Skye Lansing's Blog, page 9

Images For My Books

As of today In Honor’s Shadow has officially hit Release Candidate 2. I doubt this is the version that will be released (there are still a couple of improvements I have in mind). Still, at this point I’ve started to focus more on the actual layout. The result has been actually a little eerie for me because I’m starting to get something that looks like a professional book, only it is my story.

Getting everything to look nice has really forced me to dig into the formatting options available to me. The tricky part is that a LOT of the formatting with ebooks is handled automatically by the reader, so what might look nice on one platform can look simply bad on another. That said, most of it is just pushing text around subtly, checking to see how it looks, and then tweaking things again. There are a few flourishes that really make things pop though.

That little image above there is called a filigree, and it is one type of separator that can be placed to help fill a section break in text (such as when there is a jump to another scene in a story). There are other types that are sometimes used as well. You may be familiar with an asterism (* * *). Horizontal rules (a simple horizontal line) and fleurons (stylized flowers and leaves) are also popular. It is also possible to get away with pretty much any symbol repeated a bunch of times, and I strongly considered going that route, however I decided that a proper flourished section break was easy enough to include that there was no reason to skimp on the effort.

The filigree was actually one of the harder aspects to get right. Too small and it doesn’t look good. Too large, and in some formats it will get cut off. Fortunately, this is the type of thing that just requires simple trial and error. Work intensive, but once I found the right size it was just a matter of applying it to every instance of the image.

To the left is the second image I needed. Initially I only wanted it for my site icon, but in the end it seemed like a waste to use it for just one thing. After getting the image, I quickly decided it could be put to better use than simply having it serve as the site icon.

One thing I have looked into is starting an imprint for marketing purposes. This slightly violates what I’ve learned as the 80/20 rule, but it seems like something that will become more valuable as time goes on. It give me flexibility to change printers later, help build a brand, and in general will make things look more professional.

 

Some Thought On Favored Words

One thing I noticed early on, back when I was a teen and becoming truly ravenous with my reading, was that most authors have words or phrases they really like. Sometimes it is a particular “verbal tic” they have, other times I think the sound of the word is just appealing to the writer. From my personal experience, I doubt these are ever intentional. They most likely slip in under the radar without the author ever realizing it.

This is one reason why I take special note of words or phrases that I feel are being overused in my own writing while doing revisions. Typically, early drafts are rife with them, which I hope is not unique to me. Gradually certain phrases/words will fall by the wayside, but they are replaced by new ones almost as quickly.

Why bring this up now? Glad you asked! As of now my story is through editing and ready for publishing, pending the handling of a few minor details and a final review to ensure nothing slipped through. However, in the final stretch I noticed a few words that I apparently really enjoy using. Here they are:

Accept

One thing my characters did an awful lot of was “accepting” stuff. If someone handed them something they would “accept” it rather than take it. Should something they didn’t like happen, they “accepted” it. Explaining why I use this word so often is difficult, because I’m not sure. My suspicion is that I simply like the way it sounds, at least in the context of this story, but still I need to keep an eye on it.

Already

Ooooooh boy! This is the chief offender, and one I cut many times it popped up. Pure verbal tic I never realized appeared in my writing, but it quickly got on my nerves because usually I was cramming it into sentences that didn’t need it. Amateurish attempt to convey that things are happening around the characters even if they aren’t paying attention, but often it is implicitly understood. If I say “Max had drawn his sword” there is very little difference if I instead write it as “Max had already drawn his sword.” Yes, the addition of already gives emphasis, but the effect is completely lost if used too often.

Past

Of the three, this is the one that caught me most by surprise. It doesn’t help that this is one of the few words in my manuscript where I’m not always sure if I am using it correctly. In fact I intend to make another sweep just to ensure that I’m not using it when passed would be more correct. Worse still, I’m reaching for it when other words would be better. To give an indication of how blind I am to this, I’ve already caught myself using it during this post when it was completely unnecessary.

Book Progress

Intended to do something else for this post, only to have a whole bunch of things come together all at once. Since this is my first ever push to publish something the process is completely new to me. I’m constantly alternating between this feeling that things are moving too slowly for me to make the deadline I set, and that things are moving so fast I begin to feel concerned that perhaps I am trying to rush this out the door.

I’m sure a lot of my uncertainty will go away for future books, though experience tells me this “hurry up and wait” sensation is an indicator that a project is nearly finished. Once the book is actually published I’ll probably take some “lesson learned” notes. If it sounds like I’m complaining that isn’t the case at all. Really I’m surprised with how well everything is going, but all of that isn’t nearly enough to overcome the feelings of being lost as I grope my way through this.

