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Too Many Zombies is a daily drawing project which gives us a new zombie drawing every day. The zombies are drawn on an iPod Touch using the Layers app.

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Another Moleskin sketch. I think it has to do with my life...

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Here are two more sketches using the Brushes App on my iPod Touch. I'm starting to feel more comfortable with this tool. I draw cartoons anyway so the small size of the image is no big deal to me. the top picture is my cat Esther and is done from life. The bottom is a robot and was not done from life.

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My kid's iPod died, so he asked to borrow mine whilst he mowed the lawn.

Kid: "Do you have music on it that I would like?"

Me: "Music? I only have one song on my iPod*. But I do have lots of books."

Kid: (sighs) "Never mind..."

Me: (calling after him): "I've got The Graveyard Book. Neil Gaiman reads it himself! You'd love it!"

(sound of door slamming and lawnmower firing up)


* "Flathead" by The Fratellis. Which is a good song, but I'm not sure how it got on there.

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We rely on electricity and the wonderous things those teensy electrons can do for us.

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Every Tuesday, I park at a remote lot in downtown St. Paul and walk about 9 blocks to the building where we have a meeting. Sure, they send a bus to take us to and fro, but sometimes I just need to bond with my iPod (Robotron 2.0).

As I walk, it's like a mini music video that no one knows is filming but me.

I see some things on the ground as I walk, especially when the snow sort of melts a little bit. For your consideration:

- Starbucks coffee sleeve. (is that what you coffee drinkers call those things?)
- 6 of diamonds playing card
- smashed Junior Mints box
- toddler's tennis shoe
- turd that looks like a gorilla was loose downtown
- 2 D-Cell batteries, still in the wrapper
- a mangled Celine Dion CD
- a bullet casing, maybe from a .45
- a king of clubs playing card
- someone's grocery list
- an empty case of O'Doul's
- 80,003 cigarette butts
- blue 2 Uno card
- McDonald's burger wrappers
- an Isotoner glove, left hand
- the rest of the deck of cards
- wallet-sized photo of a young boy, maybe Hispanic
- an ad for lawn service
- crushed pack of Marlboro reds

That's a lot of garbage, yo.

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By Evan Schnittman

Last week two announcements were made that support the claims made by yours truly regarding sales of Kindles and Sony Readers, and the corresponding rise in ebook sales that will occur in 2008.

TIME Magazine reported that sales of the 130,000 titles available in the Kindle Store represented 12% of the sales of the exact same 130,000 titles in other formats. This is a significant increase as Jeff Bezos reported at the end of May this figure was 6% of 125,000 titles.

The doubling of the percentage on a bigger base points to two very interesting trends – the first is the clearly growing number of Kindle owners – I cannot imagine that kind of ebook sales growth is possible on a similar number of devices. The device sales must be skyrocketing.

The other trend that may be exposed here is the sheer number of ebooks being purchased. Last month some of the bigger trade publishers announced they were increasing the number of titles available for the Kindle. This was done not because of any arm-twisting by Amazon – but clearly as a response to the demand. And just as lack of product has helped to keep ebooks unsuccessful to date, the opposite is helping drive consumer enthusiasm and buying.

More evidence that the e-ink based devices such as Kindle and Sony’s Reader have been selling well comes from further up the supply chain, from the screen manufacturer, PVI. As I reported in the last article, PVI manufactures the 6 inch EPD for Sony and Amazon (the iRex Iliad does not use a 6 inch screen) and in a report files in DIGITIMES last week, PVI reported “Small- to medium-size panel supplier Prime View International (PVI) saw its June sales rebound 23% sequentially to NT$663 million (US$21.79 million) as demand for niche products, including electrophoretic displays (EPDs), picked up, according to the company.” While this is hardly definitive, it should be enough to support the theory that e-ink reader sales are increasing.

This is good news for ebooks – and more good news happened with the opening of Apple’s App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Even though I am not a big believer in LCD screen ebook readers (I find them very difficult on the eyes for immersive reading), I am thrilled that the iPhone/iPod juggernaut will now contain a variety of choices for reading ebooks. I look forward to seeing how ebook retailers, wholesalers, and publishers tap into this wonderful market and what inventive business models Mr. Jobs creates for ebooks. Oh, wait, Steve Jobs doesn’t think Americans read – maybe that dream of an iBooks store is a just pipe dream…

---

Evan Schnittman is OUP’s Vice President of Business Development and Rights for the Academic and USA Divisions. His career in publishing spans nearly 20 years and includes positions as varied as Executive Vice President at The Princeton Review and Professor at New York University’s Center for Publishing. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.

