K.M. Frontain's Blog, page 35
February 3, 2012
Redemption 2 re-release
Third edition, ePUB version of The Redemption of Tehlm Sevet: Volume Two is available on Lulu. It should be available on Amazon in Kindle format within 24 hours.
February 1, 2012
Fan Art!
Kehfrey by Ambra, January 2012, originally posted on her Goodreads account. Character from Bound in Stone (set of novels in The Soulstone Chronicles).
Coloured verson of Kehfrey. Ambra's art again. She's very talented. :-)
I will post more fan art later.
January 27, 2012
Three chapters to go on Redemption 2
And they already feel like the longest three chapters to edit. My biggest issue seems to be long sentences. Where to cut and how to reword to make the sentences more concise without losing flow? And without my eyes crossing permanently. This edit has the speed of a snail travelling to the next strawberry on a warm humid day, which is pretty fast for a snail. There's progress, and there's a trail of half-eaten strawberries back there, and when did I turn into a snail, I wonder? Strawberries are nummy...
Husband expected me to wash wine bottles for bottling currant wine this weekend, but I forgot I made the promise. Oops. Heh heh. And the load of unfolded clothes on the upstairs couch has become a mountain waiting to collapse on the cats. And whoah! When did that much seeds and dust get on the floor? Did I mention one of my parrotlets has this hamster wheel that squeaks? When he runs on it (which is super cute), the wheel goes "Aaiiiee Aaieee!" like a tortured itsy bitsy poodle. I should oil the wheel, but... No, it's funny listening to the noise. Yes, Bug, torture that widder poodle.
Ok, random Friday morning for me. Back to slugging words until the family wakes up and disturbs me like last night. Pedagogic day, darn it; husband doesn't work Friday; everyone is home. Time to trick some kids into vacuuming and folding laundry. Maybe the husband will wash the bottles himself...
Edit: Oh, yeah! More fan art of Bound in Stone! It’s in progress. Follow @wl552 on Twitter or on Tumblr. Woman is brilliant. What she calls flash fiction is beautiful poetry. :-) I’ll post a link to the finished art later.
Husband expected me to wash wine bottles for bottling currant wine this weekend, but I forgot I made the promise. Oops. Heh heh. And the load of unfolded clothes on the upstairs couch has become a mountain waiting to collapse on the cats. And whoah! When did that much seeds and dust get on the floor? Did I mention one of my parrotlets has this hamster wheel that squeaks? When he runs on it (which is super cute), the wheel goes "Aaiiiee Aaieee!" like a tortured itsy bitsy poodle. I should oil the wheel, but... No, it's funny listening to the noise. Yes, Bug, torture that widder poodle.
Ok, random Friday morning for me. Back to slugging words until the family wakes up and disturbs me like last night. Pedagogic day, darn it; husband doesn't work Friday; everyone is home. Time to trick some kids into vacuuming and folding laundry. Maybe the husband will wash the bottles himself...
Edit: Oh, yeah! More fan art of Bound in Stone! It’s in progress. Follow @wl552 on Twitter or on Tumblr. Woman is brilliant. What she calls flash fiction is beautiful poetry. :-) I’ll post a link to the finished art later.
January 21, 2012
The Kindle freebie stats so far
Not exactly perfectly recorded. Some things I should have kept track of better perhaps, but the free rank didn't interest me.
For the free day, the following downloads and immediate results occurred:
Amazon.com 242, free rank went as low as somewhere in the twelve hundreds.
Amazon.UK 38, free rank in the seven hundreds and a single one star review by a surprised/disappointed reader who admitted to not reading the content warning.
Amazon.de 3 downloads, didn't check the free rank.
One email of attached story for a reader who had a Linux operating system. Yes, Amazon forces you to use a Kindle client (software on a recognized operating system) to download content.
