Fiction: Good Hair Day

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are supplied by River. This week's words/prompts are: extravagant, koala, plane, charged, potatoes, alone. Another optional prompt is Charlotte's colour of the month - vivid tangerine. 
    The aim of Words for Wednesday is to use one or all of the prompts to write something – ie, a story, a poem, an essay or any forms of writing, fiction or nonfiction, basically write anything you want.

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Fiction: Good Hair Day
11:01 AM
The Samoyed was too busy admiring herself in the mirror to notice Tess Mercy walking out the door and closing it. Sometimes Tess thought she must be living in another plane of existence or else why did it keep happening? Her ability to change people into animals when she touch them when they anger or mistreat is a family curse she inherited nine months ago when she turned thirty. 
    The Samoyed was Tess' landlady, Mrs. Grant. She never used to raise rent or evict anyone but after her husband's passing, she became highly charged with anger and distrust. Tess wished she had not been so hasty to rush down to Mrs. Grant's apartment when she read the notice with the rent raise. Considering the building had been slowly falling to disrepair, a 300 dollar raise was ridiculous. But Tess' plead didn't alter Mrs. Grant's decision even if Tess did save her life once. 
    Five years ago, Mrs. Grant was evicting one of the tenants when the man set fire to his apartment with Mrs. Grant inside. Tess heard her scream when she was walking down the stairwell. It was hard work carrying a semi-conscious Mrs. Grant down the five flights of stairs. Sometimes Tess regretted saving her especially when the old woman kept raising the rent. 

Why I keep using Firefox

I normally used Firefox as my sole web browser. Recently, when I tried to comment on Blogger blogs, it would not go through but keep saying publishing and nothing happening for so long and after many tries, I had to give up and use Safari.  I don't understand why but most time when I have an issue with Blogger especially with commenting, it's because of Firefox.
    I don't hate Firefox except when it is being incompatible with Blogger. With Firefox, there is like a thousand settings to every little thing and why can't they just cut down on those settings and simplify everything? I guess I may not be the user they are targeting because I find every time they add a new feature, I had to look it up on the web on how to turn it off. It's why I hate updating Firefox, that, also, every time I update, a week or two later, there's another update. So yes, for security, it's a good reason to keep your browser up to date but are they really updating security most of the time?
   I have tried other browsers. I mostly hate Safari - something about it that just irks. Maybe it just seems like everything is on the left side, like closing tabs where the x marker is on the left side. I don't know. I also kind of hate Chrome because it's like I'm using everything google which I dislike and I didn't want to sign into Chrome. (I don't sign in when I use Firefox or Safari.) I didn't try other browsers as I'm too used to Firefox and re-learning how to use them is annoying. I guess that's not-so-great a reason to keep using the same browser but habits, how can you change that easily? Of course, I am not against using a new browser but they would have to be easy and simple for a mac user (using a computer not a smartphone) who likes easy an simple when it comes to browsing the web.

What browser do you use to blog? And do you like it?

Seven Things

01 - My writing ambition has somewhat demised. I haven't been sending out my short stories to any online journals. I think now I prefer writing contests more. At least the competition isn't everybody. I had entered a couple of writing contests before and of course I didn't win but it just seemed somewhat easier than having to randomly choose which story to send because as specific as online journals are with their guidelines (and sometimes themes or genres), they are still sort of vague in some strange way while writing contests are while just as specific, at least, they are not as vague but maybe that's just my experience. Anyway, writing contests are just easier although failure rate is kind of higher.

02 - I haven't been doing the Friday Writings challenges. I think having the restriction of writing the maximum words of 369 is something I'm not good at even though whatever writing (fiction, that is) I posted, I try to restrict to a low number although higher than 369. I guess I'm not one for brevity.
    Plus I think the Friday Writings challenges is more for poetry and prose as the participants are mostly writing poetry which I don't do any more. I like that they tell you what next week's prompt is so that you can write in advance. Check out Poets And Storytellers United over here if you like to participate.

03 - I haven't been participating (posting) in respect to Insecure Writers Support Group so they took me off their sign-up list. I actually haven't joined any other writing groups or even discussion groups so I guess being kicked off one matters little. It is nice to talk about your complaints, failures, activities and anything that gives amateur and seasoned writers something to share and bond over but like I said above, I don't have much writing ambitions so I didn't really have much to talk about. Visit the Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog here.

04 - Book series connecting to one another — I don't like the idea of an author's book series all connected into a single world. I prefer a series (as most books are series) as belonging to itself, its own little universe. Also with connected series, you feel like you didn't really finish a series unless you read the connected other series. It's awful enough that book series are like twenty books long but now they are connecting all the series, it's maddening.

05 - Ebook pricing is really getting ridiculous — Recently I saw an ebook for $22.95 (pricing is usually set by the publishers) which usually are at $12.99. Then there were ebooks at $19 and even $35 - what have changed to make ebooks this ridiculously high? 
    I can't understand the pricing of ebooks but I think ebooks should be lower than paper books. When you buy an ebook, you're not buying a book, you're buying the rights to read a book so why should people pay the same amount equal to paper books when you cannot resell ebooks or even lend them unless you hand over your ereader.
    Frankly, I think people should just invest in their public library and borrow books from them. This way, everyone benefits. But that doesn't really solve anything. What would be better if publishers allow public libraries to have perpetual licensing of ebooks they purchase since they pay triple or even quadruple the price, way more than regular consumers. If publishers are going to treat ebooks like paper books, they should allow permanent ownership (not just letting ebooks sit in ereaders or have temporary licenses) of ebooks when people and public libraries purchase them.
    Here are two links talking about ebook pricing:
    - The hidden truth about ebooks & eaudiobooks
    - The problem with e-books (video)

06 - If anyone is interested in murder mysteries, there is a magazine, Deadly Pleasures, all about new and upcoming murder mysteries books. They now offer their magazine without subscription fees. Check it out over here.

07 - Book samples that only has an introduction — When I read a book sample, I expect to read some of the book not just an introduction. So yes, an introduction is part of a book but it is not the actual book, it's an opinion, an essay, a glorified love letter to the author or the book and it sometimes contains spoilers. For those reasons, I always skip reading the introduction when I read book samples but also when starting a book.
    For a real book sample, it should show the text, like chapter 1 and then some text - this shows samples of the writing style or how the book is structured or formatted, even a little taste of the characters. You don't get that reading an introduction.

What's on your mind these days?