Strange Times Part One

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by
 

public domain, Pixabay, by MabelAmber

Well it’s been a while though I have been working on a number of books which are at different stages. Until October I was busy with researching and then producing the print version of The Reluctant Hero which was published then on KDP, using the print service which replaced CreateSpace. (Link to the UK edition here

During lockdown it occurred to me that a book I wrote back in the 1990s, Green Magic, had been overtaken by events – not only does it include the issue of mass migration and refugees trying to escape from disaster, it also deals with a worldwide pandemic, though I hadn’t called it that, which has a lifechanging result for those who survive. I didn’t think it was right to profit from something that, however loosely, relates to current issues so decided to publish the book for charitable purposes, probably benefiting the UK National Health Service (NHS). Also I would restore it to the original 1990s setting (I had updated it for technological and other changes over the years) to make it clearly an alternative history. I have been working on that over the last few months. It’s a long book and I think will only be an electronic version given the nonprofit nature of the work. I believe it is now possible to publish to Apple without an Apple computer so need to investigate that.

As well as that, I’ve done some work on a couple of other fictional works that I’ve been circulating around my critique group for feedback. I also did an online interview on the E-Author Resources site – my thanks to Vincent Lowry – you can find this here

So the revised list of to-dos is as follows:

  1. Complete the re-edit of Green Magic – partway through
  2. Publish on KDP (Kindle version)
  3. Publish on Kobo and possibly Draft2Digital unless another platform offers itself for the other platforms especially Apple. 
  4. Get some ISBNs for my pen name, as Green Magic is one of my contemporary supernatural novels – will need one for the epub format version.
  5. Continue to circulate another novel to the critique group.

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are now posting updates on the Facebook group here.

 

Reaching the Finish Line

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Front cover of The Reluctant Hero

Cover design: Fantasia Frog

For too long I’ve been quiet but nevertheless I’ve been busy. After overcoming some last minute technical hitches, I finally published my novel, The Reluctant Hero, on both the Kindle and Kobo reading platforms a few days ago.

Countless revisions and umpteen readthroughs, but I finally got there with a huge sense of relief though I know that in some senses, the hard work starts now: that of trying to market and promote the book. Plus I have further learning curves to work out how to get it onto other platforms and produce a paperback.

I think I have overcome some technical hitches I experienced a couple of days ago with the distribution platform, Draft2Digital. Possibly it is easier if you just upload a Word file to them and let them handle all the formatting, but having used my own epub file for generating the Kindle version and to upload to Kobo, I wanted to maintain consistency, especially since I have used one of my recently purchased ISBN numbers for the epub version. A workround recommended for the Kindle caused an issue where D2D could not see my final chapter, so I have had to tweak it a little and I will need to incorporate those tweaks into the standard file so that it is also the same on Kobo.

I’ve also had a quick look at the paperback setup in KDP, since CreateSpace has now been pensioned off and all printed versions must be made through KDP. There is some complexity to overcome, mainly to do with how big the book turns out to be when laid out in a KDP template, as until I know I can’t have the wraparound cover made – the book cover template screen requires the book size before it will let you download a template for that.

Exciting times – I have created an author thread on the Goodreads UK group where I am active, posted about the book on my Facebook author page and told a few friends who have kindly put out links for me. I now need to ramp up the publicity for the book. Blowing my own trumpet doesn’t come naturally, as with a lot of writers, but it needs to be done.

And I now need to get back to one of my other almost-ready-to-go books and start the process again, which should be a lot quicker since both of those books are a fraction of the length of The Reluctant Hero and have a much simpler linear plotline with far few characters.

To summarise the last lot of goals and progress (those with no annotation are not yet commenced):

  1. Complete the latest read through so that am happy to do final upload to KDP and finalise the book, e.g. pricing info etc. – done
  2. Publish on KDP (Kindle version) – done.
  3. Investigate what is needed to publish on Kobo and Draft2Digital to cover the other platforms. – done, and published on Kobo, part way through process on D2D
  4. Investigate print process – CreateSpace still? Seems as if everything is now moving towards KDP – done, it must be KDP
  5. Get some ISBNs – done
  6. Publish the print version

Those nice people at ROW80 are now posting updates on the Facebook group here.

Creeping towards the Finish

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Cross country runners

farmama, pixabay, public domain

Despite good resolutions there has once again been a lack of blog update posting. However I have been working on the edit and have completed several more readthroughs. Just when I think it is all done, I spot something else. However, it is down to small changes for ease of reading etc now.

