Jane’s Wildcards, which is the ultimate edition of Groundties, completely rewritten, is up.
So is Invitations, which is a Bren story.
There is a 10% discount on both and all our stock until next Friday, the 16th, if you use the code SPOCON10.
Jane’s Wildcards, which is the ultimate edition of Groundties, completely rewritten, is up.
So is Invitations, which is a Bren story.
There is a 10% discount on both and all our stock until next Friday, the 16th, if you use the code SPOCON10.
Of Jane’s books, the sequence is Netwalkers, which comes either in one volume as Netwalkers, or as ‘Partners’ and ‘Mimetron’ Then comes Wildcards…and the two that are coming out this week, which definitively are ALL the series. There will be a follower, ultimately, called Homecoming Games, but that is a standalone. If you have Netwalkers and the 3 after, you have a complete story.
thank you !
Hmm, I think my iPad is still synched with my laptop (Win7) instead of my desktop (Mac OS X). Methinks I’ll have less jumping through hoops if I fire up the ol’ laptop. — Yay, I’m reminded of going through Meetpoint bazzars in search of tapes and the odd this-or-that.
…The laptop, however, wants to update itself… Therefore the desktop instead.
Yet another totally off-topic comment: I’m entertaining tomorrow, and one of my friends is violently allergic to pork and everything to do with it. As a result, I’ve tried your spicy pork with beef and chicken instead. I’ll let you know what people think, if you want. Did I tell you I added ginger?
Seaboe
*Does happy dance* Love me some Bren stories!
Done and done 😀
Really enjoyed the latest(very early) Bren acount!
As always I look forward to all those to come both ebook and regular.
Ok, it’s probably obvious, but not to me. Where is the ebook tab? I see New Releases (not there) Techno, Freebies, Udates and News. I don’t find these books in any of theses. I’m on a Mac, using Safari. I can move around easily on the site, but can’t find the link to buy these books. I’ve clicked various things, tried all I can think of, and am probably missing something I should see, but I need help..
Ah, found it. The tabs are at the top! I had to scroll down to get them on my screen. Of course I only did this after I posted my message of frustration. Remember you run a smaller screen size than many, Arethusa, and do more scrolling.
Due to stupid problems, had trouble getting story to the Nook. Picked up link from email, and it downloaded as .zip to Nook. Big fight that I won. Read the .pdf. Will giggle for a while and re-read later.
Biggest problem was the Paypal password. Probably works better if you get it immediately. An interesting day.
The laptop remains stubborn, but I’m more stubborn. I’ll get it to straighten up and fly right.
PayPal. Aarrgh. I must’ve forgotten my password. Had to reset and confirm that. Then PayPal had some unspecified issue with me and “Limited” my account. (I think all they wanted was confirmation it’s me, and to put more funds in.) I tried to find how to resolve this, but their site is terrible for that. I think I resolved it, but I cannot tell yet if they think it really is solved. I’ll recheck during the week and see if it’s no longer flagged. So I may have a confused and confusing chat or call into PayPal support. I had never before had trouble with them.
All in all, it was some time between when I put the two new ebooks into the cart and when I could at last complete the transaction. This was in no way a fault of Closed Circle. And by the time I’d done that, it was late enough and I was irritated enough that neither reading nor writing was appealing. I eventually got some much-needed sleep.
So — Win for Closed Circle, Not-Win for laptop, iPad, desktop, and PayPal nonsense.
I’m about to try the laptop and moving files to my iPad again, after supper.
I *will* get the new ebooks on my iPad and desktop, one way or another. — And everything from Closed Circle’s end, er, location in space-time and internet, went just fine. All the nonsense was strictly elsewhere.
Figured out why I wasn’t getting the ‘add to cart’ button – it’s a pop-up window, according to my browser. Closed Circle is now allowed to use pop-ups. and that fixed the problem.
Purchases made!
Hope the con is going GREAT!
Great, thank you!
