Monthly Archives: December 2011

Novella

Writing one off


Looks like I’m going to have to give up on getting ‘The Odd Machine‘ into iBookstore and Barnes & Noble. I’ve done everything the publishers asked, and the bloody thing still keeps on getting chucked back at me for the same reasons.

‘Change your metadata’ is all I could get out of support, which is about as much help as a slap in the face with a rotten Sardine. Even after asking “How is the metadata accessed?” Because I made all the requested changes where I could, and still my eBook kept getting rejected for the same ‘reasons’.

Well I’m writing ‘The Odd Machine’ off as far as iBookstore and Barnes & Noble are concerned. You can get to the point where something wastes so much of your time it gets in the way of new projects. I’ll just have to chalk this one up to experience and hope that particular eBook gets noticed via the blog.

To be honest it’s left me a little disenchanted and annoyed. I hate people who won’t give you a straight answer to a simple question, instead beating around the bush and hiding their response with jargon they won’t explain, and probably don’t understand themselves. Bloody hell, it’s like trying to get network support to perform a simple task. For the moment I’m going to stop beating my figurative head against the metaphorical wall and go and enjoy Christmas.

I’ll try my luck with the first of the Cerberus eBooks in the new year, and if I get the same problem, change publishers.

General musings

Authors rights


There’s a spirited little discussion between writers going on in the LinkedIn forums. Mostly on the “How does a writer get an agent in 2012” thread. I read several comments regarding copyright, where authors wanted the rights to their work returned and had difficulties getting the necessary permissions from their previous publishers.

Not being a lawyer, but fairly switched on legally speaking, my younger stepdaughter passed her law degree with honours and specialised in that area. So we have had discussions.

The thing is, when you sell a book to a publisher, what they are buying is the ‘right to publish’ for a given edition. If the writer has not been so blinkered by excitement of getting a deal and signed away everything. Did that once for a short story. Never again. The specific rights sold might be the US / UK book rights, the publishing rights for a screenplay based on your work, forget what they’re called, have to look them up. Anything like that. Only complete newbies sign away all the rights to a given piece of work, but then we’ve all been there. Excited and bright eyed because you’ve actually sold something, and so desperate not to lose that sale that you don’t bother to read the deal on the table.

Well, that’s my understanding. However, with the current boom in eBooks, print on demand services and self publishing, the field is wide open. This may mean the days of the publishers advance are coming to an end, but the self publisher seems to get a bigger slice of the pie, so better royalties.

General musings

Getting ready for festivities


Yesterday I had a minor baptism of fire regarding Christmas trees. On Friday, Angie and I were outside our local supermarket discussing buying a tree for Christmas. Angie was fretting about one shedding needles all over the place, and I was just letting her concerns just bounce off me. One of the locals noticed our dilemma, stopped by and was pretty disparaging about the quality of Supermarket trees. “Go see Mike’s place.” He advised, referring to Mike Gogo’s sawmill and Christmas tree farm on Nanaimo Lakes Road.
“Sure, I know where that is.” I said naively. So off we went.

Drove round to the sawmill to be greeted with a “Looking for a Christmas tree?” from the man himself, followed by “Follow me.” As he drove his car out of the Sawmill yard. So we followed to the sign where it says ‘Office’.
“Okay. How does it work?” We asked after the usual British Columbian small talk was exchanged.
“Take this saw. Go pick your tree. Twenty five dollars.” Said one of Mike’s girls, handing me a yellow twenty four inch bow saw. I left Angie at the office to pay our twenty five bucks while I went hunting the twenty plus acre site for a suitable sized tree.

After about twenty five minutes and several false alarm, plus a lot of tripping and muted anglo-saxon over frosty ground, I found a tree that would serve our purpose. At a gnats over eight feet high, it looked just the ticket. Trimming away enough of the straggly lower boughs, I took ten minutes to fell the nine year old fir with the little hand saw. Then fifteen minutes carrying my sixty pound plus trophy back to our car, where my wife announced that she hadn’t been able to pay as Mike only took cash, and she hadn’t brought any. After a moments chagrin and embarrassment, we asked if we could put the tree aside and pick it up when we paid on Saturday. “No problem.” Was the reply.

On Saturday morning, Joanna, my younger Stepdaughter drove us over to the Christmas tree farm, where the tree was christened ‘Douglas’ (Don’t ask) and cargo strapped onto her cars roof rack for transport home. No prizes for guessing who was given the task of clearing most of the bugs off the tree and erecting said item. So, here it is. with me smiling. Sorry about the smile. I’m not very good at them. Always think I look like a grinning idiot.

Will catch up with Twitter and Facebook too in a while. Providing I’m not running Christmas errands. At present all my major projects are on hold as the ‘important’ things like the festive season take precedence. Although ‘The Odd Machine’ should be accepted for Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the iBookstore fairly shortly if my latest ‘fix’ for the project works (See previous post). Once that’s done, I can pitch back into working on the promised ‘Cerberus’ Novellas and final volume of the Stars trilogy.

In addition, my issues with online readings have been resolved. My cameras data card required reformatting, as the little tinker was throwing up memory controller data errors when downloading onto my venerable desktop. This little frustration was probably down to memory fragments from repeated downloads clogging up my SD card. After formatting, all is functional again.

As soon as I can finish a reading without too many fluffs and interruptions, I’ll post a couple on Youtube and embed them on a blog page.

