O frabjous day: we have a new book reviewer over at the reviews blog—Rene! She’s great, and has already posted a handful of reviews. Here are hers so far:

• Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
• Max Brooks, World War Z
• Jonathan Maberry, Patient Zero
• Loretta Chase, Your Scandalous Ways

And here are my newest ones:

• Leslie Parrish, Black at Heart
• Christina Dodd, Storm of Visions and Storm of Shadows
• Nina Bruhns, Shoot to Thrill
• Kristen Britain, Green Rider and First Rider’s Call
• Samantha Sommersby, Forbidden: the Temptation
• Ridley Pearson, Killer Summer
• Nathan Myers, Guac Off!
• Shiloh Walker, Chains and The Redeeming
• Dana Stabenow, ed.: Unusual Suspects
• Jessa Slade, Seduced by Shadows
• Joyce Goldstein, Tapas

The latter can make it hard to distinguish between an honest review and a shill. Especially because some of those people go into things with the best of intentions, but simply allow their enthusiasm for being “a part of things” to carry them away.

The only thing I don’t really agree with her about is the attempt to monetize a blog (obviously, as I have Google ads and Amazon links). I have health problems that keep me from holding a regular job, and I’m not too proud too use the means at my disposal to make a few dollars off of what I’m good at. That said, I’m not going to slant my reviews and compromise my integrity in order to get a free book. Sure I enjoy getting review copies, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I didn’t any more.

Actually, that reminds me. I wrote an article on how to be a professional reviewer more than four years ago—yes, so long ago that it’s archived in the static content of the site, because it’s from back before I had a blog! Mrs. Giggles notes that some folks now just put up a blog and expect review copies to come to them; as I note in that article,

I didn’t start requesting review copies of items and books from companies until I’d been reviewing for more than five years (and had more than 350 reviews on the internet), although some publishers approached me themselves a couple of years earlier than that.

Of course, some parts of that article are out of date now; I haven’t had to send actual physical mail requesting a review copy in a couple of years now!

While I’m posting, here are the links for the latest Errant Dreams Reviews posts:

• The Black Ship, Diana Pharaoh Francis
• Tails of Love, Foster & Cameron
• A musing on description
• Atlantis Unleashed, Alyssa Day
• Beyond the Rain, Jess Granger

While I’m at it, here’s today’s book review, of Yasmine Galenorn’s Demon Mistress!

However, Amazon’s terms for blog owners are frankly appalling. The percentage of revenue that Amazon takes is ridiculous. They set the prices, and they have an inordinate amount of control over what they are allowed to do with your content. I also didn’t see any way to claim a blog but then block Amazon from publishing it via the Kindle—so you can’t say, “that’s mine, don’t touch,” as far as I can tell. And if you want to sign up your blog, you then have to give them 30 days’ notice if you want to back out. So you’re in it for at least a month.

I went ahead and claimed our reviews blog because I felt that, under the circumstances, I needed to keep anyone else from doing so. But I also sent Amazon a message, to kindle-publishing-blogs at amazon.com:

I want to let you know that I’m not at all happy with the terms and conditions for the Kindle Publishing for Blogs program. The only reason I registered my blog right now is because it’s so easy for people to claim each other’s blogs and I want to make sure that doesn’t happen to me. Unless the terms, which give Amazon an egregious percentage of sale price and an inordinate amount of control over how content is used, change in the near future, I don’t expect to continue publication of my blog to Kindle, and I will recommend to others that they do the same.

In a not-entirely-related note, here are links to recent book reviews: Liz Scott’s yummy Zero-Proof Cocktails, and Lora Leigh’s most recent Breeds book, Bengal’s Heart.

Cahlash’s asthma kicked off again, so he spent part of the weekend before this one on oxygen, and has had to take his inhaler rather often lately. He’s also on antibiotics for a possible secondary pneumonia infection. Poor kitty. Wanna see what an inhaler looks like when prepped for a cat?

Cahlash and his inhaler

I also have some new reviews for you:

• Branded by Fire, Nalini Singh
• Bound By Honor, Colette Gale
• Pitch Black, Leslie Parrish
• Eat Me, Kenny Shopsin
• Nightlife, Rob Thurman

As well as a set of last-minute Mother’s Day gift recommendations!

Here are also some non-book non-cookware gift ideas:

Level 80 Mom stuff!

