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I just read a very interesting piece in PC Magazine written by John C. Dvorak titled:  "What is an Ebook Worth?"

It give a "Cliff's Notes" version of the current DOJ antitrust lawsuit and notes that the good news about the whole controversy is that it establishes that "the ebook is the future and everyone should buy a Kindle and/or an iPad.  There's no stopping this trend.  It's becoming a juggernaut."  (I'd disagree with Mr. Dvorak on 1 thing - that's not good news- it's GREAT news!)  But he notes that it makes the price/value question inevitable. 

Here's part of the author's analysis: 

Let's go back a few years when you could buy a true paperback (the small one) for 25 cents. Gasoline was also 25-cents a gallon. Inflation changed things and the same paperback should now sell for about the same price as a gallon of gasoline. In the interim, the larger format paperback called the trade paperback, which is the same size as the hardcover book only with a paper cover, sold for maybe $3.95 or so. Now, some are $25 or more. In fact, there is very little rhyme or reason to book pricing today with or without an inflation calculator.

It's an interesting point.  A gallon of gas and a book used to cost about the same.  Gas gives you traveling time and a book or an ebook gives your imagination traveling time.  Today, a gallon of gas would cost about $3.99.  You know what?  That's still a pretty fair price for an ebook.  So the gas/ebook price point analogy may be a page from the past that's still true today.  So many of the old truths we learned from our parents and grandparents stand the test of time, and to me - it looks like Dvorak's apt analogy does the same. 

Mr. Dvorak notes that down-pricing is common with high tech.  That holds true as well.  I recall when VHS player/recorders first came out.  They were items only rich folks could afford - at first.  But very soon, the technology went mainstream and the price went down until it leveled out at an affordable level for nearly everyone. 

Ebooks are going mainstream so it's time for the price to go down and level out at an affordable level. The gallon of gas equation makes sense to me as a price point for most books, except perhaps, very new releases. If you wanted to be the first on the block to own a VHS player, you paid for the privilege. I can see $9.99 as being a reasonable price for a new release that would hold for a few months and then fall to perhaps $5.99 or $6.99 for a year or so before leveling out at right around the price for a gallon of gas - presently about $3.99.

Kudos to Mr. Dvorak for employing something so rare that it's nearly a lost art - common sense.

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Mommy porn?  Wuthering Heights "with a torture chamber"?  Is it "poorly written and utterly ridiculous" or is it "heartbreaking and deep"?

I don't know about any of those things, but I know that the three parts or books in the "Fifty Shades of Grey" series have occupied the top 3 spots on Amazon's romance best seller list for at least the last several weeks.  I also know that Hollywood studios got into a bidding war for the movie rights to the book by EL James and I know that means millions in the multiples.

There are a couple of other things I know about the current "it" books - (1) I haven't read them yet despite an enthusiastic recommendation from a co-worker because the books would cost $30.00 and that's a big chunk and (2)  I'm tickled chartreuse for the author, EL James, who is an indie sensation because she wrote the books as Twilight fan fiction and only later did they get picked up by a small publisher.   It makes me very happy whenever writers succeed and it makes me particularly happy to see an indie author do so well.

It's the success of the books that confuses me.  I understand that the tale of Christian and Anastasia is set - like Twilight - in Washington State. He's a billionaire and she's a college student filling in for her roommate to interview him for the campus newspaper.  I understand that she's embarrassed by some of her friend's questions and he's intrigued and pursues her, trying to get her to sign a contract to be the submissive to his dominant.  Reviewers say Christian only has dominant-submissive relationships, that he pursues Anastasia "madly" and that he stalks her, is jealous of any real interaction she has with other men and he wants to control her on his terms.  

Reading those reviews and descriptions of the book, and considering its absolutely amazing popularity have me shaking my head in confusion and saying - WHAT?

