Book Love Found in The Palm of His Hand

Two weeks ago I took Morgan Dragonwillow up on an offer to join her, Tui Snider and Susan Silver in teaming up to take on a fantastic online writing community called StoryDam. It has been a wild ride ever since and the one thing I love most of all is, of course, meeting the community of writers that come to StoryDam for inspiration, collaboration and support. One of the first members I met in the first #StoryDam twitter chat I participated in was Dorian Carr Jr.

At that time, Dorian was calling himself an "aspiring writer" even though, when you visit his blog, DJ's Cave of Darkness, you will find excerpts of his current work in progress, A Vampire's Search for a Heart. When I saw this, I immediately sent Dorian a message telling him to drop the "aspiring" and to recognize that, whether he was ready to admit it or not, at the age of 18 he was already a writer! He agreed and we've been twitter buddies ever since.

So, can you guess what happened next? I'm getting predictable at this point... I went ahead and asked him my question - you know the one - What was your first book love? Dorian's first book love and his method of reading it were both new ones for me, so this interview was quite enlightening.

Around a year ago Dorian was browsing the Amazon Kindle Store on his iPod and found a title that intrigued him; it was Heku by T.M. Nielson. Although he wasn't much of a reader - in his words he said, "I felt like reading was the worst thing in the entire world" - he decided to download this fantasy vampire romance book to check it out.

For Dorian, it was the genre and the unique title that initially grabbed his attention. Here's a brief description of the book, from Amazon, to give you the idea:

Chevalier has never been told no. For thousands of years he’s sat on the Equites Council, ruling body of his heku faction, and for thousands of years his every order has been followed immediately and without question. One of the most important rules of the heku, is that no one is to feed from unwilling donors. Following a tip that a young mortal woman is being brutally attacked by his own kind, he seeks her out and immediately begins to experience unnatural feelings for the woman.

According to Dorian, "After reading this book and series [nine books], I felt like reading was my life."  If that's not the truest sign of a first book love, I don't know what is.

As a point of curiosity I asked Dorian whether he had his own Kindle or if he was using a family one when he made his wonderful discovery. That's when he surprised me, he told me he downloaded all nine books to his iPod! I found this fascinating and my eyes teared when reading this confession. In fact, in my shock, I had to ensure I understood what Dorian had told me...

@carr_dj do you read most of your books this way, or are you an old school book guy also?
— riverand (@riverand) April 16, 2012

@riverand yes... ^_^ why does that surprise you?? O.o
— Dorion Carr Jr. (@carr_dj) April 16, 2012

Admittedly, yes... that surprised me a bit, but I told Dorian I had read parts of books on my iPhone in desperate times, but never a whole book, or a whole series. Then he had one more response to floor me:

@riverand yep!! ^_^ I love it! Lol. I still have like 30 books to read on my phone :D
— Dorion Carr Jr. (@carr_dj) April 16, 2012

THIRTY books in the palm of his hand! WOW! I'm a techie, but I guess I'm not a tiny-techie these days, what amazing times we live in. Wondering if my exclusion from the tiny-tech idea was a sign of my age, I asked Dorian if many of his friends read books this way, his response may be familiar to some of you life long book lovers out there:

@riverand all of.my friends, sadly.... Dont read books : ( at all.... Its just me
— Dorion Carr Jr. (@carr_dj) April 16, 2012

They'll come around, Dorian, they just haven't found their first book love yet!

While Heku and the entire series by T.M. Nielson will forever be remembered by Dorian as his first true book love, he's had at least two more that he shared with me: Being Human by Patricia Lynne and Rae Wilder Series by Penelope Fletcher.

I am so happy that Dorian decided to share his book love story with me us this week. He has given me an entirely different perspective of the various views our stories continue to come in, which also reminded me of this great cartoon from the New York Times a couple of weeks back entitled "The Book of the Future":

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/03/30/books/review/snider01.html?ref=review

Well, whatever way you find your stories this week - in a handheld device, in an eReader, via audiobook, on your desktop, or in a good old fashioned book - enjoy your reading!

So what IS your preferred method of reading a story?

Are you an iPod/iPhone/handheld reader?

Are you a lone reader amongst your friends? 

Feel free to email me when you're ready 

to share your own Book Love Story!