Maria Yrsa Rönneus's Blog, page 11
March 9, 2021
February 17, 2021
Dawdling Doodles
So Dear Reader, it seems only fair that you shall have an update on the Amazonian debacle as per my previous post. It seems that all indeed shall be well. The Kindle Look Inside now works, and the formatting is acceptable. (Though it does still not look the way I spent so many gruelling hours to tweak, but seriously, I now wave the white flag and surrender to the Amazonian beast.) I had several prompt replies from Amazon’s support yesterday, so all credit to them for that. The paperback Look Inside matches the Kindle but that should be sorted in a few days.
Nevertheless, Dear Reader, the stress got the better of me and I’ve been feeling tired and uninspired these last few days. I spent today listening to science podcasts while making some graphic designs for covers for still very hypothetical translations to Swedish of my novels.
Have a gander! How do you like them, Dear Reader? I found the pretty pictures on pixabay which really is a most fabulous resource. Chances are that if I ever get around to doing those translations I shall have tired of this style anyway.
Meanwhile, it is now time for my supper and with that, Dear Reader, I wish you a great Wednesday, whatever is left of it!
February 16, 2021
Perils of Publishing
The path to self-publication is one fraught with problems, perils, and pitfalls, and no mistake, Dear Reader. Sometimes they come at you from entirey unexpected quarters. Out of all the troubles one could possibly foresee, one would not have pegged uploading a file to internet as the lethal blow to one’s novel. But there’s no reasoning with a poorly programmed website.
In uploading the two previous novels to Amazon, I experienced some problems with cover size and so on, but, although frustrating, I could solve it within a few hours.
This time was different.
It is about a year or so since I published Orient of Adoration, so perhaps Amazon has made some changes since then. Dear Reader, I don’t know.
For starters, the invincible and unbendable Amazon site reacted to the text file of my paperback, not the cover, which has never happened before. I had already formatted that file twice but reworked it into Amazon’s own downloadable paperback template. Problem solved. Check.
The interface where you handle your files and publications has a “preview launcher” which tells you what your finished product will look like.
Everything was peachy. Publish. Click.
On to the ebook, I used iBook Author to create a epub file. I wanted to use Scrivener (which is the software I use to write in) but Scrivener uses Kindle.app to preview files and Kindle.app decided to not work. After uninstalling and resinstalling, the same problems persisted so I moved on to iBooks Author. Life is just too short, you know?
iBooks Author isn’t that great, but it got the job done and I managed to after some hours work produce a decent looking file. Not that great, but acceptible. I have learnt, Dear Reader, that any aspirations to more than that in self-publishing ebooks will be mercilessly squashed beneath the preformatting of Apple and Amazon.
Anyway. It turns out that when you upload an epub file to Amazon, that system chews through it and spits it out the other side in the form of a .mobi file. Yep, you guessed it. My formatting was completely botched. Readable, but botched. I had no other file prepared so I left it as was while I was working to set up another file.
Meanwhile, my file was approved by Amazon but there was no thumbnail. You could see the cover if you used the Look Inside feature on the live site. I waited a day to see if something would change. And it did. The Look Inside feature stopped working. Well, that’s useless. Nobody is going to buy that.
I had turned to Amazon’s own Kindle Create, thinking it would solve the botched formatting if I use software specifically created for Kindle. Little did I know that my problems had but begun.
I have worked in Kindle Create before, I realized, as I was reliving the nightmare. It is a software so peculiarly outdated that it makes Windows ’96 jealous.
It has virtually no features. There are four templates to choose from but not many ways to tweak them. You can’t add or delete spaces between subsections e.g. And even the features there are, won’t work as intended and it’s full of glitches. If you place your cursor anywhere at the beginning or end of a sentence anywhere on the page the whole thing just skips a page forward or backward. Perhaps it works better with windows, but I wouldn’t wager any money on it.
After many hours work, I had wrested my text into the the hideous restraints and happily uploaded the file to Amazon. As one would expect, it was fine. Well. It looked the same as it had on my mac, anyway. The preview launcher showed me the file and everything seemed finally to be ok. Problem solved. Check. Publish. Click.
Hahahaha! No.
When the new file emerged from review this morning, the thumbnail was working. Great! And the Look Inside feature was once again working.
No so great. Because although my file looks as it should in the preview launcher, the Look Inside feature has gone berserk completely oliterating any shred of formatting. Every conceivable combination of fonts, type size, bold, italic
and alignment appear on every page. It is unreadable.
Since the preview launcher tells me the file is ok, this is probably an error with the live site’s programming. I do not think that is what the actual ebook looks like, but nobody but I can know that and certainly, nobody will buy the book.
This is supported by the fact that the exact same problems occur with the paperback Look Inside. Those are two different files that generate a Look Inside warped in the exact same way.
Have a look-see for yourself, Dear Reader.
