Disney and How Alternate Reality, Technology, and Sociology Shape Experience
On second leg of flight home from Orlando now. Slept through snack service both times. Thanks to our status as Disney hotel guests, we were at the park until 3 AM last night during Extra Magic Hours. Which means I slept not quite four hours last night and total unconsciousness against the bulkhead of the plane has been inevitable.
Returning from Disney to Real Life invokes a kind of culture shock that was first obvious to me at the Dulles airport while we waited to change planes. I went into a restroom that was less than pristine and thought “what the hell happened here?” To be fair, for an airport restroom, it was quite acceptable. But compared to what we were just used to, a few flushes not working and some stray paper on the floor just seemed shocking.
For the pedants out there, we were at Walt Disney World in Florida, but I’ll just refer to it as “Disney” for the rest of this entry. After all, although each park in the Disney family has its own flavor and uniqueness, they are all part of a continuum as an Alternate Reality, even though not geographically contiguous, and many of the statements I’ll make can be generalized beyond just WDW or the Magic Kingdom in specific, to the other parks that are part of WDW and other Disney parks around the world.
The status of Disney as an Alternate Reality was only emphasized by the ebook I decided to download to my iPhone to read while waiting in line. I chose a book that has had a nice life in print as well as in e-format, Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow.
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THE HOT STREAK, now published!
My latest erotic romance novel, THE HOT STREAK is now available from Ravenous Romance!
It’s not yet live on Fictionwise or the Kindle Store, but I’ll post again when it is. Right now it can be bought directly from Ravenous as PDF, .prc (Kindle compatible), and Epub formats (compatible with lots of devices and software readers).
THE HOT STREAK is the first book to really combine my passions for erotica and baseball in one book. You don’t have to know anything about baseball, though, to enjoy this book. Our heroine, Casey Branigan, doesn’t know much beyond “three strikes, you’re out” when she meets a major league pitcher named Tyler Hammond at a photo shoot.
As the marketing pitch goes: “As a manager in a big Boston design firm, Casey’s life has become lackluster – but her affair with Tyler promises to change that. Quickly caught up in the whirlwind that surrounds celebrity athletes, Casey travels all over the country to watch Tyler pitch. The sex is breathtaking and Casey loves the lifestyle fame and fortune affords. Tyler is on a winning streak, and he thinks Casey is the reason why. But Casey must decide for herself whether this is just a summer fling. Or is Casey starting a hot streak of her own?”
Buy it at Ravenous: here!
Meanwhile, I noticed my baseball-themed erotic short story, Baseball Blues, is still up for free download. So if you want a taste of things, check it out here.
Free Book Friday at Ravenous
It’s “Free Book Friday” at Ravenous Romance and they are giving away the m/m erotic romance “American Star” by Ryan Field! Their books are available as PDFs, epub format, or .prc (Kindle compatible). I just downloaded Ryan’s book but haven’t had a chance to read it yet! I hear if you like male/male action it’s rather hot, though! (“American Star” is Ryan’s version of American Idol…)
https://www.ravenousromance.com
My novel featured today!
MIND GAMES, my erotic paranormal romance novel, is today’s featured book at Ravenous Romance! There will be a print edition following soon, but for now, it’s in ebook format only.
It can be gotten a couple of ways:
From Ravenous Romance — they sell in PDF, .prc (for Kindle), & .epub (Sony Reader and others) formats
From Fictionwise — who sell in every ebook format known to man.
From the Amazon Kindle Store
Here’s the “back cover” copy, which I wrote myself. Um, I promise I’m better at writing novels than I am at writing copy:
Wren Delacourt is a woman with a gift, only she doesn’t know it. She has psychic abilities–the ability to see the future, to read minds, and to sense emotions. But ever since the death of her parents when she was a teenager, in an accident she foresaw, she has suppressed her abilities, often doubting her childhood memories and unsure if her powers even exist, or if she only imagined them. Unable to deal with other people’s emotions, she leads a quiet, somewhat lonely life working in a university library and socializing mostly with her downstairs neighbor, a gay man named Lawrence.
Everything changes when her sister Abby goes missing, and Wren hires a private investigator to try to find her. Derek Chapman isn’t what Wren expected in a P.I.; he’s young, good-looking, and sensitive. Wren is attracted to him immediately, and the feeling seems mutual, but Wren is afraid that this will be just another failed relationship.
She begins to have dreams about sex, about a dream lover who visits her at night. Is the man in her dreams just her subconscious trying to work out its conflicts between desire and fear? Or could someone really be stalking her in her dreams? And what does it mean when Derek’s search for Abby leads him to a private sex club? Fate seems to be pulling Wren into Derek’s arms, whether she is ready or not.
It has no customer reviews yet on Amazon or on Ravenous’ site, so fingers crossed that the first person who feels moved to do so loved it instead of wanting to trash it…!
Lion Dancers! Happy New Year
Chinese New Year goes on for nine days, and today when I was just finally getting settled down to work on the novel which is due in ONE MONTH (*hyperventilates*) and which I still have 40,000 words to write of… corwin mentioned he was hungry and hadn’t had lunch yet and gee, didn’t we need to take a trip to the Super 88 Market in Allston anyway?