General musings

An issue with Lulu.com


If there were any logic in the world, my novella, ‘The Odd Machine‘ would already be on Amazon, iBookstore and Barnes & Noble.

At the current count, I’ve had a distribution message bounced back at me in three separate emails at eight day intervals for the following reasons;

“Given author(s), title or subtitle don’t match your files” – Yes they do. The fields exactly match the selected author profile.

“There’s a subtitle on your cover that needs to be added to your metadata.” – Sorry, but no, unless Lulu.com’s conversion process is incomplete, I’ve filled in all the fields available to me.

“Please add “A Novella” from your cover to your metadata.” – Why was this information not forthcoming in the first email?

My manuscript file conversion completes perfectly every time, and no error messages ever come back at that stage. It’s the 4-5 day lag that is getting overly frustrating. I am currently approaching the end of my EVA tether, and Lulu appear to have shut down all support apart from a pro forma guide and the discussion forums. Replying to their ‘error’ email address throws up a ‘message undeliverable’ report.

Currently not very impressed.

UPDATE: For those suffering the same issue, I think I have an answer. Check ‘file’ then ‘properties’ before uploading your text file, especially if using a Lulu.com document template. If the ‘collar and cuffs match’ all should be well. Am kicking myself for not cracking it sooner.

Stars Trilogy

Destroying Brussels

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Despite the title of this post, I actually like Brussels as a city, and have fond memories of visiting friends who used to live there (Hi Ralph & Sheena).

In the late 21st Century of the ‘Stars’ trilogy, I’ve used the city for a more sinister purpose. Brussels becomes the headquarters of the Gaian European Republic, a thoroughly unpleasant bunch of oligarchs. A superficially theocratic republic where dissidents are routinely murdered for parts of their brains which form the processing cores for the Gaians war machines. Where people’s remains are cultured and rendered to form ‘Go-Quarn’, a Tofu like substance given to citizens as part of a ‘healthy vegetarian diet’. They were great fun to write. Even more fun to destroy.

This is the great thing about writing science fiction on the grand scale. You can have a great deal of fun simply blowing things (Places, Cities, even whole planets) up. Although in the imaginary future of the ‘Stars’ trilogy, the Gaians see democracy as a primary threat, and spend a great deal of time trying to wipe out said dangerous creed. So it could be argued that the Gaians got what was coming to them.

Language

Visual aids


Not a good day so far. Writing is again at the zero level because I’m busy running around doing other people’s errands. Small things being blown up out of all proportion, and being dumped in my lap. Like it’s my fault they were broken in the first place.

Still. One must persevere in these situations.

I’m beginning to understand why movies cost so much to make. My own first dozen attempts at doing readings for a simple YouTube vid are so full of slurring, fluffs and swearing that I’m beginning to doubt whether English is my first language or not. This is puzzling, because at Drama School, sight reading was at the top of my skill set. There’s also the issue that any vid I make approaching a Gig in file size overloads my little cameras memory controller, and the file will not download. Although considering the standard my sight reading has sunk to, I’m currently thanking goodness for the delete key. There is no way I’m inflicting that on an unsuspecting world. Even for the sheer comedy value.

General musings

Distractions


Hardly any writing output for the past few days. Too many distractions. That, and a feeling of having been kicked in the side. I think I must have pulled a muscle shifting logs. All I know is that it hurts enough to interfere with my breathing. Being ill on Tuesday didn’t help, the feeling of being bunged up and hardly being able to see out of my left eye. Every time I coughed was like being punched in the ribs. Still a little creaky.

Began Thursday with long, rambling conversation with Angie about psychology and what I call ‘behavioural response loops’ which many substitute for real thought and awareness. The way a loss of conscious thought whole days (and for some, lives) can disappear into a kind of mental fog without significant action. Days plagued by unnecessary trivia caused by people who ‘forgot’. The feeling of being stalled because others haven’t done their bit. Nothing that can’t be fixed, of course, but nothing that shouldn’t have been broken in the first place. This has been the defining characteristic of the past week.

Daughter is currently going through one of her noisy phases, breaking into raucous song when I would rather have quiet to work. There are also passports to be renewed and a thousand other things getting in the way of sustained effort on the manuscript front. Especially on the run up to Christmas. I’ve never been much of a ‘festive’ person, and while I don’t mind doing grown up stuff, tend to baulk at being expected to get all happy clappy at the behest of others. It’s not something that sits well with me. Too artificial, too forced. Partying for the sake of it was something I left behind at seventeen.

To break the creative impasse, I’ve been doing readings to camera to put up on YouTube. Not bad, but I’d never noticed before that I have a slight stammer. Not much, just the odd stumble over some simple words and phrases, but despite my drama training my verbal glitch shows up whenever I try to read a little too quickly. Thinking about it, I’ve never been all that comfortable in my own skin, and tend to do much better when I read ‘In Character’. Perhaps I need to develop a ‘reader’ character and let him take over when I want to speak in public.

Friday night we took the evening off to go and see ‘Puss in Boots‘ at the movies. A good chuckle raised me out of my immediate fugue state, and as such I can thoroughly recommend the film. The cat specific and ‘fairytale’ gags are pretty good, the DreamWorks animation superb as always, and the 3D exceptional. Worth seeing twice. One for the DVD collection.

There’s also a music lesson to book. Perhaps a session of almost reducing some poor guitar teacher to tears at my lack of talent might help.

These past few days have taught me that some days you just to write off as too much trouble to get your head down properly.