Dale Amidei's Blog, page 14

Mine

"You have created a wonderful piece of literature."

"How is your book doing?"

"You wrote a novel? How cool!"

I get a certain amount of that. People who have read The Anvil of the Craftsman seem to like it, and are eager to share their feedback. It is great to hear, and I treasure every comment. To have written something that pleases others is rewarding. Most of the opinions include the words "you" or "yours" or "Dale's." I have a guilty secret.

AOTC is not really mine, though certainly I have written every word. To claim it as mine alone would be to ignore the contributions of a great many others that made the title what it is. My long-suffering Single Candle Press editress, under whose pen my prose bleeds red, has at least as much a claim to the quality of the work as I do. It is fitting then, that we are equal partners in the enterprise. The contributions, however, do not stop there.

I have a network of beta readers I did not intend to use as proofreaders. I assumed—because I had not produced a novel yet—that I could provide them an error-free read. I read and reread the drafts of AOTC until my eyes were bleeding, and I was not the only one. It went out in beta with at least twenty errors caught at various times since then. It was a harsh lesson, and led to process improvements that we are implementing in working on the sequel.

There are people who have not even read the work yet, and still provide their encouragement and their praise. That is another component of the fuel that keeps a writer going through the long process of becoming an author, and the result belongs, at least in part, to them as well.

Most importantly, there are the readers, the ones who I yearn to please. They are perfect strangers who, for whatever reason drew them, paid their money and digested a novel that I love so much. I hear from them as well, and their words make me determined to make the sequel and the third title of the Jon Anthony trilogy worthy of their expectations. To disappoint them would devastate me.

Having said all that, I cannot escape the thought that these words are something more. Had another pair of eyes not seen them, could I really claim them as mine? There is a magic in the storyline, the lessons, and the truths there inside those pages. All of those always existed, and perhaps my part was only to organize and present them for the sake of others. That is a humbling thought.

I love these words, but they are not really mine. I was merely the first one to see them come into the world. I can count that as the blessing it is.

Choose to love, -DA

Adios, Smashwords

I believe in competition. I really do. The marketplace is the grand arbiter of performance. People, especially in great numbers, will collectively determine the best way to do things. They will find the best way to buy things, and they will reward excellence with patronage. As an author and purveyor of e-books, I recognize Amazon's predominance. They lead the sales figures of most titles, because they have the best consumer model and supply an excellent series of e-reading devices.

I am not, however, a big fan of predatory or unfair business practices. Amazon employs these as well. They are serious about competing. They are serious about winning market share. They want to sell more e-books and physical copies than their competitors, be they other websites or brick-and-mortar bookstores, and they proceed in (Ayn) Randian fashion. They play for keeps, and they live with the criticism.

It is the appreciation of the benefits of competition to the consumer and the independent author that kept me from participating in Amazon's KDP Select program. My debut novel The Anvil of the Craftsman appeared in mid-December of last year. I wanted the widest variety of venues to distribute the title. I chose Amazon, the sales leader, Barnes and Noble, the runner-up, and Smashwords, the innovators.

Amazon and their print-on-demand entity CreateSpace have by far done the most to reward my efforts. Visibility and sales far outstrip the Nook book, and the technical experience has been far better at Amazon. I have not had a customer service experience with the Big A yet. They in time may prove to be as bad as Barnes and Noble, but no one could be worse.

Barnes and Noble customer support for PubIt! is frankly horrid. I hope, again in the name of Randian efficiency, that someone has seen fit to move the bored rep who answered most of my six calls on to a more appropriate role in the work force. Better yet, I hope they have instituted process improvements, such as a more competent staff and improved user interface, which make six calls from an author attempting to set up a PubIt! account a thing of the past. That would be a great start.

Even after all that, Barnes and Noble afterward allowed me to present a quality .epub to the public. I was able to format and upload the Nook Edition of AOTC myself, and should you use that e-reader you will not be disappointed in the quality. Results are the equal of the product at Amazon, where I did not detect any flaws in the Kindle Edition, which appears to be spot-on to my .mobi and .prc versions. CreateSpace is likewise a pleasure to use. Technical requirements aside, the uploading and presentation of the product, my novel, goes smoothly.

Smashwords uses a different business mode. They require you to submit a Microsoft Word document, complete with the background code baggage from the word processor that one cleans out of the equation on the road to a well-formatted .mobi, .prc or .epub file. "Meatgrinder," their proprietary engine. It churns out several different formats from the same source document on the theory that it will have the widest distribution to various peripheral e-reader sites such as Sony, Kobo, and Diesel, all of whom in my experience have no time to deal with a small publishing company like my own Single Candle Press. They all referred me to Smashwords to act as my distributor.