As NaNoWriMo is looming, I shall work on what I hope will be the final edit during November, using NaNo as a goad to get through the last few hurdles in the way of self publication.

 

To summarise the latest goals and progress (those with no annotation are not yet commenced):

  1. Complete the latest read through so that am happy to do final upload to KDP and finalise the book, e.g. pricing info etc. – part way on the latest, up to chapter 28 in making changes
  2. Publish on KDP.
  3. Investigate what is needed to publish on Kobo and Draft2Digital to cover the other platforms.
  4. Investigate print process – CreateSpace still? Seems as if everything is now moving towards KDP.
  5. Get some ISBNs

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are now posting updates on the ROW80 blog – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

The Road Goes Ever On…

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Road winding through countrysideWell, my good resolutions about posting more regularly on the blog went a bit by the wayside, but a few other things have also been parked lately as I attempt to get through yet another couple of read throughs. The trouble with a long book like this is there are countless small bits of continuity that slip by, but eventually jump out in yet another read through. Just spotted one where someone stands up who was already standing in the corner of the room …. ho hum.

With all this, never got organised enough to join Camp NaNo to do the edit under their auspices; didn’t have time to ask people if they wanted to share a cabin etc. Maybe will sort that out for the next Camp which is in July.

Otherwise, the only writing related thing is that I’ve continued to do my reviews of whatever I’ve been reading – link on the side bar to Goodreads page if anyone is interested. Most of them are old books I got secondhand years ago and am now finally reading them and passing them on to charity shops etc.

To summarise the latest goals and progress (those with no annotation are not yet commenced):

  1. Complete the latest read through so that am happy to do final upload to KDP and finalise the book, e.g. pricing info etc. – part way on the latest, up to chapter 20 in making changes
  2. Publish on KDP.
  3. Investigate what is needed to publish on Kobo and Draft2Digital to cover the other platforms.
  4. Investigate print process – CreateSpace still?
  5. Get some ISBNs

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

Slogging to the Finish Line

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

bicycle wheels

denzel, pixabay, public domain

A while ago I was asked to sponsor a family friend who was in training to ride from London to Brighton for a very worthy cause, Myeloma UK. I was very glad to do so, and followed her progress as she trained, did a shorter cycle ride a couple of months back, and ran a countdown to the big day. On the day itself, her dad posted updates on Facebook as he followed her progress on an app.

I’m not equating the hard slog of riding a bicycle, let alone up the big hill that came just before Brighton, to writing and publishing a novel, but there are some aspects which both have in common.

The months of training runs, of building up first to a shorter challenge and then to the final event, the anticipation, the making sure that your equipment is all in good working order, that you have the right nutritional snacks and fluids to keep you going …. and on the other side, the editing of the book and taking on the input of your editor, then the follow-up read throughs to spot the small continuity errors in a 162K manuscript, or the infelicitious repetition of certain words, especially too close together. The feeling that you are never going to get to the end. Due to that, and various life events, a few things have drifted over the last six months, including this blog – sorry about that!

But the end is now in sight and getting closer. In the last couple of months, I have formatted the book into a Kindle compliant epub file and uploaded it to the KDP site. I’ve added metadata and description after investigating what was needed for those, uploaded the high quality cover file, sorted out the words flagged as spelling mistakes, checked the book’s navigation against KDP’s tools, and downloaded the file three times, to read through again. I’m about to embark on what I hope is the third and last read through before publication. I have a ‘vanilla’ version of the ebook which can go onto Kobo once I work out what is required to do that – KDP treats the cover differently so the epub file has to be tweaked for that.

As a side event, I went back to Fantasia Frog who produced the cover a while back and requested book marks which I’m pleased with.

Once I publish on Kindle, I need to investigate the process of getting the vanilla epub onto other platforms via the industry leader, Draft2Digital. And I need to master the print process. Up to now, CreateSpace has been the first choice for that, but Amazon are steering self publishers towards its own Kindle print process as shown by their recent introduction of proof copies.

To summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Completed.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – done, and proven by successful upload to KDP.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the revised shortlist of pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’. Done – editor engaged, feedback implemented.
  4. Finalise the back of book text and add info to the copyright/dedication page such as the book cover designer’s and editor’s credits. Completed.
  5. Consider if further tweaks are needed to the ebook conversion process in light of advice in David Gaughran’s book and linked articles. Haven’t had time to progress this and will probably park it for now, as KDP has been ‘happy’ with the formatted book three times now.
  6. Arrange to print book marks. Done.
  7. Complete the latest read through so that am happy to do final upload to KDP and finalise the book, e.g. pricing info etc.
  8. Publish on KDP.
  9. Investigate what is needed to publish on Kobo and Draft2Digital to cover the other platforms.
  10. Investigate print process – CreateSpace still?

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

Hopeful Signs

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

hand writing in notebook

pexels, Pixabay, Public Domain

I realise I’ve said little for the last two months although quite a bit has been going on behind the scenes. I  ‘engaged’ a professional editor at the beginning of June, and things are in the early stages, but so far I’m pleased.

I’ve done more work on the ‘back matter’ of the ebook, and also overhauled my stylesheet document before I approached my editor as there were a few small inconsistencies in it.

I played with Gimp again to come up with a transparent cover image that includes the title, author name and the publishing imprint logo. Graphics are not my forte and it takes ages to accomplish what someone else could no doubt do in an hour or less, but I got there eventually. I think I have the image sized correctly now for the ebook.

I contacted Fantasia Frog who have produced a few covers for me already, including the one for the WIP, to check what format their book cover credit should be in, and also to enquire about a possible bookmark for sale on the FF site. After some back and forth, I now have image files for a bookmark which shows information about the forthcoming book on one side and some fantasy images etc and my website link etc on the other. I can use that generic side on future bookmarks. The FF designer very kindly went the extra mile and did some investigation for me re online printers, and we identified one to use. I should already have sorted out the printing, but have been sidetracked with other things since.

While corresponding, I also asked about a premade cover for a novel which I’ve only written part of – and ended up buying it.

I also made a start on editing the second book I intend to self publish, though I’ve only managed the first chapter so far. It is, however, a much shorter book and more straightforward, being a first person narrative, so I’m hoping it will need a lot less time and effort to get it in a state where an editor can look at it.

To summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Completed.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Pretty happy with the process I’ve documented, apart from the continuing issue with the title page image which has the text too small possibly because of making it responsive and sizing for the screen (not including actual figures for width and height). Need to try again with text title/author name and the logo image and see if they still split across ‘pages’. Need to create a short dummy ebook to find out if the trial attempt at a transparent graphic works, as none of the preview tools are any use for that. Done – seems OK as far as I’ve been able to check from putting the dummy book onto Kindle and also Kobo.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the revised shortlist of pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’. Done – and engaged an editor. Now awaiting feedback.
  4. Finalise the back of book text and also remember to add info to the copyright/dedication page such as the book cover designer’s and editor’s credits. More or less done – contacted designer and ascertained form of credits they wanted, and added that to the draft front matter. Overhauled the back matter text.
  5. Consider if further tweaks are needed to the ebook conversion process in light of advice in David Gaughran’s book and linked articles. Haven’t had time to progress this.
  6. Arrange to print book marks. Again, haven’t done this yet.

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

 

Learning Curves

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Blackboard slate with 'Learning, Schooling' written on it

geralt,pixabay,public domain

Funny how you can read the same thing over and over again, re-edit it for the umpteenth time and suddenly have an epiphany – well, fancy term for something that happened when the latest text-to-read runthrough reached a particular conversation. I won’t say what deficiency it highlighted, at risk of major spoiler territory, but suffice to say I’ve been adding new material to a couple of chapters much later in the book to address it. The need for the extra work has bogged down the progress of the edit somewhat, and also raised the word count again when I had succeeded it getting it below 160,000, but without those changes there would be a major believability gap.

Phew! Does make you worry and think “What else might I have missed?” I’m hoping the professional editor I want to engage will catch anything else, though I haven’t yet approached my shortlist as the ‘final’ edit is taking longer with these additions, and I don’t know exactly when I’ll finish.

As an added incentive, I’m doing CampNaNoWriMo this month, with an initial goal of 35 hours editing, though the plan is to exceed that.

As light relief, I wrote another 200 word short story for the latest competition on one of the  Goodreads forums. This time the brief was to include five particular words chosen by last time’s winners. I’ll post that on my short shorts page once the result is announced later this month.