If there are no visible results, I can think of a few reasons. One, my freebie sucks so much it wouldn't attract a fly looking for fermented poo. Two, the story was just too out there and put readers off my other work, sort of correlates with reason one. Three, freebies don't attract buyers; they attract non-buyers looking for freebies.
The one star review was good in that it put my attention on the genre I placed this fiction under and also got me to refine the content warning a little more, for those who might not get the term BDSM. I added the term violence to the content warning and also warned not to expect a happily ever after.
Amazon allows you to categorize a story in two genres only. Since this first installment concerned demonic monsters meeting each other for the first time and how they bond/socialize/mate, there was a lot of sex. I thought I had no choice but to set the story in the erotica category first and fantasy second. But now I'm not so sure about the erotica category, first because of the reaction of the vanilla reviewer, second because the future installments do not revolve around sex as much (at least some won't). I tend to write plot and relationship. If sex happens, it happens, but sex is not actually the plot goal of Gold Bites. I have a story planned out for the characters. They're probably going to get the crap beaten out of them eventually. Well, they're demonic. People gonna hate.
Ok, any suggestions on genre category would be appreciated. I'll post a follow up on the freebie results later.
For the free day, the following downloads and immediate results occurred:
Amazon.com 242, free rank went as low as somewhere in the twelve hundreds.
Amazon.UK 38, free rank in the seven hundreds and a single one star review by a surprised/disappointed reader who admitted to not reading the content warning.
Amazon.de 3 downloads, didn't check the free rank.
One email of attached story for a reader who had a Linux operating system. Yes, Amazon forces you to use a Kindle client (software on a recognized operating system) to download content.
If there are no visible results, I can think of a few reasons. One, my freebie sucks so much it wouldn't attract a fly looking for fermented poo. Two, the story was just too out there and put readers off my other work, sort of correlates with reason one. Three, freebies don't attract buyers; they attract non-buyers looking for freebies.
The one star review was good in that it put my attention on the genre I placed this fiction under and also got me to refine the content warning a little more, for those who might not get the term BDSM. I added the term violence to the content warning and also warned not to expect a happily ever after.
Amazon allows you to categorize a story in two genres only. Since this first installment concerned demonic monsters meeting each other for the first time and how they bond/socialize/mate, there was a lot of sex. I thought I had no choice but to set the story in the erotica category first and fantasy second. But now I'm not so sure about the erotica category, first because of the reaction of the vanilla reviewer, second because the future installments do not revolve around sex as much (at least some won't). I tend to write plot and relationship. If sex happens, it happens, but sex is not actually the plot goal of Gold Bites. I have a story planned out for the characters. They're probably going to get the crap beaten out of them eventually. Well, they're demonic. People gonna hate.
Ok, any suggestions on genre category would be appreciated. I'll post a follow up on the freebie results later.
January 19, 2012
Free download on Amazon
The Beast in Beauty is set to have it's free download day on Amazon tomorrow, January 20, starting midnight PST and ending midnight the following day. The event coincides with a Twitter party, hashtag #IndieOP. IndieOP is for readers, writers, comic book artists, artists in general and anyone who wants to join in. I hope to see some new Twitter-peeps there.
The Beast in Beauty is set to have it's free download day...
The Beast in Beauty is set to have it's free download day on Amazon tomorrow. The event coincides with a Twitter party, hashtag #IndieOP. IndieOP is for readers, writers, comic book artists, artists in general and anyone who wants to join in. I hope to see some new Twitter-peeps there.
Today is an author landmark day
I have fan art. This is a huge landmark. I have fan art!
I'm awed, as you can probably tell. This is the first time anyone created a work of art based on something I wrote. Ambra, who has been lovely and left me reviews on Amazon, sent a message earlier today and posted the work onto Goodreads. It's absolutely lovely. It's called "Canella in the Old Cemetary".
Here's a link, though I think you need to be a member of Goodreads to use it.
Thank you so much, Ambra!
