5 Things You Shouldn’t Do When Writing a Book by Brian A. Klems at Dana Sitar's blog

by Brian Klems (@BrianKlems)

When writing my book, Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters, I ran into a lot of roadblocks. I’d like to place the blame elsewhere, but the truth is, they were my fault (Okay, I’ll place part of the blame on TBS for airing all those reruns of “Scrubs” — seriously, I just can’t get enough of that show).

Most of the roadblocks, though, were from avoidable mistakes I made during the writing process. Thankfully, now I know better.

To help you out, I’ve pulled together the five things you shouldn’t do when writing a book. These are tips that I wish someone else would have told me before I started writing Oh Boy. To save you a lot of time, do not:

1. Tell Anyone The Plot of Your Book

When you’re writing a book, occasionally someone — like a family member, friend or that loaded guy sitting next to you at the bar — will con you into talking about your book while you’re writing it. Wrong move. They will offer unsolicited pieces of advice like, “You should name your main character Booger.”

While most are honestly trying to be helpful, the majority of them — who have never written a book — will likely be offering bad advice. Best to stay hush-hush about it until it’s finished and you can have it edited or work-shopped by other writers.

2. Get Attached to Any Part of Your Book

As writers, we often fall in love with our own writing and plot points. This happens to me all the time. I write an awesome first paragraph and continue writing a chapter. As I go along, it’s clear that the chapter has taken a decidedly different turn and that first paragraph doesn’t quite fit. But I love that first paragraph. So I spend countless hours rewriting the rest of the chapter, even though deep down I know the only real solution is to cut that first graph.

It’s brutally painful, but not cutting it is a mistake rookie writers make. And if you want to publish your book, you’ll cut anything that doesn’t quite fit — even if it’s a part you love. [Like this idea? Tweet it!]

3. Set Unreasonable Goals

I believe in goals, so no matter what you are writing — a novel, nonfiction book, memoir, poetry chapbook, an article on how to write a blog (which I did) — you need to set some. That being said, don’t set goals that are nearly impossible to reach. Unreasonable goals will only cause you to get mad at yourself and will, in fact, slow your process down rather than speed it up — after all, if you feel like you’re letting yourself down, you’ll be less motivated to write.

I like to set time goals as opposed to word-count goals. For example, if you only have 30 minutes a day to write, just sit down and write as many words as you can in that 30 minutes. Some days you may only walk away with a couple hundred. Others you may knock out a thousand or two. But if you walk away with any words, you’ll feel more confident knowing you worked as hard as you could that day to get that many words out.

And eventually, they will add up.

4. Only Save Your Book in One Place

Like every writer, I have a very love-hate relationship with computers — as in, I love them when they are helping me work more efficiently and I hate them when … well … nearly all the rest of the time. It’s not intuitive to me to continually hit “save” when writing, especially when I’m in the zone. So when I forget to save (which happens all the time) and my computer crashes (which seems to happen every time I’m finally satisfied with my work), I lose everything.

I finally started writing using Google Docs, where it not only automatically saves your work but it saves it online, so you can access it from any computer you want. After writing the first few chapters of Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl in Word and losing nearly 50% of my writing, I fell in love with Google Docs because they took away the unnecessary stress of worrying about my computer crashing. Now my computer could reboot all it wanted and I’d still have all those wonderful words I worked so hard to write.

5. Take the Fun Out of Writing

Too often writing a book turns into a chore. That can happen for many reasons — stressed over a self-imposed deadline, trouble defining a character, dealing with writer’s block, afraid that the book just isn’t good enough so far, etc.

I once got stuck on one sentence — one sentence – because I didn’t think it was “funny enough” and used it as an excuse to stop writing for days. That’s a true story.

And now, looking back, I see how absurd that is.

The important thing to do is forget all of that — all the worries and stresses and self-induced headaches. Just focus on the reason you wanted to write a book in the first place: Because you’re a storyteller and you have a story to tell. Remind yourself of that every day and you’ll have fewer roadblocks to finishing your book.

What mistakes have you made — and learned from — when writing a book?

---

Brian A. Klems is the online editor for Writer’s Digest magazine and author of Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters (Adams 2013).

He’s also the editor of The Writer’s Dig and hosts the popular parenting blog, TheLifeOfDad.com.

You can follow him on Twitter @BrianKlems.

Doing a rewrite for Orchid Games' Heartwild Solitaire Game Series on my original texts....

Doing a rewrite for Orchid Games' Heartwild Solitaire Game Series on my original texts and I've been given the "rewrites" down by Sandlot. AMAZING. The romantic game is for adult women first but the E for Everyone had them editing out "nude" (although the male leads sculpts nudes), "naked," "touch," "kiss," "stroking," "caressing," "heat," "wet," "thigh," a fully deleted sex scene, and my favorite "prude."

So, I'm rewriting from the original for E my way. Amazing. They even added a violence that was more subtle before. Amazing.

http://www.orchidgames.com/heartwild_solitaire [http://www.heartwild.com/?ref=2] and http://www.orchidgames.com/heartwild_solitaire_book_two

WSJ: The Return of The Serial Novel

WSJ: The Return of The Serial Novel 

By ALEXANDRA ALTER

Serialized fiction, an all-but-lost art form that was practiced by such literary giants as Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy and Joseph Conrad, is rebounding in the digital era. The growing use of tablets, smartphones and e-ink devices has created a vibrant new market for short fiction as readers flock to stories they can digest in one sitting.

Bite-Size Entertainment

• The Age of Bite-Size Entertainment
• The EP as Music's Launchpad
• Short Films, Big Ambitions

Hoping to make novels as habit-forming as appointment television, a handful of publishers and several new digital-publishing upstarts are experimenting with the same type of short, episodic fiction that weekly or monthly periodicals published in the 19th century.

St. Martin's Press has published five serial novels in the past year, ranging from historical fiction to erotic romance, and has three more in the works. Penguin's digital romance imprint, InterMix, is testing serialized romance and erotica, and has released three titles so far, with several others on the way. 

The science-fiction and fantasy publisher Tor recently published a science-fiction epic by John Scalzi in 13 weekly episodes.

Amazon, which is leading the way with the format, has released 30 serialized novels through its new Kindle Serials program and is adding a new series every week. Readers pay $1.99 for an entire series, and new installments update automatically. Like a TV show, the episodes are designed to be devoured in a single sitting and end with a cliffhanger.

"The Charles Dickens model actually fits better now than ever because people want bite-sized content," says writer Sean Platt, who has co-authored six digital serial novels.