At the same time there are no problems with the Look Inside feature of my previous books. I have emailed Amazon, but do not know how much support I can expect. In all likelihood, I’ll get a bot message back with a dozen useless links.
It is my hope that this shall be resolved soon. I won’t leave the files up looking like this for long. If worst comes to worst I will take the books down.
And on that glum note, I hope that your week is going better than mine, Dear Reader!
February 14, 2021
Romance Guaranteed
Today, the third part of Regency Tales, Odyssey of Attraction, is available on Amazon as Kindle or paperback!
Having been unable to save her brother’s life, Lady Odyssa rescues his best friend from the battle-field of Waterloo. But Lord Whysleigh accuses her of having ulterior motives, and she is shunned by family and society.
A serendipitous inheritance prompts her to set out on a journey to a new life, encountering many new people along the way. Poverty and suffering is abundant, and one day she decides to help a disabled veteran by bringing him home.
Through elegant ballrooms, grisly battlefields, and rural English villages this story mixes Greek and Welsh mythology with agricultural history whilst painting sympathetic portraits of psychological trauma and healing. Yet this evocative drama delivers laughter, romance and feel-good in abundance.
February 13, 2021
Regency Drama for Valentine’s!
Dear Reader, it is in a blur of exhausted pride that I am writing this. Finally, after more than a year’s toil I am able to introduce you to Lady Odyssa and her friends.
After surviving a childhood of abuse, Lady Odyssa travels with the Melvilles to Brussels in the spring of 1815. When an old friend is reported missing after the battle of Waterloo, she proves possessing lion-hearted courage and wee bit of insanity. But her actions are misinterpreted and, accused of ulterior motives, she is shunned by the fashionable London ton.
Yeah, Inorite? Assholes.
But fear not, Dear Reader, change is coming in the shape of an unexpected inheritance…
I put together this simple little graphics for promotion this morning because wrestling technology sucked all my energy yesterday. Why should it be so impossible to make a pretty ebook anyway? I wanted to include an ordinary jpg file showing a family tree. Forget it. It just would not let me do it. Clearly, I am in want of better software.
The paperback will be available tomorrow or the day after, I hope and the ebook will come to Kobo as well eventually.
Why there is no thumbnail image of my book on Amazon, I have no idea. I uploaded one. For today, I’m just going to stick my head in the sand and hope it’ll be magically fixed tomorrow.
(It happens, you know!)
Uploading files to Amazon was for once not as recalcitrant a process as it can be. I had to re-do the text file for the paperback a few times but that was mainly down to myself. Tiredness makes you stupid.
As a result I also had to change the sleeve accordingly.
As of today, Odyssey of Attachment is available on Kindle, and you can find more information about it and the other books in the Regency Tales series on my website. You can also find the family tree posted there.
Now I am looking forward to a lazy Saturday and I hope that whereever you are, and whatever you do, Dear Reader, your Saturday will be fantastic!
February 12, 2021
Blur, bloop, blurbed?
One should never write one’s own blurbs.
Truth undeniable.
The simple reason being that self-promotions tend to suck; often coming out too grandiose or too modest. But what is a self-publishing author then to do? I’m sure that there are people one can pay of course to do this type of thing, but I couldn’t afford it. And besides, being the anal control freak that I am I prefer to be… you guessed it, Dear Reader, in control.
Sometimes I have a bit of help from betas but often, I write my own. (Giving one rebellious middle-finger to rules of writing, maniacally cackling.)
Dear Reader, lest you get the wrong impression of me, I am a lot more shy than appear. Why are you laughing?
All of this is, of course, my roundabout way of saying that after much agony, here it is, the blurb for Odyssey of Attachment:
Forgive me, but I cannot accept Lord Whysleigh’s offer.
One act of bravery leaves Lady Odyssa disowned by her father and disgraced to the London ton. Of noble birth, but without a dowry, she has little choice but to live with her aunt, destined to be the poor relation. A succession of serendipitous events lets Lady Odyssa alter her future, but leaping free from the bonds of convention requires all her trust and courage.
Taking us from elegant ballrooms, through the gruesome battlefield to the fairytale-laden landscape of the Welsh marches; this epic drama weaves Greek myths and Welsh legends into an unforgettable story, including all the elements of historical feel-good spiced with contemporary eroticism and spoonfuls of humour. Set in the dramatic years 1815 –16, it is an evocative story of trauma and healing; of growing from insecurity to strength, to blossoming and to forming loving attachments.
Odyssey of Attachment is the long awaited third volume of Maria Yrsa Rönneus’s Regency Tales series. Transporting you across the centuries into a world of finery and steel, poetry and politics, love and deceit, the Tales has the friendship of four young ladies at its heart.
What say you, Dear Reader? Is it acceptable?
With this I shall go one to finish the uploading process to Amazon.
Happy Friday!
February 11, 2021
Some days…
…you really wish you had not gotten out of bed. Dear Reader, I am certainly having one of those today. It started already before dawn when I was awakened by my husband’s erection.
