Free Kindle ebook on Amazon Saturday the 14th and Sunday the 15th, Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down, A Paranormal Romance by my wife Lisa Olsen.

The book kicks off a new series, this time about vampires, with Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down. Anja is a slightly geeky but loveable newbie vampire, and Bishop from the secretive “Order” steps up to reluctantly show her the ropes when her Sire is MIA. You need a license to breed in the hidden vampire community and Anja must pretend to be someone she’s not in order to save her pretty neck. Throw in Centuries old Aleksandr who is charmed by Anja’s mix of strength and naiveté and the mysterious Sire who abandoned her, and there are a lot of questions to unravel! While the story wraps up with a satisfying end, there are definitely plenty of stones left unturned for the rest of the series.

“It was ironic that this happened to me; I was never a night person at heart. So you can see right off the bat why a vampire was the very last thing I would have chosen to be.”

Anja Evans wakes up in the morgue with a hell of a hangover. It takes almost eating her best friend before she figures out… she’s a vampire. When a dark and dangerous vampire shows up at her door asking to see her license and registration, Anja assumes Bishop is a regular cop. But breeding among vampires is strictly controlled, and her unlicensed status makes her an enemy of The Order. Struggling to find a balance between her former life and her undead one, Anja tries to blend school and living up to her new identity, all while searching to find the elusive Viking, whose blood gave Anja the strength of a vampire hundreds of years old.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a big fan of the Android Operating System. I was one of the first out of the gate with my ViewSonic gTablet, and I loved it. It had almost everything you’d want – camera (front-facing only), USB port, MicroSD… but it was large. Fairly thick, and the 10″ screen and large bezel just made it awkward.

Well, a year later along comes Amazon with it’s own entry into the Andoid market, the 7″ Kindle Fire. I got one of these babies for Christmas and I have to say, I love it. The Viewsonic was nice but the size made it awkward to take with you anywhere, but I take my Fire almost everywhere. It is lacking in some areas – no bluetooth, no GPS, no camera, no MicroSD… but I have my DROID RAZR for that. But when I want to browse, watch movies, read books, etc… the Fire is perfect. Definitely a keeper, though I have to tether to my RAZR to use it when mobile due the the Fire’s lack of 3G.

Here are the specs:

Internal Memory: 8 GB flash memory
External Memory: None
Screen: 1024×600 pixels, 7” IPS LCD
OS: Android 2.3
Processor: Dual core, 1000 MHz, TI OMAP4, 512MB RAM
WiFi (802.11 b/g/n)
Bluetooth: None
Dimensions: 7.48 x 4.72 x 0.45 (190 x 120 x 11.4 mm)
Weight: 14.57 oz. (413g)

Additional Options:
Built-in Stereo Speakers
G-sensor

Amazon Kindle Fire

I’m not usually a fan of first person POV books, but this one drew me right in from the start. The author set up an interesting world of fallen angels and demons mixed in with urban city living in Seattle. I liked the nifty set of powers that Mercy got from being touched by and angel. I just hope the next one comes out soon!



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Loved the book… kept me guessing from the beginning, and even when I thought I had it figured out the ending was a surprise. I also liked the interaction between the quirky main character Lexi and the detective, and their slowly developing relationship. Definitely recommend it!



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She’s also getting ready to publish her second book, “The Touch”, It will hopefully be available in the next week or so as an ebook. It involves ghosts, murder, kidnapping, and the main character is a girl with psychometry, the ability to see the history of objects by touching them. A better description of her books can be found at her Website.

In addition to editing/proofreading and handling the technical side of the publishing, I also designed the covers for both books:

Angel of Mercy

The Touch

I really like the simplicity of the second one, the first one is alright (the eye makes sense if you read it).

The books can be found for sale here:

Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords

Still loving the giant high-res screen, been playing around with various themes (currently sporting a nice dark one), and movies look great on it. Movies look great on it, I have 7 on it right now, and though the files are large and I have hundreds of MP3′s on it, there is still about 18 gig available for me to find some other ways to fill.

Final note, though I haven’t tested it, I managed to find a pre-release version of the Skype video chat that will use my front-facing camera. Since the only people I really know that use the video Skype on their computers that I have to talk to live in my own house I haven’t had a chance to test it out, but now I know I CAN if I want!

Lately seems like I’m only posting something when I get a new toy, and this one is no exception… but life just hasn’t been that interesting lately. For my birthday I just got myself the new Thunderbolt, Verizon’s newest Android phone from HTC, the the first 4G phone in it’s lineup.

All I have to say is, it’s awesome. vivid high res 4.3″ screen, snappy performance, and comes with a 32GB micro SD. Unfortunately I’m not able to take advantage of it’s 4G capabilities just yet, the LTE network in Portland hasn’t reached my area yet, but I can’t wait to experience those 4G speeds I keep hearing about.

The bad with the good… after 3 days of playing with it, there is only one drawback I’ve found with it – the battery. With my Droid 1 I’d remove it from the charger at 6:20AM, and in most cases would be low but still doing alright by the time I went to bed around 10PM. I’ve been off the past 3 days so getting up closer to 8AM, and getting low battery alerts by around 6PM. with numbers like that, my phone will be dying before I even leave work to go home. I’m going to try a few battery saving trick, primarily screen brightness to see if that helps, but I may need to break down and get an extended battery if it keeps up.

Battery issues aside, all in all I have to recommend the phone, it rocks!

Good christmas this year… I didn’t get the Archos 101 tablet that I’d been wanting, but I got the Viewsonic 10″ Android G tablet instead. It’s awesome… the initial reviews for the device weren’t the best, and after my initial unboxing I was inclined to agree. The TapNTap interface they stuck on it was crap, the advertised flash was not installed, and the performance for running the Nvidia Tegra 2 processor was slow and choppy.

Then in steps the great people at XDA Developers. They have pulled the OS apart in every way possible and put it back together… I rooted the device and installed the “Vegan-tab” ROM, based off of the firmware from the Advent Vega tablet. Now… it rocks! There has been a huge performance increase, this thing really zips along. The battery lasts forever, and when I’m not near a wifi access point I can tether to my Droid phone and use it’s 3G connection.

I also got some Firefly/Serenity stuff from my wife (see the enclosed photo), including a large book of maps from the Firefly univere, a stack of currency from the Serenity movie, a Serenity keychain, and even a small model of Inara’s shuttle that I can put next to my Serenity model on the shelf at work (not pictured). Yes, I am fully aware that the sonic screwdriver in the picture is not from Firefly, but it’s cool anyway!

Also got plenty of new Blu-ray movies for my collection, including the expendables, Hitman, The Crazies, The A-Team, Kick-Ass, Knight & Day, Iron Man 2, Clash of the Titans, Hot Tub Time Machine and more… Still My favorite is the Tablet, which I have been using constantly.

Alright, maybe I’m dating myself by saying it was great seeing all these actors together, especially in an action flick like this one. But I’m always up for a Bruce Willis movie, and you can’t go wrong with Morgan Freeman. Also, was it just me or was Helen Mirren still kinda hot as the retired ex-assassin? And still kicking butt…

If you haven’t already seen it (you should), it’s a movie starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren as retired spies classified as RED (Retired, Extremely Dangerous) who because of a mission they were previously involved in have been targeted for termination. Not ones to take thing sitting down, they turn the tables on the CIA, going after those who want them dead. A lot of bullets fly, and they kick some major CIA butt. I can’t tell you how incredibly awesome it is to watch the dignified, elegant Helen Mirren tear it up with a .50 cal machine gun? There are no words… two thumbs up!