The World Feels a Bit Smaller: Kindle Shop at Amazon.de

Readers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland now have their own Kindle Shop, and in a small way Jascha Writes is part of it. A Kiss Before You Leave Me is for sale there, I have a new German-language author page, and you can even link from this blog to purchase a Kindle from Amazon.de. Kindle apps for computers, smartphones and tablets are available there as well, at no charge. (A Kindle Shop for France and Belgium is expected later this year.) A special 'Welcome!', now and always, to all readers internationally.

I'm Flattered (I Think)

When I mentioned Goodreads the other day, I didn't know that two characters from my novel A Kiss Before You Leave Me, Miranda Kincaid and Jack Emery, were being mentioned there as nominees for 'character you most want to sleep with' in Goodreads' Listopia section. When I heard the news, my first reaction was to feel flattered, and not just because the plot is premised in part on the predictable (mutual) desirability of these two lovers. Having your characters chosen feels a bit like being chosen yourself. It wasn't until the next day that I felt like asking the reader(s) in question, 'But what would your [spouse, ex, mother, mother-in-law, AA sponsor--there are too many choices, aren't there?, and that's just counting the ones that are 'suggested' by the novel]--what would they say? Do?' Or, better (or worse), 'Do you mean to tell me that, even knowing what you know now, you'd still...?'

Ah, the unexpected pleasures of authorship! If nothing else, this business at Goodreads will serve as a gentle reminder to me to return, as promised, to the question of bovarysme (identification)....

Steven Pressfield: An Offer Too Good to Pass Up

As the author of the novel Gates of Fire, Steven Pressfield has long inspired the sort of readerly enthusiasm otherwise reserved for those other chroniclers of Thermopylae, Herodotus and Frank Miller. But to 'creatives', and especially at least occasionally 'blocked creatives', he's another kind of hero: his book The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle helps writers, artists--and all of us who have trouble embracing whatever unique contributions we can make--understand and cope with Resistance. (If you usually shy away from 'self-help' books, Pressfield may be the writer to change your mind.)

Pressfield's follow-up to The War of Art is an Amazon exclusive due out a week from today--but you can reserve a free digital copy for your Kindle if you act now. The new book is called Do the Work.

Take the link, check it out, pre-order, read.

Then do the work.

William Faulkner Goes Digital

It's a bad sign (for me) that a couple of years ago when I was throwing together a list of my favorite authors (who have since turned up here under the label '26' and might be named elsewhere as 'influences', when I get around to filling out the rest of my author profile at Goodreads) it never even occurred to me to mention Faulkner. Was I taking him for granted? True, I've probably reread only two of his novels in the last 15 years (another bad sign for me), but he was the first contemporary author I can remember buying in hardback as a teenager and was definitely the first author I taught as a graduate student (one of several TAs, that semester, to Faulkner scholar Cleanth Brooks). And my admiration for Faulkner has never wavered.

I'm happy to see that Random House is finally issuing almost all of Faulkner's novels in ebook format this year--one conspicuous exception being Sanctuary, which must after all this time still not be considered 'respectable' enough. Now, the biggest bargain of the lot (three novels for $14.99) has been moved up so as to be first out of the gate next week (alongside a fine collection of Faulkner's 'essays, speeches and public letters'): the Snopes trilogy (made up of The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion).

There's even some Faulkner you can sample for free online: his 1956 Paris Review interview is available in its entirety, and, if you have access to an iPad and iBooks, you can download a very generous sample of Snopes now at the iBookstore. (Other ebook retailers will provide samples next week.)

ADDED 20 APRIL 2011: This morning Random House added an attractive third Faulkner title to today's ebook releases: the selected short stories (as published in the Modern Library). So far, this ebook is available for download only at Apple's iBookstore. The much more ample collected short stories (like the heretofore omitted Sanctuary) will be available in ebook format next month, according to the Random House website.