Another In The Shadows Update

Good news! I finally finished the blurb for In the Shadows, which means I was able to submit the whole book to CreateSpace.com for review. After waiting 24 hours, I got the word: it's good to go!

I've now ordered a proof copy that's supposed to arrive around January 5. (It's hard to wait!) Then I'll finally be able to hold my latest novel in my hands. What a feeling that is. (And it lasts until I start proofreading and find the inevitable mistake. Oh, well, that's part of the process.) I'll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, believe it or not, I've starting working on the next one! (It already has a rough draft.) This one will need A LOT of work: it doesn't have a title and it isn't even broken into chapters yet! (I think I have a good title in mind, though. I'll give it some thought and let you know once I'm sure.)

Remember to tell all of your friends and family members about the first two novels. They'd better hurry and read them before the third one is out, right?

I hope you had a peaceful holiday and will have a wonderful New Year. Look for the beauty that's around you, sometimes where you least expect it.


From Photography Workshop, November 2014

Thanks, as always, for your support.

In the Shadows Update

I've made more progress since last week, so here's the latest update.

On Monday, I got the final image from the artist for the cover. It's now on my hard drive, ready to be submitted.

On Wednesday, I registered In the Shadows with CreateSpace.com and received an ISBN for it. (That's always one of my favorite steps.) I then typed the ISBN on the copyright page.

On Thursday, I submitted the interior and it was accepted. Whew! I paged through their Interior Reviewer, which shows me what the interior will look like once it's printed, and it all looked pretty good. I also got some Likes for my posting about it on my Facebook page, which I really appreciated. Thanks for your support, everyone!

Now I'm frantically trying to write the cover blurb. I've told you a little about this in the past: I need two blurbs, one for the cover and one for the Amazon page. I think I've got the one for Amazon done, but the cover blurb is proving to be pesky. I'm getting some editorial help from my husband, who keeps telling me to "punch it up," so I'll work on it some more and try to get that finished today or tomorrow. Once that's done, I can start working on the cover at CreateSpace.com.

The book is starting to come together! Don't forget, though, that I'll have to order a proof copy and proofread the whole thing again, so we're still looking at January for a release date. I feel I'm getting closer, though!

Thanks again for your support.

Interior Finished

That's right: the interior of In The Shadows is finished!

You may be wondering, "Diane, what does that mean: interior?" The best way for me to explain is to ask you to grab the nearest book. (If you don't have any books nearby, shame on you! Ha, ha.)

Okay, once you've got a book, flip through it and notice everything that isn't a cover. See all those pages at the beginning that tell you copyright information, legal mumbo-jumbo, possibly other works by the author, etc.? See the pages in the middle that contain the story? See the pages at the end that might have information about the author and other material? All of that is the interior of the book.

And my interior is done! Woo-hoo! I went through the whole thing and cleaned it up before I added the front and back pages. I crossed my fingers when I added those because I was afraid it would mess up the page numbers, but it didn't! Big relief there.

I'm hoping to finalize things with the artist this week. Then, with luck, I'll be ready to get an ISBN by next weekend!

We're on the way! Stay tuned!

Continuing to Format

I finally feel I'm making some progress on In The Shadows!

The artist and I have been meeting and emailing, and we're getting close to the finished product for the cover image. I think the black and white version is done, so now she'll add color to it and we'll see how that turns out.

Meanwhile, I've started to format the novel in earnest. I typed In The Shadows before I had the template that I used before, so there's a lot of work to be done. I already worked on the headers (which I talked about in a previous post), so now it's on to the rest.

First I worked on the margins. I use custom margins, which are set up in Page Layout in Word. Once I set it for mirror margins, I could set the margins for the top, bottom, inside and outside, using the guidelines from CreateSpace.com.

After that I justified everything except the chapter headings, so the text goes all the way to the edge both inside and outside. It looks a lot cleaner that way. I had to watch out for the last line of each paragraph, though: if I forgot to press Enter at the end of the line, it was all spread out and looked very odd!

Next I set the trim size, which is 5"x8". This is also set in Page Layout and is applied to the whole document.

I had to wait until after I set the trim size to set the Drop Caps. I learned the hard way that these might look great in one size, but then look absolutely wrong in another size, so I don't set them until late in the process. If you don't know what Drop Caps are, that's okay (I didn't at first either). If you look at the first line of each chapter in either of my novels, you'll see that the first letter is much larger than the others and extends down to the next line. I set this to "drop" down two lines rather than three, because I think it looks better that way. I have to manually set this for every chapter.

Now the slow part: I need to scroll through the entire thing, looking out for bad page breaks, bad scene breaks, bad line breaks, etc. This takes quite a bit of time, but I don't mind. It's kind of an excuse to run through the story again, although I'm not rereading the whole thing. It gives me little reminders of scenes that I particularly like.

