Sunday, December 5, 2010

Into The Electronic Age

It takes some getting used to, just as writing on an electric typewriter and using a copy machine replaced slogging away on a  manual typewriter with carbon paper, and just as that gave way to electronic word processing and the ever-easier use of the computer and word processing programmes with discs and CDs for back-up, just as the  thought process made the transition between writing everything out first in black ink in a lined yellow pad to being able to actually compose on a keyboard...now I have to get used to reading my own books on not just the computer screen, but...oh the incredibility of it...on my iPhone.

Yesterday "Uneasy Lies The Head", Volume I of the Glastonbury Chronicles went up on Kindle on Amazon.com and I am told "The Sword of The King", Volume II of the Glastonbury Chronicles and "Son of Air and Darkness" (although it is not advertised as such, Volume I of Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe) are not far behind.  Books, months of writing and editing, all available on that tiny little screen of my cell phone as well as on my computer or a Kindle reading device.  What once was printed on hundreds of sheets of paper, now electronically sent to my phone and computer and now truly the size that can fit into my pocket or purse.

What would the great authors I grew up reading have thought?  William Shakespeare? Mark Twain?  Charles Dickens?  Even Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov?  J. R. R. Tolkien?  Would they have been amazed at this new frontier of publication?  Would it have been considered wizardry or witchcraft?  For that matter , how would Mr. Shakespeare have felt about motion picture versions of his plays?  Or Mr. Dickens about audiobooks? 

Oh brave new world that hath such contraptions in it!

And now this brand new e-Author  has to go find her book...it's ringing in the background.