See, I still love what most folks these days call either "old school romance"  or "bodice rippers."  Those are novels that started the romance genre, written by amazing authors like the late Kathleen Woodiwiss and by Rosemary Rogers, amongst many, many others.  As I've said on this blog many times, Woodiwisses' "The Flame and The Flower" is one of my all time romance faves.  But in recent years, loving those "old school bodice rippers" has become very, very UN-popular. 

People have railed against how the "old school bodice rippers" show men controlling women - dominating women.  And that's bad - right?  It's bad even though by the end of the book the hero inevitably had been "schooled" by the heroine.  He'd learned to value her gentle emotions and he'd learned to love her while she'd learned to value his passion.  That's all bad and wrong and unpopular.  It doesn't sell for beans today now, does it?

Before the Grey phenom, I'd have said, absolutely.  Put the bodice rippers in a box and bury 'em because they're dead.  I'd have said that women today don't want to read about dominating men and heroines who love them.  I'd have said that any book showing a heroine as submissive to a man was D.O.A.  But apparently - I'd have been dead wrong. 

That's where my Fifty Shades of Confusion starts.  Because I wonder -- if someone today wrote "The Flame And The Flower" as a contemporary - would it become the next big thing? 

I'm hoping that the fans brave enough, bold enough, and assertive enough to love "Fifty Shades of Grey" may become smart enough to realize that political correctness is the wrong yardstick to use to measure any book.  It's the 21st century and today a woman can enjoy reading about a domineering man, and then put the book down to go and chair a board meeting, perform surgery, argue an appeal  -- or diaper an infant and prepare dinner.

Maybe the phrase "mommy porn" is today's version of the phrase "bodice ripper."  And if that's the case, you know what I think we should do?  I think we should dig up those "bodice rippers" we buried and stuff all the labels in the coffins instead. 

Women can be - and read- whatever we like and we can do it without justifying it to anyone.

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Quacking Alone Romances is running a Spring Break Sale through April 10th. You'll save 33% off every book in our inventory by doing the following:

1.  Go to QA's page at Smashwords by clicking the link;

2.  Pick up any/all of our books;

3.  At checkout, enter the following COUPON CODES to get 33% off: 

The Duke of Eden: FL28R
The Billionaire's E-mail Seduction: ZH33A
Dangerous Relations: Griffin's Law: JF78P
Brotherly Love: NM44Z
A Sixth Sense Of Forever: ZW94A
A Golden Forever: HW62F
The Forever Series Bundle: SZ28S

DON'T MISS THIS CHANCE TO SAVE 33% THROUGH APRIL 10TH. ONLY READERS SMART ENOUGH TO FOLLOW QUACKING ALONE AND USE THE COUPON CODES WILL GET THE DEAL. 

So, open up a new tab in your browser, use the links, and load up your ereader  with great books for the long Easter Weekend holiday - or for the full Sprink Break week.  Remember, Smashwords has formats that will work for every device on the market - so if you want to read on your PC, Laptop, Ereader or Smartphone, Smashwords has a format for you. 

Who wouldn't take advice from a crazy duck lady?  Waddle on over to SW and enter the code to save 33% THROUGH APRIL 10th ONLY.

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Published on 1 Comment on Grey’s Anatomy: Movin’ On Or Movin’ Out?

As we head closer to season's end on Grey's, my mind naturally turns to the big Elephant on the Grey's landscape - contract renewals.  This post will take a minute to share my thoughts about recent episodes like the last one, "One Step Too Far," which was a bombshell.  It will also look to see where Shonda Sunshine is heading the characters -- which are movin' on  and which are movin' out.

That last new epi - "One Step Too Far" - aired March 15th and the next isn't due until April 5th, so there is time aplenty for the crazy duck lady to ponder where the show is headed and which characters will get off the Grey's train before it pulls into the stations next season.  This one let a couple of big shoes drop - surgical trauma caused trouble for Mer/Der and relationship trauma led to a big confession by Owen to Cristina.

