Jamie Ferguson's Blog, page 23

Patience is a virtue…

…but not one I have, at least not when it comes to waiting for things to be published!

The short story collection is ready to go…but I forgot to add a table of contents, so everything is now delayed by a whole day!

I did get to see a mostly correct version when my proof arrived the other day.

This collection is pretty short – only 59 pages (that includes the table of contents…I’m not making that mistake again! hopefully), so there’s no text on the spine. (You have to have a minimum of 101 pages...

The almost-ready short story collection!

My first short story collection is almost done! Here’s the cover:

I am very excited, especially since I designed the cover myself! I had help from my graphical reviewers, Drew (who designed the Blackbird Publishing logo, and Vignesh.

All three short stories are ready to go, so I just need to format the interior of the book, order a proof copy to make sure everything looks good…and that will be it!

The first draft of novel #2 is finished!!!

It still has no name…but it’s done!!!

I’ve had a challenging time with this book. It has (unless I change it later…) four viewpoint characters. Four!!! Almost all of my stories to date have had only one viewpoint character, so writing at this length with four (four!!!) has been both interesting and difficult.

Coincidentally, one of my writing friends is used to writing stories with multiple viewpoint characters, and is currently working on a novel from a single character’s POV. It’s been fun to...

The rules of ghosts

The title of this post makes me think of by Ursula K. Le Guin – it’s one of my favorite short stories. But this post is about ghosts, not names … nor dragons …

I’ve had a few people ask how I came up with the ‘rules’ Emma has to follow in With Perfect Clarity. One guy even asked, in complete seriousness: but how did you know that’s how ghosts work?!?

I felt bad explaining that I have absolutely no idea how ghosts work, nor if ghosts truly exist at all. I think he had expected...

An imaginary town

I’ve been working hard on my second novel, and it’s been a real challenge. First, writing is work. Sure, sometimes you sit down and the story pours out of you…but sometimes it doesn’t.

When I took Dean Wesley Smith’s Character Voice and Setting workshop last year, I learned that I can write no matter what. I can write when I’m sleepy, or hungry, or angry. I can write when my head hurts. I can write when it’s noisy. I can write when I have hours to spend, and I can write when I only have a few...

A tale of two houses

I came up with the original idea for With Perfect Clarity while pondering how ghosts work. I was thinking about how ghosts often haunt the house they died in, then thought: what if that house was destroyed? Would the ghost be free to find another house? What if the ghost was bound to the original house, even if that house no longer existed?

I had no idea this would turn into a novel. Also, I hope that this isn’t how being a ghost works, because if it is there must be an awful lot of angry ghos...

Going to the dogs

Several of my friends have asked how much I make per book sale. Not only do I not mind sharing this information, it’s very easy to figure this out within a few cents for any book published using the same methods.

My paperback is printed on-demand through Amazon’s CreateSpace arm. CreateSpace has a publicly available royalty calculator where you can see roughly how much anyone using their services is making per paperback.

Here’s a screenshot of the royalty calculator with my paperback’s info fil...

Take me… to the volcano!

My book is on Amazon!!!

The paperback appeared yesterday morning. Not only was this exciting all in itself (my book is on Amazon!!!), I wasn’t expecting it to appear until the weekend. I’d even saved the CreateSpace screenshot in my notes so that I didn’t forget about the time delay with my next paperback.

I submitted the Kindle version right away. Turns out that takes 12 hours or less to show up, and it probably took 10 in my case. I wanted the two versions to show up around the same time, so...

And there’s proof!

My proof copy of With Perfect Clarity arrived on Thursday – a full day early!!!

This was very exciting, but the downside was that I had to spend all of yesterday at work wanting to go home so I could proof the proof. The fact that I didn’t leave work early either says something about my willpower or my workload.

I did look through it enough to know that I need to tweak the margins. I used the margins that we used in the interior book design class I took a few months ago, and while they looked f...

A little novelty

I’m impatiently waiting for the proof copy of my novel! This is the paperback proof of With Perfect Clarity, which I’ll review to make sure everything looks good before making it available.

I’ll be spending the next few days biting my nails – call me Veruca Salt!!! In the meantime I’ve put up a page for With Perfect Clarity, including an excerpt – all of chapter one is now online.

And just because it’s so cool, here’s the image from the back cover. This is a photo from Butte, Montana; the house...