The serial model could be a boon for publishers and booksellers. Breaking up a longer work enables them to charge readers slightly more for it. Authors and publishers can also use a gradual digital release to test new series and characters in a relatively low-risk way, and build buzz for upcoming print titles. But digital serials could also be bad for business if they eat away at future print profits—still the biggest revenue source for most publishers.

Publishers and writers are now wrestling with the format, trying to figure out the best price, length, and intervals between installments.

Jeff Belle, vice president of Amazon Publishing, AMZN +0.35% says the company is still trying to "fine-tune" its serial-publishing program based on reader responses. Amazon launched its serials last fall with 10 novels. The company has since added 20 more series, which range from romance to crime to supernatural thrillers. The best-selling title so far, Andrew Peterson's thriller "Option to Kill," has sold some 80,000 copies.

"Early data indicate that shorter is probably better, and a one-week cadence works best," Mr. Belle said.

Others worry that if readers are forced to wait, they might not return. In an era when people binge on streaming TV shows and can instantly download all 20 books in their favorite crime series, the weekly-appointment model might not hold up, says Dan Weiss, publisher at large at St. Martin's, who has overseen the development of several serials.

"We originally thought it would be fun to publish brief books with cliffhangers, and publish them like a TV show on a weekly schedule," Mr. Weiss said. "But since then, with 'House of Cards,' binge viewing has come into vogue," referring to the original TV series that Netflix released all at once. St. Martin's may try publishing several episodes at once, he said, because their brevity makes them "easily digestible and phone-friendly."

Romance novelist Beth Kery wasn't prepared for the vicious backlash to her novel, "Because You Are Mine," which InterMix published last summer in eight weekly installments. The book was a hit, selling more than 500,000 copies. But some of Ms. Kery's longtime fans detested the format. Some readers were outraged over the $1.99 price tag for each installment, which added up to $16, far more than many e-books cost. Others resented being teased with cliffhangers.

"I am really sick of sitting down to read this book and just when you are enjoying it, it ends," one Amazon reviewer seethed. "Release the whole book, I would enjoy it more," another wrote.

This month, Ms. Kery's publisher finally released the complete story as a $16 paperback. It's also available now as a single digital volume, for $9.99. Ms. Kery is currently releasing another eight-part serial romance, "When I'm With You."

Publishing a novel in increments poses additional challenges for writers, who have to worry about readers dropping off mid-series, as well as new readers coming to the novel in the middle or toward the end.

Mr. Scalzi, a best-selling science-fiction novelist who released his new book serially with the imprint Tor, says he struggled at first with the unfamiliar format. 

He wanted to make sure the 13 individual episodes could stand alone but also added up to a single, seamless story for readers who chose to wait and consume it in a single serving. (Tor will release a print edition of "The Human Division" next month.)

The novel has been landing on Amazon's science-fiction best-seller list every week, and sales have grown with each episode. When the final episode came out this week, Mr. Scalzi announced that the saga would continue, telling fans on his website that the serial "has been renewed for a second season."

A version of this article appeared April 12, 2013, on page D2 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Return of The Serial Novel.

Sci Fi Circuit: The Magic of World Building, April 12, 2013

What does it take to make a sci fi world real?

 

As a science fiction fan, I love to be transported into new and fantastical worlds. As a sci fi screenwriter, I’m fascinated by understanding what it takes to make that happen, and happen well?

It’s not just a pretty gadget

Part of the appeal as fans, I think, is that just like in James Bond movies, we sci-fi geeks love to see new and clever ideas and how they work. It seems to be something of a thing, to have at least one super cool new piece of technology per sci fi film, like the hand-embedded phones in the re-release of Total Recall (2012).

But clearly a little fancy new technology isn’t the only thing it takes to make a futuristic world seem real.

What else is it?

The kind of world-building I deeply admire is what I’ve seen Joss Whedon doing with his sci fi masterpiece series Firefly and even with The Avengers. The world-building is all part of the background. It makes sense. We get it. When it comes to our attention, it’s part of the story but doesn’t overwhelm it. Everything serves a purpose. He does a masterful job of showing and not telling.

And that IS an issue with sci fi.

As Carson Reeves puts it in his excellent book Scriptshadow Secrets, “Science fiction is a memory hog.” 

He goes on to say, “You know that WHIRRRRR noise your laptop makes when Firefox starts sucking up your memory? That’s the exact same effect sci-fi has on a screenplay. 20-25% of your screenplay will be dedicated to exposition when you write sci-fi. This is due to all the rules and backstory and futuristic shit that needs to be explained… 

So make sure if you’re tackling this genre, you’re willing to put in the extra effort to minimize and hide all that exposition…”

So how do we build convincing and beautiful worlds while reining in the exposition?

First let’s start with the science, context, and backstory. To answer this question, I dragged out my early version of  The Writer’s Digest Guide to Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card for a look at the ingredients that go into building a world.

Setting the rules

Card lists first coming up with the “rules” for space travel, time travel, and magic.

For instance, pretty much at the outset of Star Wars and Star Trek we see that lightspeed and warp speed work in these universes. Even though the technology for traveling faster than the speed of light is currently seen as highly unlikely if not impossible in the scientific world (classified by Michio Kaku in Physics of the Impossible as a “class II impossibility”, meaning that it “sits on the very edge of our current understanding of the physical world”), we take it as a given that we can whip across the universe at enormous speeds without any time dilation effect.

In other universes, however, like those depicted in Aliens and Prometheus, cryo travel is required to traverse any kind of long distance, the impact of which is clearly seen when Ripley in Aliens asks, “How long was I out there?” and the answer, “Fifty-seven years,” produces a real shock for her character.

Similarly we must convey the rules of time travel — and as the writers of these tales, we get to decide on the rules.

For instance, think of the various ways time travel plays out in movies like The Butterfly Effect, the Back To The Future trilogy, and Déjà Vu. In each of these, we quickly learn the time travel rules for the particular story, such as, do people travel back through time into their own minds? Can they observe their earlier selves from the outside? Affect the past and alter the future? Or does time remain elastic and resilient, regardless of the changes we might try to make?

And even though we usually think of “magic” relative to fantasy stories, many of the sci fi worlds we see encompass some kind of magic, whether with technology or something like the Force in Star Wars.

Regardless of whether it’s magic or science, from the outset, we have to know the rules.

Detailing the past

We also need to understanding the past, including for example how a particular alien race has evolved to appear the way it has, and how it communicates — at least as the writers of the script. I love how Card describes understanding the backstory for a particular town with a mob led by a demogogic preacher and deeply understanding the kind of people that follow him. 

