Anna W. Waggener's Blog

In industry news, Kindle sales officially count towards the USA Today’s best sellers list. It’s a revolution, guys!

Also, people love rewriting Jane Austen with monsters and people love Nancy Drew, period. Or do they? Author Janni Lee Simner discusses “boy” and “girl” books in an excellent blog post that everyone should read. In a sort-of-related-but-not-really post, blogger Editorial Anonymous explains why Bloomsbury should be ashamed of itself. Maybe those are my words, but I think that it’s how most people should feel.

And I want to give a little love to Amazon, who donated $25,000 to the NaNoWriMo Office of Letters and Light. This news made me very, very happy.

Now then. Let me just say that I love the internet. Not in the OMG THIS IS FANTASTIC FOR PROCRASTINATING sense, but in the I’ve never made a real-life setting this clear! sense. Researching for my current project is going really well, and I’ve found great information in each and every book that I’ve picked up, but Google has been helping so much that it’s ridiculous. You see, guide books on New Orleans may give me great information, and may help me navigate a city that I’ve never visited, but Flickr helps me see a city that I’ve never visited.

Now, of course I’d love to actually visit the Big Easy (and all of the other sites where these books take place), but this is a good substitute until I get the chance. For example, I’ve used Google Maps to figure out driving times and to get a peek at the view from the highway, I’ve used Wikipedia for reminding me simple things about windows and stalkers (yes, I have really looked up “windows” on Wikipedia. It should probably embarrass me, but I just find it REALLY. COOL. that they have an extensive article on windows.), and I’ve navigated the boardwalk in Shreveport (via its own website) without ever having to leave my living room. I’ve listened to clips of accents from Haiti and Louisiana and I’ve window-shopped the streets of New Orleans without getting out of bed. After finding the perfect hotel in a guidebook, I was even able to go online and take a video tour of the guest rooms. I. Love. Internet.

In more panic-inducing news, after doing some calculations, I’ve decided that I need to hit 2,500 words a day every day if I want to finish this second manuscript by the time I leave home in late August. Ack. That’s a lot of words! But with discipline I can do it. I just have to find said discipline. So far I’ve only done about 700 words today, so I need to get to crackin’.

I hope that everyone has had a great weekend!