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Two local women win electronic-publishing awards By Bill Varble Two Rogue Valley women are new recipients of the electronic publishing world�s version of moviedom�s Oscars. Patricia Lucas White of Eagle Point won an Eppie for Best Historical Novel for her genre-bending Western, "The Legend of Lejube Rogue." Rosalie More, who lives near Ashland, won a Spectrum 2000 Award for her cover art for the e-book "Passion of the Drums," by Gael Morrison, a romance set in New Guinea. The awards were announced Tuesday in Omaha, Neb., by EPIC, the Electronically Published Internet Connection, a writers group with about 250 members. They were open to all e-book authors. To see White�s book, go to www.crossroadspub.com . For a look at More�s cover art, go to www.cover-art.com . "Lejube Rogue," a Western set in Southern Oregon, is about a loner who is a man of his word. "Lejube" in Chinook trade language means "demon," White says. It�s the first in a series she envisions. It�s also due out this month in paper from Stone Dragon Press, which is publishing it as speculative fiction. "It has magical realism," White explains. E-books are published on the Internet as an alternative to bound books. Buyers download the text, which can then be read on a computer monitor, printed out or stored in a portable e-book medium. The books are also available on CD-ROMs, which display text and may add musical accompaniment. More, a lifelong artist, is also a novelist who writes historical fiction. She got the assignment for the cover from an e-publisher and never met the author. The image shows a couple, presumably lovers, in a tribal setting with dancing flames. "Lejube" and two other books by White, each from a different publisher, also have been nominated for the Frankfurt eBook Award, a new e-publishing award based in Frankfurt, Germany, with a top prize of $100,000. Finalists are to be announced Oct. 1. "Bill Gates and some other people put up the money," White says. "It�s in connection with the big book fair they have in Frankfurt." For more, go to www.iebaf.org One of White�s Frankfurt nominees, "Edwina Parkhurst, Spinster," is the story of an old maid who is a closet dime- novelist from a religious family and who gets stranded with a blind gunfighter in the midwinter wilds of northern Nevada (it�s is also out in paper from Thorndike Press ). In the other nominated White book, "P.S. I�ve Taken a Lover," which White calls "the menopause book everybody should read," the heroine is slapped into an insane asylum. "It has incredible reviews," White says. "People call me up and say, �You can�t leave her in there!� " See more at www.lionheart-ed.com . White has written and sold eight e-books, each of which has been picked up by a conventional publisher and released as a paperback. Interviewed by a writer from Book magazine a few days ago, White was asked about the future of e-publishing. "It probably will never replace print," she says. "But look how paperbacks have evolved. They were started so people could put them in their pocket." She knows many don�t see e-books as books yet, but the potential is great with a generation of computer-literate kids coming of age. "And Microsoft is coming out with new software," White says. "I think it�s the wave of the future," More says. "Major changes in the publishing industry as a whole are not far down the road. "If it�s a nasty night and people don�t want to go out, they can download their favorite author and read the book immediately." Devices such as the Rocket eBook reader hold 10 books and sell for less than $200, and they�re quickly becoming cheaper and more powerful. Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA