The hot peppers are doing well, too. I wish I liked them better since they seem to like me so much. We’ve got jalapenos, habeneros, and a plant that was labeled Thai pepper on which the peppers grow upright rather than hanging. My husband chopped some (jalapenos, I think) up for hot pepper oil this evening.

In the (shady) backyard, only two green beans came up, and the second batch of snow peas is growing slowly. The zucchini plants look fabulous, but they looked great last year too and didn’t give me any zucchini. (The green beans and zucchini I planted in the front garden, where there is plenty of sun, didn’t sprout. Weird.) The leeks continue their glacial journey towards leekdom. Only ten or so beets are left; the ones we’ve eaten have been tiny, but I’ve learned that I like beet greens.

I’ve become convinced that what we thought was a crabapple tree is an apple tree; they’re getting red blotches and I made a tasty cobbler with a bunch of fallen ones. They thump onto our new roof with alarming regularity.

In other news, I think I’ve worked out the major plot issues in the book I’m going to start writing next week. Maybe I won’t hit a point during the writing where I flail madly (ha!).

First up was Robyn Bachar’s Blood, Smoke, and Mirrors, which I posted the lovely cover of a while back. Fun read, with, as it says on the web page, “gratuitous violence against vampires”. Since I hate vampires, this was most excellent. Also, fairies that managed to not be annoying in either the cutesy or the too-serious mysterious way. Hooray!

Then, Chandra Ryan’s Ink in the Blood, which is not the sort of thing I usually read. But I sped through and enjoyed it. I would have liked more depth and background in the world, but it’s novella length so there’s not a lot of room for extras. I’m looking forward to reading her Dragonborne, which is much more my style.

Up next are two books by Jaleigh Johnson: Unbroken Chain, which just came out this month, and Mistshore. Both are standalone Forgotten Realms novels. I find it hard to believe that I’ve never read a Forgotten Realms book, but there are so many that I never knew where to start when staring at the overwhelming shelves.

I’m saving those two for after I finish the epic fantasy I’m currently reading. They will be only the 4th and 5th paper books I’ve read this year (and the first three were borrowed). The epic fantasy is my 8th ebook for the year. Huh.

I’m now using WordPress 3′s default theme. My old theme was nice, but this one is widget-ready and makes it simple to change some things I wanted to change, like the header image. (That’s one of the many trees in my backyard.)

So while I was sprucing things up, I was musing on aspiring author websites and why I think they’re silly.

I mean, I know we’re all supposed to have hundreds of blog subscribers and at least 1,547 twitter followers and/or facebook friends before we publish so much as a drabble, or agents will discard our queries unread.

But aspiring author websites still seem weird. (Even though I apparently have one. (Though I had a website before I started writing, so I’d probably have a website even if I weren’t writing. It would be about my vegetable garden and books I’ve read.))

I think it’s my inherent dislike of self-promotion, combined with feeling that unpublished writers have nothing to promote. Obviously I can only speak for myself, but I’m not a brand and I don’t have a platform. I blog for my friends and family. And anyone who cares how my vegetables are doing, like my future self.

So, other unpublished writers (and recently published writers), enlighten me. What’s the value in having a website? With book blurbs and sample chapters? What about blurbs for multiple books in multiple series – does it imply you’re serious about writing, or that you haven’t sold despite trying for a long time (because I’ve seen this one a lot, and it strikes me as the latter, but I’m not really the audience for that)?

The chard I planted a few weeks ago mostly didn’t sprout, and the patch that did doesn’t look very good. Hang in there, chard!

The three heirloom tomato plants are growing slowly; the one from Lowe’s is turning into a green-tomato-filled jungle. I’ve started picking jalapenos and will grab the first habanero soon; the jalapenos aren’t hot yet and the habanero probably won’t be either. The Thai pepper and the orange bell have flowers; the green bell also has a pepper or two.

We’ve also picked up a couple green apples (obvs. very small, given the comparison with the jalapenos):

Either they’re unusually tasty crabapples, or they’re some kind of non-crab apples (though still sour, see “green”). Either way, I’m not sure why the squirrels haven’t eaten them all like they did last year. Must be too busy digging up my chard seeds.