There is only one problem with this. "Meatgrinder" makes sausage out of my work. The same file that I use to produce well-formed Kindle and Nook books looks like crap when Meatgrinder finishes with it. I have never offered the Smashwords .mobi to the public for that reason, and have told them so. The .epub conversion looked better, as good as the version generated for the Nook Edition. Until, that is, this week, when I corrected two dropped words and an editing artifact that diligent proofreading, all of my beta readers and a number of patron readers afterward missed.

The same file, plus a few letters worth of correction that "Meatgrinder" used to produce an acceptable (and by acceptable I mean perfect) .epub now includes an erroneous entry in the automatically generated electronic chapter listing. That does not work for me. Sorry, Smashwords, you lose. I may be back when you implement your plans to allow authors to upload their own professionally finished electronic titles, but no sooner.

The Barnes and Noble Nook Edition remains. I have not signed up for KDP Select because competition is good. In the near future, it may prove an impractical decision. KDP Select demands exclusivity, but increases visibility through the mechanism of free promotions and the Kindle Lending Library, an alternate revenue stream for participants. The exclusivity of the program is what grates: KDP Select would do everything for authors and consumers without the requirement that electronic titles therein be available nowhere else. It is marketplace hardball, and it exists only to hurt Amazon's rivals.

Likewise, the thought that I may have no choice than to offer at no cost a work of excellence, which consumed so much of my spirit and effort and time to produce, repulses me. If I do not, it may be that AOTC will languish in obscurity, and that most readers will never know that it exists. I love the novel, and so do the vast majority of those who read it. These are hard choices, but they are the choices given to an author in today's self-publishing arena.

Time will tell. The Nook is a good product. I hope the B&N is capable of stepping up to make the business decisions that will preserve it. Amazon may emerge as the single source for a quality e-read. I have no doubt that if such circumstances materialize they will treat customers and authors with the same consideration that they show their competition. That will be an unfortunate day.

Choose to Love, -DA

 

Eyes Wide Open

We are ten days past our beloved G. Gordon Kitty's release from this world. Mourning a loved one is never easy. However, we look for lessons in every circumstance; even the most intolerable. God builds us day by day. It is best to pay attention.

Gordon and his brother TR had different deaths, just as they were differing personalities. TR, the quiet, contemplative, and careful one, suffered a cardiac arrhythmia during a vet visit, during which we first learned of his heart condition. He had only a partly bad last day, a good dinner, and one last pleasure of falling asleep purring in the crook of my arm. He passed from there to a coma, from which he never recovered. TR left the world peacefully and without pain, stroked by the two people who had loved him all his life, and the brother nearby who had always been there.

Gordon had to endure only a single day of weakness, after a failed blood transfusion that shortened instead of extended what we knew already were the very last of his days. His blood count dropped to critically low levels, and we spent his last hours holding him. He died as he had lived, participating, also knowing that we loved him. He died holding onto his human mother's hands, with mine on him, once his heart had done all that it could.

I tried to close his eyes once he had gone. We could not. Even in death, he would not have it.

TR and Gordon each had a death that suited them so well. TR, loved every day, and Gordon, the cat of action and bold adventure. One with his eyes closed, the other eyes wide open.

It is the two ways we all will live and die. It is easier for a while to live not looking at that which we do not want to see:  folly, sin, and suffering. It is, however, a world of actualities, and pretending that challenges do not exist only hampers our ability to deal with them once the inevitable intrusion into our self-imposed withdrawal occurs.

Not looking keeps us psychologically comforted, but it is a protective mechanism that will not last. Not looking denies us views of the grandest acts as well: heroism, compassion, faith. We were born to look, learn, and grow.

God meant for us to see the signs that He is here with us, in every day of every life. Psalm 19 reminds us that the heavens declare the Glory of God. His every work does nothing less. We do not believe in mysteries. God meant for us to determine our need for Him in our own time, with the intellect and instinct that He instilled in us. His lessons are everywhere. They are unseen only when we fail to look.

TR and Gordon were the gray treasure the God bequeathed us to help us grow. They gave us joy, and at the end they taught the last lesson of loving, which is how to say goodbye for a time. Paul, in his first letter to Thessalonika, urged his reader not to mourn as those without hope. We do not, but are thankful instead for such friends as our first cats. They were and are fine and fancy kitties, used by their Creator to build His servants in a long work of Craftsmanship.

