Spider on the Freeway

On Monday, I had lunch with some folks I went to high school with. One woman I hadn't seen in more than 20 years turns out to be married to literary agent Chip Macgregor - which made for interesting lunch table conversation. For us, at least. As I was driving there, I noticed a large spider crawling near my door. I HATE spiders. Then it began to drop down on a web - heading straight for my thigh. I shrieked, rolled down the window, and tried to brush the web so that the spider would land outside the car. All while maintaining my lane and traffic flow. Instead, I just broke the web. The spider fell to the floor of my car. And promptly disappeared. I stomped around with my left foot while still staying at 65 with my right foot. I finally had to give up. I couldn't see it (it's actually really hard to see the footwell without moving your legs, which isn't a good idea when you're surrounded by cars). But the whole time, I kept feeling the tiniest of tickles on my sandaled feet and bare legs.

An open letter to folks at the gym

Dear Anonymous: I know it's easy to drop your keys/water bottle/Blackberry/sweaty towels on the nearest piece of equipment, but what about those of us who actually want to use it, but don't want to violate the unspoken "don't touch my stuff' rule? Dear Middle-Aged Guy in the White Snake T-Shirt: Dude, I know it seemed like a genius idea to cut off the sleeves to give yourself more mobility. But what possessed you to cut out the sides as well? I could see way more of the reason you decided to start going to the gym than I really wanted to. Dear Guy with the I-Pod Who Did One-Million Rapid Sit-Ups with Rabid Intensity: Maybe you can't hear yourself over your music, but the rest of us can hear your loud pants and groans, as your breath gets faster and faster. It's like porno without the visuals. Just sayin'.

The end is in sight

I can see the end in sight for the book I'm writing on spec. What will happen (mostly), how and why. Here's the end of one chapter of The Girl in the Mini Cooper: ===== The thing is, I think I might want Kayla to be dead. Because what’s the alternative? That someone took her. Either that Cody guy or someone else, someone worse. Someone took her and has her and can do whatever they want to her. I used to like movies with plots like that. Maybe not like them, but I watched the DVDs with my mom when she brought them home. After she got off work she would go over to the video store next to the Thriftway. Slasher movies. Hidden underground torture chambers. Handcuffs and gags and chains. Blood spattering on the walls, sometimes in slo-mo. The creative use of a nail gun or a rusty saw or a shiny scalpel. But when it’s not a movie? When it’s not fake? When you can’t push the power button and watch the light on the TV turn into a little white dot in the middle of the screen and then disappear? When it’s really Kayla’s pale skin, Kayla’s blood? Then maybe it would be better if she were dead and in the river.

One twin claimed her blood, the other her bladder

I’m fascinated by the idea of chimeras, which happens when twins become one person in utero very early on in the pregnancy. According to Wikipedia, “For example, the chimera may have a liver composed of cells with one set of chromosomes and have a kidney composed of cells with a second set of chromosomes. This has occurred in humans, and at one time was thought to be extremely rare, though more recent evidence suggests that it is not as rare as previously believed. Most will go through life without realizing they are chimeras. The difference in phenotypes may be subtle (e.g., having a hitchhiker's thumb and a straight thumb, eyes of slightly different colors, differential hair growth on opposite sides of the body, etc) or completely undetectable .” Go here and start about 4.5 minutes in to hear about a woman who discovered she was a chimera when she was told DNA tests showed she was not related to her sons.

Horror in a Portland suburb

Some poor girl just moved to Portland. 21 and pregnant. Looked for baby clothes on Craig’s List. She met a woman through a listing and went to her house – and never came out alive.

Instead the other woman killed her, cut the baby out, and tried to claim it was hers. But she had to call 911 because the baby wasn’t breathing. She and the baby got taken to the hospital, where they figured out she hadn’t had a baby recently – and the ambulance crew had noticed an awful lot of blood around the house.

The really creepy thing is she had been telling everyone, including her boyfriend, who they don't think knew what she was planning, that she was pregnant with TWINS. And the police are tracking down other women who may have had contact with the killer.

I only heard about this type of crime a few years back. Do you think if it hadn’t been in the media, then crazy women like this chick would think of it on their own?

You can read more here.

And similar cases are listed here. Notice that none of them is more than a decade old?

What will Kindle mean for books? Some eye-opening numbers

Publishers Lunch says that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said "Kindle sales are now 35 percent of books where we have Kindle editions" and print editions of the same title. PL says this is “more than three times the ratio that Amazon had reported previously, first in October and then again in February when Kindle 2 was announced. The initial reception at numerous trade publishers, executives tell us, was deep skepticism. But as sales departments crunched numbers, in many cases the data has confirmed the general range of Amazon's report.”

The most interesting part of the article was this unanswered question:
“Do Kindle Sales Cannibalize?
The big unresolved question for many houses is whether this spike in Kindle sales is additive or cannibalistic. (Amazon did not update their contention from last year that Kindle customers "buy the same number of physical books going forward as they did before they owned a Kindle. And then incrementally, they buy about 1.6 to 1.7 electronic books.") One executive believes strongly that, while their house's total Amazon sale on big books is rising when you include Kindle and print editions, the Kindle spike is taking market share away from other retailers' print versions (though this point will be hard to confirm until after returns are taken on recent releases). Other houses are just beginning to analyze the extent to which these sales are additive or cannibalistic.”

The NYT had an interesting article on ebook pricing. One sentence caught my eye: "But publishers argue that those costs, which generally run about 12.5 percent of the average hardcover retail list price, do not entirely disappear with e-books."

So if my current hardcover sells for $24.99, then as an ebook version, it should cost $21.86.

But it doesn't. It costs $9.99.

So how does that work?

Here's the answer, according to the article "For the moment, say some publishers, Amazon is effectively subsidizing the $9.99 price tag for new book titles in digital form by paying publishers the same $13 it pays them for a new hardcover title with a list price of $26. It’s a classic “loss leader” situation. Although Amazon won’t comment on the arrangement, the online bookseller is using low-price e-books as a lure to persuade consumers to pay $359 to buy a Kindle, or $489 for the new, larger Kindle DX."

But if the Kindle establishes itself as the dominant player in the ebook market, how long will Amazon be willing to pay publishers less? And if they pay do pay publishers less, you know that the publisher is giong to turn around and ask the authors to take less.

Lots more food for thought here.

Welcome to the world of $1300 a piece nausea patches or $400 a piece pain killers

Remember Bridget, this beautiful 31-year-old writer who lives in Portland? Three things happened to Bridget in February:
1. She got an agent for her young adult novel.
2. She got married.
3. She found out she has Stage Four colon cancer.

You want to know the reality of health care in American today? Bridget just found out that her "insurance" doesn't cover $1300 a piece nausea patches or $400 a piece pain killers. What would you choose? Paying rent or vomiting so much you end up back in the hospital? Buying groceries or being in agony?

But you can help. To help defray some of the costs, authors and artists all over the US have banded together to offer their goods and services in an online auction. Check out the items at the Bridget Zinn Auction at http://bridgetzinnauction.wordpress.com. The auction closes May 30.

If you live in Portland, then go to the Lucky Lab Brew Pub, 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Friday, May 29, 6:30-9 p.m. You don't have to RSVP. Just show up! Why did we pick that day? Because the Portland area Kidlit Bloggers decided meeting for drinks and chat on a regular basis would be a great way to network. Bridget came up with the idea to meet on the fifth Friday of a month. May 29 is a fifth Friday.

And if you would like to follow Bridget blog or just find out more about her, you can do so at http://www.bridgetzinn.com/blog/.