Bard’s Baroque Performance – Dec 2nd at 7pm

Friends,

Did you know that Mardou,  publisher and owner of Red Petal Press plays a musical instrument?  Yep, she plays a wind synthesizer.  Well, on December 2nd at 7pm you will get your chance to hear Bard’s Baroque in a benefit performance to support the Monroe Public Library Book Fair held at the Pittsford Plaza Barnes & Noble book store.  Come and support the library, support Red Petal Press, and listen to music that’s really old played on bleeding edge electronic instruments.

Here’s an excerpt from the Bard’s Baroque web site:

Bard’s Baroque is composed of Mardou Case and Art Whitfield, wind synthesizer and flute players capturing musical textures written long ago. With a timespan from the 1200′s up to the 1800′s, this Renaissance and Baroque music harkens back to the time of Shakespeare, Henry VIII, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The music is largely written for wooden recorders, but has been adapted for the wind synthesizer by the performers. Some additional parts have been custom written by the performers to more suitably fit a duo arrangment. With no vocals and minimal sound reinforcement, this music softly fills the performance area, providing the ideal background music for many occasions.

What if I want a single app to read every type of e-book?

There is a wonderful free product available that works as an e-book library management tool, an e-book conversion tool, and an all-in-one e-book reading tool. I been using this tool for quite a while now and the developer works very hard keeping it up-to-date and error-free. The tool is called Calibre. Downloads are available for the main 4 OSs.

Calibre home page

Using the application means you are not limited to just Kindle e-books or just Nook e-books.  It might have too many features for someone who just wants to read e-books, but I thought you might want to know about it, in case you want to play around with different types of e-books.

different types of e-books

Download what you like, and when you launch Calibre, click on[Add Books].

I have downloaded a free e-book. How do I get it to my device?

This is easy.
Using our previous post of using the e-reading application on the PC and “purchasing for free” the e-book of our choice, the file is automatically delivered to the PC. Simply open the application (Kindle for PC is our example) and the book should display in the Archived tab.

Downloaded book shows on the Archived tab

(The example shows “The Girl In The Lighthouse” book.)

Right-click on the book cover, and click on “Move to Home”.

It's now on the Home tab

Downloaded book shows on the Home tab

The book now displays on the Home page of the application. To read it, click it.

Yes, you say, but how do I get it on my device? There are 2 ways.

First, let’s assume you have a Kindle, it is powered up, and you have a Wi-Fi (wireless internet)
The book is automatically sent to your Kindle (provided you’ve registered it with Amazon).

Ok, but what if you don’t have Wi-Fi? Still easy. Use a method called “sideloading”, which is connecting your Kindle to your PC, and drag-and-drop the book files to your device that displays as a drive on the PC.  Here’s a link that explains all about “sideloading” in much more detail than I could provide: Sideloading.htm

Remember that a Kindle reads only certain types of file formats (eg. .azw, .mbp, .mobi), so if you try to sideload that new .epub book file onto the Kindle, Kindle won’t read it. Just as the Nook won’t read Kindle type files. No big deal, because practically everything is available in all of the most popular formats.

There are hundreds of thousands of free e-books out there. Imagine an enormous library that can can access for free without leaving your chair. I hope you take advantage of it, and there are lots of resources with answers to your questions about e-books and e-readers.

(Humbly, MRC, ed.)

I have an e-reader or e-reading application. What now?

Our previous post was about getting an e-reading application.
Hopefully you have gotten the application and installed it or you have your e-reader and want to use it.
You will want to register your application or device with the “vendor”, ie. Kindle/Amazon, Nook/Barnes&Noble, etc. This is a requirement.

I will walk you through getting a free e-book, using Amazon as the example site. In this example, the e-book will download to your computer. (Barnes&Noble works similarly.)

Go to http://www.Amazon.com
From the left-side menu, select Kindle
There are 2 links to free books to choose from: Free Collections – the classics, and Top 100 Free

2 spots for freebies

Click on one of the links. The one I chose is for the classics.
There are many freebies, both classics and new books, so browse a bit, and choose one you would like to read. Click it.

 

 

In this example I’m selecting “Sherlock Holmes”, so I click on it.

 

 

 

 

Click to buy it for free.

I click to buy it (for free).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sign in to your account to finish buying it for free.

Sign in to your account, and the book is delivered to you. You will also receive a receipt in your email of your purchase (yep, even for the free ones).

 

 

 

 

 

Next post will be “I have downloaded a free e-book. How do I get it to my device?”

Why e-books? Lots of reasons.