We can let them both go, knowing that they will rise and stretch in the window of The New House when we come, and move to the door to greet us just as they did in life.

In the meantime, we will rest with eyes closed and live with our eyes wide open.

Thank you, TR and Gordon. Your last lessons are yet more  gifts that I can repay only with my heart.

Choose to Love, -DA

G. Gordon Kitty passes

In mid-August 1996, two gray tabbies were born in the dairy barn of a friend. They were a litter of two to another gray tabby called Tripaw'd. She was a small cat, the victim of a farm machinery accident that left her without a rear foot. Her loss was no impediment, as she granted access to the barn food dish with a swipe at every other cat who came to eat, presumably for not showing her proper enough deference.

Eight weeks later the pair of kittens arrived at our house in a cardboard box, having fought the driver of a pickup truck to escape the container for thirty miles. It was a conspiracy. The box was delivered without a word—from a human. It was only a second before the kitten (who was probably Gordon) meowed as a surprise to his human mother, and the two began  their lives as members of our family.

His brother was stockier and proper from the start. We named him Theodore Roosevelt, and he became our beloved TR. His smaller brother, who gave up nothing to size, earned the best cat name ever:  G. Gordon Kitty.

Both filled our lives with unforgettable joy. From the new kittens scampering across the sofa as if it were a bale of hay to the cats who came to see us as their family, days were filled with laughter at their antics, and the evenings were fulfilled by the sharing of quiet time together. Human laps are cat-shaped and warm, and meant for occupation.

They lived their lives with us, and followed where we went, and even if the new house was small they at least remained with the ones who loved them. Finally, they arrived at the last house they would know, surrounded by Texas oaks and situated in a spacious fenced lawn of green grass. Windows ledges are fine for sitting, and a bath for birds stands outside the best one.

TR died at 5:55 AM on New Year's Day in 2009 of an undiagnosed congenital heart condition. We had enough warning, and the ones he loved most were there with him. They included  Gordon, who spent their last few nights together in this world keeping his brother warm in a padded laundry basket on the floor of the den. Gordon was there when his brother left the world, as he was when TR came. Our hearts were broken.

Cats mourn. We saw in Gordon the same emotions that we felt. We felt the same sadness, the sense of loss, the longing for the brother who was no longer there.

Gordon himself had no easy life. He and TR nearly died after their first series of shots from the same allergic reaction, and only the quick action of a veterinary team saved their lives. Gordon, had he stayed in the barn, would have died at 30 months from a bladder stone that bisected his urethra. Scarring from that first procedure would have taken him again at age five, had we not lived in a location with advanced veterinary surgery available. Vets saved his life once again from a serious kidney infection caught by the watchful eyes of his human mom three and a half years ago.

Gordon survived with reduced kidney function, requiring very regular subcutaneous infusions of fluid for the rest of his life. Those years were good ones, and we treasured every one of our last days with him. When it was his time he left the world from his home, in the embrace of the two people who loved him most, as his brother did in the same room three years earlier.

TR was a very proper cat, careful and reflective in every situation. Gordon was a cat of action and bold adventure. He reveled in discovery, and could open cabinet doors and disc drives with ease. Gordon dialed 911 by walking across a speakerphone one Super Bowl Sunday and then hung up on the dispatcher, allowing us to meet two of our city's finest at our front door to explain his talent.

Gordon was a bright light. He looked deep into your eyes to see who was there. He grasped the concept of family and of love. He brought joy to our lives and so was a very successful cat. We thank God for the decade and a half plus that we were allowed to be his humans. His life was a gift on loan from a loving Creator, and we do not begrudge Gordon's return to his Source. If it were within our power, we would have kept him here.

Light bright and dim will leave the world today, but Gordon's led the way, as was always his style. Lives great and small end in every moment. In this moment, I mourn only one. My cat is dead. My friend is gone. My heart is undone.

Choose to love, -DA

What are you doing right now?

I am not sure if you have noticed, but I tend to not waste time splashing around in the kiddy pool of ideas. My style is making a beeline for the deep blue water. The bigger the question the better I like it, and the more compelled I feel to address the thing.

As my character Jon Anthony says in the upcoming novel The Britteridge Heresy to think about life is also to consider its end game. One should think life through from beginning to end as a program of living deliberately.

So what are you doing with your allotted time? Too many people treat it as an accident. They trip through day after day. Time slips away, and it is too soon apparent that time slipped away is lost forever. So is time an end in itself? No. It is merely the ticking of a metronome, the whip-by of mile markers on your journey. A life is not your time.

