Kindling Tips

I have an Amazon Kindle. Great little device. It does much more than just read books, though Amazon may not want you to know everything the second generation version of their flagship e-reader can do. Well, they may, but they sure don’t advertise some of these uses. Maybe I’ve stumbled across these uses, maybe they’re inherent to anyone with half a brain. I dunno. Just thought I’d share them.

I’ve been using the Kindle to “hear” my own works of fiction. As you can tell, I write a lot, and I have a huge backlog of stories that are sitting around collecting dust. They need to be revised; nay, perfected. Sometimes, a writer needs to hear their work before they can truly gleam how well it flows. Reading it aloud yourself works, but doing so alone is tedious and I tend to give it up after a few sentences. No human being likes to talk to themselves, much less tell themselves a story they already intimately know. For me, hearing someone else read my story is like reading it with virgin eyes. Hearing others struggle over passages I deemed fluid makes my proofing job much easier. Not everyone I hand my stories to can give me the type of criticism I need; the next best thing is hearing them attempt to read the work. Now, I don’t have to even bother with that awkward stage. The Kindle can read a work to me, as long as it’s in the right format (PRC, TXT, AZW). That way, I can at least hear if something sounds awkward or illogical. Sure, the text to speech format isn’t the best and certainly can’t replicate a good human reader, but it’s helpful nonetheless. Any help in proofing goes a long way for writers wanting to hone their pieces. A word of warning: pausing the text-to-speech reader will eventually lock your Kindle up. To fix this, go to Home, press the Menu button, select Settings, and then press the Menu button again. Select “Restart” and your Kindle will reboot itself  (about a 5 minute process). Don’t worry when the Home screen comes up and there’s nothing there. It hasn’t finished reading its storage memory. Wait a moment and your content will reappear as it was.

If you’ve got a Kindle 2 and wanna take your word or OpenOffice pieces and convert them to PRC (the best format for Kindle 2′s text-to-speech feature), you can use Mobipocket Creator. It’s very straight forward and, best of all, free.

The Kindle 2 has free US internet access via AT&T 3G (international as well, if you get the DX). That means that most major cities and towns in the US can access Amazon’s mobile Kindle store. This is great for downloading books, but what about other tasks (such as looking up the weather or movie times) that would cost an arm and a leg on most cell phone data plans? The Kindle can do those too. On the Home page, hit the Menu button and then select Experimental. Then select Web Browser.

Keep in mind that this web browser is slow (due to e-ink refresh speeds) and cannot display a huge amount of content. Always go to the mobile edition of a website. For an example of how useful this is, while getting a new pair of glasses and in close proximity to a theatre, I went to fandango’s mobile website and found movie times. A word to the wise: it can’t do twitter-like API calls, so don’t expect to be doing any blog commenting or twitter/facebook updating. It’s merely an information gathering tool.

So you’re a writer and you’ve got your works on your Kindle 2. Congrats. Now what? Well you can read it…and you can proofread it. The Kindle has an annotation/note engine built in (the key reason for the full keyboard). Use the 5 direction selection stick to select words, then start typing. You’ll note that particular part of that page. The notes will be organized, catalogued, and then accessible at all times. You can even jump from note to note. This makes proofing possible when all you’ve got is a Kindle and lots of time on your hands. That’s why I’ve started to keep all my drafts on my Kindle. Never know when I might get the urge to proof!

If you have any PDF works or documents, CONVERT THEM to PRC as I suggested above. You cannot, via any way I’ve found, zoom in to a PDF. It simply displays on the screen as it can. Most of the time, this means it’s unreadable. You can flip the screen (press the Aa button next to the space bar and select the screen orientation you want) to a wider than tall format. This splits the PDF page in half (double the page viewing and screwing up magazine articles with more than one column) and zooms in a little bit. It’s still not perfect. The Kindle DX (with its 9″ screen) doesn’t seem to have this problem, but as that version is a bit pricey, I doubt it’s as proliferated as its smaller sibling.

The Kindle does have games built in. They’re accessible through keyboard shortcuts via the Home screen. I found them to be a bit…eh. Hopefully this will change as the KDK (Kindle Development Kit) has been released, which will invariably mean an APP store is coming for the Kindle platform. Google the shortcuts. I found them, played them, forgot them. So will you.

