Confessions of an E-Book Convert

I never thought I'd become an advocate of e-books. Call me old-school, but I love holding a physical book in my hands, flipping through the paper pages, highlighting pertinent passages and making notations in the margins. My favorite books are so bedraggled from use they're held together with rubber bands. Bookstores--especially funky ones with lots of odd, rare, or esoteric books--draw me like taverns draw alcoholics. When I go to someone's home for the first time, I always peruse the books on his/her shelves. (Maybe you can't tell a book by its cover, but you can tell a lot about people from their books.)

However, I’ve moved four times in three years. Each time I move, I schlep dozens of heavy boxes packed with books from one locale to another, promising myself I'll downsize my personal library soon. Yet parting with my books is like parting with old friends. How can I resolve this dilemma?

Enter e-books. Admittedly, wireless reading devices such as Kindle lack the tactile experience of physical books. But they're lighter and thinner than a typical paperback, and hold about 200 books! Talk about traveling light... (Now the money I might have paid a chiropractor can be spent for more books.) Not only can I read and store books on one of these handy hand-held units, I can even buy books with it--and download them instantly. Immediate gratification.

But the "green" factor is what hooked me. Before I became a full-time writer, I worked in the publishing industry for many years. Let me share a dirty little secret with you: the environmental impact of conventional publishing is phenomenal! Trees--lots of them--get cut down to make paper. The paper-making process pollutes water and fouls the air. (Ever stood downwind of a paper mill? It smells like an outhouse.) Toxic printing inks and dyes seep into the ground.

Then there's the little-known (outside the publishing world) matter called "returns." Ever see those flashy promotional displays in bookstores, featuring stacks and stacks of a new book? Many of those books will never be sold. The bookstore orders them, then return them for a full refund--even after they've been sitting around the store for a year and are so dog-eared the publisher has to trash them. Often stores just rip off the covers and send them back. The books end up in landfills.

So when Ravenous Romance's CEO Holly Schmidt invited me to edit The Green Love Anthology, I jumped at the chance. Here was an opportunity to combine three of my passions: literature, the environment, and sex. The anthology includes twelve tantalizing tales that blend ecology with erotica--each one hot enough to take the chill off a cold winter's night (you can turn down the thermostat and save oil). I even got to write a story of my own for the anthology: "Midnight at the 11^th Hour Cowboy Bar." Going green has never been so much fun! (Anybody know how to get a copy to Al Gore? It might warm him up a bit.)