And thank all of you who’ve toughed it through to buy copies! I know what you mean: I’m world’s worst at remembering passwords…
I will recommend what has saved my sanity: lastpass, a cloud storage just for passwords and personal info encrypted in such a way that even THEY can’t figure out your master password if you lose it. F’gosh sakes, write that down and tuck it in a place you ABSOLUTELY won’t lose! But it will generate new ‘strong’ passwords for you, or store your old ones, store credit card info, and log you into sites automatically, plus it can be transferred to a new computer just by ‘installing’ and then opening your files there. Just don’t forget that master password or you’re SOL; and obviously, just as policy, but there IS the password hurdle, don’t open it on somebody else’s computer. I’m a nervous suspicious soul, but having been through ‘almost’ losing my master password, I can tell you—that is one tough site and no, they cannot help you if you screw that up. Instead of me having to run get my billfold for an online purchase and fill in numbers, it can autofill.
Safely.
And it remembers all those sites I rarely use.
I use KeePass for passwords – useful if you don’t have access to the cloud. It will run from thumb drive and like LastPass you can specify a master keyword.
I’ve just changed my FireFox password control to use a master password as well.
Based on CJ’s suggestion, I do subscribe to Lastpass, it’s free, and it does a bang-up job of generating those pesky complex passwords the Department of Defense requires for its IT systems – even though I’m no longer in the DoD, as a retired military member, there are DoD facilities that I have to access, such as my medical, finance, etc., and Lastpass is a lifesaver. Remember one password, ask Lastpass to remember the rest of them for you, and online life is so much easier.
Just bought “Faerie Moon” and “Invitations” and downloaded both. Thank you!
I really enjoyed “Faerie Moon”, Joe. Hope you do, too!
I just finished “Faery Moon” about 45 minutes ago, read Jane’s Afterward, and realized just how lacking in understanding of ancient Celtic (and Gaelic) mythology I happen to be. Perhaps I read the stories (The Brothers & Faery in Shadow) much too quickly, and yes, I would have liked for Caith to have married the girl at the end of “The Brothers”, but that was predetermined to lead to disaster. I’m sure that with the ending of “Faery in Shadow”, that we’ll be hearing from Caith and Dubhain again, although I hope that Caith no longer has to suffer as badly as he did. Reminds me of the unfairness of people toward Vanye for things Morgaine must do, and how Vanye seems to take the blame on himself rather than allow anyone to taint Morgaine with blame. The FAQs were very helpful without spoiling the story, and I knew I’d seen the glossary somewhere else, perhaps in “Arafel”, because many of the terms were used in that book, too, such as Daoine Sidhe, or ban sidhe, and it did bring back reminders of that book. I find it cruel in the world that children are held accountable for the sins of the father (or mother), even more so than when a child who had no say in the matter is born out of wedlock to a lordly father and a lower-born woman, the child goes through life with the sobriquet “bastard”, can never hold a lord’s title, inherit anything without it being given by the parent first. Vanye, Caith, how many others….
Last night, I went through almost two hours of updates to my laptop: Windows, my anti-virus suite, Firefox, iTunes, Flash player, a couple of others, all insisted they must be updated before I could do anything else, like re-download ebooks and sync my iPad. After I’d done the updates, I decided I’d had enough of that for a while and tried to nap.
I then decided syncing to the laptop was a bad idea. But iTunes on my Mac had had some very odd problem which had really disarranged files. (I suspect a feline traipsing across my graphics tablet had something to do with it. Plus who-knows-what.)
So before attempting to sync my iPad to that iTunes, I needed to fix the mess from a couple of weeks ago. After a little fiddling, I determined the way to do this on the Mac side of things was to delete the iTunes library database files (not the media files such as ebooks, audio, video, etc.). So…delete those and send up a prayer to the powers that be. Re-open iTunes and go through re-importing media already downloaded. (I won’t go into it, it’s tedious.) I did write down the process, which might help people.
But this involved also re-importing third-party content such as ebooks and audiobooks. YAY! Success! The process took a long time, but it’s worth it. The iTunes is now ship-shape again and once again has my media properly imported, such as third-party ebooks from Closed Circle and other authors such as Diane Duane and Vonda McIntyre. 🙂
So this evening, I’ll curl up with the new Bren story and restart on Jane’s NetWalkers series and on Protector.
While waiting during all this, I also determined a Sodastream would pay for itself quickly enough that I’ll treat myself either this month or next.
Just had a spam filter moment—some of you may find your posts! If you put more than one url in a post the spam filter swallows the post: just make two posts and it won’t.