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Okay - as I mentioned the other day I have just received my first iPod. Yes, I have a lot of music to put on it and it will be a nice accent in my car, (though I do have XM.) But I've been thinking in terms of how to use it to help me keep connected to my writing life when I am at the day job. 

I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that I could sync my contacts and calendar on it. That makes looking for a new cell phone much easier. I don't have to look for a smart phone - yeah! And there's the notes functions which I don't know if I will use but it could nice to have.

I've explored iTunes and found several Poem-a-Day projects as well as NPR and some other freebies. But it's a big wide Internet out there. What, if anything, have you found as far as podcasts, etc, that I might want to add to my iPod?

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Guess the Plot

Once Upon a Quest

1. When a best-selling fantasy author takes to telling his young daughter bedtime stories, he finds himself compulsively expanding classic fairy tales into massive narratives replete with wide-ranging sub-plots and multitudinous arrays of secondary characters. Years later, he finds the child has died of boredom.

2. A band of adventurers prepare to embark on a glorious evil-vanquishing quest, only to realize that their realm has experienced nothing but peace and prosperity for seven years, and no one really needs any evil vanquished.

3. A dragon saves a princess from a fate worse than death-- marriage to the villainous Prince Charming-- and hilarity ensues as they seek the means to live happily ever after.

4. At midnight John Inkleton slowly crawls through the dim hall of the Crow's Inn toward the sleeping princess, who is disguised as a scullery wench. His quest: cut off her hair for Peggy McFlynn, the Irish witch who enchanted his village.

5. There's nothing holding Jane Smith back as she inches along a narrow ledge near the top of the Empire State Building. She's determined to get her pages to Miss Snark's attention, or die trying. But does Her Snarkiness even live there? Or will that window actually reveal the red velvet hideout of Viggo the Terrible?

6. When Sleeping Beauty wakes up after 100 years to find herself alone in a ruined tower, she knows that Prince Charming has let her down. Accompanied by a half-blind dragon and a mouse with a big mouth she sets out to find him and show him that a Princess can be a tigress. That's assuming she survives the journey . . .


Original Version

Dear [Agent],

Owen Masterson needs a quest. Not just any quest, but one so grand it will cut years of service from city guard drudgery and catapult him to knight-status. His childhood friend, Finley Winterbourne, knows that an epic journey will provide the perfect material for a grand ballad – something he believes will secure him a cushy spot as the Bard of a High House [Suddenly we're capitalizing everything.] – and agrees to accompany Owen. Unfortunately for the friends, the realm of Turon has endured nothing but peace and prosperity for seven long years… and it doesn’t look like anything is about to change.

Still, the friends refuse to give up – evil must certainly still exist somewhere, and they intend to find it. With the help of a bawdy, female dwarf, a delusional peasant who believes herself the banished heiress of a long-decrepit estate, a small potatoes thief, and a mediocre wizard who has a serious shapeshifting problem, the band of wannabe adventurers set off on a quest-for-the-quest that will fulfill their destinies. [Those who set off with the help of the heiress, wizard, dwarf and thief are the Daring Duo, not a band.] But when they finally stumble upon a town in peril, will they be ready to take the enemy on? [We don't need quite so much information about the bit players. What we do need is a better wrap-up. Do they stumble upon a town in peril? Who are the enemy? You wouldn't describe Lord of the Rings by saying,

A hobbit goes on a quest accompanied by a couple of his friends, a bawdy male dwarf, a six-foot-tall elf, a wizard, and some guy who's actually a king. Will they defeat their enemies and complete their quest?]

We need more than the set-up; we need something about the quest.

Complete at 70,000 words, ONCE UPON A QUEST is a comic fantasy novel appropriate for readers aged 14+. My past credentials include [credentials]. This is my first novel.

At your request, I would be happy to send a partial of [or] full version of the manuscript. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,


Revised Version

Owen Masterson needs a quest, and not just any quest; a quest so grand it will cut years from his city guard commitment and catapult him to knighthood. Owen's best friend, Finley Winterbourne, knows that an epic journey will provide the perfect material for a grand ballad –which he believes would secure him a cushy spot as the bard of a High House. The two men set forth on a quest to vanquish evil--until they realize that the realm of Turon has experienced nothing but peace and prosperity for seven long years, and that no one needs any evil vanquished.

Still, the friends refuse to give up – evil must certainly exist somewhere, and they intend to find it. Joined by a bawdy female dwarf, a delusional peasant, a petty thief, and a mediocre wizard, the wannabe adventurers embark on a quest for a quest--one that will fulfill their destinies.