Much of the world is too rooted in tending basic survival needs to devote any time to philosophizing. We live in a comfortable society prone to indulgence and complacency, divorced from the bitter realities that have occupied the great majority of humanity before the present era. Are the acts of survival life? Again, no. It is evidence of having found fuel for the fire, and a sign that you are not yet finished living.

Your work is not your life, evidenced by the number of people who complain in their workplace of not having one. One can find purpose there, if so blessed. See otherwise the comment above on survival needs.

Children and family are not your life. They are the ones who will carry on, and it is easy to see your life as the foundation of that. It is a reflection of God's work in progress, and so is beautiful to watch, as is all of His work.

The product of life is not your time, nor your living. It is not your occupations or distractions. Nor is it your enthusiasms or your involvement with the ones you love or the ones you have lost.

The result of your days is the journey of a soul:  the eternal spark of life that God brought forth from within Himself without diminishing at all. He charged you to tend it through your time, until you return to the Source, and your ellipse is closed. That act of seeing illuminates all of the other duties and pleasures and opportunities of each day in the proper perspective.

Carry on as if you matter. You have an infinite worth to your Craftsman.

Choose to Love, -DA

Three Two One

2012 marks the close to the first year of setting out to be an author of mainstream fiction. It has been quite a ride. Naturally, I would have done certain things differently in hindsight.

I would have kept quiet longer after the first draft. There was a serious underestimation of the time editing would take, because the standard is approachable perfection. The 94,500 words in the first draft of The Anvil of the Craftsman reduced over the following nine months to 92,835 (according to Smashwords). People were instantly anxious to get their hands on it, and stayed in that state for too long a time.

The work as far as we can tell is error-free, not counting the vagaries of diction in dialogue. The Single Candle Press editress recently found three dropped words in one of Isaac Asimov's works, since she now reads everything with a practiced eye, so we do not feel as bad about the many glitches expunged by the time AOTC hit the virtual shelves. If another appears, I would be tempted to issue a revised edition. Error is that annoying.

I learned a hard lesson in discovering the necessity of cross-platform proofreading. The initial release candidate draft of AOTC went out with too many snags that became annoyingly apparent as I reviewed the manuscript on the e-reading simulator. Though we proofed the MS Word version until our eyes were bleeding, the different layout of the Kindle simulator and PDF defeated the "brain-fill" effect that was keeping errors out of view. Many formats, many eyes is now the mantra. I hope to do better with the strategy next time for the sake of the Betas.

The enormity of the challenge in overcoming obscurity is daunting. There are many routes to discovery, and exploring them all takes time. Words are my passion instead of selling. Writing is drawing me back to the keyboard. Ad dollars are easily wasted, and there will be more research finished before any of those are committed. This was a venture, not an indulgence.

2011 ends with three novels conceptualized and outlined, two written, and one published. 2012, God willing, will see the release of the sequel The Britteridge Heresy, and also possibly a third—the last title of the Anthony trilogy. More friends will be discovered. More fans will be earned.

This is the time of year to look both forward and back, as did the mythical god Janus, for whom next month is named. Take up your store of wisdom and carry it with you into a promising New Year. Together we are all moving forward.

Choose to Love, -Dale Amidei

The first review is in!

The first review for The Anvil of the Craftsman (five stars) has been posted on Amazon, which is as much of a Christmas present as I could have hoped for. Needless to say, I am thrilled. To read the words is humbling, more so since the reader seems to have captured the essence of the novel in a way that I could not in many revisions of the description. The comment appears below in its entirety.

"I find it hard to consider this a debut work. The story and its telling show the polish of experience yet retain the genuineness of one's best effort. I found myself identifying with the different aspects of the characters. They were all believable, yet unique and interesting enough to hold my focus.

The action moves nicely, yet is paced in a way to encourage the reader to develop a moral and emotional construct for that action.

The work can be likened to Tom Clancy and Joel C. Rosenberg, yet it seemed to take off with less of a lag. In contrast, Amidei manages to integrate the characters' personal theologies in a way that causes the reader to examine his own. Far from being preachy, the work initiates thought and conversation. It is less about emotion than about meaning.

I am glad to be one of the first to read this author. I suspect there will be future works by Amidei, and I look forward to them. With time, other writings will be compared to his.

The novel will not disappoint."

That is what we set out to do a year ago. Now back to the crafting of words, the expectations of which have been set. We will do what we can.

Merry Christmas! -DA

How do I feel?