Is there a linguist in the house? Changing culture and values are reflected in word use frequencies.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/changes-in-language-reflect-our-247626.aspx
Much obliged, Paul: it sounded interesting, so I was obliged to read it. My wording seems like something you’d get in a Western, no? As is more common usage today, “Thanks, Paul: it sounded interesting, so I had to read it.” Get it? I don’t see how the good doctor could account for changing fashions in word usage. If she gets confirmation in other languages, then I think she might have something in terms of social change. Maybe.
The rise in “get” could just be the effect of the start of mass production, allowing more things to be gotten; and the change from a vast majority of self-reliant farmers to vast majority of inter-dependent (sub)urbanites, who must get a large number of items, mostly food, routinely. It seems to me you’d have to separate social give and take from the commercial, and also subtract out fashion, such as “get a cold” vs. “catch” or “contract”. Helicopter parenting–over-generous, perhaps–might lead to “getting” children to and from school. One also has to “get to” work or school or the various other places modern transportation allows. Unless more went on than the article discusses, the approach seems over-simplistic.
But, my linguistic training was limited to the structural framework of linguistics, that needed for Computer Science; and English classes, of course. CJ is much more the natural (human) language linguist.
:nods: It appears that “have” and “get/got” are in transition. It looks like “have” is becoming more strictly an auxiliary verb, while “get” and “got” are strengthening to become the primary verb. Spanish did something like this. The verb “tener” means “to have, to hold” that (centuries ago) meant “to hold,” while “haber” is only an auxiliary verb “have, had” that (centuries ago) was “to have.”
Another change I would bet on is the loss of separate adjective vs. adverb forms, dropping -ly and loss of pairs like “good/well” and “bad/ill” so that these have only legacy, archaic connections. I say this from editing for the general public. I can also say, as far as most of the public is concerned, “whom” is already dead, and they can never figure out “who’s” versus “whose” or “it’s” versus “its” and “-‘s” versus “-s’.” Throw in “there/they’re/their” and “two/to/too” and “loose/lose” and you get a large number of the things a proofer or copyeditor corrects for daily.
I wonder which “plural you” will become the standard. There are at least “y’all” and “you all” and “you guys” and “youse,” with a few others. (I vote for “y’all,” which is gaining ground throughout the US. An Aussie friend says, because of US media, he’s heard it in Australia.)
Speech habits do change over time, and dialectal habits get in there too. Very neat stuff. — The rise of mass communications and the internet is already doing very interesting things towards the US/UK spelling and usage divide.
How testable/provable that is, could be challenging. A study over time might show trends toward/away from expressions.
Yes. Perhaps you have encountered the 1500-word Basic English, promoted for easy learning? But in addition to those words, a student had to learn “get in” for “arrived”, “got up” for “awoke”, and so forth–not necessarily easier than learning distinct words, especially if the student’s native language is Indo-European. A romance language learner might say he arrived at the airport, while a Germanic language learner might say “landed”; each has a cognate(?) in his native language.
On a quite international site, a romance language native blamed English’s awful spelling on it being Germanic. I opined that German was quite sensible and quoted James Nicoll: “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” The question from the English side is, which is the romance word, which the Germanic, and which comes from some other random language? “Honcho” was a popular word in the sixties, thus in Westerns, and so one might expect it to be Spanish; but, it’s Japanese.
Despite just seeing a “green grocer’s apostrophe” in The Economist, I think the badgering of the self-appointed Internet grammar police is having a positive effect. I can’t think of a case where either who or whom can be used correctly and alters meaning, so I don’t think we lose much from that. However, I regret the loss of distinction among can, may, will, shall.
“You” is usually clear. You might be interested in http://spark-1590165977.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/jkatz/SurveyMaps/
@Walt and BCS, now it’s been mentioned, I’d like to ask something that’s been bothering me for a while. Can someone explain the rules about apostrophe-s and fixed-s to me?
Without too many grammar terms please, as I’m not very familiar with those in English.
I’ve found some rules:
1. A fixed -s on the end denotes plural: one book – two books. If the singular word ends in an -s sound, -es is used for ease of pronounciation: 1 jinx, 2 jinxes. I’m not going into the rest of the details like changing consonants here (1 life – 2 lives) etc., I’m only looking at the -s or -‘s rules: -es is still a fixed -s on the end.
2. ‘s is used as abbreviation for the verb-form ‘is’ or ‘has’; this can be used with any kind of subject (people, pronouns, animals, things, and the other kinds of little words I always forget the category-names for) – as long as the verb-form fits: Peter’s got a book, it’s on the table; he’s proud of it, it’s obvious.
