It's Been a While

That would be my fault. Between the heat and laying a new patio and critiquing three manuscripts as the parts become available and of course working on two of my own stories, well, I sloughed off writing for the blog.

According to Kristen Lamb, that’s a sign of indecision, or lack of sticktoitivness (spell check doesn't like that one) or something equally obnoxious. I have no problem with that assessment; unfortunately, it seems perfectly reasonable.

However, just because the muse flittered away for her holiday in the midst of Boston's heat wave, and I’m having trouble deciphering her notes, those aren’t good excuses. For neglecting either the blog or the ending of Background Check. So I’m going to work at both those things.

For the patio, shown in progress,

we selected Belgard's Urbana 3 Piece in Sable. To finish will take another week, weather permitting, of digging, spreading the base, laying the stones and then ’grouting’ the joints. A little clean-up around the edges and on to restaining the deck. Never ends, right?

I am trying an experiment with Freedom Does Matter, hopefully to go live in the next couple of weeks. Based on a perceived lack of interest in Mercenaries: A Love Story which i’m attributing to a combination of the description and the cover, I sent a candidate description to an editor, and am awaiting his feedback. While waiting, i’m doing yet another read-thru for typos and excess words. We’ve already shown the cover (top right), so we’ll see what difference these make. With the editor’s permission, when we finish  I’ll post the exchanges and results for your edification.

As I implied above, Background Check is nearly complete. However, the last scenes are giving me a fit. Too slow, and not enough action for the closure. But rather than navel-gazing, I need to look at the run-up to the end, and just go ahead and finish it. Then revise as necessary!

Comments are always welcome. More to come.

CreateSpace: Why would you not?

While e-books are likely the wave of the future, many people I know have no interest in adding a Kindle or Nook or whatever to their electronic library. Some don't like e-books for what are to them, perfectly valid reasons. And some reserve their savvy for other than computer-based work. Probably, you have friends in one or more of those categories. And there are potential readers out there who also fit. Given the small amount of additional work needed to create paperback copies of your wonderful novel, doesn't it make sense to do so? No, I'm not acting as a shill for Amazon; it just seems like a no-brainer to me.

Of course, the decision is yours. I'm relating my experience to give you an idea about the effort needed to take a book already available in e-book format to CreateSpace. If you do it, and sell enough to clear the (low) royalty hurdle, congratulations! If not, at least you didn't close off the path.

I spent about ten hours over the past several weeks formatting and proofing Mercenaries; A Love Story for the print on demand service CreateSpace. Most of that time was spent on learning the (admittedly few) ropes needed to select a trim size - I based my selection on a survey of the paperback books in my library and the page count estimates from the processor. That was probably the most difficult task.

For printing, the things you need to choose are the trim size (the actual page size) of the book, the font and size of the interior text, and the line spacing. Assuming you are not planning a different edit for print, these are the major determiners of the page count, which drives the cost, and therefore the sell price.

I went back and forth a few times in making these choices for my book, and I plan to keep them for other books in the series, to keep them cosmetically the same.

I asked my wife, an avid reader,  for input on the font and size by printing a few pages in the same size and layout as the book in different fonts and sizes, and having her review them. Between us we selected Georgia in 10 pt for the font, with 1.1 x line spacing.

CreateSpace takes PDF files for the internal text. I created these directly from Scrivener, using their compile option to override the project page set-up with a specific one for pdf. Along with the page size, I set up the headers and footers as I wanted and ’pressed the button, Max!’ (Apologies to Dr. Fate.)

After a review of the resulting PDF file, I selected it in the internal file section of the CreateSpace process. It was then a matter of waiting until their review process ground its wheels. Any errors are flagged. The first time I tried this, I didn’t understand the requirement that the size of the pages in the PDF file had to match the page size selected in CreateSpace. I know, I know, it's obvious, right?

I fixed that in the Scrivener options by choosing the 6 x 9 page size with margins* to fit CreateSpace suggestions, and lo, my file came back error free!

I would note that while Scrivener makes the process of changing the page set-up easy, your own experience may vary. I believe that it would be as simple if using Word, but my experience with Word is several years old. I have been unable to accomplish this with Open Office, since they tie the page size to Styles, and I haven't ever figured out how to use Styles. My guess is that LibreOffice is the same as OO. To be fair, since Scrivener does the job, I've spent very little time on it.

Other choices affecting page count are requiring chapters to begin on "a recto page" (the right hand side), the font size of the Chapter headings and the padding used to lower the Chapter heading toward the center of the page. These, however, won't affect the page count by more than five percent, in my experience, if you make reasonable choices. Starting on a recto page will have the biggest effect; with optimal bad luck, it could amount to an extra page per chapter. Plan on half that.