Today’s reading was about agent pay, which has been discussed a lot, including by Victoria Strauss, Jane Friedman, and Jodi Meadows (with bonus “how to help agents”). Jodi said pretty much what I think on the matter: if agents switched to billable hours, it wouldn’t help them in the long run, and would increase the opportunities for scammers. (She says a lot more than that; go read her post.)

Side note: I already have enough (too much) to read, but I’ve been enjoying finding things from http://longform.org/ and http://www.instapaper.com/ (which lists popular items that people have saved). It’s nice to read longer articles; jumping from blog post to blog post makes me feel scattered.

The short version: I have a Sony and love it, mostly. Great battery life, and I can take notes, but the screen is dim and I can’t print the notes. I also read on my iPod Touch, but right now I don’t have a way to put books I’ve bought from the Sony store onto the iPod.

The long version:

I was buying an ebook reader right around the time of the buy button fiasco, so I didn’t do much research into the Kindle. Also, I thought it’s keyboard was a feature I don’t need, so I’d already pretty much ruled it out.

I’ve been very happy reading books on my iPod Touch, so had been looking forward to the iPad and its larger screen, but the Nook/Kindle/Sony have longer battery lives. Obviously, depending where you’re reading, that may not matter, but I like not having to recharge my book every day, and I wanted something to take on a 12+ hour one-way, two week trip.

I tried the Nook at our local B&N, and ended up getting a Sony Touch (their mid-range reader).

Some comments on the Sony vs the others:

* Many people like the e-ink screens better than LCD; I find it a bit too dim, and of course you can’t read in the dark. All three readers have that problem.

* The Nook’s color strip at the bottom means you get less screen per device area, which seemed silly to me. Kindle has the same problem with the keyboard. The Sony Touch has a nicely sized edge and narrow buttons; it’s pretty much all screen.

* On the Sony (except for the higher-end one) you can’t buy wirelessly, so you have to wait to buy books until you’re at the computer (horrors!). (Aside: My favorite comment on articles about the Nook coming out was “This is the 21st century, I shouldn’t have to walk to the bookstore to download a book.”) Their store and  software are easy to use, although somewhere along the line I had to get some Adobe login, which was a pain. It’s easy to organize and sync files and to find them on the device. I found navigating the Nook more difficult, though obviously I didn’t try it for as long.  Alas, the Sony store is full of DRM, but the reader’s happy to handle books from every other store I’ve found as well.

* I’ve had no trouble putting all sorts of free content (mostly PDFs given away by publishers) onto the Sony. It also reads every other format I’ve run across. Except Kindle, but I haven’t yet found something I needed that was only available on Kindle.

* The Sony Touch doesn’t seem to do a sans-serif font. The Nook and Kindle both do, as far as I can tell. All three can make text ridiculously gigantic. Although I prefer sans-serif on a screen, it’s easy enough to read the serif font. The quick look I had at iBooks looks awesome; much prettier than any of the three readers.

* Annotations: The Sony has a stylus with which I can mark up text (including my own RTF files), and I can see the annotations on the computer.  I think the Nook and/or Kindle only let you annotate certain types of files, but don’t take my memory’s word for it. Anyone know about the iPad? Unfortunately, while I can make annotations on my Sony and sync them back to my computer, *I can’t print them*.  I marked up some manuscripts for critique on a trip, and I had to copy all my scribbles onto paper. The other option was to take screenshots on my computer and print them. (I used the stylus to make notes. You can also type notes, and maybe those can be printed?  Also, you can highlight words, and you can get a list of all the words you highlighted. I didn’t find that particularly useful for critting…) I’ve run across a python script that would fix this, but haven’t tried it yet. The annotations are stored as image files on the computer, so I assume the lack of printing is a deliberate anti-piracy decision rather than a technology issue. Still, it makes it useless for anything but marking up my own manuscripts.

* All three have the e-ink page turn flash, which the LCD screens don’t. It’s not annoying; most of the time I don’t notice it.

* Supposedly you can borrow books from the library with the Sony, maybe also the other readers. I haven’t tried it, and our local library doesn’t have a very big ebook selection.