He says, “Now, maybe you won’t even use an incident like that in the story. But you know it, and because it’s in there in the history of that town, the people in that mob are no longer strangers to you, no longer puppets to make go through the actions you want them to perform. They’ve come alive, they have souls — and your story will be richer and more truthful because of it.” (Emphasis added.)

In my own work and reading on this subject, even while I am at times tempted to throw up my hands and say, “It doesn’t matter, I don’t care about that!” I find that my work deepens the more care I put into thinking about the world and story behind what we’re seeing.

Understanding language

Joss Whedon’s brilliance shines when it comes to language, which is the next of Card’s world building items. Ever the erudite communicator, not only has Whedon thought through a likely political and cultural evolution for the future of the human race in Firefly, he has extrapolated slang words like “ruttin’” and “gorram” along with the notion that characters will swear in Chinese. Along with subtle Asian cues in clothing, lettering, and set design, we quickly grok that China’s culture has become an integral part of these new worlds.

There’s nothing like a good delivery of language, whether we’re talking Aliens or Much Ado About Nothing to get us well-immersed in the tone and spirit of a particular world.

Designing scenery

According to Card, designing the scenery “… is the part that most people think of when they talk about world creation: coming up with a star system and a planet and an alien landscape.”

Carolyn See writes convincingly about the importance of “geography, time, and space” in her Making A Literary Life. Although I’ve been tempted to ignore such specifics along these lines at times since I’m writing “in the future,” I can see the validity of her point that we can become boring when we try for “universal” by neglecting the details.

I’m again reminded of the beauty of the ship “Serenity” in Firefly, and the careful thought that went into creating it, down to the flowers painted on the dining area walls. If we’re paying attention, we surmise they were added by one of the characters on the ship.

But here’s a question I wonder about: How much of this happens on the set, and how much happens in the writing stage?

As I contemplated that question, I remembered hearing Jane Espenson talk about writing the episode “Shindig” for Firefly. She described coming up with the idea for transportable door knobs that function as futuristic hotel room keys. And guess what? It’s in the script. So the writer does and can play a role at this level too.

And what about exposition?

Carson Reeves suggests that most sci fi projects need some kind of backstory introduction to help avoid overly expository dialogue. He points out the well-known use of the title card in the Star Wars franchise, but also references voice-overs in Avatar (and the video journaling did an admirable job there too, in my opinion), and the documentary-style footage in District 9.

I love this point from Michael A. Banks from his chapter, “Science Fiction: Hard Science and Hard Conflict” from How To Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy, & Science Fiction (from Writer’s Digest) about the degree of attention one must give to the science behind the fiction: 

“More detail is necessary, because you are frequently showing the reader things that don’t exist. 

You’ll have to depend on intuition to tell you just how far you can go without being a bore. … If the science is to be part of the conflict, you’ll have to take it quite a bit further. Because conflict is so closely tied to characterization, motivation, and the overall success of plot, you will have to give the science behind a conflict as much attention as you would any of the other basic story elements.”

He also says, “The ground rules are simple: Don’t tell the reader everything you know, and don’t dump the information you do use on the reader all at once. … Use only detail that adds necessary color, moves the plot, or helps the reader understand events, characters, or background.

I know that as I’m writing, I’m constantly asking myself, how can I convey this more concisely? How can I show it? How can we feel it? Can I make it tighter or clearer? If it means my reader “gets” my story more clearly, it’ll be worth the effort.

Lest we forget

Last, here’s a point I think is worth remembering, again from Orson Scott Card, about the value and importance of sci fi in our own world today: “Indeed, one of the greatest values of speculative fiction is that creating a strange imaginary world is often the best way to help readers see the real world through fresh eyes and notice things that would otherwise remain unnoticed.”
Related Articles:

• What Makes It Sci Fi? by Jenna Avery
• Alt Script: Tell the Story, Tell the Story, TELL THE STORY
• Structure and Breaking In: An Interview with Syd Field

Tools to Help:

• The Writer’s Digest Guide to Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card
• The Writer’s Digest Guide to Science Fiction & Fantasy eBook by Orson Scott Card
• The Writers Store resources

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Arabian Nights Tale of Princess Perizhade or Parizade [The story of Princess Parizade and the Magic Tree]

All who are stuck as to what courage and destiny can look like in a woman [for game writing or any writing] should read the Arabian Nights Tale of Princess Perizhade or Parizade [The story of Princess Parizade and the Magic Tree] compiled with the other tales in the 1700s!

Not all tales need be violent, guy porn, nor about a girl stone object.

http://books.google.com.pk/books?id=ATkQAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA543&dq=princess+parizade&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Kg9aT-aBPYa-0QXxqejSDQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=princess%20parizade&f=false

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights

Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games

Publishing Soon. New Short Story Fiction from Neale Sourna and PIE: Perception Is Everything

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Telegraph: Game of Thrones's George RR Martin: 'I'm a feminist at heart' By Jessica Salter

Game of Thrones's creator George RR Martin explains to Jessica Salter why his epic fantasy, which features boobs, swords and dragons, surprisingly appeals to women.

Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones, played by the actress Gwendoline Christie Photo: HBO

By Jessica Salter

01 Apr 2013

I am sitting on a leather chair in the middle of a very manly den – walls decorated with giant swords, model soldiers in mid-battle in glass cabinets – talking to George R. R. Martin about why women love him. What is the secret to his appeal? His fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, which has been adapted into the hit television show Game of Thrones, has an army of female fans clamouring for his next instalment. 

^{The writer George RR Martin at home in Santa Fe PHOTO: Nancy Newberry}
 

‘It is one of the things that pleases me most,’ Martin told me when I went to interview him at his home last month in Santa Fe, New Mexico. ‘The fact that women love my characters.’ He is playing it down – more than half of his fans are women.

Typically fantasy writers paint women either as angels or demons. But Martin’s women are more three dimensional - part of his creative appeal.

They include the beautiful and manipulative Cersei Lannister (played by Lena Headey), who would defend her children and family to the death; Lady Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley), a strong mother, devoted wife and a shrewd political strategist not afraid of a 300 mile trek on a horse to join her son in battle; Arya Stark (Maisie Williams), a nine-year-old tomboy who wants her own sword and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), who wants to cross the narrow sea to win back her father’s throne.

Oh and not forgetting the most awesome Brienne of Tarth, a female knight played by the 6’ 3’’ actress Gwendoline Christie.