Here are photos of the interior, showing a chapter opening, and a two page spread. Focus isn't too good, sorry.

 

The second hurdle was creating a table of contents. In the ebook version, I had entries only for  individual sections, but I wanted to add the chapters in the print version. This was more trouble, because of the various options for TOC creation in Scrivener, and rather than detail it here, if you need or want more detail on that, contact me.

The last item is the cover. Once you've chosen a trim size, it also defines the cover size, and therefore the requirements for the image. For the 6x9 trim size, the image you select must be 6.25" x 9.5" with a resolution of 300 DPI. Another requirement is that there be no useful information within a quarter-inch of the edge. This typically means the title and the author's name must be well within the finished printed area. Other trim sizes will have their own requirements, determined when you begin the process. You will select one of the templates that allow you to add your own cover image.

An Author photo is nice to include, but not required. The image should be 1.5" x 1.5", again with a 300 DPI resolution. I haven't checked, but this requirement probably fits all trim sizes.

You'll need the text for the back cover (the book description may be what you want), and if you choose, an author biography to go with the picture.

That's really about it. The CreateSpace process is dead easy to follow, and it gives you feedback at every step to keep you headed true.

Once everything's been approved, proof the result. I suggest you order the physical book at least once. When you receive it, make sure it's what you expect. Check the cover: front, back and spine. Check the front material to make sure you got the one for the printed version! Inside, make sure the chapter first pages look the way you want, including whether they start correctly, and have the font and size you expect. Make sure the padding is the same from chapter to chapter. Several places through the text, check the page numbers and the other header/footer text you added. Make sure it doesn't overrun the text.

Before finishing the process for Mercenaries, I did the same process for an editing copy of my WIP, Freedom Does Matter. For this copy, I printed it myself, on my overworked HP inkjet printer.

Because I didn't want to cut the sheets down, I bought a ream of legal paper and set Scrivener for a trim size of 7" x 8.5", half a sheet. I used Cheap Impostor to do the imposting (the re-ordering of pages into signatures). It makes a nice package... especially if a duplex printer is available. For Freedom, 292 pages the way I printed it, I had 73 sheets of paper (four pages per sheet) to fold, which took something over an hour.

Because my printer is not duplex, I first printed the even pages, then turned them over and printed the odd pages. For whatever reason, the HP printer doesn't pick up freshly printed pages as well as it does unprinted sheets; I had to help the printer pick up each of the sheets when printing the odd sheets. That added about an hour, so the marked-up copy in the photo required three plus hours to put together. You can tell that it is not glued--much better for editing.

I was glad I went through the exercise. Not only did I get a different format (making editing easier for me), I got additional experience in the process of making input files for CreateSpace.

If this seems like it would be useful to you, feel free to experiment. At the least, if you decide to have someone else do this work, I hope you'll have some insight into the work they will be doing for you. If you’d like more details on any part of the process, contact me. And as usual, comments are welcome!

*The inside margin (the left in Scrivener) is determined by the page count, to allow the text to be read when the book is bound. As the page count increases, so does the depth of the inside margin.

Photos of Freedom Does Matter editing copy:

Binder Clips. That's what they're for, right?

With the beat-up cover-don't mind where the cat licked!

Two piles of folded signatures. I did edit, see!

One of the signatures, open

It's not ignoring you if I'm working... Right?

It's been a while since I posted anything here. If you've been waiting with bated breath, I apologize. I've been busy, not only with householdy kinds of tasks--as all us househusbands, and virtually all women, are aware--but some writing related ones as well.

I'm doing a couple of dedicated reader critiques for Critters, and another review for one of my beta readers, whose story is moving along with only a couple of minor adjustments needed... in my opinion! It's all my opinion!

In the past week, I've been working on formatting Becka Sutton's The Storm Child for e-book delivery. It's the second book in her series, The Dragon Wars, and like Land of Myth, the premier one, it reads well. I'll be able to recommend it... once I've delivered the files back to her and it's available. Watch her web site for news. Note, Land of Myth is available other places; check Becka's Books page for details.

I set a pretty low goal for the year, word count wise, 15Kwords per month, except 30K for April (Camp NaNo) and 50K for November (NaNoWriMo). That adds to 230K words. Even with that low target, I missed February and March. However, April went over enough to cover March's shortage.

The target for April was set to finish the first 'vomit' draft of Background Check. While I got just over 30k words into it, it's not quite finished, but the draft is at 108K words now, and I really thought I should be done at 100K. Oh well. Start at the beginning and write to the end. It will be what it will be. Or possibly, there's room to cut!