If I discover anything else, I’ll share. Till next time…

Antartist

Unpublished. Publicly read a few times.

The pen was not as smooth-writing as advertised. Ray’s tracing of Myra Cole, swimsuit model and wife to some famous athlete, was looking shoddy already. The soft outside lines of her gaunt shoulders deviated nearly an inch from their source, causing her arms to bow inward, as if she were some feminist lesbian rendition of Richard the Third. But Ray soldiered on. He had convinced himself that this would work.

After an hour of work, he pulled back and set the pen down to eye his handiwork. The traced lines were yet to meet, the last unmarked gap cresting the ridge of her left big toe nail. He frowned as he noticed how the tracing was devoid of detail. Myra’s eyebrows resembled cat whiskers and her face was fully lacking its normal color and gleam. Her eyes were vacant, white orbs missing irises or pupils. Ray hadn’t risked trying to replicate her eyes through side-by-side comparison drawing because he lacked the skill required. Ray was a terrible drawer and had tried to improve many times over the past few years to no avail. Not even a short stint in a college level drawing course had been able to save him from an eternity of mangling even the simplest of stick figures.

He groaned as his eyes moved to Myra’s most famous feature. Her breasts were flat crescents, their forming lines wayward and humped. Ray sighed and picked up his pen. He attempted to shadow in some curvature to her chest but only managed to create what appeared to be a gaping chest wound before he gave up. He was certainly a breast man and spent a lot of time searching Google’s image finder to locate the perfect pair. Since he had little patience for dating and no real charm to attract those that he did attach affection to, Ray had endeavored to draw his perfect woman. He had recently discovered (through tiresome internet searching) that his dream woman looked a whole lot like Myra Cole.

Ray added a few more touches to the body, including a crude stomach musculature and an offset belly button, and hovered his pen’s tip over the last line gap to close. He exhaled, his brain forbidding his hand to finish its work, his loins urging him to hurry it up. If this worked, he would no longer be alone. Ray closed his eyes and pictured Myra Cole, perched atop the sand dune in her barely-there bikini, beckoning him to join her, and closed the gap. He opened his eyes and looked to his right. Nothing. His rationale sighed with relief while his libido withered from disappointment.

Customer Service

This was published in the 2009 edition of the literary magazine The Filibuster.

I did try to include my thoughts on having to start my stubborn old pickup in the middle of the night, as well as the eerie feeling of driving on an empty bypass and parking in an empty parking lot. I’m no Hemmingway. I fail to fit all my details in ten word sentences. But I am a writer, perhaps on assignment by the fates. Take the gruel with the gravy they say, but so far I’ve completely eluded the gravy at my tender age of twenty. Frost once said that writers write in ignorance from fifteen to twenty-five but he couldn’t get properly published until he was forty so screw him. I don’t write about farms or dead children. I only write what I know and then I pervert it with my amateurish, cold narratives. That’s probably why I’m walking down the “Personal Care” aisle to clock in to my first shift as an overnight supermarket shelf stocker instead of walking down the left-most aisle of Radio City Music Hall to accept the Nobel Prize for literature.

“Excuse me.”

A man, shambling like an old tramp and dressed just about the same, assaults my nose with liquor-laced, lava-hot breath, pickled by neglect of brush and paste. Yellow and broken teeth, barely attached to their moorings, hang between chapped lips bent in a sheepish grin.

“May I help you,” I ask, not yet on duty and burning with the desire to knock out his remaining bicuspids.

“Where are your provalactisms?”

I stare at him, slack jawed, taking in his stained gray wife-beater and tattered maroon shorts, his hairy thighs entirely too visible.

“Pardon?”

“Your provalactisms,” he affirms, nodding sagely. Now, I have at this point no earthly idea what this hobo is talking about so I stall. I rack my brain as I stare back at him. What in the hell is a provalactism?

My idea bulb turns on. “Oh, you mean prophylactics?”

“Naw, I mean provalactisms.”

“Sir, I don’t know what-”

“Rubbers! Your damn rubbers, son!” he shouts, rolling his eyes at my ignorance.

I take him aboard the HMS Condom and point to the shelf he’s standing next to. His face still contorted with rage at my inability to understand his strange language, he turns to gaze at a true wonder of consumerism. A veritable schmorgasboard of condom sizes, shapes, and colors, all organized by brand in neat little columns, meets his eyes. He grins like a boy about to buy a slingshot. Fun, but dangerous.