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  27 Mar 2013
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  04 Mar 2013

So how does he get inside the head of, say, his teenage characters? 'Yes, you're right I've never been an eight year old girl,' he says, 'but I've also never been an exiled princess, or a dwarf or bastard. What I have been is human. I just write human characters.' 


^{The sexy high priestess Melisandre, played by actress Carice van Houten PHOTO: HBO}
 
He gets plenty of feedback from his fans. ‘Some women hate the female characters,' he says. 'But importantly they hate them as people, because of things that they've done, not because the character is underdeveloped.' 

The pitfalls of lots of other fantasy texts, he says is when writers stray into writing in stereotypes. 

But because Martin has a sprawling world with thousands of characters (and five books to do it in), he has the luxury of developing each one fully. 'Male or female, I believe in painting in shades of grey,' he says. 'All of the characters should be flawed; they should all have good and bad, because that's what I see. Yes, it’s fantasy, but the characters still need to be real.’
 
Martin should be used to female adoration by now. Although he has only hit mainstream consciousness in the last few years (his books have sold more than 20m worldwide), he has been a minor celebrity on the science fiction circuit for years. His wife’s first words to him, when she met him at a science fiction conference in 1975 were that his first novel, A Song for Lya, ‘made her cry’. 

Now he is mobbed wherever he goes - his trademark fisherman's cap an instant giveaway that he is the man behind the globally successful franchise. 


^{Arya Stark, a nine-year-old tomboy played by Maisie Williams PHOTO: HBO}
 
His books feature sex pretty heavily (to say the least) but it is something that has been ramped up even further for the television show, which is back on Sky Atlantic tonight. Often crucial conversations between characters happen while one of them is having sex (not always mentioned in the book) - something that has the American academic Myles McNutt to term them ‘sexposition’.
 
‘Is it simply because we couldn’t be trusted to pay attention otherwise?’ McNutt asked on his blog. ‘It’s as though they think having a prostitute appear and only talking, without actually having sex, would be some sort of cop-out. In my view, at least, it’s the other way around: it just feels lazy.’ 


^{Daenerys Targaryen, the would-be queen, played by actress, Emilia Clarke PHOTO: HBO}
 
Gina Bellafonte in The New York Times went further. Last year she wrote: ‘all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise.’ The truth was, she sniffed, ‘Game of Thrones is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.’ 

Female GOT fans lept to Martin's defence, including Emily Nussbaum from the New Yorker who wrote that the strength of the series was ‘its insight into what it means to be excluded from power: to be a woman, or a bastard, or a ‘half man’ [dwarf].’
 
But Bellafonte's comments still rankle with Martin a year later because he is, at heart, a feminist, despite being cautious about admitting it.
 
‘There was a period in my life when I would have called myself a feminist, back in the seventies, when the feminist movement was really getting going and growing out of the counter culture of the sixties,’ he says. 

‘But the feminist movement has changed. Sometime in the 80s and 90s I read some pieces by women saying that no man can ever be a feminist and you shouldn't call yourself that because it's hypocritical, so I backed off. I thought if the current crop of feminists believes that no man can be a feminist, then I guess I’m not one.’ 


^{Cersei Lannister, mother of King Joffrey Baratheon, played by Lena Headey PHOTO: HBO}
 
I tell him men are allowed to be feminists again – that he can have Ryan Gosling, the 21st century’s thinking woman’s crumpet, as his mentor. He chuckles behind his candyfloss beard. ‘To me being a feminist is about treating men and women the same,’ he said. 

‘I regard men and women as all human - yes there are differences, but many of those differences are created by the culture that we live in, whether it's the medieval culture of Westeros, or 21st century western culture.’

Dictionary.com: Solving the punctuation puzzle [history and usage]

http://dictionary.reference.com/

Ampersand

[am-per-sand, am-per-sand]

This strange punctuation mark has a fascinating past. The ampersand emerged over 2,000 years ago as the Latin word et meaning "and." The cursive writing of Latin scribes often connected the "e" and "t," giving rise to the shape of the ampersand. 

The name did not appear until the 1830s when "&" was the 27th letter of the English alphabet. The mark concluded the alphabet with "X, Y, Z, and per se and" with "and per se" meaning "and by itself." This final phrase was slurred by English school children during recitation and reborn as "ampersand."

Colon

[koh-luhn]

This punctuation mark is not to be confused with the end of the large intestine. Grammatically, the colon marks a major division in a sentence. 

The sign may also precede lists or summations or even help to categorize numbers, like separating hours from minutes as in "5:30." The word comes from the Greek kolon meaning "limb" or a "part of verse."

Semi-colon

[sem-i-koh-luhn]

This punctuation mark, called "dangerously addictive" by Virginia Woolf, unites two independent clauses with a common thematic tie: "Leonard had nothing against tigers; he grew up with cats." 

In this example the two clauses would be perfectly permissible sentences on their own, but because they both relate to the same person and the same affection for felines, they are appropriately linked with a semi-colon. The addition of the prefix semi-, meaning "part," to the Greek root kolon meaning "part of verse" makes the semi-colon quite literally a part of a part.

Comma

[kom-uh]

Aside from the period, the comma is the most common punctuation mark in English. The word is derived from the Greek koptein meaning "to cut off," fitting for our beloved comma's use in marking pauses within sentences and separating terms in a list. 

The mark was invented by the Italian printer Aldus Manutius in the late 1400s, a time when the slash mark signified a pause. Manutius lowered the slash mark in relation to the line of text and curved it slightly around the final letter. This freed the slash mark to indicate a comparison and simultaneously gave birth to the comma.

Ellipsis

[ih-lip-sis]

"I think I love you..." If you've ever been confronted with this maddeningly indeterminate end to a sentence, then you're no stranger to the effects of the ellipsis. 

From the Greek word elleipsein meaning "to fall short," this punctuation mark indicates an omission or suppression of letters or words. Oftentimes readers can infer which terms are replaced by the ellipsis, but in certain settings there's just no way to know.

Apostrophe

[uh-pos-truh-fee]

In English, the apostrophe is the agent of contraction and possession, shortening words by replacing letters as in: can't for "can(no)t," and designating ownership as in: "the iguana is Lisa's." 

The word came to English in the late 1500s as a direct loan from the Middle French apostrophe meaning "aversion" or "turning away." Following its induction into English, the symbol enjoyed extreme popularity in written text, the result of a centuries-long trend to imitate French culture.

Quotation marks

Also called "inverted commas," quotation marks set off dialogue, quoted material, titles of short works, and definitions by demarcating of a section of text: "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," said Dorothy, as she opened the door. 