I’ve been reading parts of David Gaughran‘s book “Let’s Get Digital” which has lots of interesting info and also links to other articles on the internet, some by him and some by other writers. I may have to slightly revise my ebook formatting process in the light of some of this advice, mainly along the lines of swapping out e.g. emdashes in favour of substituting the html codes for same. Will need to consider that as soon as I have any time.

Anyway, to summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Part way through chapter 29 of the latest.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Pretty happy with the process I’ve documented, apart from the continuing issue with the title page image which has the text too small possibly because of making it responsive and sizing for the screen (not including actual figures for width and height). Need to try again with text title/author name and the logo image and see if they still split across ‘pages’. Need to create a short dummy ebook to find out if the trial attempt at a transparent graphic works, as none of the preview tools are any use for that.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the revised shortlist of pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.
  4. Finalise the back of book text and also remember to add info to the copyright/dedication page such as the book cover designer’s and editor’s credits.
  5. Consider if further tweaks are needed to ebook conversion process in light of advice in David Gaughran’s book and the linked articles.

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

Spring Shoots

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

snowdrop

Cocoparisienne, Pixabay, Public Domain

Well, a gap in the progress log again, but despite the lack of blogging about it, there has been some progress since my last post. Firstly, I’ve been carrying on with the ‘final’ edit of the WIP. Secondly, I have to report that I heard back from the Magic Oxygen short story competition I entered some time ago, but sadly, I didn’t make the short list.

However, I was a joint winner of a small, non-prize but just for fun competition run on one of the Goodreads forums – 200 words and a certain line had to be included. I’ve posted it on my  short shorts page.

Apart from editing – some days it’s gone well and I’ve done up to three chapters, though other times I can only manage a chapter a day – I’ve also done some work on my book description/book blurb. Some time last year, I produced three rough ones. Last week I posted the best onto SFFC forum and asked for comments. I posted subsequent versions based on the comments – but then received disparate views which left me a bit confused.

So I tried again on one of the Goodreads forums and had some useful input, e.g. that it’s good to go ‘top down’ from less detailed to more detailed, as you want something with impact to show on Amazon before the link to view more, as only limited text shows. Also, that one of the blurbs I’d done as a result of the SFFC input could be worked on to become a ‘long’ blurb (it isn’t that long as such, just has more detail). As a result, I’ve now put something together which has the amended input from SFFC, reworked along the lines suggested on Goodreads, and also using some amended wording that one of the Goodreads contributors suggested. I’m going to head it up with the byline of the book, and with any luck it will also serve as the backcover copy when I finally produce the paperback.

A small side task was to look at one or two sites that would produce barcodes, again for the paperback. I found one that I think will be OK and does it for free, with contributions welcome.

I also took a copy of one of my book title images and played around with making it transparent, as one of the issues with using an image is that if the reader changes their view to white-on-black (or uses a sepia background on a tablet, which I do myself as I find it more restful on that kind of screen), it hopefully won’t appear as a white block against a different colour. Haven’t had time to check that yet as I need to make a small ebook including it. Still don’t think I’ve cracked the actual size issue re the title page graphic, but I’ve found a hint on a book building site that images should be 300 not 75 pixels per inch. I did try to produce a transparent image with text superimposed in Gimp but the text looked puny so the title page image is a work in progress in its own right. Graphics are not my strong point, unfortunately.

I did some reading for general tips on a few sites of people who have self published. A good one which I first found some years ago and then lost track of is Lisa Shea’s. She has redesigned the site a lot since I first found it – http://www.lisashea.com/lisabase/writing/gettingyourbookpublished/

Anyway, to summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Up to end of chapter 17 of the latest.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Pretty happy with the process I’ve documented, apart from the continuing issue with the title page image which has the text too small possibly because of making it responsive and sizing for the screen (not including actual figures for width and height). Need to try again with text title/author name and the logo image and see if they still split across ‘pages’. Need to create a short dummy ebook to find out if the trial attempt at a transparent graphic works, as none of the preview tools are any use for that.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, check where authors can be identified who have used particular pro editors previously identified as possibilities, to validate the quality of the editing and possibly amend the shortlist.
  4. Approach the various editors in the revised shortlist to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.
  5. Come up with a book description that can be used on Amazon and also for the back cover description on the eventual print on demand version. More or less done, with the input from SFFC and Goodreads.
  6. Finalise the back of book text and also remember to add info to the copyright/dedication page such as the book cover designer and editors credits.

