Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 63

Oh, well...the text will be right in the book...

I heard from BookLife that they cannot update my submission for reviews, but swear that the typos won't matter in the review. We shall see. My one real consolation is, this book will be tight once it's in print. I may miss one or two, but I remember books coming out from major publishers that had notes added to them to state "this line on page 225 should read..."

Erratum was not unheard of, before. I think this is my favorite reference to it:

Of course, even the first time I saw this I knew Ben Hur wasn't published in 1860, but the duplicated line might be correct. Mistakes are not uncommon.
The Alice '65 is based on the first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland being withdrawn because the illustrator hated how his work was printed in it. Which wasn't so much an error, really, but the artist just being difficult. Still...the fact that only 24 are known to exist makes it very valuable. Which fits.
Maybe that's what'll happen with APoS. Early versions have an unseen error and I find it and change it and the first ones become collectors items. Maybe.
It's good to have dreams.

Weary...

I'm not feeling good; some kind of upper-respiratory infection is going around and I got it. Not Covid; I've run 3 tests and all are negative. But I've coughed myself into a headache, and the only thing that seems to remove the ticking in my throat is drinking Dr Pepper, since it's carbonated and is like scratching that fucking itch. Gargling with Listerine diluted in half does help, but not all that much. However, doing that I don't need to pee every hour on the hour.

I managed to get through more of APoS-Derry's backward proofing, and it seems the closer I get to the beginning the fewer typos I find. Probably due to all the times I reworked the first chapters to work with the last. I have 9 left. I've been inputting any corrections I make on the ebook format of the novel, so it will be ready to upload to BookLife to replace the one that's currently there. 

That's such an embarrassment. I should have waited till I did this before sending it in for reviews.

This shows why I'm a bust when it comes to fixing and promoting my work. I should hire someone professional to do not only the proofing but also some editing. Someone to point out when I get repetitious or inconsistent in the story.

It's said that Hemingway didn't become a great writer until he worked with Maxwell Perkins. Same for Thomas Wolfe, who was known to love his own writing, unlike me. Perkins was an amazing editor who could catch the gist of the stories and would argue with his writers and fight to help them make their work even better. Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Wolfe...all their greatest books had his fingerprints all over them.

I need a Maxwell Perkins.

Jobs, jobs, jobs...

I'm off to LA on Saturday and another job came through today, out there. So I'm jammed with work, Monday-Friday, with my flight returning to Buffalo on Friday night. One is on Mulholland and damn near impossible to get to, easily; one is in Sierra Madre, which is really more of a pickup and single pack; one is just making sure boxes go into bins properly for transport.

Wonderful. I would be recuperating for the rest of the month except I'm flying to San Antonio on the 20th and dealing with family till the 26th. Glorious. I'll need till March to get back in gear.

I learned, today, that Direct2Digital POD will be just as obnoxious about erotica as Ingram. They definitely refused to set How to Rape a Straight Guy up for print and distribution and sent me this explanation in response to my query. None of which is in their Terms of Service. Fucking asswipes.
I mean, WTF does mainstream erotica mean? Danielle Steele romances with a couple of bad words in them and intimations of sex?

I can still get HTRASG printed up for me, if I want. And I can sell it, myself. But I'm not set up for that. It's irritating, but there it is. I guess I can think about it...but not right now. I need to finish APoS-Derry.

Most of the day was working up my new schedule, ordering materials and making sure I had everything I needed as well as contacting the clients to verify next week's business. I still got through more of my backwards proofing of APoS...and found two more typos. Again, easy ones to miss. One word was in singular when it should have been plural, and the other was the wrong tense.

I also found I'd inadvertently identified a tea shop with the same wording, as if it was a new place for Brendan and Joanna, twice. They were separated by a chapter so again, easy not to notice. Cut the second one that's in the story.

Dear God, I'm suck a fuck up when it comes to typos and mistakes.

Backwards is good

I'm going backwards through APoS-Derry, one page at a time, of course, and have found three more typos. This time it's two words jammed together without a space between them, two words conjugated without an apostrophe, and a missing period. All very easy to overlook. At least it's getting better.

The problem with doing this is I've decided to cut a bit more. In and of itself, that's not a big deal since I've yet to set it up for print. But I have submitted it for reviews and now may need to update the file I sent in. Don't want reviewers whining about typos and the book seeming unedited.

I know I should have done this before I did that. Such is life. One of these years I'll learn how to do things right the first time. Or not.

Got an email from D2D POD saying they didn't want to offer HTRASG in their catalogue. I've asked them why, since it doesn't violate any of their stated limitations and am waiting on an answer. I pointed out Amazon still offered aftermarket copies of the book, so it's not banned by them. They have that as a deal-breaker; if Amazon says no, it's no way in hell.