As of this writing, The Anvil of the Craftsman Kindle edition is awaiting review via Kindle Direct Publishing. CreateSpace files for the AOTC paperback are also under review and in all likelihood the site will allow me to order the second proof copy in the morning. Smashwords and Barnes & Noble placement will follow.

Beta input is in and solid. Some of positive feedback from my first novel was touching, and left me humbled. I used to think that I was good with words until I came to a place where a simple "Thank You" was not nearly enough.

I chose to pursue excellence in the written word, and to comport myself as a person of faith should in the process. I am satisfied with the result, regardless of the incredible amount of work it has taken to get to this evening.

Three months spent writing the first draft. Nine more consumed by editing and revision to produce a snag-free manuscript. One solid year of free time spent doing and learning everything needed to form a small business and self-publish my first novel.

How does it feel? I am exhausted. I am exhilarated. I am proud, and at the same time I know that I was merely the one sitting at the keyboard when this work came into the world. Yes, we act, but more important is the One who acts through us, the Craftsman working slowly and well in the world to bring about His own ends.

Soon, after the retailing web pages are set up and settled in, the process of overcoming obscurity will begin. After a time I will hopefully know as much regarding the marketing of a novel as I have learned over the course of the last year about producing one.

How do I feel? Alive:  to do is to be. Awed:  by the thought that Homer wrote his Iliad in the eighth century before Christ, and his thoughts, frozen in time by transcription, still have the power to affect people to this day. Writing, after all, has the potential to allow part of what we are to survive our time in this plane, and to an extent preserves us in a world we must one day leave. That is, I believe, the secret hope of any author.

I am anxious to do it all again. Most of all, I am so very thankful for the gift of words. Thank you for those, Lord. Please use them to your Glory.

Choose to Love, -DA

Tend your fires!

I awoke late last night when G. Gordon Kitty left my lap to attend some business. It was time for a warm bed and deeper sleep. In the fireplace, the logs were silent. Having no one awake to attend them, they had abated.

They sit there this morning unfulfilled, waiting to be included in the next use of the hearth. Like everywhere when one is looking, there is a lesson here.

Untended fires die. They reach their end unless stoked, unless someone is there to keep the flame going.

Writing can be like that. You may wander away from a project, to find the coals cold when you return. Relationships can cool. Enthusiasms fade until one last wisp of smoke signals that the burning has finished.

Sometime soon, perhaps tonight, I will add wood to the fireplace, more kindling, and another spark will see the fire rise once more. It is not over; there is a pause instead because I will care to begin again.

Tend your fires. Finish that draft. Hold someone close to you. Sit with your old cat. Keep your fires going, and if one should die for a time do what you need to do. Time ticks by at a steady rate—you will be doing something, if only deteriorating. Why not take action, which brings warmth back into a cold world?

Fire, seen from a distance, will let someone know that you are here.

Choose to Love, -DA

The Story of the Story

Shortly after Christmas 2010, I sat staring at a new computer, completely loaded and configured, and thought Now what? The question turned into an ambition to fulfill a lifelong goal: to produce a full-length, best-quality work of fiction. I wanted to write a novel.

Writing the thing took three months. Editing through several more drafts took another seven. I am blessed in that, as it turns out, I married a hard-nosed copy editor without realizing it. I pour the words onto the page, and she gets them marching in close-order drill. Research clarifies and confirms plot points, and review after review eliminates sticking points in the mind until the storyline is completely plausible. Between us, we have all the skills necessary to produce a work worth reading.

After editing, comes Formatting. To relate what I have learned about producing a Kindle title will be worthy of a post of its own one day. Coding the files that allow the additional navigational features of a Kindle book is where the headaches lie. It is doubtless the reason that most self-pub authors forgo them or hire the process out.

Cover art comes naturally. I have long experience in both art and graphic manipulation, which is where artistic expression came to reside after the advent of the personal computer, at least in my case.

Last comes the writing of the Description, one of the four pillars of a successful e-book. (Content, Cover, Product Description and Price). The Description is the first part of the marketing efforts that follow release, but it is also the principal avenue toward being found by a reader on a retail website.

Producing The Anvil of the Craftsman has taken eleven months to the day. I have not tallied the hours involved. Start with nearly a year of spare time and you will have a good estimate. The title is now in the hands of Dale Amidei Beta Readers. I look forward to hearing their opinions, but I know the product is solid. Today I have a sense of accomplishment that is fresh. I like it. I want more. Back to pounding out words, I guess.

Choose to Love, -DA