Coliloquy active fiction books now available on NOOK tablet, Kindle Fire, and all other Android devices.

We are thrilled to announce the wider availability of our books on all Android-based devices, including NOOK Tablet and Kindle Fire.

• NOOK Tablet owners can find our books in the NOOK store,
• Fans with Android phones or tablets can purchase our books through the Google Play Store (fka the Android Marketplace),
• And we’ve added Kindle Fire to our previously-supported E Ink Kindle family

In addition to broadening our distribution, we’re having fun working with the NOOK team! Not only are they across the street, but they firmly agree that every business meeting is better with pie. We celebrated last week with Lisa’s newly renamed NOOKona Mud Pie and look forward to some exciting new projects this summer!

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A few months ago, I found a Post-It note on my desk that said:

4.2 – Lisa dies

I have no idea where it came from or who wrote it, which has made it kind of creepy and awesome at the same time.

Being the organized sort, I dutifully set up a calendar invitation. My Post-It grim reaper didn’t include a year, so I made it an all-day occurrence, recurring annually. Notably, Waynn accepted my death within minutes, while Jennifer rejected it.

I know who is getting the biggest slice of pie from now on.

Waynn’s all-to-easy acceptance of my annual passing aside (I mean, really…you couldn’t have at least waited an hour, Waynn?), I actually kind of like having a death day. I don’t celebrate my birthday, Valentine’s Day, or really any holiday. But a death day? For me, it’s been a nice gentle reminder from the paper supply gods that life is too short to not be enjoying every day.

It has also provided fodder for a new office game: “If Lisa’s life were a [insert book genre], she would [insert method of death].”

In the past few weeks, I’ve been drowned by a jealous mermaid, eaten by an alligator, thrown off a building by an angel, only to be devoured by a hoard of super-hot zombies, and (of course) accidentally beaten to death by Grey. The good news is that in most cases, the afterlife is filled with an astounding array of incredibly attractive angels, demons, warlocks, vampires, and other lost souls, all of whom are perfectly eager to help me unravel the mystery of my death, so that I can rejoin the living world.

As Friends of Coliloquy know, I love to bake and our entire team loves pie. It’s really a perfect match (other than the fact that I don’t get to spend much time in the kitchen these days).

However, last week, I decided to try making a new pie, in honor of Heidi Kling, Nephele Tempest, Pam van Hycklama, and Annette Pollert, henceforth known as the Thin Mint Gang (TMG), due to an awesome moment at this year’s San Francisco Writer’s Conference, when a girl scout strolling through the hotel lobby hit paydirt with our bevvy of starving literary ladies.

Fast-forward to the next day, when Waynn turned down a girl scout selling cookies at the office. Aside from the fact that I now blame him for single-handedly crushing her entrepreneurial dreams, he managed to slightly redeem himself by sending around a link to Dreyer’s limited edition thin mint ice cream…which led to Lisa’s Thin Mint Ice Cream Pie!

We ate the first one last week at Innovation Endeavors in Palo Alto, and I am officially adding it to my pie rotation. If you’d like to make it at home, here’s the recipe:

Lisa’s Thin Mint Ice Cream Pie

crust:

3 sleeves of thin mint cookies (that leaves one sleeve for snacking and decorating)

7 T butter, melted

ice cream layer: 1 gallon Dreyer’s Thin Mint Ice Cream

fudge layer: 1/4 lb of fudge, melted

mocha custard layer:

I used Martha Stewart’s recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/316400/mocha-custards, but if you don’t have a lot of time, you can replace with instant mousse (I don’t judge). Either buy chocolate mocha mousse or buy chocolate mousse and replace water with coffee.

directions:

Place the cookies (still in their plastic sleeves) inside a 1-gal freezer bag and vigorously smash to smithereens. I used a baseball bat. This should be fun!

Mix cookie smithereens with melted butter, and then, using your fingertips, firmly and evenly press the mixture into the bottom and sides of the pie plate

Pull the ice cream out of the freezer and place in fridge while you make the mousse layer (this will make the ice cream easier to mold)

Layer the ice cream into the bottom of the pie crust, filling it about 3/4 of the way. Use your hands to mold it into the pan. Drizzle a thin layer of the melted fudge on top, and then seal with a layer of the custard or mousse (the fudge and custard will hold the pie together later). Decorate with thin mints and place in freezer.

to serve:

Move pie to refrigerator 30 minutes before serving. Dip bottom of pie pan into 1/2 inch of hot water to loosen. Cut and serve.

Our first stand-alone (non-serialized) book, Fluid, is now available on Amazon! It takes advantage of the electronic medium in a way that traditional books can’t, using choices and branching storylines drive questions about “free will,” consequence, and the struggle between good and evil.  Travis shot a few promotions for the book, and they’re *awesome*. Check them (and Fluid) out!

(Note: Lisa LOVES this one)

One of the programming languages we use here at Coliloquy is Java, which was originally marketed by Sun Microsystems as “write once, run anywhere”. At the time, the idea of allowing developers to write a program and not worry about what underlying systems were supported was revolutionary — as long as they could support Java, they could run the program.

That’s exactly how I feel about getting our authors’ books out to our readers. I want everyone to be able to read what we’ve published, however they want to, on whichever device they own. It’s especially important to me given recent news in the publishing world. Seth Godin just had his book rejected from iBooks because it had links to purchase buttons on Amazon. Smashwords has had to censor certain content due to pressure from PayPal (though it looks like there’s some potential gray area).

John Gilmore, the founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has a great quote, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” By being on as many platforms as possible, Coliloquy content should be accessible to people regardless of place, platform, or device — and we’ll have more exciting announcements in the weeks and months ahead specifically around that. Keep watching this space!