3a. ‘s is used as a possessive; this can be used with almost any kind of subject, people, animals, things, single and plural: Peter’s book, the cat’s toy, the book’s cover, humanity’s foolishness.
3b If the word denoting the possessor (whether singular or plural) ends in s, you only add the apostrophe, not the second s: the books’ covers, the peoples’ votes, the census’ report.
3c. This led me to use ‘it’s’ to denote the possessive, but I get the impression that this is wrong.
For example: “Here’s Peter’s book, it’s cover is blue.”
Is ‘it’ the single exception where possessive is written as ‘its’ instead of ‘it’s’?
Hanneke, you’ve got it exactly right, right down to the its. Its is like ‘his’ and has no apostrophe. When you mean ‘it is’, THAT’s when you use ‘s.
You will also see a ‘ as the ending on singular words that already end in s or ss: this is the older style, which has begun to shift in favor of using ‘s regardless of the form.
Old style: it was the Joneses’ house [pronounced JOAN-zez]meaning the whole Jones family’s house.
Now: it was the Joneses’s house.
It gets (to my eye) ridiculous when you put it on a word ending in -ss.
Old: It was the seamstress’ house. Pronounced: It was the seam-stress house.
Midway: It began to be pronounced: seam-stress-es, [same way as the plural of the word, seamstresses]
Now: It was the seamstress’s house. Pronounced: It was the seam-stress-es house.
So you will see one way in older books, and from stubborn people like me, and you will see it another way from newer books and younger writers.
Your knowledge of English would put many American college students to shame.
Hi CJ, thanks for the answer!
I agree seamstress’s looks ridiculous, and even the Joneses’s house can still cause a small blink, though it’s getting familiar enough I can’t guarantee to notice it while (proof)reading. I guess I’ve read a lot of older books, and books by writers who are careful about their language; after all, that’s where I learned my English.
I only picked up on rule 3c after I started participating in the blog discussions here, once I noticed that my bits were always a lot fuller of apostrophies than looked normal for everyone else. That made me pay attention to the ‘technical bits’ again, instead of just going with the ingrained sense of what looks right.
At that point I’d been reading English books for 4 decades without really *noticing* this exception, once I thought I knew the rules; though in all those books ‘its’ had looked quite right to me while reading! Writing is clearly still different from reading, even though a lot of reading experience does get absorbed unconsciously into an automatic skill set useful for writing.
I do wonder at those college students who are so bad at their own language: don’t they read? Or do they mainly read the carelessly-worded and abbreviated sorts of things one finds in tweets and SMS-messages and on some of the internet? That might quickly desensitize their sense of what looks right, now there’s such a lot of badly-written text of the fast-to-consume kind around, even in newspapers and suchlike, especially if they haven’t built up a solid sense for good sentences by reading a lot of well-written stuff first.
But that doesn’t really explain how things could go downhill so fast once written life started speeding up, because it’s not been so very long yet, and the early users of the faster media would have had a solid grounding of well-written language around them while growing up, and not the excess of bad examples that one can be surrounded by today.
Hanneke, I’ll add couple things to what CJ said. (Have at me if you disagree, CJ!)
Plurals that don’t end in S are made possessive with ‘s: children’s books; people’s votes.
Don’t imply a false pronunciation, especially a point with silent letters, and don’t make something too hard to pronounce: the sixteen King Louis of France [not Louises, because the s in Louis is silent, but pronounced in the plural]; the sixteen King Louis’ thrones [not Louis’s because that would imply pronouncing it Loo-es-ez]; but Inspector Lewis’s many mysteries [because the s in Lewis is voiced]; Xerxes’ army [because Xerxes’s would be hard to pronounce, Zerk-zees-zes]. This is essentially CJ’s rule of not following a rule off a cliff.
English is just as strange to native-speakers as it is to you. I think many of us get overwhelmed by all the rules and exceptions. For example, one rule is:
| I before E [IE]
| Except after C [CEI]
| Or when sounded as A
| As in nEIghbor or wEIgh
However, many exceptions exist, be they adopted forEIgn* words (zEItgEIst*) or just defiCIEnt* and wEIrd*. *All these are spelled correctly and break the rule. (At this point, you and many native English writers are asking yourselves, “How many words actually follow the rule?”)