Editing 95% Done

On the editing front there is very little that remains. For my peace of mind I’m going to do a check of common errors and misspellings, plus some errors I often make. This may sound like a lot of work to do for a whole book, but it just requires a simple search and replace. The process will actually be rather boring since I don’t want to make the changes automatic, and want to verify them each myself.

Other than changes to the story itself, there is only a little that needs to be done. Need to make sure the formatting looks good (though I’ve already done a lot of work on that front). Need to make sure I have all the necessary parts for the book’s front/back matter (again, this is mostly done). Finally, I’ll probably do one more quick read and give a few copies to friends to have them read, just to make sure nobody spots any obvious errors.

Cover Art Done

Quite literally the day after I got the last edits from my editor, I also got an email from my cover artist. The art is done, all that remains is for me to work out how the artist would like to be credited (I definitely believe she deserves it). Once I know that there will be a bunch of updating for me to do on this site. Right now my Books page is just a place holder.

Review Copies

This is probably the last big thing I need to do, and one which I’m not at all sure how to approach. I have a few ideas (especially considering that I am not anticipating making bank with this book), but I want to make sure I’m ready to run them before I get myself into trouble.

E-Readers

For Christmas I received a Kindle Paperwhite (3rd Gen.) to replace the Kindle Touch I’d been using for the past few years. The improvement between the two devices was noticeable and for a couple of days I considered doing a review, but have now decided to take a slightly different track. My blog isn’t for reviewing gadgets, and there are plenty of other places you can get that. Instead, I’d like talk about my experience with e-readers over the years.

When it comes to e-readers, I was a fairly early adopter. I have only owned 3 dedicated e-readers myself, however I have tried reading e-books on other devices so this will cover those as well even if they aren’t exclusively e-readers. Consider this a sort of documentary of the different devices I’ve used over time.

Retrieved from Wikipedia
2nd Gen. Kindle

I didn’t quite get in on the ground floor of the e-reader revolution, but I think I probably got in at the first point where the devices were starting to become good. That said, they were still fairly crude. They still relied on buttons for page turning, and had a simple keyboard at the bottom; basically a tablet that lacked the touch screen and used e-paper for the display.

At the time I only jumped in because Amazon was pushing them, and I was facing the reality that I keep almost every book I buy. Finding shelf space had become massive pain. I was also interested in the prospect of being able to bring a large selection of books with me when I travel, instead of picking just two or three.

Before my purchase I actually looked at other e-readers that were coming to the market at around the same time. The whole e-book industry (and by extension e-reader industry) was still in its infancy—really it is still in the process of maturing despite how wide-spread it seems today. The only ones I seriously considered were made by Sony.

I ended up passing on the Sony readers for two reasons: First, and most important, I was convinced that Amazon would have the better marketplace, and that using their own device would allow me to interact with it best. Second, the free 3G delivery of books seemed wonderfully convenient to me, especially as I didn’t have a wi-fi network at home and didn’t feel the need to deal with the device’s file structure to get books on it.

Inelegant as the 2nd Gen. Kindle seems today, it completely sold me on e-readers. Reading on it was easy, and the device just seemed to vanish which allowed me to focus on the book. Battery life was great—even back then I could read almost constantly for 3 days before the charge started to get low. I thought an e-reader was a bit too pricey for most people to consider, and figured someone who reads a “normal” amount would probably prefer a tablet of some sort, but for someone who read as much as I did it was perfect. Ultimately, I ended up reading on it exclusively shortly after I got it.

Retrieved from Wikipedia
Kindle Touch

Within a few weeks of getting a 2nd Gen. Kindle I began to think about what features would improve it. At the top of that list was replacing the buttons with a touch screen. I figured this would let you either expand the size of the screen, or shrink the entire device (I didn’t actually care which was done). After the Kindle Touch was released it was a foregone conclusion that I was going to pounce on it.

Although I found the gestures for interacting intuitive, early on this new kindle felt a little fiddly. Sometimes I’d accidentally turn pages without intending to do so. Over time this issue vanished (I am unsure if I got better at using the Kindle Touch or if there were software updates that improved the sensitivity). In addition, the storefront presented was more attractive and the display itself was crisper, with more contrast for the text.

The version I got gave up free 3G delivery. At the time I wasn’t sure what to make of this, because it was one of the major features I had wanted in my previous Kindle. Ultimately it didn’t matter that much, to my surprise. By then I had wi-fi where I lived, and pretty much anywhere I went had wi-fi. If I was concerned about wi-fi access somewhere I could always plan ahead and buy books before my trip.

The Kindle Touch immediately replaced my 2nd Gen. Kindle as my main reading device. It never ended up being my exclusive reader the way the previous Kindle had, but for any serious reading it was by far my favorite way to lose myself in a book.

Retrieved from Wikipedia
Barns & Noble Nook 1st Ed.

