somebody stop me

okay, another cover.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<----------------over here on the left.
love the pregnant woman cover, but it has a very contemporary look, and doesn't convey the fantasy element of the story. I'm never going to bitch about cover art again. It's hard to capture every element that needs to be captured. An editor once told me that the cover has to be able to snag a random reader's attention in something like a quarter of a second, so you not only have to portray some aspect of story, you also have to think of the shopper who is scanning a rack at the airport.

here's another one

After some time away, the pregnant woman is still my favorite. Maybe this addresses some concerns:

is this anything?

test covers

Now that Max's story is done, I plan to do a final edit/polish, beg someone to proof it for me, then make it available on Smashwords. There's been some talk here, on Facebook, and in emails of my doing more with this. Maybe a full-length novel, maybe a pop-up book. While I would love both of those, I doubt I could find a publisher. However, I can imagine putting together a picture book through Lulu or Lightning Source. Another idea is to actually do the book binding myself, with each book being slightly different. I was looking up book binding online, and I think I could manage the thread kind of binding. But once again, a lot of work and probably not enough interest. But anyway, here are some covers I put together to possibly use on Smashwords. Input appreciated! I hope to have someone tweak the cover of choice. All could really use some Photoshop.











or this:

The Lineup - Poems on Crime

In eighth grade literature class I had to write a poem once a week. I kind of hated it. I can still recall the frustration of having this deep emotion I wanted to convey, yet being totally unable to transfer it to paper. And I still remember lines from some of the awful poems. One had the saccharine title of Love Be In Clover. This was during the Vietnam War, which easily explains the first two lines:

So you’re gonna go and fight,
You do what you think is right.

This very well could have been my first piece of writing. It was pretentious, phony, awful, and I knew it.

When Gerald So asked me to submit a poem to be considered for The Lineup 3, poems on crime, my first reaction was to tell him no thanks. I don’t write poetry. I don’t know anything about poetry. And the lines of the above poem kept circling in my head. So you’re gonna go and fight….

But I can’t resist a challenge, so I decided to give it a try. I spent several hours working on a poem. Here’s what I came up with:

THE SWIMMER

He holds me
And whispers, “I adore.”
A kiss

Soft
Reverent
He pushes and whispers, “My darling.”
Release

A rush of air, a splash
I descend through water, past broken moonlight
Past slumbering fish

Toes and fingers rake the river bottom
Stirring up sediment
Slow motion

The current coaxes
Water moves across skin
Hair sweeps my eyes
In death, I swim.


It was okay, but certainly nothing special. Like my eighth grade poem, it felt forced and kind of phony, written from the outside instead of the inside.

But it was done and that was that. I would proof it one more time before emailing it to Gerald in the morning. But then an odd thing happened. That evening another poem popped into my head almost fully formed. I wrote it in about five minutes, wondering where in the hell it had come from, because I’d had no plans to write more than one poem. Not even on my agenda. With that piece, I managed to capture 90% of what I wanted to convey. It was also very different from what I would have consciously tried to write. The second one came from me, and it felt authentic. That second poem ended up being chosen for next year’s poetry chapbook.

Dollhouse

This was such an amazing episode of Dollhouse. What a loss. Two episodes air Dec 4, and another two the following Friday. (I believe.)

Smashwords and Kindle, a comparison

I've been talking about Smashwords and Kindle for quite a while, and after publishing with both, I have a good idea of what works and what doesn't. Smashwords leaves Kindle in the dust in every area, the biggest being ease of use, formats, and flexibility. If you want to see what Smashwords is like, just upload a Word file and give it a test run. Smashwords has something they call the meat grinder that turns your creation into a multitude of files so it can be read on any device. (Download Stanza to your computer if you don't have an ebook reader.) And if you format correctly, your book will end up in the Barnes and Noble premium catalog. And if you don't format correctly, Smashwords will tell you what you did wrong, and how to correct it. The thing I love about Smashwords is the flexibility. If I want to change a price, I change it and the new price appears on my page as soon as I hit save. If I want to change the description, instant. If I want to upload a new copy, instant.

Amazon... If you change one tiny thing, price, typo, etc, you start over with the approval process. This can takes days or weeks. Pale Immortal has been on Amazon for over 6 weeks, and the description still hasn't shown up.

With Smashwords, you have completely control of your book. With Amazon, you have zero. And say you want to REMOVE a title. It can't be done without contacting someone at Amazon, another exercise that could take weeks.

Frustration level with Smashwords is zero. Amazon is off the chart.

Okay, now for sales. I don't think I can even speak to that, because I've sold zero books through Smashwords and three through Amazon. I'll never break even, and I really could have written a novella in the time I spent converting Pale Immortal from print to ebook format.


The takeaway:
I need a publisher for my print and ebook titles. It's that simple.

But I do think Smashwords is going to be huge and they're going to kick Amazon's ass when it comes to self-publishing and a user-friendly platform.

UPDATE: Smashwords Adds Kindle Store, Makes Acquisition. More Smashwords news from Publishers Weekly.