I'm just so fucking tired of this puritanical bullshit happening all over the US. I don't like what you write so I won't let anyone read it. Fascist fucks. I get that D2D is a private company and it can decide for itself what it will and will not offer in its catalogue, but you should be up front that your so-called erotica section is very limited in what is and is not acceptable.

I went through a lot of trouble to set the book up in their system, and would much rather not have done so if they're going to be dicks about it. And you can rest assured, I will make damn sure, if they still say no everyone in the writers groups I belong to on Facebook will know about it.

Dunno if that'll work to change their minds, but I got Amazon to back down the first time they banned HTRASG. Maybe again?

Got a cold...

I think. I took, a covid test and it came up negative. Taken another one and waiting for it to finish. My feeling is, I stirred up some dust and it's messing with my sinuses and given me a touch of bronchitis. But we'll see.

Today, I set How to Rape a Straight Guy up with D2D POD. Seems if you use a PDF for the text instead of Word, it maintains its formatting. I'm waiting for the proof...and word as to whether or not they will offer it; they might not...then I'm ordering a physical copy to see, before I allow it to be offered. It's going to be limited in who will carry it due to the sexual content. If I had Curt just killing people, that'd be fine. Any library or book store would be happy to offer it. But two men having sex? No can do.

Doesn't matter that it's rape, in the book. Books with women being raped and with incest are available on library shelves and carried in B&N and the like. It's insulting, but it's how we are, today. I ran into that when Amazon did its first ban of the book, back in 2010. They carried the Flowers in the Attic series, which has incest and a baby born from it, and Wild Orchid and such, but those were offered by major publishers who could fight back.

I think they were surprised at how hard I fought them on HTRASG. And that I refused to give up. They finally agreed to offer it in paperback but not Kindle, mainly because they were too lazy to do an adults only section, back then.

I also worked up an ad for Rape in Holding Cell 6. I've rather neglected pushing that book. That's inappropriate. It's got a wide-ranging story and is the prelude to The Vanishing of Owen Taylor, so needs to be done up right.

Another negative reading. One might be false but not two. Cool.

Full dust jacket...

I worked on this, today. Getting it as close to done as I can. I'm leaving space for  reviews that might come in by the end of the year. Of course, if they're really bad I may make something up. We'll see how it goes.

I like the general look of the dust jacket. Normally, publishers full-justify the synopsis on the flaps but I think the left-justify fits better with the book, overall. What I'm showing here is the third version. The first two were okay enough but this one is it, I think.

The good thing is, I won't need to finalize it till the end of December, so I might still make changes.

Now I can get started on my backwards proofing of APoS. After realizing my version of Word might be part of the reason for so many typos, I especially need to verify everything is in order. Again, I have time...though not all that much. Next Saturday is leaving for a week-long set of jobs in LA and then I'm going to Texas for Christmas. Oh...my...

I'd rather stay home.

I almost got a job in London from someone I've done work for on a few occasions, but it got to be sounding sketchy. Hand carry a small work of art to a university. That can be really tricky since universities usually have their own brokers to handle imports. Plus, duty is due on art, not to mention Customs fees...and I got the feeling it was being sent undervalued, which is a very big deal if Customs catches you.

So backed away. Dammit.

What did I do today?

I honestly have no idea, except I dismantled by Mac Mini, answered emails, and watched an old episode of Midsomer Murders that I didn't really like. And by old, it was 2nd or 3rd season and written by someone out to get even for slights in boarding school. I cleared my recycling. Watered my plants. Made blueberry muffins with pecans. And the rest is just blank...like I went into auto-pilot.

Oh, I did get my LCCN from the Library of Congress, for APoS-Derry. That means when I do publish a hardcover copy of the book I have to send them a copy and it will be part of the LoC's collection. I'm quite pleased about that.

Thanksgiving is early, this year, so I keep thinking we're into December when we still have a week. And then I remember I'm leaving for LA a week from tomorrow...and may be there longer than I thought because another job popped up that I will need to deal with. Nothing major, just make sure bankers boxes are packed into a D Container for shipment across the country.

I've got several things I want to get done before Christmas, but cannot make myself face them, just yet. So I'm coasting along.

Aw, fuck it. I'll get everything done when it's done. I worry about self-imposed deadlines too much. The only thing I really have to do by a certain time is a sketch of our grandmother's house in San Antonio, for my sister in Aransas Pass.

We lived there a lot of our lives, off and on. Nana bought it in 1941, once she began work at the Nix hospital in the newborn nursery. She had to do it through a savings and loan because she was a divorced woman and no regular bank would deal with her, back then.