A bunch of stunning necklaces at our Etsy shop and our Shop Handmade shop. Order between now & Mother’s Day within the continental US and we’ll give you a free upgrade to Priority Mail!

Amazon decided to exclude “adult content” books from sales rankings, and thus from certain searches. I can at least understand the point some people are making that it’s reasonable to want to protect children from sexual material. However, there are a couple of problems with that idea. First, the listings of these books don’t contain explicit material of any kind; someone would have to order them, and that generally requires a credit card, which means an adult is involved at some point. Second, the actual books being deranked belie the assertion that Amazon is deranking “adult” material.

In other words, they’re deranking material that certain segments of the population would consider inappropriate or controversial, such as GLBT parenting and children’s books, while leaving “Girls Gone Wild” and “Playboy” material alone. There’s a very clear double-standard at work here that is forcing one brand of morality onto all of Amazon’s customers. It appears that category metadata is probably being used to filter out GLBT and sex-related materials.

Amazon is now claiming that this is a result of a glitch, despite having told at least one author that it was policy. Hopefully this means they’re back-pedaling and will undo the deranking. However, it would be foolish to simply assume we’ve won. Keep an eye on the ongoing news regarding this. Make it clear to Amazon that you don’t want them determining which categories of books you can and can’t find when you do a search on their site for reading material. Many people are switching wholesale to buying their books from other outlets. You can also contact their customer service department (politely but firmly!) to let them know how you feel and what actions you plan to take. Digg, reddit, stumble, and FARK the good articles you find regarding this subject so more people will find out. If you want to tweet about it, just check out #amazonfail and you’ll find more information than you know what to do with!

And here’s some new book reviews for you: Other Earths (Gevers & Lake); Burning Wild (Christine Feehan); Ghostland (Jory Strong).

Looks like we’re back to my husband having a sinus infection, NOT cluster headaches, which is awesome. A really bad sinus headache requiring a second course of antibiotics, and a somewhat deviated septum, but that’s a hell of a lot better than cluster headaches. I’m so glad the ER doc was wrong, and just amazed that a sinus infection could cause that much pain!

Friday night one of them hit while we were out to dinner, and it was so bad we ended up taking him to the ER. His right eye was bloodshot and looked swollen, his hands were shaking, and he could barely stand upright. I’m still amazed he could drive, and speak coherently. Two hours later, while we were still in the waiting room, the symptoms disappeared just as quickly as they had come on.

As it turns out, that quick and sudden disappearance was the key that clued the ER doc in to what was probably going on. If he’d still been in as much pain when she saw him as when he’d arrived, he would have ended up getting a CAT scan looking for an abscess, or she might have thought he had meningitis. But the pain wouldn’t have just vanished. Instead, she read off the list of symptoms for cluster headaches, and they all fit perfectly. Every last one.

The huge relief is that this isn’t something critical that could result in disability or death, and frankly with the amount of pain he was in, that was a scary possibility. But the still-frightening part is that this is an incurable neurological disorder that is believed to cause “the most severe pain known to medical science.” Women have been known to say it’s worse than childbirth. It’s been compared to having a hot poker shoved in one’s eye, or having a limb amputated without anaesthetic. Cluster headaches have also been called “suicide headaches.”

Did I mention how amazed I am that he managed to drive, remain upright, and speak coherently while in that much pain?

We’ll be taking him to our regular doc tomorrow, who can hopefully give him an official diagnosis and some meds. This weekend he unfortunately had to miss some fun events since he had to stick close to the hospital—he’d been advised that if he had a repeat experience that was longer or more severe(!) he should go back and get that CAT scan.

Anyway. That was our Friday night. We were at the ER until about midnight. Thankfully I’d brought what turned out to be a really good book, Leslie Parrish’s Fade to Black. Speaking of which, here are the other books I’ve reviewed recently:

Paul Levine, Illegal
Fiona Patton, The Silver Lake
Keri Smith, Wreck This Journal
Christine Feehan, Dark Curse
Dakota Cassidy, Kiss & Hell
Anton Strout, Deader Still
Rob Thurman, Deathwish
Elizabeth Vaughan, White Star

Vaughan’s book is the tenth in that “recommended reading” series, and Thurman’s book ended up being an unexpected book 11. I also adore Patton’s series, and Parrish’s book was fantastic!