Sunday 9 February 2014

The world is getting smaller and bigger

The world is getting smaller and bigger.

This blog was supposed to be about my big announcement that my books are now available not just in paperback and Kindle but also as eBooks for Nook and Kobo:
Click Here to check out my ebooks for Nook




 KEY WEST 

 DEATH by GLASGOW

 NAKED EUROPE

But this week, I was in a nostalgic (read: emotional with issues) mood after reluctantly selling my 14- year-old car that I had washed, polished and loved for many winters, springs, summers...you get the neurotic picture.

Signing over the car  'title' got me reminiscing about the good ol' days -  the early days. My first foray into the world of computing -

Ebooks are definitely here to stay and as a writer, despite my love of the paperback (and of course hardback), I'm happy to embrace the new technology. I must confess that the embrace does involve rather a large learning curve. From iPads to Kobo to Nook - how is the writer, who just a few years ago thought he'd mastered the ultimate in technology when he bought a Philips Videowriter word processor, supposed to keep up?
Jon Breakfields' first computer
A treasured mseum piece

This beast served as my notepad/typewriter for all my writing for many years. It had 16K of RAM and 16K of ROM and no I didn't misstype and forget a 'Mega' or a Giga'.
It weighed a mere 30 lbs. soaking wet and traveled with me across continents. Its main claim to fame was a supporting role in the Bond movie 'License to Kill'. If it was good enough for Bond then...
In the days when the sneaking on of carry-on baggage was a little less stressful than it is today - I dragged the beast on board flights across the pond. In its large black carry case, today it would be refused by the likes of Delta Airlines or Ryan Air as too large and overweight for even checked baggage, never mind as a carry-on.

I was the guy shoving past you to board the aircraft first to make sure there was a seat with extra legroom - not for me but my brontosaurus-sized laptop. I used to pray that it would fit under the seat in front of me - terrified in case the economy-class cabin staff would confiscate it and send it tumbling down into the bowels of the aircraft along with all those other fragile items...never to be retrieved in one piece. Going through security was always a nightmare when the dutiful ex-Stasi employees insisted I turned it on...not always prudent in a foreign county whose electricity supply was measured in enough volts to incinerate my treasured iPad of the 1980s.

You typed away and saw your words on a little screen - made your corrections. Happily accepted your one choice of font. Saved your work on a floppy disk that cost about $20 for one and printed out your work...and sent it off to potential publishers.

Many years later, I bought my first laptop ( A Toshiba - that had no internet access and weighed a mere 8lbs from an ex-felon in Key West) and marvelled at the technology until I had to sadly send the beast off to the computer knackers.

So back to the 21st century and I may not have an iPad or a touchpad or an eReader but I'm proud to say that you can read my books anyway you like to: hard, soft, over-easy ... just like an egg.