My writing week 3 (45)

Hi all,

I'm a paid writer. I received a payment for the first two articles I wrote for Divine.

I immediately used some of my writer's earnings to go over to the darkside: I ordered a Kindle. It's supposed to turn up this week. Then I can rush onto the Kindle store and fill it with free ebooks. I will never have to pay for a book again. Just joking. Anyone who has read this blog knows I am no fan of free or stupidly cheap ebooks. I will pay what I think is fair and just because it only costs $2.99 won't make me any more likely to buy it.

I have just checked the Kindle top 100 bestseller list for the first time in about five weeks. Last time, you might remember, 51 were free. This time there were 44. An upward trend? Not really, as there were 14 ebooks from $0.01 to $2.00 with just about all of these being 99c. I noticed that someone has decided to charge 99c for some of the classics that dominate the free ebooks. Last time there were about ten ebooks at $2.99, the going price recommended by ebook gurus, this time there were none. There were four ebooks priced from $2 to $3.99, 18 from $4 to $8.99, 11 from $9 to $11.99 and nine over $12.

The most expensive book was George Bush's bullshit autobiography. Good grief, as if that guy could write. Dick Cheney obviously wrote it with a little help from Rupert Murdoch's bullshit artists. It was $19.13 and came in at number one on the list.

I am speeding up the critiquing of a novel, which I am quite enjoying. The author has managed to maintain a high level of intrigue for more than half the novel. I printed out another story to critique last week, but it turned out to be one of those with a twist at the end, where everything before the twist is just filler. I am not a fan of stories just written for a twist or pun at the end. So I did not critique it.

I only did a tiny bit of work on the novella. My productivity last week was again hampered by lack of sleep due to dropkick neighbours on two nights and heat. I am getting ready to flip the nasty switch if it happens again this week.

Graham.