Today I’m interrupting my usual schedule to let you know what my Plan B (or rather ‘project’) is, after these last six months. I spoke of it in January, mentioned it yesterday, but today’s the launch day so I thought this was the best time to blog about it.

I’ve started a service for writers who are in the midst of drafting their books; the service is a detailed critique. If you want to take a look, the site is here: Carnelian Valley Manuscript Critique.

I never thought I’d get the site completed and everything prepared, but somehow it all got finished in the end. Perhaps the biggest thing I’ve learned from this is that it’s incredibly difficult to procrastinate over starting something when everything is ready. And I’m glad to be using the homepage of my dot com again since I stopped personal blogging a few years ago – I’ve been ‘Carnelian Valley’ for 10 years now.

The question for today has to be: when was the last time you took on a daunting task/project?

I apologise to my email subscribers who have likely received this post late. The only way to adjust sending times (my posts get sent to you at 7am) would have resulted in a duplicate email.

If you need help saving your list of RSS feeds from Google Reader to your harddrive, you’ll find instructions at the bottom of this post.

Last Friday saw the announcement that Google Reader is to be withdrawn as a service for users on 1st July this year. Whilst I don’t use it myself (ironically I don’t use it because I worry about companies switching off products) many, many people do and it has to be said that it is a brilliant service. I’ve read that Google isn’t a fan of RSS and hopes that Google+ will become more popular, which seems rather silly, because social media just isn’t the same. Unless you are on Twitter 24/7 you are going to miss a lot of blog posts.

But it’s happening and unless Google act on the feedback, blog readers will have to find alternatives. There is always email subscription, but considering RSS itself isn’t going anywhere, it would be useful to have a list of RSS readers for those who prefer it. Tanya wrote a very good post on the day of the Google announcement, and so rather than repeat what she’s said I’m linking to her post and using this, my own post, to list ones I’ve used personally or have a good knowledge of.

I will say, in reference to Tanya’s post, that her suggestion of Bloglovin’ is great. Bloglovin’ isn’t quite Google Reader but it keeps your list of feeds on the Internet. Don’t let the bias towards fashion and food blogs put you off – with GR‘s demise that bias likely won’t remain much longer.

So, here are my suggestions for alternatives to Google Reader. Click on the name to go to the website.

Feed Demon

Pulse

If you’re looking for something stylish, Pulse is the way to go. They have mobile and web applications and present news as thumbnails so you can scroll through. You can’t mark news items as read but then you don’t really need to as they will disappear after a while.

Exporting Your List From Google

Considering all existing services will be doing their utmost in the aftermath of Google, instructions for switching will likely be everywhere. However if you do need a break down, here is how you export your lists of feeds from Google Reader to your harddrive. Services like Bloglovin’ and Hello Cotton will do things differently – the following is for those who wish to use a desktop application:

To export your list of feeds in order to keep them once Google Reader has gone:

1. Click on the bold heading labelled “Subscriptions”
2. Click “Manage subscriptions” from the drop-down menu
3. Click “Import/Export” from the list of tabs that appear
4. Click “Download your data through Takeout” under Export you information
5. Click “Create Archive”
6. Click “Download” in the “Reader” section and save the file wherever you wish on your harddrive.
7. You will be able to import your list once you’ve chosen and signed up for/downloaded your new RSS reader. Importing from the file you downloaded from Google will require you to extract the zip folder, and then, when you’re in the new RSS reader, choosing the “Subscriptions.xml” file to import.

This news is surely a huge wake up call to remember that products can be recalled at any time.

Do you think this change will affect blogging and blog reading in the longterm?

Call for stressful measures. I’m still about but I haven’t had time to read much in the last few weeks, nor time to write a decent non-book post. The Worm Hole’s birthday is in early April, however, and I plan to at least be back by then if not before. I’ve a couple of review copies left to complete that are top of my list of reading priorities.

Summer and the end of the educational year truly cannot come quick enough.

This is a quick post to say that I will be reading and discussing Wuthering Heights along with Iris from Iris On Books in the next few days. Not knowing what to read next between Charlotte Brontë’s Villette and Emily Brontë’s novel I turned to Twitter and Iris kindly gave me a rundown of what to expect from the latter. Needless to say her information was gladly accepted as I had visions of an angsty but somewhat pink-hearts-and-ribbons story, and having said that she wanted to tackle the novel again we will be posting our thoughts around the same time. So watch this space, there may be rants, there may be raves, there may be heather. As Mr Tracey says in the introduction to every Thunderbirds episode “anything could happen in the next five minutes” and I get the feeling that with Wuthering Heights this may be the case as it becomes ever more challenging.

On what was an alright beginning of the weekend, Charlie consumed many many sweets, popcorn, and chocolate. And that was long before the film started. On what is a dull ending of the weekend she is now feeling a little sick so a very short post is in order.

I am finally getting round to adding a list of links to my favourite book blogs for placement in the navigation column. I already created the list, but it’s got me thinking, so my question for you today is:

What are your favourite book blogs?

In other news Orion Books have recently set up a Facebook page for their newer chick-lit, romance, and thriller releases. There are competitions for the books and the page is being updated with each new release, so if you’ve a Facebook account you might want to check it out: Cherry Picks