Tag: #amwriting

Jake and the Dynamo, Re:Formatted

I’ve got the cover art farmed out for both Jake and the Dynamo and its sequel, Dead 2 Rites. With fingers crossed, I proclaim that Jake and the Dynamo will see its re-release next month, and Dead 2 Rites the month after. I can’t absolutely confirm that yet because art is the major factor again, and I’m not the one making the art.

The re-release is a new edition with a revised text as well as new formatting. The screenshots here are from Dead 2 Rites, but the J&tD re-release will look the same.

The new edition of the first book will be thicker than the previous one though the revised text is slightly shorter. The second book is a hefty 530 pages, partly because it is a long novel (132,000 words) but also because of layout: The layout of these books is more polished than before with a larger font and wider line spacing for more comfortable reading.

The internal illustrations of the first book will be the same. Roffles Lowell was not entirely pleased with the way his drawings originally turned out in the paperback; however, aside from uploading the biggest and best files I can, I have no real control over the appearance of the illustrations, so I assume they will look the same as in the first edition.

For Dead 2 Rites, however, Roffles produced black-and-white versions that we hope will print more clearly.

Internal illustration from Dead 2 Rites.
Example of an internal illustration.

Both books will feature full-color internal illustrations in the eBook versions. The books will go up on multiple platforms simultaneously, but on this blog and in my social media accounts, I will probably only advertise the Amazon versions since that’s where sales rank really matters.

Print editions with full-color internal illustrations are possible, but there would need to be a strong interest.

I am starting in on the formatting of Rags and Muffin, which is the now-official title of my third book. This begins a separate series. Previously, the working title of this book was written as Rag & Muffin to emphasize the pun, but that would likely cause a lot of grief later on since HTML and ampersands don’t get along. An ampersand will likely appear on the cover, but the official title has “and” in it.

Printed pages from Dead 2 Rites.
Example of printed pages.

New Book, ‘Pulp on Pulp,’ Available for Preorder

A collection of essays by pulp writers, entitled Pulp on Pulp*, is up for preorder on Amazon Kindle and will release on January 19th. It is currently listed as 99 cents, but it will be free forever when it releases. Last I checked, it was number one in Amazon’s new releases related to authorship.

The collection is edited by the prolific author of military sf, Kit Sun Cheah, and the equally talented Misha Burnett.

Two of the essays in this collection are by me. Since my interests are out of the norm for “PulpRev” authors, so are my essays. I discuss both the writing of harem comedies and what really defines a “strong female character,” with references to magical girls.

*This is an affiliate link but, as already mentioned, the book will be free forever, beginning on its release date.

Editing and Formatting

I’ve almost finished plugging Jake and the Dynamo into Vellum. I’m still deciding whether I actually want to commit to this software’s steep asking price. It doesn’t offer a lot of customization, but it does remove a lot of major headaches. I’ve got pretty much the entire text and the illustrations plugged in and now just need to clean up a few artifacts from the reformatting. I admit it looks really clean, and it shows how it will come out both in print and on several devices.

My only serious complaint at the moment is that I can’t add a caption to a full-page image. I can insert illustrations with captions, but then I can’t make them as large as I want.

Experimenting with Vellum

I am currently in the “completely bewildered” stage of preparing to self-publish my work, with the goal of releasing no less that five (three, absolute minimum) books next year. I’m considering several options, thinking about services I might need, looking at necessary or unnecessary software, and so forth.

I have just finished (?) editing the first volume of Jake and the Dynamo. This may sound like unnecessary fiddling, since the book has been edited and even published previously, but I am treating the next release as if it is the first, a complete start-over, and I want to present readers with the best, cleanest, most professional text I can. This new version is, at present, almost 3,000 words shorter, entirely because of improvements in style and grammar.

One thing I’ve thought I would likely do is purchase Vellum. Although it’s enormously expensive, it is more or less the only software that prepares a manuscript for multiple formats with minimal hassle. Its creators allow you to download it and use all its options, forcing payment only when you’re ready to generate the files.

Thus, I have been sitting here sipping a gimlet (one part gin, one part Rose’s lime juice, and nothing else, as Raymond Chandler explains) while familiarizing myself with Vellum and getting a handle on what it can—and can’t—do.

It is as user-friendly as it claims to be, but that seriously limits its abilities. Some formatting I have in Word, formatting I thought was quite minimal, has been stripped out of my Vellum file. For example, it doesn’t allow lettered lists:

Lists in Vellum.
An unordered list in Vellum.

This is a little disappointing, but I can easily envision a reason for it: The idea is maximum compatibility across readers and file types. I found some software previously that allowed for edting EPUB files in XML, and I originally thought that put me on easy street since editing XML is something I can do, but I soon discovered that editing files by hand was time-consuming and also produced unexpected results in different types of eBook readers.

Vellum, despite the claims in its advertisements, feels very limiting. It offers only a handful of styles with minimal customization, few fonts, and few layout options, but it also keeps you from inadvertently creating messed-up files that don’t work on major platforms. The few layouts it allows look good. Sme things I want, such as handwriting fonts in a few spots, aren’t possible—but then again, that’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t show up on most e-readers anyway, and eBooks are where I can expect the most sales. Kindle, for example, strips out all custom fonts and uses Amazon’s proprietary font in their place.

Also, in this first run, I experimented with Microsoft Word’s styles to produce the cleanest, lightest manuscript I could. A lot of what I did transfered straight into Vellum, and Vellum was even able to intuit some of the document’s features (most especially, its section breaks). Some things, however, did not transfer—particularly, text that was set to be in all caps (rather than typed in all caps by hand). To make sure everything is kosher, I probably need to make a few more tweaks to my DOCX file before I import it to Vellum again.

Book Update: ‘Jake and the Dynamo’ and Sequel Forthcoming

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I am working on preparing books for publication, and as always, these things take more time than I anticipate. In fact, in my available time, I have been doing almost nothing else. But that’s okay because I want to make sure I do this process right and get together everything I need for a successful roll-out.

My ambitious plan at present is to have five books published in 2021. If I can’t meet that, I should at least have four. I’ll definitely have three. The three is a given.

The first will be Jake and the Dynamo which will appear with a revised text and brand new packaging. The second will be its sequel. The third will be Rag & Muffin. I’ll announce the others later.

Anyway, one of my other goals is to post here more regularly, so look for consistent content as we move forward.

Writing ..

Spending the evening writng. That is all.

I gotta work tonight …

I’m starting to explore the possibilities of self-publishing, so I’m spending tonight looking into the subject and gathering information on what steps to take. I’ll check in later with some some reviews and stuff.

Update on My Projects

I won’t deny that I’ve been struggling with the third volume of Jake and the Dynamo. For this volume, I had a lot of clear vignettes in my mind but no idea how they related to one another. So I’ve been writing disconnected scenes without really knowing what I was doing.

Fortunately, I finally had a breakthrough: I had a single plot point come to me that tied everything together, so I’m working on the book tonight and it’s flowing reasonably well.

On that note, I have no update on publishing. I haven’t heard back from any publishers to which I’ve submitted, so I will probably, in the next few months, give them up and submit to other places.

Sneak Peek: ‘Jake and the Dynamo,’ Volume 3

I finished the essays I was working on for a side project, so now I’m back to working on the third volume of Jake and the Dynamo, currently under the working title of  The Shadow of His Shadow. Here’s a foretaste. As always, there is no guarantee that this will be in the final product.

On an added note, I am still waiting to hear back from some publishers to whom I’ve submitted, so I have no updates on possible releases of the previously published volume or its sequel.

At last, these treatments were apparently at an end. The bespectacled goblin sniffed once, made another mark in his ledger, and threw a loose silk robe over Jake’s shoulders. Then the trolls dragged him through yet another dank hallway, finally depositing him in the Bedchamber of Darkness, where he fell to the floor in a heap.

The trolls bowed respectfully before turning, leaving, and shutting the door behind themselves.

Jake raised himself to his knees and blinked against the gloom. He saw a large, four-poster bed atop a pedestal reached by steep stairs. On the walls hung an array of bizarre devices, most of which were unfamiliar to him—but the collection of coiled whips and handcuffs had an obvious purpose, as did the bloodstained rack standing in one corner. Ropes and chains dangled under the canopy above the bed.

He swallowed loudly.

On the bed lay the coldly beautiful woman he had earlier seen in the inner sanctum of the Temple of the Moon Princess. In a filmy dress of glossy black, she had one broad hip exposed, like an imposing hill in the middle of a plain. Her full, blood-red lips were slightly parted, and her round breasts rose and fell with her breath. Her raven-dark hair splayed across an embroidered samite pillow.

Frowning against bruises and stiff muscles, Jake carefully pulled himself to his feet.

Am I … am I about to score with the Dark Queen?

The Queen said not a word. She merely reached out with one shapely yet bone-white hand tipped with sharp nails as red as her lips. She patted the comforter once, twice. At the same time, she raised an arched eyebrow.

Continue reading “Sneak Peek: ‘Jake and the Dynamo,’ Volume 3”

Working Away

I’m over here working on the third volume of Jake and the Dynamo, which is going all right, though I’m a tad frustrated that I still haven’t heard anything from potential publishers. Anyway, while I’m writing a rough draft, I often listen to music, and I have recently found some dude on YouTube who does “ambient metal,” which is kind of nice because it’s a style I like and doesn’t have any words to distract me.