 

ROW80 is posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

Pushing Through

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

computer keyboard

Pixabay, by Simon, public domain

Some progress over the last week or so. I completed the read-through to the end of the novel and embarked on creation of the fourth ebook version for a final read-through before approaching pro editors.

I used the process I started to develop last summer, and this time there were no ‘rubbishy’ styles thrown up in the Calibre conversion, just one for italics and the rest the odd ones it uses as part of its structure, at the top and bottom of each file/page for example. So I won’t need to use Calibre in future conversions for this novel, such as the real one for producing an epub file for Amazon upload.

The most taxing part of the process this time was at the HTML stage where the tool was going through the motions of saving the file but then prompting to save it when I tried to quit as if it hadn’t saved it at all. Luckily, I played safe by using the File\Save As option and also copying/pasting the text to a notepad file to be on the safe side, because when I managed to quit the program, none of the work I had done in the preceding 2.5 hours had been saved in the original file! It was still the filtered HTML file as exported from Word that I’d started with. Soon sorted that out by getting rid of that version and renaming the Save As version with the right name. Phew! Computers can be sneaky.

A glitch at the Sigil stage was a couple of fonts not displaying as intended; instead, they were defaulting to the options in Sigil for text that has no CSS class defined. Then I realised I’d met this problem last time and it is due to the font names being capitalised by Word, but all lower case in the stylesheet. Made a note in my instructions this time at the appropriate place to remedy that during the HTML clean-up stage. It was in the notes later on, at the Sigil stage, but it should’ve been flagged up under the section on HTML and it was quite a few months ago that I’d met the problem so I’d forgotten.

Also I did some more trials to try to get a single image that would include the book title and the logo for the title page. This continues to frustrate; I found out how to make the image responsive and include that in the CSS by using an id tag in the image inclusion tag and and cross referencing that in the CSS file, but the text continues to look miniscule when displayed on an actual Kindle. So still head scratching. I’ve confirmed by research on the Kindle forum that there is no way in an ebook to keep text together (or text and a logo image). The advice on there is to make the title page one whole image, but despite trying to enlarge the text, it is still pretty teeny on the Kindle itself. Otherwise, all was OK, with correct table of contents, book opening in the correct place and the text itself all being correctly indented or blocked, and italicised text being italicised.

Following this, I’ve embarked on the read-through and have done nine chapters so far which doesn’t sound a lot, but the last three were long ones. The only actual mistake I’ve come across was the use of ‘relived’ instead of ‘relieved’ in one place. The rest, as ever, is tidying up cludgy bits missed previously or sorting out the odd sentence which is really omniscient viewpoint rather than close third. Plus some small bits have come out here and there that I think are obvious and don’t need to be underlined. The main concern is introducing new mistakes because I did realise in time that I was nearly doing that in one place when rephrasing, so I hope there aren’t any that I haven’t caught.

The pro editor question is bothering me a little; I had a look at the work of a writer who recommended an editor who is right for the genre and sounds a lot more reasonable price-wise than most. The writer has used this editor for all their books and been happy. But in the first few paragraphs, a comma splice jumped out at me and one or two places where I’ve been told a comma is required. Comma splices (joining two clauses with a comma when they need either a colon, a semi-colon or possibly a comma and a conjunction such as ‘and’ or ‘but’, depending on the type of clauses being joined) is a general no-no in English (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice), so I’m having doubts about the editor’s abilities. I need to look into this in much more depth for all the recommended editors on my list, but I don’t want to distract myself from the read-through.

Anyway, to summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Up to end of chapter 9 of the latest.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Pretty happy with the process I’ve documented, apart from the continuing issue with the title page image which has the text too small possibly because of making it responsive and sizing for the screen (not including actual figures for width and height). Need to try again with text title/author name and the logo image and see if they still split across ‘pages’. Haven’t finalised the end pages yet.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, check where authors can be identified who have used particular pro editors previously identified as possibilities, to validate the quality of the editing and possibly amend the shortlist.
  4. Approach the various editors in the revised shortlist to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.
  5. Come up with a book description that can be used on Amazon and also for the back cover description on the eventual print on demand version.

 

ROW80 is posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

 

Still Making Progress

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

stone cutting tools

Gellinger, Pixabay, Public domain

Well, only the second post of the year; already falling into bad habits! I just seem to be doing so much and not having a lot to show. But there is progress, in small stages.