I'm awed, as you can probably tell. This is the first time anyone created a work of art based on something I wrote. Ambra, who has been lovely and left me reviews on Amazon, sent a message earlier today and posted the work onto Goodreads. It's absolutely lovely. It's called "Canella in the Old Cemetary".
Here's a link, though I think you need to be a member of Goodreads to use it.
Thank you so much, Ambra!
January 13, 2012
Cat's Ass Logo and KDP Select
Beginning with KDP Select: I've been following blog posts of this. I understand how it works somewhat better now. I still don't like what it's done to the market (monopoly anyone?), but I have decided to make use of it. No, not for The Soulstone Chronicles. No way I will remove that from Lulu and therefore iTunes. Actually, I have an email with links to show me how to get the series onto Kobo, but I set it aside for a bit because the process is a little complicated and my brain melted.
Books on KDP Select are free to download on certain days the author can schedule, and because they are free that day, they show up in the list as free, which means attention directed toward that book and, hopefully, an increase in sales for other books. Five days of free download can be scheduled for three months of contract. That's just the stupidest thing ever. Five days for an even three months. My math OCD wants to add a digit to the five. Why is Amazon being cheap and not giving us six days for three months?
Ok, so despite the five instead of six days, I chose an older short story to use as my KDP Select experiment, an experiment I hope will bring attention to my other work. I spent the last two days melting my brain further converting and re-converting the doc file and testing the ePUB and Kindle versions until I had the correct format with all the tweaks in the original story I wanted. This is a 17 K short erotic fiction story meant to become a series of short fiction stories, not necessarily erotic in each chapter. The Beast in Beauty is something I wrote in 2006 when Erotic Dreams Publishing existed. I still have two reviews up on the internet for it. I shall link them now:
Fallen Angels Review
BDSM Reviews
I had a good review by M.E. Ellis too, but that blog was pulled down and rebuilt elsewhere. I know Emmy gave me permission to post the review on my defunct website, but I can't find the permission, so I'm going to ask her again and post the review on the blog later. Unless I have it on my blog somewhere already. I have to check that. Thinking through my keyboard, sorry.
I had to think up a series name for my short fiction series and arrived at Gold Bites.
Meanwhile, and back before Christmas, I had an artwork epiphany concerning perspective and drew a cat's butt. A cat's butt, it turns out, is much easier to draw than a cat's front. But it took me many decades to figure that out. Two of my progeny are very artistic when it comes to pencils, paint, craft materials. I think all the stuff they've been showing me nudged my failed artist alter-ego out of the tangle of personalities in my head and it gave me ass. I mean cat's ass.
Then, about two days ago, I realized I might actually have something there. It wasn't that bad a drawing really. If I use my better talent at photo manipulation, it might make a logo, a logo I could pin at the end of my ebooks.
And there it is. I spent part of yesterday perfecting it. I added it to my short fiction pub. Then my daughter said, "You need to initial it." She was right. More hours of fiddling with photo manipulation ensued.
I had already spent time coming up with my author signature. I took the initials from the author signature and added them to the logo and re-uploaded my story to Amazon.
And then I came up with a posterized version of the logo. And darn it but I want to re-upload to Amazon again (Yes, OCD).
But there it is, I have a logo. It's the cat's ass.
Really, it's my cat's ass. He's walked off in a huff bazillions of times with his tail swishing off to the side like that. Cat's are huffy.
Oh, yes. Haven't forgotten to work on Redemption 2, just wanted to drive more attention to my series through this experiment. I'll get back to the edit now. :-)
Books on KDP Select are free to download on certain days the author can schedule, and because they are free that day, they show up in the list as free, which means attention directed toward that book and, hopefully, an increase in sales for other books. Five days of free download can be scheduled for three months of contract. That's just the stupidest thing ever. Five days for an even three months. My math OCD wants to add a digit to the five. Why is Amazon being cheap and not giving us six days for three months?