Before mechanized printing, quotations were indicated by identifying the speaker or using a different typeface, like italics. At the time single quotation marks indicated a pithy comment or quip. But by the 1740s, mechanical printing had taken off and printers adopted quotation marks to indicate speech.

Hyphen

[hahy-fuhn]

The hyphen is a short line used to connect the parts of a compound word. It may also be used to indicate a connection between the parts of a word that has been divided for other reasons like a line break. 

The term is derived from the Ancient Greek hypo + hen literally translated as "under one." 

Historically, the mark was used to unite words or syllables, most likely indicating the way phrases were meant to be sung by Greek and Roman bards. Hyphens are still used today in choral notation to indicate connected syllables.

Question mark

Also called the "interrogation mark," the question mark is, in English, the punctuation mark placed after a sentence to indicate a question. In Spanish an inverted question mark is placed at the beginning of an inquisitive sentence as well. 

There is much speculation as to the origin of the question mark, but most attribute its invention to Alcuin of York, leading scholar and teacher in the court of Charlemagne. 

In the 8th century, Alcuin indicated questions in his writing with a mark like "a lightning flash, striking from left to right," according to language writer Lynne Truss.

Exclamation point

This forceful punctuation mark indicates a moment of high volume or excitement at the end of a sentence. Though there is no consensus as to the origin of the exclamation point, many believe that it is an abbreviated composite of the Latin word for "joy," io. 

After centuries of hurried handwriting, the "i" became a line, placed over the "o," written quickly as a dot. The exclamation point was introduced into English in the 15th century as a "note of admiration."

Interrobang

[in-ter-uh-bang]

This hybrid [double] punctuation mark is the only symbol on our list that was born in the USA. The interrobang combines a question mark and an exclamation point to indicate a mixture of query and interjection or shock, as in: "She said what!?" 

In the case of the interrobang, both word and symbol are portmanteaus in that the word bang was used for "exclamation point" in 1950s secretarial vernacular. Similarly, the question mark is also known as the "interrogation mark."

========================================== 
The beginnings of punctuation lie in classical rhetoric--the art of oratory. Back in ancient Greece and Rome, when a speech was prepared in writing, marks were used to indicate where--and for how long--a speaker should pause.

These pauses (and eventually the marks themselves) were named after the sections they divided. The longest section was called a period, defined by Aristotle as "a portion of a speech that has in itself a beginning and an end." The shortest pause was a comma (literally, "that which is cut off"), and midway between the two was the colon--a "limb," "strophe," or "clause."

_http://grammar.about.com/od/punctuationandmechanics/a/PunctuationHistory.htm

==========================================

Check out these other great lists

When in Rome: Everyday Latin phrases

Know these nine commonly confused pairs?

Seven riveting words for befuddling blunders

Fifty Shades Freed Review by Neale Sourna

Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James

My Goodreads rating: 4 of 5 stars


For those who chickened out before they got this far missed the healing and the heart opening and a guy who keeps her on her toes "What will he do next?" Why he wanders: "What will she do next?

It's something like 70+ - 90 percent of marriages and committed heterosexual couples wherein the feminine half is bored witless of the repetitive missionary and nothing else sex. And don't know what an orgasm with their love is like. [How to Satisfy a Woman Everytime by Hayden]

Smell the chocolate, never get to eat it. FRUSTRATING

If men want to learn more about women and women about themselves this series, which is well-written, cleverly so, despite the naysayers reveals much about who can read it and who can. We're not even talking about you just don't like the stories.

Talking about hating the heroine (seeing too much of yourself?) or fearing the "kinky fuckery" without understanding how having a choice in sex--Christian missionary ONLY mentioned above--is a good thing.

And more important, it's a book, if you can't put ideas in your head, try them on mentally then drop 'em or adopt 'em, you must be the most brain-washable, easily hypnotized person the the planet.

View all my reviews

Rise of Latino population blurs US racial lines By HOPE YEN | Associated Press

http://news.yahoo.com/rise-latino-population-blurs-us-racial-lines-114944593.html

Related Content

• View PhotoIn this photo taken March 13, 2013, …
• View PhotoIn this photo taken March 13, 2013, …

WASHINGTON (AP) — Welcome to the new off-white America.

A historic decline in the number of U.S. whites and the fast growth of Latinos are blurring traditional black-white color lines, testing the limits of civil rights laws and reshaping political alliances as "whiteness" begins to lose its numerical dominance.

Long in coming, the demographic shift was most vividly illustrated in last November's re-election of President Barack Obama, the first black president, despite a historically low percentage of white supporters.

It's now a potent backdrop to the immigration issue being debated in Congress that could offer a path to citizenship for 11 million mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants. Also, the Supreme Court is deciding cases this term on affirmative action and voting rights that could redefine race and equality in the U.S.

The latest census data and polling from The Associated Press highlight the historic change in a nation in which non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority in the next generation, somewhere around the year 2043.

Despite being a nation of immigrants, America's tip to a white minority has never occurred in its 237-year history and will be a first among the world's major post-industrial societies. Brazil, a developing nation, has crossed the threshold to "majority-minority" status; a few cities in France and England are near, if not past that point.

The international experience and recent U.S. events point to an uncertain future for American race relations.

In Brazil, where multiracialism is celebrated, social mobility remains among the world's lowest for blacks while wealth is concentrated among whites at the top. In France, race is not recorded on government census forms and people share a unified Gallic identity, yet high levels of racial discrimination persist.

"The American experience has always been a story of color. In the 20th century it was a story of the black-white line. In the 21st century we are moving into a new off-white moment," says Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, a global expert on immigration and dean of UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

"Numerically, the U.S. is being transformed. The question now is whether our institutions are being transformed," he said.

The shift is being driven by the modern wave of U.S. newcomers from Latin America and Asia. Their annual inflow of 650,000 people since 1965, at a rate that's grown in recent years, surpasses the pace of the last great immigration wave a century ago. That influx, from 1820 to 1920, brought in Irish, Germans, Italians and Jews from Europe and made the gateway of Ellis Island, N.Y., an immigrant landmark, symbolizing freedom, liberty and the American dream.

An equal factor is today's aging white population, mostly baby boomers, whose coming wave of retirements will create a need for first- and second-generation immigrants to help take their place in the workforce.

The numbers already demonstrate that being white is fading as a test of American-ness:

—More U.S. babies are now born to minorities than whites, a milestone reached last year.

—More than 45 percent of students in kindergarten through 12th grade are minorities. The Census Bureau projects that in five years the number of nonwhite children will surpass 50 percent.

