A Splintered Mind

Although activity on this blog has been very quiet over the past few months, I've been an antsy ant over at HealthyPlace . Each week I have posted two shiny, tingly ADHD blog entries of such extreme excitement that I'm tuckered out just thinking about them. Never mind the two audio clips a month of me talking while doing something at 3am. Is there no better way to define "excitement"?! I can't think of any. Well, maybe running around the top of Mount Timpanogas with a lightning rod during a thunderstorm while screaming "Missed me!" might be just a bit more exciting, but not by much. Hey, I even recorded my thoughts in an empty parking lot. It was thrilling stuff. I do have to admit that the videos have been devoid of high entertainment value, unless you happen to enjoy train wrecks. I have mastered many things in my life. Task management , tecktonic, the Rubik's cube, personal hygiene… But feeling comfortable in front of a camera has not been one ...

Last Monday, I was ticking so badly that I had to inform my editor over at HealthyPlace that I would be unable to write my blog in time. And so I spent my night in a mental limbo of tickiness. I usually end up watching Netflix with my head perched on my neck in a way that the eyes are directed towards the monitor. As long as images of interest flicker by, I can ride out the ticking episode until the storm passes. Unfortunately, there is no creative output during this time—not while the storm rages across my lobes.  Sometime during that limbo when it was not Monday but Tuesday yet still early enough to pretend it was still Monday, I was struck with a new idea for a picture book. I quickly jotted my ideas down, but then realized, “Oh, hey! I'm not ticking. I should probably work on my article for HealthyPlace.” This sudden realization of responsibility is usually the sign that the episode has passed. And so I worked on my blog. Two days later I returned to my story and finish...

Ben Crowder mentioned something in his blog post "On Reading" that brought into still clarity something that has been knocking about the back of my head for the past few months. "I almost feel like I’m uttering sacrilege, but format is only a minor part of the experience. The real thing is the words, people. That’s what matters. Everything else (typography, paperback vs. hardcover vs. ebook, etc.) is secondary — still important, yes, but the people who are bemoaning the death of print are fixating on the wrong thing. It wasn’t the smell of paper that made me love reading (though that was part of it). It was the words, the story, the act of turning a string of letters into a vivid imaginative experience that changed who I was every time it happened. And that can happen whether you’re reading the book in hardcover or in paperback or on an iPhone or on your Kindle or on your laptop or on thousands of handwritten post-it notes. Don’t forget that. It’s words all the way do...

The Story So Far: Part One - iBooks Buyer Beware Part Two - iBook buyers beware – no refund or exchange even if your book has been updated! (www.Teleread.com) Part Three - Close, But No Cigar - I Get a Reply from Tor   I'd like to officially close this sordid tale with a happy ending. My OCD fixation with eBook OCR errors has been sated. When compared to man's struggle against the cosmos, my battle here has been a small insignificant thing. Yet, as silly as it has seemed at times, I like to get what I pay for. On Thursday, August 5th, Apple contacted me via email with instructions on how to redownload the corrected version. A reader let me know they had received that email, too, so I know that others with the corrupted text received their corrected versions. It all took place within iBooks and couldn't have been simpler. I deleted the corrupted eBook, went into the "Purchases" page of iBooks' store, and selected "Redownload" next to "Ender...

Coming home from the Irish Music Festival in Park City we were treated to one of the most richly hued sunsets I have ever had the pleasure to witness. None of my photos paint the imagery with full justice, but they capture a taste of the moment.    Follow me on Twitter for my ADHD escapades at @SplinteredMind or my novel writing project over at @DouglasCootey . And if you're a glutton for punishment you can friend me on Facebook as well.  

Since I wrote about my copy of "Ender's Game" with OCR errors galore , I have seen the story picked up by Teleread.com and even received a response from a TOR editor . That's progress, right? Unfortunately, it all amounted to me still being left with an error filled copy of an eBook with no replacement or refund. I respond to Tor below. I emailed Apple and requested escalation, but received no word from them. I emailed Scott Card and received no word from him. I did, however, receive a reply from Tor on both this site and over at Teleread.com . That was unexpected progress. If you didn't see the reply on the other blog posts I'll share it with you here. Patrick Nielsen Hayden said : I posted this over at Teleread , but it occurs to me that I should say the same thing here. Hi, I’m a senior editor at Tor, Orson Scott Card’s publisher. I’m not Scott’s editor, but I do manage the science-fiction department. Our digital-publishing people are in tou...