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Tag Archive for books

Sand

The hot wind hit Angel like a warm towel. The sand aloft in the air scratched like the fabric. The sand, it was hard to walk through the sand with no socks — only shoes that he was forced to empty every block or two. The sand was everywhere in the city. It piled along the buildings and alleyways like the snowdrifts of years past.

Gone were the plows to clear the way for traffic. Occasionally the wind would reveal a patch of pavement. Sometimes Angel would spot a crosswalk or a yellow line that ran down the middle of the road.

Block by block he worked his way across the city. The sun baked down on him. Without his clothes his mile-long walk would have given him cancer, or at least an excruciating sun burn.

He walked it every week. He walked among the empty streets and buildings of this once magnificent, second city. This place had survived a tragedy before, a great conflagration that destroyed nearly everything. There was no escape for her majesty this time around. The devastation was complete, along with every other city around the world.

Ten years had passed since the last remaining vestiges of the world’s military squared off for the slivers of fertile land near the poles. The final battles took place in Antarctica. The West won, but their prize was short-lived. Even the southern continent succumbed to the warmth. The heat and the dryness obliterated crops, as they had done across the globe years before.

On he trekked, climbing over rusted relics that used to move along the streets, but were now buried in tons of silicon and grit. He climbed down from upper streets to lower streets on scattered fences, jumping into dunes when the makeshift ladder fell short.

Only the wind, the sand, the sun and the decay made any sort of sound. Glassless behemoths stood and howled, as if to call out in slow anguish while the years tore them down. Pitted walls gouged by the relentless beating of the air made them look as ancient stone in some places, relics and ruins in others.

The air was thick with heat, but short of oxygen. More than the shoes, exhaustion slowed Angel’s pace.

A world had gone wrong, infested with a short-sighted species that valued power over existence. A world that had been abandoned by logic and empathy had no recourse to right the wrong, and no way to cry for help.

This is only the beginning of a story based on a very strange dream. I also have a book coming out soon. If you’d like to be informed about my writing escapades you can follow me on Facebook or sign up for my mailing list.

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Why the iPad will change the book business

iPad and CalculatorThe launch of the iPad heralded the end of the netbook, the Kindle and the nook. None of these things will come to pass due to the iPad, however. The netbook will survive because people like a keyboard and people like their windows applications. The Kindle and the nook may survive as well, they will be single purposes devices like the calculator that still sits on so many office desks. No, the iPad won’t kill these devices, nor will it destroy the physical book. But it might make a wide array of books unavailable in print form. The iPad can’t be blamed for this alone, but consider it the last horseman of the books apocalypse. The Kindle, the nook and even the Web itself were all whispering about the death of print media long before thoughts of the iPad were dancing in the minds of Apple fan boys.

Let’s not forget the stepping stones to bring book buying online. Certainly Amazon and everyone Amazon crushed will have their place in the history “books”. Their online marketplaces showed everyone how to sell books on the web with reviews, technical details and even book previews that whet the appetites of rabid readers. And while Amazon sits in an interesting position having its own e-reader and a well established store, it couldn’t quite commit, or get the market to commit, to an entire catalog of all-digital books with no paper copies shipping. The Kindle, while great for novels, wasn’t a device for all types of books and without that versatility it can’t eliminate the need to publish books on paper and send them through the market to the consumer. Read more