I’ve been working on the WIP using the text-to-speech technique which helps to throw into relief clunky sentences and the odd place where a word was missed out. I had to break off and go back to the beginning again a little while ago because I’d read in more than one place that it was standard for UK books to use single quotes for dialogue (with double quotes inside those for any quote-within-quote). The reverse is true for US books. I’d been raised with the old tradition learned in typing classes that you used double quotes for speech, and so have several other people I know, but books such as ‘New Hart’s Rules’ have been informing me this isn’t standard for the UK. I checked quite a few recent traditionally published paperbacks and they all follow the single quote convention, so I’ve been back through the MS correcting that.

Being concerned that something might go haywire with a global find-and-replace, after doing the replace, I did a search on single quotes to make sure that nothing funny had happened, which resulted in a few small line edits here and there as I spotted other things I could improve. I had to tear myself away from re-reading the chapters in full, but given the number of edits already made on this third text-to-speech read through, I think I’m going to have to do a fourth to make sure there really are only minor things to deal with, before approaching the pro editors. Anyway, I’ve caught up to where I was before starting the quote replacement so I’m hoping to steam away with it now and get the last bit done.

Something I discovered by chance: I use an electronic copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, but on Windows 10 it has gone a little bit glitchy, loading ‘off screen’ so that I have to maximise it via various right-click and key combinations to make it visible. Then it does a ‘stay on top’ so that I have to minimise it to get back to Word. I discovered yesterday that there is a free Wordweb dictionary tool which, provided you accept the option on installation to create a taskbar icon, you can access by highlighting a word in Word (or other software), then holding down the Ctrl key and right-clicking with the mouse. A window pops up with various dictionary help and functions. They also do a pro version for £17 that allows you to purchase add-on dictionaries, and I was tempted when I saw they did the SOED, but I investigated and the last edition is the one I already have – 6th edition (2007) – so it wouldn’t make sense to buy the same thing again in a different form. Anyway, for anyone interested in the free version of Wordweb, it’s at http://wordweb.info/free/. For users of Macs or other operating systems, scroll down that page to the links at the bottom.

Quite a bit of time has been taken up over the last few months writing reviews of the books I’ve been reading for the Goodreads site – anyone interested in seeing those can click the Goodreads button in the sidebar on the home page. I found a few good groups there for exchanging views and finding out information on self-publishing, not just author only forums but also those where the focus is on readers.

Earlier this month I wrote a short story (200 words) with a set topic (a particular phrase had to be included) for a short story competition in one of those Goodreads forums; no prizes, just a bit of fun, and I thought it would be a challenge. I’ve backed off from doing those kinds of competitions for some months as I felt a bit discouraged by the lack of response (didn’t expect votes but some feedback would’ve been nice). So we’ll see how this goes. It doesn’t close until later this month.

I’ve just finished critiquing the latest batch of submissions in the email-based group to which I belong. More alpha than beta readers, as I’ve only sent round parts of a first draft of another novel so far and it’s not the whole book in one go, just a few chapters at a time. I’m parking all feedback on my own material for now, rather than letting it distract me from finishing the current WIP.

I’ve been reading a rather quirky book, The Pocket Book of Proofreading. It also covers copy-editing to some extent and includes some useful information; in fact, it ‘prodded’ me to finally do something about the single quote thing – I had read something about that a couple of months ago, but prevaricated about having to deal with it.

Last time I received a couple of comments from kind people who read that post and asked questions. I should have spotted those back in January so apologies for the delay. @Shan Jeniah Burton, the forum I meant was the Science Fiction & Fantasy Community. Thanks for that tip about APE. @Beth Camp, I’ve been using an old Kindle Keyboard which does a robotic voice for my text-to-speech readthroughs, which I bought secondhand. For this book, I’m going for copy editing, because a professional writer very kindly read an earlier version and gave me developmental comments.

Anyway, to summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Play the novel through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Up to end of chapter 30 of the latest run through.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – This is parked at present though I’ve done quite a bit on this. Have looked at other ebooks by self published authors I know, and they all differ. Need to sort out the graphic I was using as the title page – when I had the publisher logo with normal text it split the page text, but the graphic all-in-one wasn’t big enough either and looks silly.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the various editors previously identified as possible pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.

 

ROW80 is posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.