Myself, I didn’t quite have to take English when I entered college (I had to take a test), but I took college English later and greatly improved my English.
Odds & ends on the linguistic thread:
I’d love to say, “As I sit in my pajamas on the verandah of my bungalow…”, but alas it’s a ranch with just a patio. It’s not the first time I’ve read the “cribhouse” comment, but it is such a delicious “turn of phrase” (and where did that come from?).
Terminal “esses”: We’re all familiar with the old Norse use of -son & -dottir in names. Some (genealogists) even with “ap” and “fertch” which do the same job in Welsh. (And other Celtic languages?) But it was through genealogy I discovered that the terminal “s” on some family names is, in effect, a shortened form of -son. So Welsh Quaker John ap Roger, son of Roger ap Robert, became John Rogers when he immigrated to Pennsylvania (and thus it has been). Evans for the descendants of Evan, Hughes of Hugh, etc.
| I before E [IE]
| Except after C [CEI]
| Or when sounded as A
| As in nEIghbor or wEIgh
Maybe as a rule of thumb, but it’s not scientific!
(And other Celtic languages?)
Oh, yes: Mac-, son; O’-, grandson or descendent; and other less common prefixes.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_name#Surname_prefixes and thereabouts.
Thank you, and Jane too.
Lovely to get a glimpse of young Bren.
I’m keeping the rereading of Jane’s books ’till I’ve got the set complete; very interesting to find out the difference.
In re: Jane’s books. I’m that way, too. I got all three of the original versions of the Netwalker series at once, and read them one after the other –bang-bang-bang. Just couldn’t put them down. Really looking forward to having the whole “new improved” set and indulging myself in a good long read.
This may have been addressed at some time in the past, but I can’t find it, so I’m going to ask: Which type of file should I buy these works in for a Kindle (the Keyboard one)? I’m not very computer-savvy and have never bought e-books anywhere except on Amazon, so I don’t really know the difference between mobi and the others….can anyone advise, please?
if it’s any help, I downloaded the “full” version of “Faery Moon”, and the “mini” version of “Invitations”. My system read them as .zip files, and when I extracted them to the target directory, the software that comes with my reader (a Sony eReader), automatically told me which version it prefers. In my case, the epub version, although I believe any one of them would work with a Kindle (please note, I don’t have a Kindle, so can’t say for sure, just that I’ve been successful with .pdf, .rtf, and epub files on my reader)
@ Silverglass et al. —
.mobi — For Amazon Kindle reader and Kindle apps on any platform (computer, OS). The .mobi became a proprietary format when it was purchased and changed by Amazon.
.epub — For pretty much everything else. For Nook. For Apple iTunes iBooks.
.epub — Is the open web standard. That said, Apple has added some things for ebooks sold within its domain. However, .epub itself is an open web standard just like HTML5 and CSS3. In fact, the new EPUB3 is based on those, while EPUB2 is based on older XHTML1.1 and CSS2. This makes .epub the best bet for future compatibility.
.pdf — Still common in the printing industry. Adobe’s proprietary, closed format, specific to printed matter, not originally intended for screen reflow. PDF does certain very odd things with images and with images instead of text that are specific to its real print purpose. While it is OK for proofing and printing, it is ~terrible~ for on-screen and for transforming the format to or from anything for an ebook reader or on-screen. — Unless you’re working within the publishing and printing industry, avoid .pdf for ebooks in favor of .epub or .mobi whenever possible.
(I’m about to wade back into the one book I’ve seen out on EPUB3 and others on EPUB2.)
I bought mini because I couldn’t remember the Kindle suffix.
I read the “Blood Red Moon” teaser as a pdf before I decided to buy a Kindle Keyboard specifically to read these and other friends’ ebooks. I’m now tempted to get the full-blown Kindle Fire HD, but not anytime soon. The KK does the job I wanted – reading a book – without any other distractions.
@Silverglass: Kindle uses .mobi.
GOING TO CAP FOR A MINUTE CUZ I’M COMING IN LATE! .mobi is the standard extension for a Kindle-friendly file, but you’ll see our earlier ones are .prc.
This is the same kind of file and Kindle will recognize it. Early on, we did our Kindle conversions with mobi-pocket creator which, for some reason, tagged it with a .prc extension. Don’t know why, but both work. I’m slowly going through the old files and getting them into modern mobi files.