“Thank ya’” he grumbles as I walk away, leaving him to the hard task of figuring out just what type of condom fits just which form of debauchery.

I hope I get overtime for this.

Copyright Adam Schultz, 2009. Republication of any form is prohibited unless written consent is given by the author.

Gone

This flash fiction piece has creeped out many an individual. Not many see this story for what it really is; no, I won’t spell it out for you. Written in 2008. Unpublished.

The scents of dust and death, neither fresh enough to be powerful or stale enough to be hidden, dance in the air on the diminished remains of pencil wood and loose-leaf paper. The floor cradles decaying husks of wooden desks, their corpses hairy with black mold. Rusty chair legs jut out of the debris strewn about the room, capped pipes reaching for the holey roof, carrying dreams going nowhere. Standing tall, authority over all, the grand teacher’s desk, with its freshly-lacquered face, reflects the room’s rot back at it, Lord and Mirror. The disciple, a black void on framed board, shouts in chalky-white scrawl:

“We’re all pink on the inside–

I should know!

I cut us all open.”

As the words bore into my mind, a chunk of The History of America lands just shy of my feet, a few blank pages falling to the ground in its wake. “Bill of Rights 326,” reads the otherwise empty piece of paper that comes to rest on my boot. I nudge it away, reach for my blade, and seek my enemy.

A young boy leans in a far corner, his gray gaze wide and long, passing through me to stare at some distant horror. I approach him cautiously, the child much more frightening than the chaos of the room. Dried blood curls the corners of his mouth into tight parentheses, manufacturing a smile I know he cannot feel. I kneel to bring our faces level, offering him a fatherly grin.

“Whatcha doin’ here, son?” I ask, the words skinned raw by the gravel in my throat.

“I came here to learn,” he replies, tilting his head as if my question betrays a lack of intelligence.

A growl tickles my teeth, so I close my eyes and fight the urge to put the boy in his place.

I open my eyes. “Where ya from, little fell-”

He’s gone.

I stand and dash for the doorway, reminding myself that little kids are often too fast for their own good. A chair leg catches my foot and sends me flying into the hallway. I pick myself off the floor, shake the dirt off my sleeves, and glare down the corridor.

It’s empty, just like the rest of this school, this town, this world.

Copyright Adam Schultz, 2008. Republication in any form is prohibited, unless written permission is obtained from author. Links/diggs/tweets are permitted

A Missed Deed

This story was written in 2007 and was published in a couple of local literary papers including the Auburn University Montgomery campus newspaper The AUMnibus.

At three thirty in the morning, my cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

I could hear something in the background.

“Hello?” I repeated.

“Momma?”

I blinked. “No…” The greeting was odd, seeing as I was most certainly not a mother, or female.

“Daddy?”

“Wrong again,” I croaked, wiping at my gummed-up tear ducts. To the best of my knowledge I had yet to father a child.

“Who ish thish?”

“Likewise,” came my retort. The word was soaked with both anger and confusion. The fellow on the other end seemed to notice it.

“Bashturd!”

I laughed. “No need for such language. Call me Bob. And you?”

“Geoff”

“Well Geoff, it sounds to me like you’re drunk.”

“Shut up. I ish fo’ine.”

“Right.” I laughed. “Wrong number, Geoff.”

I hung up.

At four o’clock in the morning, my cell phone rang again. I ignored it, even as it kept ringing. I contemplated turning the phone off, but decided instead to activate its vibration setting.

“Hello, Geoff” I finally answered.

“Bob. Ish troubled here.”

“What?”

“Trouble! Two…everything…no see.” Geoff’s cell phone must have been giving him a hard time. I was only getting a few words.

“Geoff, listen to me. You’re drunk. It sounds like you’re driving. Pull off the road and rest. And stop calling me.”

I hung up. Geoff did not call me again.

At seven thirty I woke. Normally, I would watch a bit of the morning news before leaving for work, but decided against it. Instead, I slipped into my shirt, pants, and tie as quickly as possible. I grabbed a cereal bar on the way out of the door.