There was no fence, she had a mimosa tree in the yard by the driveway and an oleander bush under her front window. It was a cranky place on cedar stumps for a foundation that had to be reset every 5 years, and was painted white with dark gray shingles. She sold it when she realized her cancer was inoperable and incurable, and passed away not three months later.

But that's what sister-san wants for Christmas. Shit...I don't even have Christmas cards, yet...

Damn...

I did the last of a read through of CK and found a couple more spots where letters had been dropped from the text, but were correct in the printed book. And...one where a word was singular that should have been plural, which was in the printed copy. So now it's done and in a PDF and I'm beat so checking it over, tomorrow. This time just making sure the page numbers are in order. It's a holiday weekend. Nothing's getting done till Monday, anyway.

I got so engrossed in getting it done, I almost missed Thanksgiving dinner. I'd planned to make a green bean casserole and cornbread to go with the turkey slab and mashed potatoes I had, but wound up hungry so just heated everything up and made a quickie salad from a beefsteak tomato and cucumber. And had a beer. Gravy on the turkey and mashed potatoes was courtesy of a can of Campbell's mushroom soup, and it was craisins for the cranberries.

I made myself eat it at my table instead of my desk. It was nice. So easy and quiet. And I do like Shiner Bock. Now I'm having tea and contemplating what's needed for tomorrow. It's time to remove my Mac Mini from my desk, for example. I can do Photoshop on this laptop so that little beast is just taking up space.

Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was nice and non-confrontational. I just had to repost this...

WTF????

I don't know what happened, but when I adjusted Carli's Kills into a PDF to upload to Ingram Spark, it wrecked my Table of Contents. Those numbers are not correct.

I didn't notice until I got the proof back. Now I'm going through the whole book to make sure everything is all right. Truly freaked me out, but I looked at copies of the book I'd had printed, before, and it was fine in them...so this is just some issue with the document.

This is me and electronics. I came so close to just automatically approving the proof because I've never had a problem with it, before, but noticed the numbering almost by chance and now I'm paranoid like you would not believe.

The next time I shift this Word text into a PDF, I'm doing it through the printer to see if that is better. I may even do it on the company PC, to see if that kind of computer works.

There was a car wreck at the Rainbow Bridge going into Canada and the right wing was screaming it was terrorism...only it's just a wreck. A middle-aged man in a $300,000 Bentley had a medical incident or did some drugs and lost control and is now dead. And places like Fox News and the right wing scum who love to blame everything in the world on Democrats almost seem disappointed it was not terrorism. And not one apology for their fake hysteria.

God, sometimes I'm ashamed to be part of the human race.

Down day...

And by down I mean emotionally. Had to handle a couple of things for the upcoming jobs in Los Angeles then had a followup eye appointment to check on this floater I have in my right eye. Seems to have stabilized, but my ophthalmologist says it's permanent and probable I'll wind up with a similar one in my left eye; that's how these things usually go.

That knocked me off center. I don't want to have to worry about going blind. That would destroy me. I'm set to go back in six months instead of a year, to keep watch on it.

It was raining steady and cold, and my neck was starting to act up. I have psoriatic arthritis in the left side of it and it hates the cold. But I found if I keep it wrapped up it's not as bad. I'd had a light lunch so was hungry and wanted a burger, but the only place around was a Mickey D's. Which was fine; I did a quarter-pounder with cheese meal.

Still, it didn't stop me from following a path of whining about where I am in life. I wanted to go straight home and just lie in bed, but I'm out of groceries -- milk, veggies, jam, DPZ, pretty close to bare except for some dry and canned goods and a couple frozen meals. So had to go Tops, and my car needed gas. Didn't get home till five.

While getting out of the car, I shifted my neck in some way that shot a vicious pain down the left side of my back. I was halfway afraid my muscles or tendons or something were going to seize up, so I did not move until it all stopped. I'm still a bit sore...

And now I'm an old man talking about his aches and pains. What a cliché.

Regarding APoS, all I did was update the synopsis and cover with Book Life. I also set up Carli's Kills with Ingram, again. I had to re-send them the files for the text and cover, but there's no cost for it. I'm going to push the book as best I can, to get its paperback sales going. They weren't at all what I'd expected with Kindle Direct. The e-book is still with Smashwords.

I'll have to build a better market for it. Most of my work is gay-oriented while CK is very straight, if rather kinky. First chapter has a naked woman who's just had sex being pushed off a 25th floor balcony to her death, by Carli...with her contemplating having fun with the naked, married male lover. Still, my audience prefers the wicked pleasure of reading about men being raped by men; a woman doing it doesn't have the same pull.

Dunno why; women can be just as cruel as men.