I’ve had a few people say to me, “I’ve been given a Kindle, or e-reader, and I don’t know how to use it” or “why would I want to read an e-book?”.
I’d like to give a bit of guidance and information here on digital books, or e-books.

Why e-books? Lots of reasons.
- One of the pleasing aspects of e-books is the ability to make the text bigger or smaller and have the format automatically adjust so that the text is never off the page. (For aging eyes, the larger text feature is a blessing.)
- Another feature is that the e-book program remembers where in the book you left off and will open it to that page.
- A virtual unlimited library. (This will be a later subject.)

Want to experience an e-book without buying an e-reader like the Kindle, the Nook, and so on.? Most all of the popular e-book sites offer free e-book readers to download to your computer, e-reader, tablet or smartphone to read e-books.
The e-reading applications give you full reading features that are also found on the e-readers.
Here’s a couple of links to download some free e-reading applications. (If you don’t like it, you can always uninstall it, so take a chance, you might like it.)

To try the application (the links are for PCs, but iPad, Mac and more are there also):
Click for Kindle app
Click for Nook app

Register the application with the vendor site (ie. Kindle/Amazon) so the site recognizes the application and will allow the downloads of e-books to your computer. If you have the actual device like the Kindle, register it for the same reason.

Next post will be “I have an e-reader or e-reading application. What now?”

A Trick For Better Editing

I, the humble editor at Red Petal Press, want to share a small editing trick with you, as it is helping immensely in my final proofing and editing of “The Case Of The Persian Plague” by Jason Lord Case. The trick is this: read the book backward – not word for word nor even sentence by sentence, but paragraph by paragraph. I am so impressed at how effective this is in finding little errors. I can’t remember whom to give credit to for this great advice, but it works. The method is obviously not as fast as reading a piece forward, but when you finding yourself skimming over material and possibly missing those little demons that sneak into writing, try it backward. For all you folks heading back to school, this is also a great method for proofing your own essay writing. When familiarity with a piece might lead to a less-than-critical eye, read the piece backward.
(MRC, ed.)

Guest Blogger Preview of Book 4 “The Case of The Persian Plague”

Hello RPP Blog Readers!

I’m a guest blogger here at Red Petal Press. Here’s hoping you enjoy some thoughts from time to time.

I was fortunate to read a proof copy of Jason Case’s latest manuscript “Persian Plague”. This is clearly his best book in the series. It is an exciting read, with several unexpected story turns. Colorado, London, Turkey, secret passages, 007 class technology, and colorful characters. Even the supporting characters are just that – characters! Loved the truck driver. And of course, this book is exciting all the way. It’s a globe trotting romp, and I was very surprised by what turned out to be the actual “Persian Plague”. I know the book hasn’t been published yet, but Red Petal Press told me it is in proof review. I take that to mean it will be out shortly. You won’t be disappointed.

artwindworks

What’s In A Name?

Everything. While performing some cursory searches for the proposed title “The Persian Plague” for Book 4 of The MacMaster Chronicles, the search engine returned over 3 million links. Apparently there really was a Persian Plague in the mid-1800s. Our fiction title would get lost in that much data. If you add “case” (a double-entendre – author’s last name is “case”), 2 million links are returned. If I put the 3 words in quotes, very few links are present. And so I think the new book title will be “A Case of the Persian Plague”. Our book will be the only one out there with that title.

Our e-books on sale at Smashwords!

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and Winter in the Southern Hemisphere. What better time to enjoy a Smashwords ebook!
Our books are included in Smashwords Summer/Winter promotion, taking place July 1-31. Visit the Smashwords link and get our e-books at half price. Use the code SSW50 at checkout for 50% off. Thanks very much.

1861 Prelude to Civil War, Whitman’s Words of Witness

This is Whitman’s poem “1861″, published in 1865, from his work “Drum-Taps”, as witness to civil war.

For anyone who is watching the Scott brothers’ “Gettysburg” on the history channel:

1861.

ARM’D year! year of the struggle!
No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you,
terrible year!
Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisp-
ing cadenzas piano;
But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes,
advancing, carrying a rifle on your shoulder,
With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands—
with a knife in the belt at your side,
As I heard you shouting loud—your sonorous voice
ringing across the continent;
Your masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great
cities,
Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you, as one of the
workmen, the dwellers in Manhattan;
Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois
and Indiana,
Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and de-
scending the Alleghanies;
Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on
deck along the Ohio river;
Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers,
or at Chattanooga on the mountain top,
Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed
in blue, bearing weapons, robust year;
Heard your determin’d voice, launch’d forth again and
again;
Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round
lipp’d cannon,
I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.