Sadly, the people are so miserably content, the realm so depressingly perfect, that the band of heroes contemplate returning home. Then they happen upon Desolation, a squalid town governed by tyrant weredingos. At last! This is what they've been looking for all along. Or is it? How can a half-dozen bungling stumblebums hope to defeat the most heinous, depraved creatures ever to walk the face of the Earth?


Notes

Up until it petered out, I liked it.

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Guess the Plot

Ladies First

1. As the cruise ship goes down and the lifeboats are boarded, a misogynist assassin suddenly wonders if he still agrees with his lifelong motto.

2. The ladies of the garden club couldn't have cared less when the poor people of East Aurora started disappearing--until they suddenly found themselves without their gardeners and manicurists.

3. Nobody, no sirree nobody, ever said the words "Ladies first" like I did when I yanked Coldwater Kate in front of that bullet meant for me, Bootstrap Billy. Of course, things got pretty ugly after that.

4. All his life, Frank Morton has been a rude, boorish jerk. But when the hijackers on his flight home from Thailand start executing passengers to get their demands met, Frank suddenly remembers his manners.

5. Lt. Hastings has impeccable manners, but his insistence on 'Ladies First' will come back to haunt him when he orders his squad to clear the mine field. Can the Southern gentleman get his bars back?

6. Pamela Purse, intergalactic pirate fighter, insisted that her all-male crew put "ladies first." When her ship is boarded by man-eating Djoorin who plan to feast on the crew, they are only too happy to obey her rule.


Original Version

Dear Agent,

Seven people have disappeared from their beds in East Aurora, and Monica, Effie, and Tabitha are appalled: the candlelight vigils interrupt their beauty sleep, the rallies outside the police station make them late for charity functions, and Effie's gardener (father to one of the missing) completely abandons her primroses. A week before she is to host the East Aurora Annual Garden Party, no less! [I know how she feels. Just last week my butler and sommelier gave notice just an hour before I was hosting a wine tasting. Fortunately, one of my guests was able to figure out how to operate a corkscrew, thus saving the day.]

The missing people -- blue-collar and low on East Aurora's long socioeconomic ladder -- don't have the sweet, photogenic faces the media adore, and the police aren't doing much more than shrugging and handing out missing person forms. None of this matters to Monica, Effie, and Tabitha, of course: as long as they have their manicurists, their club, and their Wednesday liquid luncheon -- a twenty-year tradition -- they will magnanimously overlook the myriad ways these missing people have inconvenienced them and made their lives virtually unbearable. Really, now; these people were poor. It's the least they can do. [I, too, would give up my luncheons and manicures and the club; just don't ask me to do without my weekly scalp massage with Jimmy.]

But then Tabitha's husband comes under investigation by a D.A. trying to change the news cycle, Effie's nail girl hotfoots it back to Taiwan, and a clue to the whereabouts of the seven missing people is placed in Monica's lap by her own perennially sleazy spouse. In response, the ladies do what they always do in the face of adversity: they try to pass the buck. No one pays attention to their anonymous letter to the police, however,

[Dear police:

Regarding the seven missing people: I have reason to believe my perennially sleazy spouse is responsible.

--Anonymous.]

and things begin looking dire. Tabitha's accounts are frozen and she's close to financial ruin, it seems that Monica may have married a kidnapper and murderer, and Effie's nail beds and side garden are disasters. It's time for these ladies, however reluctant, to solve this mystery themselves and get the heat off Tabitha's husband -- or those Wednesday lunches are history.

Ladies First is a 65,000-word satirical novel. With your permission, I would be thrilled to send you a partial manuscript.

Yours,


Notes

This was one of our better queries. Good job. I would drop this sentence from paragraph 2: Really, now; these people were poor. It makes the next sentence harder to understand. Besides, it's already been said.

I'm not sure I'd say they pass the buck. It's not clear that they ever had the buck. You could try dumping the middle of paragraph 3 and combining the front with the back, something like:

But then Tabitha's husband comes under investigation by the D.A., and her accounts are frozen. A clue to the whereabouts of the seven missing people is placed in Monica's lap by her husband, suggesting that he may be a kidnapper and murderer. And Effie's gardener and manicurist disappear, endangering both her rose beds and her nail beds. Now the ladies are left with no choice: they must solve the mystery themselves, or their Wednesday lunches will soon be history.

Clearly you've felt no need to hint at the reason these people are vanishing, or at a possible connection among the disappearances. Is it unimportant? You don't even refer to the book as a mystery. May we assume that the ladies see the light in the end? Or that their solution to the mystery is brilliant? If they merely stumble upon the solution, and remain self-absorbed, some will find it a less-than-rewarding read.

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