Special Report: Amazon buys Goodreads?

Goodreads has been a pretty big part of my spare time in the last few years.  You don't get to be the #6 reviewer of all time in America by just dabbling here and there.  Anyway, it was a pretty big jolt when it was announced yesterday that Amazon was buying Goodreads.

I'm not sure what to think at this time.  It could be good for Goodreads but how often does a corporation buy something and then not make sweeping changes?  I'm not jumping ship yet but it never hurts to have several escape plans in place.  I might start using Bookish as a backup.  It's run by Simon & Shuster, Penguin, and Hatchette so it might be a good way to get free stuff.

I'm trying to be optimistic but Amazon buying Goodreads is a lot like that Spider-Man story where Doctor Octopus got engaged to Aunt May. You knew something bad was on the horizon but at least Aunt May got to be happy for a little while.

Going Camping?

The April session of Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up fast.  I'm taking full advantage of the new variable word count feature to set the bar pretty low at 20,000 words.  I have several reasons for doing this:

1. I have several fantasy short story ideas I can't seem to get out of my head, one of which I will attempt using Lester Dent's formula.
2. Ticket to the Grave isn't quite ready to start yet since I haven't made any changes Between Hell and a Hard Place yet.  I probably have 20k of changes to make, which I'll be doing once I write the short stories mentioned in #1.
3. The time factor.  I know of two concerts I want to go to plus spending time with my lovely girlfriend is a lot more pleasurable than wrestling out a novel in 30 days.

March already?

One of these days, I'll write another blog post that isn't bullet points:

1. My lovely girlfriend is out of town this weekend visiting relatives so I'll be giving Between Hell and a Hard Place a much needed round of editing.
2. Camp NaNoWriMo part 1 starts April 1st.  I still have no idea what I'm writing.
3. I read this article about Michael Moorcock writing a lot of his early books in 3-10 days using a specific formula.  His prep works sounds a lot like my NaNoWriMo preparations.  I'm toying with trying the method to write a pulp fantasy novel at some point.
4. I'm thinking I need to read a few westerns in order to read outside my comfort zone.  While I've read a number of weird westerns, I don't think I've read more than a couple straight westerns.
5. I'm reading my first Joe Abercrombie novel and enjoying it quite a bit.  People always mention how gritty they are and how the characters don't fall into the standard good or evil mold.  What people never mention is all the dry humor.