Chihuahua News Round-Up

Video: Chihuahuas Strut Their Stuff on Delores Park Runway, SF, CA

Video: Two Chihuahuas show up on Albuquerque, NM’s “most dangerous dog” list. (Tip to owner: Instead of chuckling when your Chi growls inappropriately, scold it.)

New Santa Cruz, CA dog designer helps support SPCA.

American Reporter and Husband Return Missing Chi to Owner after Six Years

South Carolina man looking for Chis who were mistakenly rescued.

Upcoming events:

Chattanooga, Tennessee bluegrass festival and Running of the Chihuahuas.

SPCA’s The Whole Enchihuahua, San Francisco, California

Chihuahua Palooza starts at East Bay, CA area shelters. Video interview of topic.

Chihuahua race as part of Cinco de Mayo celebration, Phoenix, AZ

Cinco de Mayo Chihuahua race in Craig, CO (check sidebar for details)

How to send documents to a Kindle

It’s not hard to send and receive documents and have them show up on a Kindle. What is hard is finding the instructions, so I’m putting them in this blog post.

Each Kindle device has its own email address. With the device on, press the Menu button and select Settings. Your Kindle’s “name”@kindle.com e-mail address is listed under Device E-mail. Use the same name to also send documents to your Kindle at “name”@free.kindle.com . Just stick “free.” in front of the “kindle” part of your email and you won’t get charged anything. Give that email address to the person who is sending the document.

Now, not any person can send to that address, or you’d be getting a whole lot of spam. The person with the Kindle needs to let the device know to accept a document from a certain email address.

To do this, go to Amazon.com and click on My account toward the upper right corner. Scroll down to Digital Management and click Manage YourKindle.

Amazon will have you sign in.

Under Your Kindle Approved email List, type in the email of the person who is sending the document and click Add Address.

Now all the person has to do is send the document from the approved email address to the email of the Kindle device. Kindles will accept unprotected Microsoft Word, PDF, HTML, TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PRC and MOBI files. As I recall, whatever is in the subject line of the email shows up where a book title would normally be. It might take a little time. Give it at least an hour before you start freaking out. And of course, the Kindle will need to be in a wifi zone or have 3G turned on or whatever in order to receive the document.

Those are the basic instructions for an all-text document that’s roughly book size. PDF files can be converted to Kindle format by typing “convert” in the subject heading of the email. If you’re doing more exotic things, go to this link for more instructions.

If these instructions don’t work for you, please let me know that in the comments.

Chihuahua News Round-up

Japan’s Pet Survivors Face Post-Tsunami Struggle

Katherine Heigl saves the lives of 25 Chihuahuas

May 1, the American Cancer Society’s Bark for Life

Proposed “puppy-mill bill” in Texas

Chihuahua News Round-up

New oxygen masks especially for dogs helps save pets after house fires.

Longmont, CO celebrates Cinco de Mayo with a Chihuahua beauty contest (among other things). I’m providing a gift basket.

San Francisco SPCA Kicks Off Month-Long Chihuahua Celebration with “The Whole Enchihuahua” on May 1 in Dolores Park

20-year study finds that Chihuahuas (and toy breeds in general) are more prone to cardiovascular disease. Keep those Chis trim!

Shreveport, LA is having a free showing of Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, preceded by a pet parade, May 6.

Keep your Chi close if you live in Deming, NM. Someone is stealing them.

Getting a new thumb/index finger ring.

$19 and free shipping is a screaming deal. You get your choice of three finishes, two typefaces, and your choice of words, inside and out. Mine will say, “Pull my finger” on the outside, and “Pfft…” on the inside, because I will do anything for a laugh. Well, not anything, but $19 is cheap for a good gag. Click the pic to go to his site.

Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder

Nikki, of the fantastic site, Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder, is in the process of reading an advance copy of Chihuahua of the Baskervilles.

(Bebe is my fave of Nikki’s Chis, btw. She’s the little mite who is second from the left in the photo below. To give you an idea of how wee she is, Monte (second from right) weighs three and a half pounds. Bebe is the dog equivalent of a sparkling fairy pony or a shoulder dragon with tiny flapping wings.

I have to mention some coincidences between Nikki and the book. Suki is Tripping Magazine‘s staff photographer. She’s half-Japanese. Nikki is also half-Japanese and a photographer. And their names both end in ‘i.’ There will be one more coincidence at the end of the second book, Portrait of Doreene Gray. You’ll just have to wait and see.

Oh, and if you’d like to join a super-fun Facebook group for Chihuahua lovers, join Nikki’s. I’m on there all the time, cooing over photos of Bebe.

Video about canine designer Ada Nieves

Here’s a great short video about Ada Nieves, a New York designer of canine couture, on IndieSceneTV.com. Click the pic above and then scroll down a little. You’ll find the same picture on the right. Click on it for the vid to come up.

And if you’d like to see more videos of Ada and her dogs, there are bunches on YouTube. Click here.

Jenny Blossom sings the Tripping song

I have almost no idea who this woman is.

Ebook authors need some kind of scrapbook system.

Today I was involved in a Facebook discussion with Vincent Zandri, a thriller author who is exploring the frontiers of epublishing and POD. He started by talking about a book signing scheduled for this evening at a local Barnes & Noble.

But here’s a prediction: I will sell more copies of “Innocent” before lunch even, than I will sell of the trade paper edition of “Remains,” during the B&N signing. I’ll also call the store to make sure they’re set for tonight, and I guarantee the response will be, “What’s your name again?…What book???” 🙂

And sadly, he was right. Due to an error in how they had entered his ISBN number, his books arrived and were then shipped back. The book signing is postponed, and the experience didn’t exactly rekindle Vincent’s love of of paper books.

I’m done with traditional book signings.
From now on I will happily sign the reverse side of your NOOK and KINDLE, which seems to be the trend these days.

One thing this discussion made me wonder was if there is a market for some kind of cute scrapbooking system for author autographs, especially as the number of authors appearing only in ebooks grows. If it exists, let me know. If not, someone needs to get on this. Here’s what my ideal system would have.

A binder that allows you to decorate the cover yourself, or has preprinted pages for various genres (romance, mystery, speculative, horror).
Envelopes that hold postcards, so you can send an author a prepaid postcard to sign/dedicate, and then they drop it in the mail to you.
A scrapbook page that includes slots to hold the postcard. Also a promotional bookmark or biz card, if the author provided one.
A page onto which you can print the book’s cover art. It could also have blanks for where/when you bought the book, who recommended it, how much you enjoyed it, where you’ve recommended it (Goodreads, online booksellers).

Authors, you don’t have to wait for this. Why not have a page on your website that allows fans to print postcard designs with your cover art and photo, so they can print it out and send it in for you to sign and send back? Don’t forget to give them your P.O. address.

And now, here’s a poll.