Mer/Der had been rocking along very nicely until Shonda Sunshine suddenly made it rain.  After choosing to "punish" Mer for helping Adele by switching packets in the clinical trial, last epi Derek decided to switch gears with no warning.   Der had banned Mer from his service and essentially from all of neuro and forced her to watch from the sidelines as he brought in Lexie as his new protege.  Mer's been floundering - trying to find a new surgical specialty and Lexie's been shining in the McDreamy spotlight, gaining a bit too much confidence in her surgical skills.  But it's been a while since Mer's banishment and Lexie's induction, and both ladies were getting used to things.  Naturally, Derek had to change that.

Der brought Mer back in for brain surgery on a patient who had a cyst in her temporal lobe that was causing problems.  The patient also had a brain tumor which wasn't causing problems so wouldn't be removed in this surgery.  While assuring the patient that they'd get the tumor soon,  Der made the huge, immense, ginormous mistake of telling the patient that this little ole tumor was gonna be so easy to remove that an intern could handle the procedure.  Why was it such a mistake?  The intern, Lexie, was listening and she takes every word out of Derek's mouth as gospel so why should she doubt this pronouncement?

So off they go to surgery where Der pushes Lexie out of first chair position and moves Mer back in, leaving Lexie to assist.  They get the cyst exposed and Der is called for an emergency on intern Morgan's infant son.  Mer and Lexie get the cyst drained only after a little trouble occurs and Mer tells Lexie to open the incision wider.  After the cyst drains, both girls see that in the wider surgical field, the tumor they'd been discussing earlier was exposed.  And Lexie sees her chance - she can prove to her mentor that she's the best protege and show big sister that little sis has some surgical chops too.  But Mer's the senior in the room with Der gone and Lexie can't have her big tumor removing moment unless Mer gives the go ahead.  Mer protests and wants to wait but Der doesn't return as quickly as he'd said he would. Eventually Lexie wears her down and Mer consents.  She stands by while Lexie slices the tumor out - without either physician consulting any of the brain scans taken earlier.

When the patient awakes, she can't speak normally and she never, ever will.  Mer doesn't want to tell Lexie but Der insists and Mer tells Lexie how to handle her hubby.  But hubby is still pissed with his wife and he's still grumpy at the scenes at the end of the epi.  He's grumpy, but he turns down Mer's offer to leave, which is a good thing.  However, we're left with the tension circling their bedroom and we still see trouble ahead.  Neuro superstar Derek has been mixing family with business way too much and everyone knows that's never a good thing.  Now, the patient will pay the price for Der's idiotic assertion that Lexie could remove the tumor.  Der always stews and mopes and lets things build and build to the point where they can only explode, so that's likely what he'll do again.  He's also terrible at taking the blame when he sees another candidate handy, and he's decided this one is his wife's fault.  Okay, Mer should have said no but she'd been out of the neuro game for a long while and Derek left her in an impossible position.  In my field, what Der did would be akin to a Judge leaving a courtroom in the middle of a death penalty trial so that his law clerk was left to finish the trial and pass sentence.  Whose fault would that be? The Judge's of course.  And whose fault is it that the young patient will never talk normally again?  That's right, it's Derek's fault.

Der might be the God of Neuro, but there are other neurosurgeons in the hospital.  He shouldn't walk out and leave a resident and an intern alone to finish any brain surgery-- cyst or not.  And his tendency to stew and stew before he finally blows up might get him in real trouble this time because Mer might finally be getting tired of playing emotional punching bag for Derek.

Then there's Otina.  Cristina's nose for trouble has been sniffing out the suspicion of Owen's having strayed for a few episodes.  Things came to a head in this one. Emily, the nurse she's seen Owen flirting with is tasked to help Cristina convince a man to pull the plug on his husband who'd been left brain-dead after a car crash.  The nurse is kind and caring but it's Cristina who eventually convinces the man that his soul mate has already gone.  After they finish the case, Emily asks Cristina something like - is there anything else I can do - and Cristina says yes, you can stop sleeping with my husband.  The nurse says she may have flirted a little with Owen because she flirts with everyone but she's madly in love and has never, ever been unfaithful with Owen or anyone else.

