Kindle Archives | A.J. O'Connell

Me: My Kindle! It’s dead! Nooo! No! This is terrible. This is like the Library of Alexandria burning down all over again. Oh. Wait. False alarm. It’s not dead. it just passed out again.
Husband: Did you just compare your Kindle to The Library of Alexandria? That’s hyperbole.
Me: Oh really. How do you know what was in the Library of Alexandria?

He doesn’t, because it burned down. The Library of Alexandria totally could have contained The Hunger Games trilogy, every Robert Louis Stevenson book ever written, the proofs of my own book and a freshly-ordered copy of The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern. Sure it could have. We will never know. So basically my husband is just making guesses here.

No kidding.

This is a certainty though: Kindle DX is well on its way to its demise. It sleeps far too much these days. And there are times, like tonight, when I can’t wake it up without a fight. And one of these days, I won’t be able to wake it up at all.

This bothers me because I can’t get a replacement DX; Amazon isn’t making them anymore. And because I love my DX. It’s got my library on it. I need it.

The poor thing, though, was an early model and it just wants to die. It is still chugging along, but it’s slowly decaying like a biter in The Walking Dead. First the power cord disintegrated because it was allergic to sunlight (Amazon was nice enough to replace that). Then the five-way mouse split down the center. (But we’re still using it.) Now the software appears to be on the fritz.

I get that it’s probably time for a new Kindle, but I don’t want another Kindle. I’m emotional about this reader in the way I’m not about laptops and cell phones. This Kindle has been my book for hundreds of novels. It’s been A Thousand Acres. It’s been Anna Karenina. It’s been The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It’s been a graphic novel, twice. And dammit, I was planning on it being The Night Circus right about now.

Technology is temporary, but books are forever, right?

Except that they aren’t. Because well, the Library of Alexandria.

Like House of Cards promo art, but with a mollusk.

So this evening was my husband’s night out with the boys, and as usual, when he left the house looked normal and I was full of project ideas.

When he came home, there was sand and fake blood all over the bathroom, the house was a disaster, and I was holed up in my office with a carton of fro-yo. For art.

It’s a testament to either my husband’s character or to my insanity that he didn’t bat an eye. In fact, he didn’t even ask why the bathroom looked like Quentin Tarantino had just filmed a scene there. He’s that used to this kind of thing.

But you might want to know, so I’ll tell you.
I recently got the bright idea to self-publish two already-published stories with Amazon’s Kindle Direct. The stories are not doing me any good just sitting around in my computer, so why not?

Apparently, however, you need to have a cover for such things. Since I probably won’t make enough money off these stories to cover the cost of a graphic artist, I thought I’d try to come up with a cover myself.

One of the stories is about a killer sea god. (Thus the fake blood and sea shells.) The other story is about a creepy lady who conveniently has an ice cream addiction. (Thus the half a carton of frozen yogurt I consumed.)

The result of my photo shoot? A bathroom that looks like a triple homicide was committed in it, a blown diet and a few okayish photos (but not of the fro-yo, because I ate most of that.) I think the photo in this post is probably the best. It doesn’t show how my fingers are now dyed the color of Mikhail Gorbachev’s birthmark.

I will keep you posted on the progress of the short stories, but at the moment, I’m not sure when they will be coming out. This is mostly because of the cover art. Despite the fact that the bathtub might now be permanently pink, I still think I need better photos.

Might it be a good idea to hire an artist? It might. But only if that artist is willing to work for fro-yo.

Posts

My Kindle DX’s breakdown will be just like the greatest literary disaster in history, as far as I’m concerned.

Fake blood & fro-yo: this is what happens when I try to self-publish.

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