against something and all you need is a finger to hit the next page button. And another feature I didn't realize it had until I started reading was when you turn it off and then back on, it automatically goes to where you left off reading. Kewl.

So so far, so almost good