At the time I got my Kindle Touch, my brother got a Nook. I didn’t get to use it much, but I did fiddle with it a little and quickly decided it wasn’t something I’d want. Of course, part of that was the knowledge that my growing Kindle library couldn’t easily follow me onto the Nook, but I also didn’t find the user interface particularly appealing.

The miniature screen below the main display was an interesting innovation that tried to bring more utility, but to me it seemed like clutter. When I read something I don’t want there to be any distractions. I want it to be as much about the “page” before me as possible, even when I’m holding an electronic device.

This is the point where I should stress that the Nook looked like a perfectly fine e-reader. I’ve heard some criticism about Barns & Noble’s e-book store, but my brother didn’t seem to have any difficulties. It’s completely possible that the reasons I didn’t like the device come down to personal preference and that I had already bought into the Kindle.

Laptops

I actually didn’t own my first laptop until after I got the Kindle Touch, mostly because I never saw the need for one when I had a desktop that was capable of everything I might want to do. Really the laptop I got was a move to start writing more seriously, and was a machine that would be dedicated to writing (mostly because it wouldn’t be powerful enough to run games).

At some point I began to read on the laptop, though this was rarely by choice. I find having a back-lit screen hurts my eyes if I read on it for any significant length of time. The main reason I used it at all is that the Kindle is really tooled for .mobi files, and when it comes to PDF’s it isn’t good at displaying the document. That isn’t to say it can’t do it, just that I find the result distracting.

So when I am required to read PDF files (and I do sometimes read things several hundred pages long that are PDF’s) I fall back on a laptop. I’ve tried using the kindle app for computers, and while I do think it works well and displays e-books beautifully, I vastly favor reading them on a kindle to this day. In short, while I do read with a Laptop it is restricted to a single file format.

Retrieved from Wikipedia
Nexus 7 Tablet

About a year after I got my first laptop I bought one of the first generation Nexus 7’s. This was more of an impulse buy on my part. I had been interested in tablets since the iPad came out, but the full-sized iPad just seemed unwieldy to me. If I wanted a screen that large I was going to be using my laptop or desktop. It was about the same size as my Kindle Touch, so I naturally decided to try it out as an e-reader.

The experience wasn’t unpleasant. I still found the back-lit display a bit of a strain on my eyes, but I could turn the brightness down and there was the perk of being able to read when there wasn’t any light. For some reason it didn’t stick with me in that role, though. In the end it became a sort of day planner/note taker for me.

If I had to guess, I would say that the more diverse nature of the tablet naturally lent itself to doing more with it…but this also detracted from making it a transparent device for reading. The Kindle, by contrast, is completely dedicated to reading. When I pick it up I know what I am going to be doing, and there isn’t any temptation to use it for anything else. Others probably don’t have this problem, but for me it was insurmountable.

Smart Phone

I owned a smart phone long before I got the Nexus, but I never actually tried reading with it until after I purchased the tablet. There isn’t much to say here beyond I didn’t find the experience particularly enjoyable. The small screen just turns me off, even on modern smart phones with larger screens.

Maybe I’m just old, I know that reading on phones is becoming a big thing and completely get why. Since Smart Phones are so ubiquitous these days it is just convenient for people to read on one during their morning commute when they don’t want to have to carry something else. Unfortunately, that just isn’t a problem I have, although if I ever get into audio books I am sure the phone is what I would use.

Retrieved from Wikipedia
3rd Gen. Kindle Paperwhite

I know these have been out for a while, but the Kindle Touch has served me so well I didn’t want to replace it until recently. What finally gave me the push was getting my hands on a Paperwhite over Thanksgiving. My brother (the one who had previously owned a Nook) had been gifted a used one at some point and came to like it. I noticed him using it and tried it out for a bit, then quickly decided an upgrade was in order.

Technically this was a gift (I merely dictated what I wanted), and to help keep the price down I chose to forego 3G once more. I also decided to include “special offers” which is marketing code for ads. It is the ads I most want to talk about.

I had anticipated that Amazon would target the ads to me based on my purchase history, making them a way to help me discover new titles I might be interested in, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. For the record, I mostly read science fiction and fantasy. Most (all?) of the ads I’ve been served are for romance novels. Perhaps that is all that is being advertised. I’ve heard that romance is the largest genre in existence, but even if that is the case, you would think Amazon’s ability to collect data on what it’s customers buy would allow it to offer well targeted ads at bargain prices even if your target is a niche market.

That said, the Paperwhite is a nice step forward. The side lighting overcomes the last drawback of my previous Kindles, allowing me to read even if the lights are out. The text is crisper, as I expected it would be. The UI works wonderfully, and the size of the device is perfect for use even with one hand. There are probably improvements that can be made, but by now they are likely just refinements.

