8 Ways to Sunday

I made this:

The cover of Bill’s forthcoming book of short stories (click for a larger version)

Bill’s first book of short stories is coming soon, self-published via Lulu Press. It’ll be available via Lulu’s online store and on Amazon.com for about $10. I did the book and cover design, and it looks pretty damned good if I do say so myself.

The pencil sketches you see on the cover were done by Amber Govert, the sister of one of Bill’s former students. Her drawings also illustrate several of the stories found in the book.

On a side note, I know I’m behind on the promised Tucson trip update. I promise I’ll get something up here about our medical travel adventures by the end of the week!

Updates

• 8/20/2005 @ 12:40 PM — Lulu has been in the news lately. For more info about this new self-publishing company (kind of like CafePress for books, but more professional results) you can read articles in Time magazine, Britain’s Sunday Times, and the Sydney Morning Herald. (Props: Lulu Developer’s Blog)
• 10/16/2005 @ 5:23 PM — I forgot to post this earlier, but the book is now very much available. You can buy it now at Lulu.com. There are still some problems with the Amazon listing for the book, but those should hopefully be fixed sometime this week.

David Coursey of PDFzone expounds on the eight things that are wrong — and two things that are right — with current e-book publishing and technology.

In my opinion, Coursey is 100% right on all counts. That said, the Amazon–Booksurge–Mobipocket deal that Robert Nagle has reported on may have interesting repercussions in the future. Nevertheless, I don’t think any amount of author empowerment will help until the broad variety of e-book formats is narrowed down, and until the books themselves become easier and more enjoyable to read thanks to better reading devices. I doubt that e-books will truly take off until electronic paper technologies are perfected.

(props: I learned of the Kuro5hin story about Amazon’s e-book ambitions from TeleRead.)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will finally be coming to movie theaters this May. Visit the official web site and click on “larger trailer” to see a big beautiful QuickTime version of the hilarious teaser.

Google is adding books (those things made of glue and paper, remember?) to its long list of resources culled by the popular search engine. Google Print, currently in beta, will allow publishers to add their books to a database searchable by Google. A hit will allow searchers to view an image of the page in the found book, and to flip two pages forward or back to get a sense of context. Links to stores where the book can be purchased online will also be offered.

Fox News — known for its right-leaning bias — surprised last week by giving liberal pundit Michael Moore’s new film “Fahrenheit 9/11” a glowing review on its web site. Among other praise, reviewer Clive Davis called Moore’s movie “a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty, and at the same time a [sic] indictment of stupidity and avarice.” Davis cites a video of Bush reading to a group of school children on the morning of the attacks as the “most incredible” moment of the film. Sent to Moore by the instructor of the class Bush was visiting, it shows the President lingering for almost eleven minutes to complete his photo op despite having just been told that the country was under attack:

Instead of jumping up and leaving, he instead sat in front of the class, with an unfortunate look of confusion, for nearly 11 minutes. Moore obtained the footage from a teacher at the school who videotaped the morning program. There Bush sits, with no access to his advisers, while New York is being viciously attacked. I guarantee you that no one who sees this film forgets this episode.

In another refreshing instance of the press calling a spade a spade, the New York Times — a partisan media outlet in its own right — blasted Bill Clinton’s autobiography My Life in it’s Sunday book review section, chiding the former President for having written a “sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull” memoir.

In other news, record low temperatures have been reported in Hell this week. When asked to explain the underworld’s cold snap, a National Weather Service meteorologist said that it was agency policy not to comment on weather occurrences outside the earthly plane.