“Morning, Robert!” My boss, Mr. Blackmorn, looked especially jovial today. “Gonna make it to the party tonight? Open bar, my friend!”

“I might,” I replied. I had not planned to get drunk with my coworkers, but it was better to lie to Blackmorn most of the time.

“Look, Bob,” he said, stepping closer to me. “We got a newbie in today. I want you to meet him before I get on the vid-conference with home office.”

“Ok,” I replied, looking over Blackmorn’s shoulder.

A very young man came out of a corner cubicle. He had to be no older than twenty.

“Bob, this is Bradley Dobbs. He’s our new data entry worker.”

I shook the kid’s hand. “Pleasure,” I mumbled, smiling dumbly in the kid’s general direction.

Dobbs nodded, but said nothing.

“Look,” Blackmorn said, pointing a finger at me. “I’ve invited Dobbs to the party tonight. I want you there, Bob.”

“We’ll see,” I said, turning to head to my office. I heard Blackmorn opening the conference room door.

At nine thirty, Dobbs entered my office.

“Mr. Blackmorn said I’m supposed to get something from you.”

“Yeah,” I said, handing him a stack of papers. “It’s your insurance stuff. Fill it out. Includes a twenty thousand dollar life policy and dental.”

“Nice, but can I opt out of the life policy?”

I shook my head. “I wouldn’t. It’s free, if you’re worried about cost.”

“Oh,” he said, somewhat surprised.

“Have that to me by four, so I can sneak out before the party.”

He looked up at me, curious. “You’re not going?”

“No. I don’t like to encounter my coworkers outside of a work environment.”

“But the party’s in the office.”

“True,” I agreed, “but I consider mingling with drunken coworkers as being outside of a work environment.”

“Ah. I’ve never really been to a party with drinks before. I guess I have to give it a try. Keep face around Mr. Blackmorn, anyway.”

“Good idea.” I said, nodding. “Well, I look forward to reading all of your personal medical information.”

This got a laugh. “Thanks.”

At three thirty, Dobbs entered my office and placed the forms I had given him on my desk. I nodded to him and he sat down. I looked down at the form briefly, checking to make sure he didn’t miss anything.

“Everything looks in order.”

“I’ll see you Monday, then,” he said, standing up.

“Huh,” I asked, watching him head to my office door.

“Well, I won’t see you at the party tonight, will I?” He grinned.

I laughed. “You got me. See you Monday, Brad. Enjoy the party.”

“I’ll try,” he said and exited my office. He then stuck his head back in and added, “Just call me Geoff. Everyone else does.”

Nodding to him, I turned my attention back to his form.

“Geoff, huh?” I mumbled. “Huh…weird.”

When I got home, I made sure to turn off my cell. Didn’t want another drunk dial.

Saturday morning, I woke to the thud of the local paper hitting my wall. Gotta love paper boys. After getting dressed in some comfortable clothes and making some coffee, I stepped out and picked up the paper. The top of the front page was the usual sports, major news, etc. I flipped it over and gazed at a poorly reproduced picture of a horrendous looking car wreck. The article was small, but covered all the bases.

A young man, identified as Geoffrey Dobbs, 21, of Clearwater, has been found dead on I-22. Geoffrey’s vehicle, a red four-door sedan, slammed into a concrete barrier. Mr. Dobbs was flung from the car. He died instantly. Police suspect the deceased was intoxicated.

I wouldn’t be seeing Mr. Bradley Geoffrey Dobbs on Monday or ever again for that matter, and neither would anyone else.

Copyright Adam Schultz, 2007. Republication in any form is prohibited, unless written permission is obtained from author. Links/diggs/tweets are permitted.

This Thing On?

Welcome to my personal little spot on the great web-o-sphere. My name’s Adam Schultz, but most know me by my username “tlozwarlock.” I’m a staff writer for The Falcoholic, a Sports Blog Nation NFL blog focusing on the Atlanta Falcons. I’m also a music reviewer for The New Review, a site focused on heavy metal news and CD reviews. I’ve got other projects as well, but all will be revealed later. For now, this will be the one stop shop for anything me; and as crass and self-centered as that sounds, it’ll be true.

Not only will you see links to my various CD reviews and football articles, but you’ll also be getting various bits of fiction and opinions scattered throughout all that boring writing. Look for stuff soon. For now, I’m going to bed.