However, I set BC aside because one of my beta readers finally gave me the complaint that's bothered all the critters who've read Freedom No More--and that just before I built the ebook to send it to Amazon! Importantly, he used the words I needed to hear to recognize what the issue was. Since then, I've been rewriting the first arc of the story. It's certainly different; I hope people think it better.

He also thought it could do with more cutting. At 116K, I'm inclined to agree, but I'd taken 4 or 5Kwords out of it to get to 116. I've not checked it with the new first arc, but it doesn't feel any shorter.

The last thing--that I'm going to talk about, anyway--is that I finally got off my duff and used the CreateSpace account I'd set up almost a year ago to publish Mercnearies: A Love Story in paper. My 12Worlds friend Brian Drake blogged about his experience, and mine mirrored it. It is unbelievably easy! I'll do a separate post on the process, but this is the result:

Front and back. This version's available at both CreateSpace and Amazon.

Comments and questions are welcome.

Still, No Updates Missed

Becka Sutton has continued the unbroken string of twice weekly updates to her web-serial, Dragon Wars, with hundreds of updates to her excellent story. From her web site:

Dragon Wars: Young Adult Fantasy. Three British teenagers are dragged into another world to be warriors in its millennia long conflict with the dragons.  This ongoing Fantasy series will span several sub-genres.

She updates Friday and Monday at Dragon Wars.

She has been collecting the arcs of Dragon Wars in both e-book and physical form. The first in the series, Land of Myth, has been available since last summer, and the second, The Storm Child, is being prepared for a spring release.

I'm bragging on Becka's story and ethic because she's in the middle of an IndiGoGo Campaign to fund a portion of the pre-production costs. Click the link and check out the current status. As I write this, twenty-six days remain in the campaign. The perks are described along with the work to be funded; if you can, adding your two cents (or whatever) to the pot would be appreciated.

Disclaimer: While I'm happily doing the e-book formatting for the series, it is gratis, because I can. My interest is in helping Becka get the best version possible of her brilliant story in front of people.

New Pricing, in Anticipation

I'm planning to publish Freedom Does Matter by February 20, so I've dropped the price of Mercenaries: A Love Story to $2.99.

The new price is active at Amazon (click the cover in the sidebar), Smashwords and Kobo. Through Smashwords, it's available at Barnes and Noble, and iTunes. A warning: B&N hasn't caught up to the price reduction as of January 22, '13.

I dropped the price of Book One, also. It's only available at Amazon (sidebar). If you purchase it and email me, I'll get you a discounted price on the whole book so you won't get stiffed on it if (as I hope!) you want to read it all.

I'm planning to have the third Beckie and Ian story, Background Check (unless I change the name) out before NaNo. We'll see how that goes. NaNo will be for the fourth and perhaps last volume in that series.

Comments welcome.

Some Catch-up

While I'm in the midst of editing Freedom Does Matter and working out a plot detail in Background Check that research proved isn't likely to happen the way I had written (damned research!) I thought I'd share some reviews that I've posted since the last time I did this. Again, these are in the order posted to Amazon.

Let It Snow by Red Tash and others

Let it Snow! Season's Readings for a Super-Cool Yule! (Christmas book 2012) is an interesting, not quite eclectic, group of ten stories in the spec fiction genre. If you're familiar with these authors, this will be a welcome visit to their worlds and characters at this special time of year. If they are new to you, these stories provide a mostly fun, sometimes touching introduction to the unique worlds these authors have created.

While to me these all fit well under the spec fiction umbrella, that's not to say that they are all similar; they are assuredly not. The common thread is the Holiday Season, as the Foreward begins:
"Happy holidays and welcome to our quaint little holiday collection of zombies, crazies, fairies and treasure-hunters (and more)!" And snow, because here in the northern hemisphere, Holiday Season comes with snow... or the thought of it. The quote should give you an idea of the breadth good spec fiction can encompass.

For me, I hadn't heard of any of these authors, and I was happy to have a chance to expand my experience. Of the ten stories, nine were what I'd hoped for in opening this file. While the tenth story fit the collection: a story in the author's world set at a holiday dinner party, it was out of my comfort zone. Even at that, I think, for readers familiar with the world it is set in, it will add to their understanding and answer questions so far unanswered.

In the other nine stories, the characters brought me into their authors' worlds, whether a landfill, a mental "hospital" (it seemed that insane asylum would be a more appropriate, though non-PC, nomenclature), a parking lot in Arizona or a research lab in Southern California, and made the experience wonderful. Add to those an egotistical, arrogant dragon; how can you go wrong?