Ok, so despite the five instead of six days, I chose an older short story to use as my KDP Select experiment, an experiment I hope will bring attention to my other work. I spent the last two days melting my brain further converting and re-converting the doc file and testing the ePUB and Kindle versions until I had the correct format with all the tweaks in the original story I wanted. This is a 17 K short erotic fiction story meant to become a series of short fiction stories, not necessarily erotic in each chapter. The Beast in Beauty is something I wrote in 2006 when Erotic Dreams Publishing existed. I still have two reviews up on the internet for it. I shall link them now:
Fallen Angels Review
BDSM Reviews
I had a good review by M.E. Ellis too, but that blog was pulled down and rebuilt elsewhere. I know Emmy gave me permission to post the review on my defunct website, but I can't find the permission, so I'm going to ask her again and post the review on the blog later. Unless I have it on my blog somewhere already. I have to check that. Thinking through my keyboard, sorry.
I had to think up a series name for my short fiction series and arrived at Gold Bites.
Meanwhile, and back before Christmas, I had an artwork epiphany concerning perspective and drew a cat's butt. A cat's butt, it turns out, is much easier to draw than a cat's front. But it took me many decades to figure that out. Two of my progeny are very artistic when it comes to pencils, paint, craft materials. I think all the stuff they've been showing me nudged my failed artist alter-ego out of the tangle of personalities in my head and it gave me ass. I mean cat's ass.
Then, about two days ago, I realized I might actually have something there. It wasn't that bad a drawing really. If I use my better talent at photo manipulation, it might make a logo, a logo I could pin at the end of my ebooks.
And there it is. I spent part of yesterday perfecting it. I added it to my short fiction pub. Then my daughter said, "You need to initial it." She was right. More hours of fiddling with photo manipulation ensued.
I had already spent time coming up with my author signature. I took the initials from the author signature and added them to the logo and re-uploaded my story to Amazon.
And then I came up with a posterized version of the logo. And darn it but I want to re-upload to Amazon again (Yes, OCD).
But there it is, I have a logo. It's the cat's ass.
Really, it's my cat's ass. He's walked off in a huff bazillions of times with his tail swishing off to the side like that. Cat's are huffy.
Oh, yes. Haven't forgotten to work on Redemption 2, just wanted to drive more attention to my series through this experiment. I'll get back to the edit now. :-)
January 9, 2012
ePUB tweaking is done
At last, after days of digging for info (Lulu's FAQs are useless for this), I have fixed the non-resizing font in my ePUBs. I've also, incidentally, removed thousands upon thousands of hidden code that made my ePUBs larger in size.
Why didn't Lulu's converter convert my docs right? Not sure. The converter, I think, should have been programmed to strip from a document anything unnecessary to an ePUB, but it doesn't do that.
Why didn't I know my documents had all this unnecessary stuff? It is hidden to the point it cannot be seen. Really. I literally had to cut and paste each story onto a fresh Word doc (I use Word 2003). Then I had to kill all formatting. Then I had to re-do the paragraph formatting. And after that, I had to add in all the italics, searching my back up doc for each instance and adding it into the new copy.
It took days. I'm tired. I learned more about CSS. I learned more about ePUBs. I'm tired. Yes, I'm repeating myself.
Ok, so I'm back on track. Next up, finish the final final final ePUB edit of Redemption 2. Will take a few days. I'm tired.
I'll just crawl to my bed now and rest my brain. Wish me luck or bless me. I may have CSS nightmares.
But I'm happy it's all done! Yay! :D
Now I'm going to bed.
Why didn't Lulu's converter convert my docs right? Not sure. The converter, I think, should have been programmed to strip from a document anything unnecessary to an ePUB, but it doesn't do that.
Why didn't I know my documents had all this unnecessary stuff? It is hidden to the point it cannot be seen. Really. I literally had to cut and paste each story onto a fresh Word doc (I use Word 2003). Then I had to kill all formatting. Then I had to re-do the paragraph formatting. And after that, I had to add in all the italics, searching my back up doc for each instance and adding it into the new copy.
