Finally...I Get To Read Frank's Book!

 I was so happy to see this on my iPad screen this afternoon. It's been a long time coming.

I met Frank Cole I believe last year at a Salt Lake Comic Con event. He was on a panel I moderated and a nicer guy you could not find. I even screwed up the next time I saw him by saying that he was the one who wrote "the janitor books."

You see, Frank didn't write the janitor books--he wrote The Afterlife Academy, the Guardians and Hashbrown Winters books. I was on another panel with a local author the year before who wrote the janitor books. Since the stories authors write are so personal, my comment was like calling one of his kids a boy when it was a girl. Frank was polite and acted as if my comment was "no big deal." Either he's a good actor or is really wasn't a big deal. I felt bad and apologized and I told him I would read one of his books.

Fast forward a few months and I saw his book, The Afterlife Academy, at my local library. I thought I could finally make amends and read one of his books. But I'd have to wait a little bit. Turns out, this particular book was popular. I was number five or six on the waiting list. A few days ago I got a message from the library saying it was now my turn.

Great! I was stoked! The way e-books are "delivered" from our library is that once the book is available, you click a button and the book downloads to an Amazon account. No big deal, but when I hit "download," my computer was signed up under my wife's Amazon account and therefore, it went to her Kindle. It did not go to my iPad, the device I take to work and from which I read e-books going to and from work on the bus.

I spent the next hour or so trying to figure out how to add my iPad to her account so I could transfer the book. Nope--those Amazon smarties do not allow this. I then tried downloading again from the library's website. Nope--I only got one shot.

Since I don't download a lot of e-books from the library, I didn't see the other option the library offers to its patrons. I could download the document to a web page and that's how I finally got Frank's book in a format where I could read it on the bus. I started it this afternoon. I'm liking it so far--good writing!

Of course, I could have avoided all this pain-in-the-rear stuff had I just bought his book at the Con...