We hopped in the car and went to Super 88 with the plan of getting something to eat in the food court there and then doing our asian grocery shopping. The food court there is huge, 10 stalls or something, including korean, viet namese, thai, taiwanese, bubble tea, dim sum, and I can’t even remember what else. We got the asian equivalent of “soup and sandwich” by getting pho and banh mi from the vietnamese stand, plus I got bubble tea and he went and got a thai iced tea.
While we were waiting for our food, a troupe of lion dancers came in and performed rites in front of each and every stand. Each shopkeeper put out a head of lettuce and some fruit, and the two lions would dance around each one and take turns “eating” the lettuce (shredding most of it and spraying it around). The kung fu school who did it is clearly one of the popular ones and they must be doing a lot of these ceremonies — they were all wearing matching sweatshirts with sponsorships on them, including Foxwoods Casino and such.
Each lion is made up of two guys, one working the head, and one the tail. The guys in the head make the eyelashes bat, the mouths open and close, and are responsible for tearing up the lettuce (and, I think, collecting donations), which the one in the back wags the tail and follows the front man around. Sometimes they are quite acrobatic, although in the crowded food court these poor guys couldn’t do much.
There were also two obviously non-Chinese members of the troupe tagging along somewhat wide-eyed and amused, one white, one black–I’m guessing it’s their first New Year.
Anyway, it was very good luck to be there to see the lion dancers, even if my ears are ringing somewhat now from all the drumming and cymbals.
Meanwhile, they are massively renovating Super 88 and it seems like they are shrinking drastically the amount of actual food they sell. The frozen foods section was about the same, but and entire aisle of tea is gone, they no longer have all the Philippine jarred/canned fishes, even the rice section is drastically shrunken. I don’t know how much of that has to do with imports from China being stopped, how much is the economy, and how much is their business model is changing, but there is easily half or less of the products they used to carry, and some items are mysteriously missing completely, like canned water chestnuts.
Huh, just answered my own question with this article from The Boston Globe: Super 88 Shifts Course As Competition Mounts This is a shame, as the other Asian groceries around have too narrow a range of foods to satisfy all my needs, but with Super 88 cutting down to bare bones, it’s hardly worth going there at all.
Arisia Party & Reading Info, plus other readings
The Circlet Press party will run from 8pm-ish to 11pm-ish in a room on the party floor, number to be determined on check in. I’m promising free blinky lights to the first 25 attendees! Why? Um, because blinky lights and erotic books are both really cool? Check the party board for the room #.
Then at 11:30 pm we shall repair to the BU Room where I’ll read some smutty science fiction & fantasy. Right now I’m planning to read from White Flames, maybe a piece of my new erotic paranormal romance ebook, and of course, if you all beg really nicely, a piece of Harry Potter porn.
We’ve also got the following other readings coming up!
Friday, January 23rd, at VERICON (Harvard’s SF Con) at 7:30 pm
Vinnie Tesla and Lauren P. Burka will read with me. They’ve also both worked in the Circlet offices and can share humorous stories of the slush pile.
and Tuesday, February 10th, a pre-valentine’s event at Back Pages Books in Waltham! 7pm.
Vinnie Tesla, Shariann Lewitt, and Lauren P. Burka will be joining me there.
Notes on the characters from MIND GAMES
Wren totally looks like Winona Ryder when she had short, short hair, with those big eyes and a kind of fragile gothic heroine look about her. While I based Derek on an anime character I love, actually, the male lead in BLOOD ALONE.
Mind Games, sample chapter
Hello friends and loved ones! For your reading pleasure, chapter one of MIND GAMES, the paranormal erotic romance I wrote that went live yesterday (January 10, 2009) on the Ravenous Romance site!
MIND GAMES: CHAPTER ONE
“Come on, Wren, I know you’re in there!”
Wren Delacourt hugged the pillow over her ears, but there was no chance that Lawrence was going to go away. She’d told him to come by at noon just last night, and he’d seen her go into her unit in the condo, and if she didn’t get up soon, he was going to start to worry that something terrible had happened to her…
No. Best not to think about that sort of thing. “I’m coming…” she called, but weakly. No way he’d hear that through her bedroom door and across the kitchen. She had to face facts. She had to sit up, then stand up, then open the door. She felt on the floor for her bathrobe.
Halfway to the door, she had to stop and put her hands to her eyes. The world seemed too hot today. Not the actual temperature, which was pleasant enough, but it was as if something electrical were pricking at her, about to overheat like a transformer.
Or maybe it was just a hangover. She pulled open the door and saw Lawrence’s face fall.
“Oh my God, are you all right?” he blurted.
She must have looked a fright; Lawrence was never tactless. She leaned on the doorframe. “Do I have raccoon eyes?” she asked, examining her palms for mascara smudges.
“You do,” he said, pushing her gently into the apartment, “if a raccoon were run over by a school bus three or four times.” He was carrying a paper bag and a wonderful smell was coming from it. “Go on, now, why don’t you get washed up and I’ll squeeze some oranges.”
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Just testing out the new blog theme…
So here’s a test post while I futz around with this out of date install of Word Press. There will be real content appearing here pretty soon, though.