It took days. I'm tired. I learned more about CSS. I learned more about ePUBs. I'm tired. Yes, I'm repeating myself.
Ok, so I'm back on track. Next up, finish the final final final ePUB edit of Redemption 2. Will take a few days. I'm tired.
I'll just crawl to my bed now and rest my brain. Wish me luck or bless me. I may have CSS nightmares.
But I'm happy it's all done! Yay! :D
Now I'm going to bed.
January 5, 2012
Blackberry Playbook review
A brief review of the Blackberry Playbook from an author's perspective: the Word to Go app sucks if you want to edit a large, very large as in my case, document. There is no Go to function, so you can't skip to a page at the back. There is no search and replace function, so that means of skipping to a section is out as well, not to mention this is one of the most important features an author uses in Word. Without search and replace, Word to Go is only good enough for moderate editing of small docs, very small docs, like two or three pages.
RIM come to my rescue and upgrade the Word to Go app.
As for using this device as an e-reader: It's very comfortable. I bought a 99¢ app for this, because the provided app, Kobo, wouldn't let me add to my library by searching for book on the hard drive. That's no good to me. If I buy a book, I want to know exactly where it is on my hard drive. I want to be able to move it around, save it elsewhere, back it up. Couldn't find any means to do that with Kobo so far. I am very glad I did not buy a tablet that forces me to use a proprietary app that controls where I put media, how I buy media, how I store it and when I can read it. Thumbs up for the Playbook in that regard (because of that non-proprietary app I bought--it's called Book Reader, btw).
Last, I am grateful to have bought this device for one annoying reason. Yes, I know that sounds odd, but when I tried my ePUBs on a reading device at last, I found font flow problems that were not evident using Calibre or Adobe Digital Editions on my computer. On a tablet, my fonts refused to resize. The white space between sentences got larger or smaller, but not those fonts.
Ah, the agony! I'm in the process of reformatting docs and tweaking the css sheets of all my published ePUBs. Strangely, the Kindle versions, which Calibre created from the ePUB versions, all work great so far on this device. No font weirdness at all. (Email me if you find any! Or comment.) The Playbook has been essential for testing all css tweaks.
And that's about it. Glad I have the Blackberry Playbook but need to have Word to Go upgraded to be a working application rather than a cheap addition good only for small docs.
Oh, and that wasn't brief at all... Oh, well.
RIM come to my rescue and upgrade the Word to Go app.
As for using this device as an e-reader: It's very comfortable. I bought a 99¢ app for this, because the provided app, Kobo, wouldn't let me add to my library by searching for book on the hard drive. That's no good to me. If I buy a book, I want to know exactly where it is on my hard drive. I want to be able to move it around, save it elsewhere, back it up. Couldn't find any means to do that with Kobo so far. I am very glad I did not buy a tablet that forces me to use a proprietary app that controls where I put media, how I buy media, how I store it and when I can read it. Thumbs up for the Playbook in that regard (because of that non-proprietary app I bought--it's called Book Reader, btw).
Last, I am grateful to have bought this device for one annoying reason. Yes, I know that sounds odd, but when I tried my ePUBs on a reading device at last, I found font flow problems that were not evident using Calibre or Adobe Digital Editions on my computer. On a tablet, my fonts refused to resize. The white space between sentences got larger or smaller, but not those fonts.
Ah, the agony! I'm in the process of reformatting docs and tweaking the css sheets of all my published ePUBs. Strangely, the Kindle versions, which Calibre created from the ePUB versions, all work great so far on this device. No font weirdness at all. (Email me if you find any! Or comment.) The Playbook has been essential for testing all css tweaks.
And that's about it. Glad I have the Blackberry Playbook but need to have Word to Go upgraded to be a working application rather than a cheap addition good only for small docs.
Oh, and that wasn't brief at all... Oh, well.
