Howdy Folks,

Well, friends, the brave new world is upon us. Yuk! I hate this e-pub stuff, but it has found its way into my cave, alongside my wall paintings, spear, and flint ax.

Shirl's home page pretty well describes our shock when we learned that her publisher was going out of the mass market publishing business after barely publishing the first book (Love Lessons at Midnight) in her new Regency series. Since the book was on the market a scant month, I'd suggest that if you can find one in print you buy it. Someday, it will be a rare artifact of a bygone age. LLM is one of the most sensual pieces that Shirl ever penned and the next in the series, Loving Lucifer at Midnight, steams. But it and the remaining sequel of the "House of Dreams" series will get published ... one way or another.

However, this e-pub business is driving us both crazy. Shirl is now on Facebook, although she doesn't know how to operate it yet. She thought is would be a good thing for me to have a Facebook page; but when she sent a picture of me, they thought I would be more appropriate for their newest venue, A**book. Sort of covers the other end of the spectrum, so to speak.

At present, all is confusion trying to learn new technology (for us, at least) and a new vocabulary. This last for me is really distressing. For god's sake, I was an English professor! To me, this techno jargon is obscenity. Come to think about it, that's not accurate. I wrote a couple of books and several articles on the metaphors of obscene language. When somebody sent Shirl an e-mail that said, "I want to friend you." I thought it was a typo for "befriend." Friend is a noun, not a verb. She got another e-mail from somebody who wanted Shirl to "like" her(?) What does that mean?

When I was in the Navy if a gal said to me, "Sailor, I want you to like me," I knew it was going to cost me money and, depending upon what port I was in, perhaps some time in sickbay.

The redhead is also on the e-pub loop with a bunch of other published writers and they all talk in "Borg-speak." Linking, patching, tagging, downloading, uploading! Good grief! One writer was proudly announcing to all about how much she was "uploading." When I think of "uploading," I think of the proctologic atrocities I have suffered, even the dreaded colonoscophy.

Oh well, if there is a consolation to all of this it's the fact that we have been able to get back the rights for some 25 + of Shirl's books from three different publishers. She intends to put these all in e-book format to published on Kindle, Nook, etc. No, none of the works contain buff vampire heroes. Whoever heard of buff vampires anyway? They live on liquid diets. They are all thin, friends. That's why they suck the fluids out of young women! Nor are there any werewolf lovers in Shirl's books. Hey, when a werewolf "devours" a gal, he really devours her…sometimes high heels and all. You might as well go on a date with a piranha!

However, Shirl's books will never grow old if you appreciate believable heroes and heroines, passion, adventure, humor, a vivid sense of place and time period, and a quirky casts of secondary characters. If so, then I will have performed a worthwhile service in helping her get these works in e-book shape. But so help me god, folks, while I have always enjoyed "linking," I absolutely refuse to "upload" anything.

Take care (and watch out for the "Borg"),

Jim