Guest blogger William G Jones

Kennesaw handed over the reigns of his blog to me today. I’m not quite sure why, but I figure I should make the most of it. I’m William G. Jones, and I wrote a little book called Driving to BelAir. It’s a story about brothers, an ex-fiance, and a poodle all on a road trip in a ’56 Chevy. People keep telling me it reads like a Lifetime movie. Is that a good thing? I don’t know. But they really seem to like it.

I’m a big car buff and drive a black ’57 Chevy quite often. I also have a toy poodle, a little dog hat’s become my little buddy. Both the car and the dog had a heavy influence on me writing my book.

A couple of days ago, I got my hands on a Kindle Fire, and I’m super excited about it. I’ve had a third-generation Kindle for nearly a year now, and I love it. I read more on the Kindle than I ever read traditional books. The Fire, though, isn’t about reading. It’s more of a tablet computer. I bought it hoping to take some of the wear and tear off my MacBook Pro, which I use extensively in my day job doing graphic design and video editing for various clients.

Contrary to the hype that’s been swirling around the media, the Kindle Fire is no real competition to the iPad, except in the sense that many people (including myself) lump all tablets into one big category the same way some people (not me) lump all laptops into one category. By way of comparison, the iPad 2 is like a powerful and complex DSLR camera compared to the Kindle Fire as a point-and-shoot. For most people, I’d imagine, the Kindle Fire is more than enough to get the job done.

It’s obvious to me that Amazon took a page out of the Steve Jobs book of design. The Kindle Fire looks incredibly smooth. It feels incredibly solid.

Because there’s only 6.5 GB of internal storage (1.5 GB is used for the operating system), managing content on the device will be a challenge for some users. The Kindle Fire is likely not a device you’ll load up with movies and music and take on vacation. You’ll be able to get some movies onto the device to watch on, say, an airplane, or while riding shotgun in the car, but mostly this is a device you’ll use at the hotel to check email and surf the web, or a device you’ll take to Starbucks or McDonalds or Panara Bread to use in-store wifi. I have the sense that most Kindle Fires will find a place on the coffee table in their users’ homes, ready to grab for a quick web browsing session or to look up prices on some need-it-now items and little more.

The worst that I can say about the Fire, aside from a few glitches with the touch screen not registering the touch I wanted, is that my dog is insanely jealous of the device. I love my dog, so I’m having to put it away more than I want just to make the pooch happy.

I do recommend the Fire for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that my book, Driving to BelAir, is available on it. It’s also available for nook, and at Smashwords for just about any eReader on the market.

Thanks for hosting me, Kennesaw, and I hope your readers will check out a sample of my book!
www.williamgjones.com