—The District of Columbia, Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Texas have minority populations greater than 50 percent. By 2020, eight more states are projected to join the list: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey and New York. Latinos already outnumber whites in New Mexico; California will tip to a Latino plurality next year.

—By 2039, racial and ethnic minorities will make up a majority of the U.S. working-age population, helping to support a disproportionately elderly white population through Social Security and other payroll taxes. 

More than 1 in 4 people ages 18-64 will be Latino.

—The white population, now at 197.8 million, is projected to peak at 200 million in 2024, before entering a steady decline in absolute numbers. Currently 63 percent of the U.S. population, the white share is expected to drop below 50 percent by 2043, when racial and ethnic minorities will collectively become a U.S. majority. Hispanics will drive most of the minority growth, due mostly to high birth rates, jumping in share from 17 percent to 26 percent.

The pace of assimilation for today's Latinos and Asian-Americans is often compared with that of the Poles, Irish, Italians and Jews who arrived around the turn of the 20th century and eventually merged into an American white mainstream.

There was a backlash. By the 1930s, an immigrant-weary America had imposed strict quotas and closed its borders. Those newly arrived were pushed to conform and blend in with a white mainstream, benefiting from New Deal economic programs that generally excluded blacks. The immigration quotas also cut off the supply of new workers to ethnic enclaves and reduced social and economic contacts between immigrants and their countries of origin.

"America of the Melting Pot comes to End," read a 1924 opinion headline in The New York Times. The author, a U.S. senator, pledged that strict new immigration quotas would "preserve racial type as it exists here today."

Today, data show that Latinos are embracing U.S. life but also maintaining strong ties to their heritage, aided by a new stream of foreign-born immigrants who arrive each year. Hispanics, officially an ethnic group, strive to learn English and 1 in 4 intermarry, taking a white spouse.

Nowadays, immigrants face less pressure to conform than did their counterparts from a century ago. Latinos are protected as a minority, benefiting from the 1950s civil rights movement pioneered by blacks. Nearly 40 percent of Latinos now resist a white identity on census forms, checking a box indicating "some other race" to establish a Hispanic race identity.

While growing diversity is often a step toward a post-racial U.S., sociologists caution that the politics of racial diversity could just as easily become more magnified.

A first-of-its-kind AP poll conducted in 2011 found that a slight majority of whites expressed racial bias against Hispanics and that their attitudes were similar to or even greater than the bias they held toward blacks. Hispanics also remained somewhat residentially segregated from whites in lower-income neighborhoods, hurt in part by the disappearance of good-paying, midskill manufacturing jobs that helped white ethnics rise into the middle class during most of the 20th century.

The AP survey was conducted with researchers from Stanford University, the University of Michigan and NORC at the University of Chicago.

Harvard economist George Borjas projects that by 2030, the children of today's immigrants will earn on average 10 percent to 15 percent less than nonimmigrant Americans, based on past trends, and that Latinos will particularly struggle because of high rates of poverty, lack of citizenship and lower rates of education. In 1940, the children of early 20th-century white ethnics fared much better on average, earning 21.4 percent more than nonimmigrants.

About 35 percent of Hispanic babies are currently born into poverty, compared with 41 percent of blacks and 20 percent for whites.

"How America responds now to the new challenges of racial and ethnic diversity will determine whether it becomes a more open and inclusive society in the future — one that provides equal opportunities and justice for all," said Daniel Lichter, a Cornell sociologist and past president of the Population Association of America.

The demographic shift has spurred debate as to whether some civil-rights era programs, such as affirmative action in college admissions, should begin to focus on income level rather than race or ethnicity. The Supreme Court will rule on the issue by late June.

Following a racially lopsided re-election, Obama has spoken broadly about promoting social and economic opportunity. In his State of the Union speech, he said that rebuilding the middle class is "our generation's task." Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a rising star of a mostly white Republican party now eager to attract Latino voters, is courting supporters in both English and Spanish in part by pledging programs that would boost "social mobility."

Left unclear is how much of a role government can or should play in lifting the disadvantaged, in an era of strapped federal budgets and rising debt.

The Latino immigrants include Irma Guereque, 60, of Las Vegas, who says enjoying a middle-class life is what's most important to her.

Things turned bad for the Mexico native in the recent recession after her work hours as a food server were cut at the Texas Station casino off the Strip. As a result, she couldn't make the mortgage payments on a spacious house she purchased and was forced to move into an apartment with her grandchildren.

While she's getting almost full-time hours now, money is often on her mind. Her finances mean retirement is hardly an option, even though she's got diabetes and is getting older.

Many politicians are "only thinking of the rich, and not the poor, and that's not right," Guereque said in Spanish. "We need opportunities for everyone."
___
Associated Press writers Elaine Ganley in Montfermeil, France, Jenny Barchfield in Rio de Janeiro and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
___
Online:
Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov

EDITOR'S NOTE _ "America at the Tipping Point: The Changing Face of a Nation" is an occasional series examining the changing cultural mosaic of the U.S. and its historic shift to a majority-minority nation.

Writers Digest Online: The Two Pillars of Novel Structure by James Scott Bell

http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/the-two-pillars-of-novel-structure?et_mid=607627&rid=3032068

Structure is translation software for your imagination.

You, the writer, have a story you want to tell. You feel it, see it, populate it with characters. But turning all that raw material into a novel isn’t simply a matter of putting it into words on a page or screen. You have to “translate” it into a form that readers can relate to.

That’s what structure does. And if you ignore it or mess with it, you risk frustrating—or worse, losing—readers.

by James Scott Bell

I was amused many years ago when a writing teacher of some repute shouted in front of an auditorium that there was no such thing as structure. He went on and on about this. Later, when I looked at his materials and the terms he had used to designate various story beats, guess how they unfolded? Yep, in a perfect, traditional three-act structure.

When it comes to the writing process, fiction writers tend to fall into two camps: those who prefer to outline before they write, and those who find outlines too constricting. The pillars of structure are equally useful tools for both of these types of writers. If you’re a writer who likes to outline, you can learn to set up a strong story by mapping out a few key structural scenes from the start. 

And if you like flying by the seat of your pants, you can continue to be as free as you like with your first draft. Write hot. Just understand that later, you will have to think about structuring what you’ve written—because manuscripts that ignore structure are almost always filed under unsold.

But what, you may ask, about authors who purposely play with structure—some to the point their books are called “experimental”? Suffice to say that these authors usually know exactly why they are doing so—and they accept as a consequence that their books might not be as popular with the reading public as novels that have structure working in their favor. 

At the very least, every author should understand structure fully before playing around with it. (This advice also applies to hand grenades.)