Cristina is still mulling things over when Owen comes home - late again, as has been his slippery pattern of late.  She's decided she made too much of nothing and confesses her suspicions to Owen who first tells her that he loves her so much it hurts.  That sounds good until Owen corrects himself  and says that it hurts to love her.  Pow - a punch in the gut - but it gets worse.  Owen says he has been unfaithful - but not with Emily.

So who did the dirty deed with Owen?  Teddy would be the first guess.  She went to war with Owen over the terrible way she found out about her husband's death but she and Owen have a lot of history.  And we all remember that there was a time when Owen had to choose between Cristina and Teddy.  Could he have decided he made the wrong choice?  Don't forget, there was a time when Derek had to choose between Mer and Addison and he chose Addison but he decided that he made the wrong choice.  Yet, in a preview for the 4.5 epi, we hear Owen claiming that it was "just sex."  It's hard to think he'd feel that way about sex with Teddy, but then again, Owen is a man.  So he could think that if comforting Teddy went too far it was "just sex."  But we'd know better, right?

If it wasn't Teddy, then who might it have been?  Morgan's been crushing on Alex but Owen may have been trying to help her past that or over the problems with her child.  Then there's April - the lady Owen gave Chief Resident too, after all.  But April's supposedly a virgin so it'd be a little hard-nosed for Owen to call that "just sex" but a man who could backslap his wife the way Owen did on the last epi might be capable of deflowering April and then calling it just sex. Of course, it could be just a random nurse or a stranger he met in a bar - those things happen on Grey's, don't they?  Worse - it could've been Lexie.  Now wouldn't that be a nice pickle?  Yeah, it'd be more like "just sex" because we all know that Lexie loves Mark but at the same time, it'd be much more of a knife in the back. And what if if was Lexie and she gets back together with Mark only to find out that she's pregnant from Owen?

Either way, it appears that Cristina's gonna confide in Mer in the next epi and Mer's going to tell Derek that he'd be in real trouble if he ever cheats on her.  And in the clip, Der looks worried.  What could that mean?  It's possible that Owen has confided in Derek.  He may know who Owen did the nasty with - and if so, that would really put Derek in the middle.   Of course, Derek deserves to be put in his place a little.  His whiny, it's not my fault attitude and his grandiose bragging have earned him some pay back.

But - looking past this epi and the next - where are we with the future of Grey's?  If the network doesn't re-sign Mer, Der and Cristina - where does that leave the show?  I can see Crinstina possibly leaving.  It would be a tough, tough loss -- but I think the show could go on without her.  I can even see recent events ultimately making Cristina question whether Owen is her soul mate.  If she thinks back on the man and his husband and the trauma she just helped them through, it'd be natural for her to ask that question in the wake of Owen's confession.  You know what? I've never thought Owen was Cristina's soul mate.  I think that was Burke.  So maybe she'd leave the show to go off and explore what future might be open for her with the man who got away.

That would even leave Cardio as a a specialty for Mer, which might turn out to be a nice fit.  It'd force her to work with Teddy which could be especially interesting if Teddy turns out to be the one Owen slept with.  That would mean that Mer's mentor would be the person who ultimately cost Mer her person.  Lot's of interesting possibilities in that, right?

But you know what I find to be the "no future possibilities" scenario?  If the produces are stupid enough to let either Mer or Der go -- there goes the show.  That's the last call folks - at least it is for the crazy duck lady.

For this romance writer, Grey's without Mer or Der would be like a romance novel that tried continuing after the hero or heroine died.   There's no HEA for Grey's if Mer/Der aren't on the show next season.  Yes, there's a great ensemble at Grey's - but they're ALL secondary characters.  Grey's is the show that Mer/Der built and it can't go on without them.