I started the book and for the first couple of pages, I worried that I didn't know enough about the back story to enjoy the stories. By the time I read another four pages, that fear was gone; I was thoroughly into the Landfill in Laurents County. I read straight through the collection--I did take a break to get a glass of water--and was sorry when 100% showed up at the bottom of the window. I wish I had sufficient funds to buy everything these guys write; it is good, with brilliant characters and clear settings.

I read this both on the Kindle for Mac app, and on the Kindle. In the desktop app, the cover looks quite nice; on the greyscale Kindle, almost as good. In the copy I read, there were a few typos and such; I marked the ones I noticed and put them in an email. A pleasant response came back, along with a note that they had been corrected, so you won't have to worry about those! I would have liked the table of contents to have entries for each of the stories, rather than just the midpoint, but not enough to mark it down.

I recommend this collection heartily to those who have read one or more of the authors, and even more willingly to adult fans of spec fiction who want to find new worlds. Buy it, read it. You'll laugh, and you'll cry.

Five Stars

Youth by JE Medrick

I was a little unsure about Youth. The main character, Louise, is even older than I, so I was leery. If that's also you, rest assured that this is a well-paced, moving story, with conflict aplenty. Most but not all of the conflict is based in Louise's family relationships, with her husband, with her children and their relationships with her and, to a lesser extent, each other.

Don't be confused; this is Louise's story, and I found it heartbreaking, uplifting and probably more true to life than I'd like to imagine.

Other than being a love story, I'm unsure of the genre. It could be considered science-fiction, in that the necessary things could exist, though they don't yet. Or fantasy, if you believe they can't exist, have no scientific basis. Let's call it speculative fiction and say it is an excellent example.

Ms Medrick's descriptions are not lush; they are just right, not slowing the necessarily measured pace of the story, but providing sufficient clues that the reader's imagination can fill details in.

I won't spoil the conclusions. I'll just say that Medrick has enlivened the whole story with interleaved questions (I'm loath to call it a mystery), and the answers will hopefully surprise and please the reader. They did me.

I read Youth on a Kindle; there were a few formatting errors which did not take me out of the story. It's a small thing, but there is no table of contents. When I opened it on my Kindle for Mac, it was as good as the Kindle, except that the cover looked very good in color. However, on the Kindle, one chapter's formatting is quite difficult to read, and I've taken one star for that. In the desktop app, that same chapter is formatted the way I assume it was intended. Even with that problem on the Kindle, it is a wonderful read, and I recommend it highly.

Four Stars

The Puppet Master by Jessie Sturman-Coombs

This is the second book in the Poker Face Series, the first is Poker Face. Ms Sturman has created a little piece of her own world in a British setting, and the results are incredible. Unlike the first, this story plays more to Ruby's internal struggles, making it wildly different from the first one. I'm not sure what's left for Ruby to explore, though I'm sure Ms Sturman is!

This book has as much conflict as you could ever want in a thriller, legal or not. In The Puppet Master (Poker Face), there's little of the legal, but a boatload of conflict, almost all due to Ruby herself, though there are villains, more easily despised than dealt with, to spice up the mix. I found myself quite anxious through the middle of the book as Ruby, Danny and Alessi work through a major course correction for her, largely because I couldn't figure out how she would get through it. Also, I wondered what would happen next, since it was too early in the book for this to be anything but the appetizer.

The main course, so to speak, was fully satisfying, and relieved almost all my tensions, and the dessert was a wonderful strawberry shortcake with a dollop of whipped cream atop. You may substitute your own favorite; it will be as satisfying to you.

The cover by Ivan Waldock is great and helps tie the series together.

I read Puppet Master on my Kindle, where it was easy to read. Like Poker Face, there are British phrasings and word choices, hardly surprising given Ms Sturman's British heritage, but none of them were more than a small bump in the road, so to speak. There are some grammar issues, mostly missing commas, that may cause someone like me to notice them, but should not interfere with enjoying the story. I opened it using Kindle for Mac; it was fine there as well.

I recommend Puppet Master to any reader looking for an intriguing thriller. If you're looking at this after having read Poker Face, what are you waiting for? If you haven't read Poker Face, this story will still work, but references may not make as much sense, and the relationships will be murky, I think.

Five Stars


Of course, you don't need to take my word for it, read these yourself and come to your own opinion. But I hope these comments intrigue you enough to look at these and perhaps purchase them your self... or something else by these authors.

The links are for the Kindle editions; if you are not a Kindle person, have no fear, just drop a note in the comments section and I'll find an alternate option for you. Any other comments are welcome as well.

Happy Holidays

To everyone who wanders by this little corner of the Internet:

May you have a wonderful season of the type that mans something to you, whether it be Christmas, or Hanukkah or the love of your choice.

And may you have health and success as you define it in the New Year.

All the best!