A Bridge to Somewhere

My favorite visual representation of story structure is the suspension bridge:

The key foundational elements here are the two pillars, or pylons. These pillars are set down in bedrock, allowing the suspension cables to support a solid and secure platform—the bridge itself.

Think about it: Every story has to begin, and every story has to end. And the middle has to hold the reader’s interest. The craft of structure tells you how to begin with a bang, knock readers out at the end, and keep them turning pages all the way through. When you ignore structure, your novel can begin to feel like one of those rope bridges swinging wildly in the wind over a 1,000-foot gorge. Not many readers are going to want to go across.

The First Pillar

The beginning of a novel tells us who the main characters are and introduces the situation at hand (the story world). It sets the tone and the stakes. But the novel does not take off or become “the story” until that first pillar is passed. Think of it as a Doorway of No Return. The feeling must be that your lead character, once she passes through, cannot go home again until the major problem of the plot is solved.

Let’s use Gone With the Wind as an example. In the first act, Scarlett O’Hara is sitting on her porch flirting with Brent and Stuart Tarleton. We get to know her as a selfish, scheming, privileged antebellum coquette. She is able to use her charms to enrapture the men around her and play them like carp on a hook. A sister of the Tarleton twins says Scarlett is “a fast piece if ever I saw one.”

If this novel were a thousand pages of Scarlett’s flirtatious ways, we’d never make it past Page 10. A successful novel is about high-stakes trouble. True character is revealed only in crisis, so Margaret Mitchell gives us some opening trouble (what I call the Opening Disturbance): Scarlett learns that Ashley is going to marry Melanie.

That trouble alone might be enough for a category romance, but not for a sprawling epic of the Old South. There must be something that forces Scarlett into a fight for her very way of life, and that’s what the first pillar is about: It thrusts Scarlett into Act 2. That event is, of course, the outbreak of the Civil War.

We first catch sight of this pillar in Gone With the Wind when Charles Hamilton hastens to Scarlett at the big barbecue at Twelve Oaks:

“Have you heard? Paul Wilson just rode over from Jonesboro with the news!”

He paused, breathless, as he came up to her. She said nothing and only stared at him.

“Mr. Lincoln has called for men, soldiers––I mean volunteers––seventy-five thousand of them!”

The South, of course, sees this as provocation. Charles tells Scarlett it will mean fighting. “But don’t you fret, Miss Scarlett, it’ll be over in a month and we’ll have them howling.”

The Civil War is a shattering occurrence that Scarlett cannot ignore or wish away. She would rather stay in the Old South and preserve Tara, her family home, and the way of life she grew up with. In mythic terms, Scarlett would like to remain in the “ordinary world.” But the outbreak of war forces Scarlett into the “dark world” of Act 2.

That’s why it’s useful to think of this as a Doorway of No Return. There is no way back to the old, comfortable world. Scarlett has to face major troubles now—and not just about matters of the heart. She will need to save her family and her land. She will need money and cleverness. She must overcome or be overcome.

In the classic three-act story structure, Act 2 is all about “death stakes.” That is, one of three aspects of death must be on the line: physical, professional or psychological.

For Scarlett, it’s psychological death (though her life is in danger at various points). If she doesn’t preserve Tara and her vision of the Old South, she will “die inside,” so to speak. 

Gone With the Wind’s story question is: Will Scarlett grow from her old self into the self she needs to be? 
She doesn’t want this fight. But she is pushed into the death stakes because of the war.

The timing of the first pillar should be before the 1/5 mark of your book. In movies, it’s common to divide the acts into a 1/4-1/2-1/4 structure. But in novels it’s best to have that first doorway appear earlier. In a fast-moving action novel like The Hunger Games, it can happen quickly. 

It’s in Chapter 1 that Katniss hears her sister’s name chosen for the games, and in the beginning of Chapter 2 volunteers to take her place.

Gone With the Wind is over 1,000 pages long. The Civil War breaks out at about the 1/10 mark.

Other examples of the first pillar:

■  In Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling is thrust into a cat-and-mouse game with Hannibal Lecter because it might be the only way to solve a serial killer case.

■  Detective Sam Spade takes on Brigid O’Shaughnessy as a client in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.

■  In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch accepts the job of defending a black man accused of raping a white girl. For his daughter, Scout Finch (the story’s narrator), this means events thrust her into a dark world of prejudice and injustice. She can’t remain an innocent.

Look at your own novel-in-progress:

■  Have you given us a character worth following?

■  Have you created a disturbance for that character in the opening pages?

■  Have you established the death stakes of the story?

■  Have you created a scene that will force the character into the confrontation of Act 2?

■  Is that scene strong enough—to the point that the lead character cannot resist going into the battle?

■  Does the first Doorway of No Return occur before the 1/5 mark of your story?

The Second Pillar

The second pillar is another kind of Doorway of No Return: It makes possible or inevitable the final battle and resolution.

Act 2, between the two pillars, is where the major action takes place. The stakes are death (physical, professional or psychological) and the lead has to fight (literally or figuratively). Remember, the first door has been slammed shut. The second act is a series of actions where the character confronts and resists death, and is opposed by counterforces.

Then the second pillar, or doorway, happens. This is often an event that feels like a major crisis or setback. Or it can be a clue or discovery. Regardless, it pushes the lead character into Act 3. It forces the final battle, the resolution. Indeed, it makes it possible.

Returning to the example of Gone With the Wind, Scarlett has many battles in Act 2. She needs to get out
of Atlanta with Melanie before the Yankees take over. She needs to get money to save Tara from onerous taxes. She needs to figure out how to handle that charmer Rhett Butler, who keeps showing up in her life. 

These matters relate to the overall story question, the test (and growth) of Scarlett O’Hara’s character.

All of this leads to the second pillar: the crisis that occurs when Scarlett marries Rhett. Scarlett still believes “she belonged to Ashley, forever and ever,” and yet she says yes to Rhett’s proposal. Why? Because it “was almost as if he had willed the word and she had spoken it without her own volition.”

This marriage makes inevitable the final battle in Scarlett’s heart, and the crisis intensifies. Rhett finally realizes Scarlett will never give up on Ashley, and decides to leave the marriage. Scarlett, however, has a realization of her own: that she has been living for a false dream, and that home and Rhett are what she truly needs. But it will, of course, be too late. Rhett doesn’t give a damn, and Scarlett will have to go back to Tara to think about getting him back. Tomorrow.

Other examples of the second pillar:

■  Lecter tells Clarice that Buffalo Bill covets what he sees every day (clue). This information leads her to the killer.