And that's where we are for now. I need to keep checking the format and the artist needs to apply color to the cover. After that, I'll be ready to try submitting the whole thing to CreateSpace.com. I'll let you know more about that when the time comes.

Onward!

Science Fiction Movies

I just read a rather bitter opinion piece about how "Star Wars" ruined the sci-fi genre. This is of course precipitated by the release of the first teaser trailer for the upcoming movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Here's the trailer:

Here's the piece: http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/02/opinion/beale-star-wars/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

I have to disagree with Mr. Beale. One movie franchise is not going to ruin an entire genre. True, it might make some people believe that space opera is the full extent of science fiction and that's a shame, but does it RUIN the entire genre? Of course not. I'm actually encouraged that Hollywood continues to try science fiction of various types. Like every other genre, many of those movies will be forgettable mush, but there will always be that occasional gem that makes people notice and maybe even convinces them to try reading a few books in that genre.

The editorial is about movies, however, so we'll stay with that. Mr. Beale says that the Star Wars franchise has created a "template" for science fiction movies: "lots of whiz bang, plenty of quirky alien characters, CGI to the max, plenty of explosions and little thought of any kind." While I agree that these aspects are present in some science fiction movies, let's take a step back. Aren't these aspects (minus the quirky alien characters) present in the majority of movies out of Hollywood? Are all the genres ruined every time a movie with action and special effects appears? No, because they're MOVIES. Hollywood producers aren't stupid: they know there has to be action to keep people's interest. There have been exceptions, but those certainly aren't normal. I agree that there should be more than a "little thought of any kind," but again, we're talking about Hollywood. They're trying to make money, not necessarily quality.

I'd like to suggest to Mr. Beale that if he doesn't want to see the next Star Wars movie, he shouldn't see it. But he needs to be more patient: don't write off the whole genre yet. Science fiction is just like every other genre in one respect: there are going to be good movies and bad movies. It's usually pretty easy to tell if an upcoming movie has any interesting thoughts to go along with the action, so wait for the right one. (While you're waiting, try picking up a book.)

Photography

I took a short photography workshop today. A group of about 15 people met at a nature reserve and got tutored in f-stops, shutter speed, ISO and white balance. I've taken photographs for most of my life, but the vast majority of those were with a film camera and now I have a digital camera, so I need to learn a new mindset.

I don't know how many times that's happened to me in my lifetime but I'm sure the number is high. No matter how much I want things to stay the way that I'm familiar and comfortable with, the more they seem to change.

Not all the changes are bad: I don't have to wind the camera after every shot and I don't have to worry about wasting film. I like that! However, I have to figure out what all of those buttons on the camera are for. The workshop today helped me make a lot of progress on that.

I think my favorite part, though, was when we went outside to try out what we'd learned. The day was overcast and most of the autumn colors are gone, so some people would have despaired. There's nothing worth taking photos of, they would think. Fortunately, I was with a group of people who knew better. If you'd stumbled upon us, you would have seen one person taking a photo of a tree trunk, one of a cluster of red berries against the brown, one of the pattern on the water, one of a rooster who came to check us out. I took a moment to appreciate their attitude: there's plenty to see out there if you actually look for it.

And I think it's the same with writing. Every week I sit in front of this computer and think there is no way I can write a blog that day because nothing has happened to me lately and I don't have anything to say. But then I remember: if I'd felt that way about 24 years ago, I would never have written my first novel. I wasn't sure if I had something worth writing, but I tried anyway. (I'd done it before with very awful results. Thank goodness it came out better this time!) The point is that I tried. I looked until I found something.

Keep looking.

Artwork Update

I was finally able to meet with the artist this past week about the cover of the third novel. For various reasons, this was the first time we'd seen each other for a while. She had an image of the artwork she's creating and we talked about that for a while. I was kind of relieved to see it because somehow the physical drawing reminds me that I'm working on something tangible, not just a jumble of words that happen to reside in my three-ring binder and my head. The artwork isn't finished yet and we talked about a few tweaks, but at least progress is being made.

I've been working hard on the novel itself. I can't keep putting it off or telling myself I can read it "one more time." If I keep doing that, it will be 2016 before I think it's ready! If there's one thing I need to remember, it's that I can't keep tinkering forever if I want anyone else to read it.

And I want someone else to read it! I like knowing that my characters are in someone else's imagination, even if only for a while. It's like giving them life. I feel I have a responsibility to introduce them to as many people as I can. It's the least I can do to repay them for the years of entertainment they've given me.

For those of you who enjoy a pun, compliments of my husband:
We were driving near a local shopping area last evening when a male deer ran across the street in front of our car. I asked if the deer had been shopping at Wal-Mart and he replied, "No, it was shopping at Dollar General because you can get everything for a buck there."
(rimshot)

Thanks for reading!