If the producers don't re-sign Patrick Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo, in my opinion, they're signing Grey's death warrant.  Yes, they're killing the goose that laid their very own golden egg.  Grey's without Mer/Der is like a romance novel without the hero and the heroine - it'd be a mighty sad place.

The last episode for Mer or Der would be the last episode of Grey's Anatomy most of America would watch -- and that includes a certain over-the-top duck lady.

UPDATE: Welcome Twitter, Facebook, and FanForum visitors! Take a look at my tribute to Grey's, Dangerous Relations: Griffin's Law! The synopsis and purchase buttons are at the preceding link, and Amazon has graciously provided a "read the first paragraphs" link; check it out!

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For my February Prime borrow on Kindle I picked up Elizabeth Lowell's, "Golden Mountain."   It now appears to be free, so you might want to pick it up and give it a read.  Your opinion could certainly vary from that of a crazy duck lady, because IMHO - this is one to pass on.  And I can't believe I said that about a Lowell romance!

I love every Lowell book I've ever read with the exception of this one.  Ms. Lowell is an amazingly talented author, but this book just didn't do it for me.  I couldn't finish it.  I read about 10 to 15% of the book before I put it away.  I only read that much because it was a Lowell so I kept waiting for it to pick me up and get me involved.  Except that never happened.  Not only did I not get involved, I dreaded picking up my Fire and would make excuses why I couldn't read more just now.  That's when I knew that I had to let this one go because normally I steal time from writing to read.  I was a romance fan a long time before I was a romance author, after all. 

Why didn't I like this one?  First, it took way too long to get started.  The first part was the heroine following her father around and assisting him while he took photos of  Chinese miners and mining communities.  When the father died - very early in the book (not a *spoiler*) -  the heroine wandered off to Seattle to take photos.  Then we're treated to long, expansive descriptions of the Chinese community in Seattle.  By the time I put it down the story seemed almost ready to go somewhere, but by then I didn't care.  In a romance, I want to feel tension between the hero and the heroine fairly quickly.  I'm okay with a few pages of backstory, but get me involved first, then feed me the history.

My other big problem with this book was that it wasn't clear from the get go who the hero was.  There were 2 brothers - one good guy and one wild one.  It seemed that the good guy would be the hero, but the first chemistry we read about occurs between the heroine and the wild brother.  I wasn't even sure if the good guy could be the hero because there was a reference to the good guy having slept with the heroine's newly discovered step-mother, a prostitute for one of the Chinese crime lord big shots we read far too much about.  That made me feel icky about the good guy brother.  Of course the good guy could have turned out to be the bad guy and the wild one could have been the real good guy. 

My biggest problem with the book was that the lack of clarity about the hero made me feel unsure of the story.  I'm okay with a hero that starts out with issues.  I'm okay if he is the biggest rogue in the galaxy.  I know that once he meets the heroine, he'll change.  Oh, he'll be unwilling to change and perturbed with the world at large because he is changing.  But by the end of the story, I'll have been with him through his changes and I'll adore him.  But that can only happen if I'm clear that I should be rooting for him instead of finding him annoying.

I hate romances where the heroine is torn between two men.  Or at least, I generally hate them.  I recall that "Whitney, My Love" was an exception to that rule.   Golden Mountain could have been an exception too - it should have been, because it was written by Lowell.  The difference between Whitney and Golden is that we knew who the hero and heroine were in Whitney and we saw chemistry between the hero and heroine early on - even if the heroine didn't see it yet. 

I guess Elizabeth Lowell can't be perfect every time.  So she's only "almost" perfect.  If I ever achieve "almost" perfect I'll rent out an airplane and skywrite it.  I'll buy TV time and advertise it.  But I won't start budgeting for that just yet...

If I were you, I'd give "Golden Mountain" a pass and pick up Lowell's "Only" books instead.    I got them while they were $1.99.  Of course, they're old favorites but now they have space on my Fire.  It looks like HarperCollins is running "rolling" $1.99 specials on a bunch of Ms. Lowell's work.  Trust me, pick those up and pass on "Golden Mountain."