No, not the fun kind.
At first I thought it was the magpies, they wreak all sorts of havoc here, but I digress. My hubby was erecting a ladder outside for the chimney sweep. The morning was dark and glistening with frost, below -10 °C; the poor dear was out there shivering and skidding on the icy ground. There is no way any sweeps can chim-chim cheeree on that roof today, so I called to cancel. Just as well, for the sweep sounded uncommonly lacking in both chim and cheeroo.
Our house is a draughty old thing, you might say that there is a fair bit of wind in her. (No, Dear Reader, I will not make the fart joke!) And as the morning progressed, I felt chilled to the core and went for a long, hot shower.
Ha!
About ten minutes in when I was all lathered up and had a head full of conditioner, there was suddenly no more hot water. I came out colder, albeit quicker, than I was going in.
That is when I started to suspect that this might be a day when otherwise unremarkable tasks must be performed with extra caution lest they turn into death traps. Any use of matches or sharp knives is ruled out, obviously. As is laughing while answering a call of nature, as I next discovered.
Despite this day’s track record, I decided to boldly proceed to apply for copyright of my new novel. This is a tedious process laced with notices and exclamation marks and warnings. And once something is entered into the online form, it can never ever be altered apparently. The copyright office’s online registration interface looks like a cheap knock-off of Windows XP, and though there may be those in our midst who remember it fondly, I, Dear Reader is not one of them. Moreover, it is slow, excruciatingly slow.
But as this day is what it is, I tempered my impatient urge to wildly click anything remotely clickable, and eventually I got through the process. Then payment time.
This is where I hear Thursday the 11th sniggering.
My card was denied. Of course. I mean, it’s a valid credit card with enough money on it, so why wouldn’t it be denied on a day like this? Two attempts. Nope. It couldn’t very well be due to all the “invalid” letters in my name, I have paid this way before. Third attempt. Still nope.
–’Honey!’ I yell, into the depths of our draughty house. Apparently, his “invalid” characters are less irksome, or perhaps he as a person is less offensive to the system than I, either way, the payment was processed.
I then uploaded my file fully expecting the system to crash or for internet itself to crumble into fractions of zeros and ones. Nope. In an anti-climactic turn of events, it all worked.
So it seems, Dear Reader, that publication is nigh. But past experiences with Amazon’s self-publishing site teaches me to not hope for immediate success. Not today.
There are still a few things left: a blurb for starters. It has to be succinct and catchy. But today I doubt my ability to catch a rash if I landed in a pile of poison ivy.
Anyway. Odyssey of Attachment will be available on Amazon some time in the next few days! I had hoped to publish Orbits of Attraction, the 5th part of Regency Tales, as it is more or less finished. I found myself being stressed by my self-imposed deadline however, so to allow time for a thorough edit, its publication will be somewhat delayed. 
In an unparallelled act of dashing and daring I shall now proceed to wrestle the Amazonian beast. Wish me luck, Dear Reader, and may your Thursday be glorious!
December 24, 2020
Happy Holidays
Dear Readers, thank you for your support and for reading my words this past year. Where ever you are, I hope you have the best holiday season possible and that you get to celebrate with your loved ones.
Love,
Maria
December 21, 2020
Magic Flowers for Christmas
Dear Reader,
I am so pleased to tell you that yours truly has again been trusted to do the graphic design for the fourth part of Zenka Wistram’s fantastic Between Saga. You know, just between ourselves, the fantasy genre isn’t usually my cup of tea. But this series is special in many ways, and I am so happy to play a small part in its creation.
Part Alice in Wonderland, part Celtic, Scandinavian, and Native American folklore, these stories are woven with the clever use of thrilling suspense, romance, and a good dose of humour. Zenka Wistram builds a world that in its compelling magic seems just a little bit better than our own.
The heroines are named with floral themes and, unsurprisingly, in ‘Bewitching Hazel’ the leading character’s name is Hazel. Given the title, the plant on the cover had to be witchhazel. Like for the previous books, I chose an image that included some light flares, to imply a little bit of magic and mystery. The added stylized tree shape mixes up the textures a little, and reminds of ancient rock carvings.
Marketing however is more than a nice cover, and I ended up making two promos; one for the series as a whole and for the Christmas release.
Generous people across the internet offer free graphic elements and I am much obliged to the people on pixabay and Mark at Covervault for providing easy-to-use templates. The first promo is fairly simple; just background, light, and a gradient and voilà!
But the Christmas release, I had to build element by element. As is always the case, I am not entirely happy with the outcome, I keep seeing the flaws.
Please tell me what you think in the comments! If you are interested to see other samples of my graphic designs, you are welcome to have a gander at arsronnei.wixsite.com/arsronnei.
With that, Dear Reader, I wish you a happy Monday, and remember that there is still plenty of time to get someone an e-book for Christmas!