■  The bullet-ridden body of a ship’s captain collapses in Sam Spade’s office. Inside the bundle he was carrying is the black bird (major discovery).

■  Tom Robinson, an innocent black man, is found guilty of rape by an all-white jury, despite the evidence to the contrary (setback).

Look at your own novel-in-progress:

■  Have you created a major final crisis or setback the lead must overcome?

■  Alternatively (or additionally), have you presented a clue or discovery that is key to the story’s resolution?

■  Does this final Doorway of No Return make the resolution possible or inevitable (or both)?

The Other Side

The two pillars of structure will never let you down. In defining the three acts of your story and creating points of no return for your characters (and your readers), they will guarantee that the platform of your story is strong. And they will free you to be as creative as you like with the elements of your story—characters, voice, scenes—without fear of falling off a rope bridge into the Valley of Unread Novels.

Let the construction begin.

This article on novel writing is by James Scott Bell, who is the author of Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure. Click here to order your copy (or click here to download the ebook).

Want to learn more? Expand your writing knowledge with these great writing books & videos:

• Write Your Novel in 30 Days
• You Should Really Write a Book
• Awesome First Pages: How to Start Your Story Right

************

For more on Brian, his blogs and his book, click here.

Follow on Twitter: @BrianKlems

You might also like:

• The 7 Deadly Sins of Self-Editing
• Turn One Agent’s No into Another Agent’s Yes
• Why You Should Write About What You Don’t Know
• Can You Use a Book Title That’s Been Used Before?
• The Basics of DIY E-Book Publishing

Lightning Source and Didio Communications Ink Agreement to Expand eAudiobook Market Publishers, Booksellers Gain New Options for Secure Digital Audiobooks

 LAVERGNE, Tenn., and LEEDS, United Kingdom, Feb. 8 /PRNewswire/ --

 Lightning Source Inc.(SM), a pioneer in innovative digital fulfillment, and
 Didio Communications, Ltd., a world leader in digital audio services, have
 entered into a strategic alliance to jointly market their services to the
 publishing industry worldwide. 

 Didio and Lightning Source will collectively leverage their technological
 expertise to galvanize the eAudiobook market and work together with publishers
 to increase the volume of eAudiobook content available to consumers.  Under
 this new alliance, Lightning Source will expand its suite of services to
 include digital audiobook fulfillment capability. 

Didio will work with Lightning Source to gain access to and properly support worldwide channels of
 distribution for eAudiobook content. 

 "Our alliance with Didio provides a strategic pairing of two key digital
 fulfillment technologies," said Ed Marino, president and CEO of Lightning
 Source. "In co-marketing our services, we'll be able to offer publishers and
 booksellers one source for secure fulfillment of eBooks and eAudiobooks, as
 well as possible future combinations of the two formats." 

 "Lightning's alliance with Didio confirms the growing interest in
 eAudiobooks," said Paul G. Smithson, Managing Director of Didio.  "By
 combining Didio's cutting-edge eAudiobook solutions with Lightning Source's
 established track record with digital content, we're providing access to a
 unique, combined content format offering that is sure to be of great appeal to
 all online retailers and audiobook publishers, and ultimately to their
 consumers." 

 As a pioneer in the new world of eAudiobooks, Didio has made substantial
 investments in delivery and encryption technology, resulting in an eAudiobook
 digital delivery service that combines superior sound quality with exceptional
 security for audiobook content. 

Today, Didio helps audiobook publishers and retailers in this growing market develop and implement digital audio download
 strategies, and enables publishers to transfer encrypted digital downloads of
 eAudiobooks to their customers. 

Didio also helps publishers enlist retail affiliates who wish to access their secure eAudiobook content, and aids
 retailers in developing their service to customers who wish to sample and buy
 eAudiobooks.

 Didio's services for audiobook publishers include design, hosting and
 management of the eAudiobook digital distribution platform, acquisition of
 third-party distribution channels, and safe, secure delivery of eAudiobooks
 directly to customers, both online and offline.  All of these services are
 supplied by Didio as directed by their publisher and retailer clients.

 Content owners retain full control of their content and brand identification
 without having to assume the technical burden, time and heavy expense of
 implementation.  Didio also has future plans to offer audio-print-on-demand
 (APOD) and fulfillment services to its publisher clients.

 Lightning Source, a pioneer provider of print-on-demand (POD) and eBook
 fulfillment services, electronically stores books and other content in its
 digital library, which currently offers more than 20,000 titles. Lightning
 Source has long-term relationships with more than 900 publishers, and has
 received commitments to add more than 50,000 titles to its digital library.

 "Our alliance with Didio is a perfect complement to Lightning's services,"
 said Marino.  "Digital fulfillment leverages the extreme flexibility and
 portability of digital content, and accommodates essentially any form of
 content that can be digitized, including the continuously growing medium of
 audiobooks."

 "The new alliance will enable all of our customers to reap the full
 benefits of this expanding spectrum of digital services," added Didio's
 Smithson.
 
     About Lightning Source

 Lightning Source Inc., a subsidiary of Ingram Industries Inc., provides a
 comprehensive suite of digital fulfillment services.  The company is
 revolutionizing the options available to the industry in the secure
 conversion, storage, management, and distribution of digital content.
 Lightning stores books and other information electronically and delivers them
 "on demand" in either traditional printed format or as eBooks in response to
 orders from booksellers, librarians, and publishers.  Lightning Source has
 printed more than 1,500,000 "on demand" books for more than 900 publishers
 around the world.  For more information, visit our website at
 http://www.lightningsource.com .
 
     About Didio

 Didio Communications Ltd. is a provider of digital content services to the
 Publishing and Retailing industries.  Didio is a part-owned subsidiary of
 Chivers Communications Plc, itself a specialist in Publishing, having
 Audiobook and Large Print interests through its wholly-owned subsidiary
 Chivers Press Ltd. Chivers Communications Plc also has interests in Digital
 Radio Channel, One Word Ltd., and audiobook mail-order business, Audio Book
 Collection.  Together, Didio Communications Ltd and Chivers Communications Plc
 are building on relationships in the publishing industry in delivering digital
 media services to content-owners.  For more information, visit out website at
 http://www.didio.com .
 
     The Lightning Source and Didio name, corresponding logos, taglines and
 other service marks identifying Lightning Source and Didio and their services
 are the proprietary marks of Lightning Source Inc. and Didio Communications
 Ltd. and must be represented accordingly. Other products and company names
 mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
 

SOURCE  Lightning Source Inc.

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