Small thoughts about reading

[lexin]

The boss is back – which means the new head honcho's attention is no longer fixed on me like an Exocet missile. Hurrah! On the other hand, work has become unexpectedly rather busy, which we could have done without.

In other news

There is no other news, except that clare_nce, gloria1 and I are getting together over the weekend to watch SGA, which should be brilliant. I'm looking forward to it very much. SGA and me is an odd one – I love the show, but don't ever read the fic.

As for reading, I'm still reading ebooks from Fictionwise - I choose them because they allow you to pay by PayPal and have the books in a wide variety of formats, including for the Sony ebook reader that I've got.

I've been reading a lot of gay mysteries; I think we're up to four gay PI's now. I didn't know it was such a trope.

Write what I want to read, damn you!

I've noticed that it seems like about a third of all gay ebooks seem to be about (one or more of): vampires, shapeshifters, ghosts/about ghosts, paranormals of one variety or another, or werewolves. What is it with that? None of the above do anything for me at all, though there are so many of them I assume they sell well. Write more gay Regency stories! Neckcloths are where it's at.

Comments

[stranger]

There've been some lesbian P.I.s, both explicit and women who for some unfathomable reason just don't talk about their sex lives while contemplating corpses and dealing with cops. Apparently P.I.-ness requires the sort of hard-boiled loner-ness that was, and sometimes still is, common for gay characters not inhabiting gay romance or porn. I decided at one point that lesbian characters and lone-woman characters were functionally the same (this was in the late 70s, but not everything has changed enough to make it invalid) since neither needed *a man*, i.e., both types were flouting the patriarchy/romance imperative.

Also, have you run into a series of mysteries titled Slate, Vermilion, etc., in New England gay subculture and starring a gay man and a lesbian? Not deathless literature, exactly, but fun in its way.

[lexin]

Slate, Vermilion

No, I've not found those...what's the writer's name?

[stranger]

The author is Nathan Aldyne. There are four books in the series, Vermilion, Cobalt, Slate, Canary. They seem to be out of print, although some used copies are around. I'm afraid I don't know what the ebook situation is.

Also, have you seen M.J. Pearson's two Regency gay romances? Amazon et al. have them. Also not deathless lit (and try to ignore the cover art), but they definitely deserve the category label.

[lexin]

M.J. Pearson's two Regency gay romances

Yes, I've got those, they're great fun.

[stranger]

Oh, I just saw a reference to James Fairfax, evidently an Austen pastiche with James-for-Jane gender-bending. Sherwood Smith, sartorias on LJ, was recommending it, so I'll pass that along.

[caulkhead]

Geek question - What format do you buy from fictionwise? I've just bought Melusine in Adobe for my Sony reader, and the formatting has been driving me mad - either the text is too small to read comfortably (about four point), or I get a page and a trailing little bit that really breaks up the reading pattern.

[lexin]

My ebook reader is the Sony 505, and I download the stories in .lrf format, which is specific to the Sony reader.

I find the first size they offer is too small, but then if I increase the font, the second one is the right size to read properly and the .lrf format works on the reader.

Though the Sony says it reads .pdf, I find that you have to be very careful indeed when formatting in .pdf or the text does as you say - it can be too small to read, or behaves in strange ways when being read on the device.

I don't buy stories which don't come in a .lrf format, meaning that I have to be very careful when I'm making my choices - I need to be sure that they are noted 'available in multiformat'.

This is frustrating - for example I'd like to buy and ebook version of the Temeraire books by Naomi Novak, but they're only available in "secure ereader recommended". And they're not available in ebook format from Waterstone's in the UK, which would work on the Sony.

[caulkhead]

Thank you. I *think* there is a way to strip the drm off adobe books and convert them into.lrf, but I'm not techy enough to do it.

I have the Temeraire books in hard copy if you want to borrow them, but it sounds like it's specifically ebook versions that you're after?

[lexin]

I've got them in paper versions, it is specifically the ebooks I want so I can carry them around with me.