New Years Resolutions 2016

End of the week and beginning of a new year. Things have been very busy for me this year, but I’ve ended up learning a lot about what I’m trying to do. Not bad, considering I am constantly trying to figure out what I’m doing. Thus far my accomplishments are mostly personal, but I feel like they were all major steps toward this writing dream I’ve given myself: Got this website up, finished editing my book (mostly), found a cover artist, and started making plans for a modest book launch.

It’s tempting to rest on my laurels while I wait for my first book to be ready to publish, however I want to keep the momentum going. To that end, I’m going to lay out some resolutions for 2016.

I will launch In Honor’s Shadow before March.

While the book is about 90% ready to go, with me mostly waiting on getting a few things back, I need to make sure to not let this rest until the last moment of my deadline. There’s this whole checklist of things I need to check and double-check. Ideally I’ll have everything ready to go before the end of January, but I want to give myself a bit of wiggle room. Mostly I want to have things ready to the point where I just throw a switch and everything is set into motion. I also plan to take notes so my next launch will be easier.
I will keep my website updated.

This one is a bigger point than I think a lot of people will understand. Right now I’ve updated once a week, and while I want to eventually draw that back I’ve always felt it is important to keep up a living presence on the web. For now there isn’t much here besides my blog posts, which makes it critical that I keep them coming. Eventually, once I have more varied content, I can back of on this. There are plans, I just tend to think they are ones for the distant future.
I will finish writing my next book.

Probably my most ambitious goal, and the one I will push at the cost of others (except #1). I’m not really sure how long it will be, besides saying I expect it will be up to 30% longer. I would LIKE to have the book done by August or September so I can really dig into editing before the year is out (it would be great if I could release a full-sized novel every year) so that is my real goal, but I don’t want to overreach either.
I will be ready for NaNoWriMo.

Events contrived to make me unable to participate this year. That is still possible for next year too, honestly. I have a lot of elderly family members that aren’t in the best health, and they obviously take priority. None of that is under my control. My ability to be ready for NaNoWriMo in the event that things DO work out is, however. Currently I’ve got 3 ideas that would all be a good novella, so there is no reason I shouldn’t have those ready to go come November.
I will write at least 1K words/day, 6 days a week.

Even if I’m writing slowly this is just 2 hours of work. I expect to be writing more than simply 2 hours a day, so there is absolutely no reason I cannot make this goal unless I’m letting myself slack off. At a pace of 1K/day I should have my new novel ready in draft form after just 4 or 5 months of writing even if I end up having to rewrite vast swaths of the story. Moreover, I want this to hold true even if I’m in an editing cycle, so things like blog posts and the like also count.

There you go, the five goals I’m setting for myself this year. Next year I can revisit these (if I remember) and measure how well I did. And perhaps if I enjoyed the exercise I’ll set up some new goals to go into 2017 with.

Site Header (at last)

This is going up a bit late for what I would call good excuses, except none of them are. Big change to the site’s look, however, thanks to a new site header image! I’ve been waiting to get something else to replace what I was using, since that was basically just the default image that came with this theme.

Beyond that, some stuff that I’ve been up to and my plans for the next while:

Flooding!

So it seems when I travel to visit my grandmother (on my father’s side) the weather generally ends up being bad. This rarely impacts my ability to work on things, writing is fortunately very good when it comes to that. Doubly good now, because with the flood stage at something like 14 feet I’m basically stranded. At least things are dry where I am.

Book Outline

Been working on my book outline for the next book (which I haven’t even thought of a working title for). Progress on this has been less than it should be, mostly because I’ve slacked off to enjoy my holiday. This isn’t to say that I don’t have an outline, I’ve actually got one that already details the major story beats, but I wanted to make something more detailed.

At the moment, I’ve got probably 15-20% of the book outlined in this more detailed version. That’s not bad, but it would be nice if I was maybe 60-70% done. This more detailed outline forces me to think about the story in greater depth and has already resulted in some significant changes in the plot.

Book Cover

The book cover for In Honor’s Shadow is now effectively finished. The artist wanted to finish a few details, but I should be able to share the result before too long. Honestly it came out better than I imagined it would, and I expect I’ll be going into this more once I’m able to show the finished cover.

Minor Side Projects

This has been what takes up most of my time lately, and effectively amounts to me playing around writing random things. Some of it is for friends, some of it is for me. The weird thing is that this really isn’t any different from if I was writing on what I should be working on, so it isn’t like I’m avoiding the writing itself.

Mostly I just put this down to my mood and make sure to keep track of what I’ve done. In many cases these little side-things I work on end up being good leads for other stories. So does reading for that matter (which I’ve done my fair share of this holiday too). Right now I doubt I’ll have any time to really work on them, but one is a candidate for NaNoWriMo.

Resolutions

Seems like everyone is working on those right around now. I’ve never seen the point of having these, but decided it would be a fun exercise to post a few related to my writing. Those will go up on January 1st.