* Battery life and charging: My Sony wouldn’t recharge from an AC socket on our trip. (My husband has an AC USB adapter that works great for the iPhone/iPod, so I don’t know if the limitation is something Apple put in or an issue with the Sony.) Sony sells an AC adapter separately.  That said, I read more than a book and a half on the way over, made annotations on about 150 pages, got a low battery warning, and read another book plus a bit on the way back – the battery never quit on me.  I suspect all three readers have about the same battery life,  though.

So, after several months of using the Sony, what do I think? If I were buying based on battery life and/or price (which I did), I’d get the Sony. Anything else, the iPad.

Last year, the peas bloomed and then died. This year they’ve inserted the step of producing peas.

We’re also getting our first peppers.

I didn’t plant this:

And in non-edible (to humans) news, I put a cage around more of my hostas tonight. It’s probably too late for this one, though it does have almost two leaves left.

This weekend I pulled out all the spinach; it was starting to bolt. Some of it ended up in lentil soup, and the rest got frozen. And while I was doing that, I discovered that the spinach plant that came up late and in a strange place is actually a Swiss chard from last year’s seed (all the chard sprouted and then died). So I planted more chard where the spinach was, and birds or squirrels have dug up most of those seeds already. If I’m lucky they’ll leave me one or two.

Writing Excuses podcast: Basic marketing, branding, and websites (3 separate episodes)

YA author Saundra Mitchell on Marketing Timelines (thanks to Kelly Swails for the links): Part 1 and Part 2

Things to do with your galleys

Creating covers

Other stuff:

pantheon.org is a mythology site, mentioned on a CoyoteCon panel (sadly, the only panel I was able to attend). Coverage varies, but I’m finding it a useful starting point for figuring out what to look up elsewhere.

Not tired of debating ebooks yet? Here are posts by A.R. Williams and Naomi Clark.

Number of people in a conversation

Time management (I suppose someday I’ll feel like I have enough of a handle on this that I’ll stop reading about it…)

That’s 5/18, 4/26, 4/8, and 3/20 (planting day). Look at all that lovely spinach!

We’ve had some salad twice already, from spinach, beet, and lettuce thinnings.

This past weekend I planted the last of the front garden: I’d put in some peppers, a tomato, some herbs, and a few flowers the week before. Then I bought more peppers, more tomatoes, and an eggplant from someone at work who’d saved seeds from last year and some herbs at the herb society’s annual sale. So we’ve got a yellow tomato, a Nebraska wedding tomato (orange), a red fig tomato, a regular red tomato, a Santa Fe pepper, a Thai pepper, two jalapeno plants, one yellow and two green bell peppers, cinnamon basil, dill, fennel, chives, rosemary, and marjoram. And a bunch of lettuce and onions coming up in the flower beds and pots, because that seemed like a good place for the extra seeds/sets. I wanted to get some native flowers from the prairie society, but I wouldn’t have had room for them. Maybe next year, if I dig another bed in the front.

It’s hard to see the plants in that photo because the whole bed’s mulched with leaves, but trust me, there’s 10 of them (the Thai pepper is in a pot).

One of my coworkers has a calendar of old book covers. I believe it was March when The Flying Eyes got the spot. It was rather…eye catching, so we looked it up. The back cover description finishes with “And then [the eyes] issued their terrible ultimatum: Explode a series of atom bombs to supply them with radiation or they would turn the world’s population into mindless robots! It gave the world two harrowing choices – self-destruction via fallout from bombs or annihilation via the sinister Flying Eyes.”

So you know we had to read it.

J. (Joan) Hunter Holly‘s book is pretty much what you’d expect from the cover, except the female character plays a smaller role. It’s pretty good if all you’re looking for is plot. Plus there’s physics. Not to spoil anything, but the world doesn’t end, and the solution to the two harrowing choices was rather more clever than, say, giving the Eyes’ spaceship a computer virus.

And totally unrelated: Today was release day for local author Robyn Bachar’s Blood, Smoke, and Mirrors. Isn’t this a gorgeous cover?