Jean M Cogdell – Page 2 – Jean's Writing

Secrets to Keep – FSF

Published on April 26, 2013 by Jean M. Cogdell

Secrets to Keep

My mouth tasted like a desert, and I looked like crap. Another night of tossing and turning, but at least I did get some sleep thanks to an old standby.

Some secrets should remain a secret, and digging out my old fairy night light is one more I’d keep even from my best friends. I hadn’t used it since grade school but couldn’t stand the thought of one more night lying awake in the dark.

A soft glow from a Tinker-bell lookalike had pushed the shadows to the far corners of my room giving me a false sense of security until I drifted to sleep.

Thanks to Lillie McFerrin for her Five Sentence Fiction Prompt “Shadows” this week. My entry is an excerpt from a WIP, hope you enjoyed it.

Don’t you be blue

Published on February 21, 2013February 21, 2013 by Jean M. Cogdell

If you smile…

You’ll stand out and attract positivity. So stay on the sunny side. Today this made me smile so I hope it brings a smile to your face too. It was attached to an informative writers blog, which I enjoyed but the pic is what captured my fancy. Go to She Writes to read the article.

Positivity

Monday morning smiles or blues? (wordznerd.wordpress.com)
The Writer Who Doesn’t Write Every Day (surrenderdorothy.typepad.com)
Sunny day blues (homepaddock.wordpress.com)
Writer Quirks – Jenny Milchman (janetboyer.typepad.com)
The Next Big Thing (4writersandreaders.com)

Who owns your books?

Published on January 15, 2013 by Jean M. Cogdell

I had a great Christmas and to my surprise received a new Kindle Paperwhite. I’ve been a proud, addicted owner of a Kindle 2 since

their launch and had lusted after the cute tiny Paperwhite from the first commercial. So, I abandoned my faithful 2, curled up with my cute new baby to enjoy all that the latest and greatest had to offer. I was about to be surprised in a different way as I discovered there are less, not more, whistles on my new toy such as no text to speech.

I’m not alone in my love of Kindle. My kids and grandkids have Kindles. It was through a series of events in helping each other with all these gadgets I discovered Kindle has made a major unpleasant change. Due to the new Cloud feature, a person is more or less, in this bloggers opinion, renting books rather than purchasing.

Let me explain. With the old Kindle, you could archive some books and retain others on the device itself. Should you deactivate your Kindle the books on your device (Kindle) at the time of deactivation would remain available and saved. The archived books were no longer available as these books remained on the Amazon.com Website.

However, the new Kindle devices work different. Should you deactivate your device, Amazon wipes your Kindle brand spanking clean. How do I know? Because we did this with ours, I wanted to change the name of my account to separate it from the old Kindle. All books I’d purchased were lost and I was unable to access on them my new Kindle unless I reactivated it with the old account. The books were sent to Am azon’s Cloud.

I spoke with customer service and voiced my concern. Their response was that I wasn’t the only person who felt this way. The customer service rep continued to say over and over that Amazon would hold my books on their website in the Cloud until I activated another device to access them. So I ask him, “Am I renting these books or buying them?”

A little flustered he responded that the Paperwhite would hold up to 1100 books. However, I was correct that when the Paperwhite or Kindlefires are deactivated, unlike the old Kindles, all books are transferred to the Cloud where they remain until reactivated. My old Kindle is looking pretty good now…

What do you think? Are we buying or renting?

Let me know your thoughts…
Better yet let Amazon.com know your thoughts.