Covers and paperbacks

It's been a year of biting the bullet.

When I say 'year' I'm including 2018, since that's when most of what I'm going to talk about happened.

Each time since 2014 when I uploaded a new book to Kindle I intended to produce a paperback version as well. And I got myself an account at CreateSpace to do this, but somehow held back from going through with the whole process. Formatting an ebook seemed a piece of cake by contrast with preparing a book for print. The thing that was my main sticking point was sorting out the cover.

Recently, CreateSpace went out of existence and Kindle (KDP) took over the print on demand process. I decided this was it: time to take the plunge. I worked my way through everything that I thought needed to be done and then checked with my older son, who's the IT whiz in our family. Immediately he pointed out a bunch of things that weren't going to look good unless I reformatted and improved the fonts and shifted pages around and got rid of things that weren't appropriate for the paperback version. Phew.

He came over to my house and wrote me out a check list as a reference for when I did the other three books. It proved immensely helpful, and for the most part I managed to reformat the remaining three books on my own. Even doing the covers.

The first paperback, Diary of a Prostate Wimp, was published in the second half of last year, while my wife was in England. The first time we spoke on WhatsApp after I'd published the paperback, she told me she'd ordered a copy. (So at least there was one sale...!)

All the books are now available in the printed version, and it's been encouraging to see the interest in the books as opposed to their electronic cousins.

Having achieved this, I felt it was time to do something about the cover for Grimhilda! The original e-book cover was adapted from the poster for the stage production - Grimhilda! had started out life as a musical. My son and I had sat down one evening, taken the poster version, got rid of some elements, improved others, and generally made it more presentable. No disrespect to the original artist but the poster wasn't up to scratch for the wider world of book covers.

The cover my son and I made was good, but not excellent, but it sufficed for the first four years of the book's life online. I always knew I wanted to redo it, but I never seemed to have the cash in hand to get a good artist (such as the guy who did the original cover for my third book, The Disenchanted Wizard) to make a good job of it.

There was no option: if I wanted a new cover I'd have to do it myself. And early this month (January 2019) I sat down, worked my way through Canva and produced a cover that I was much happier with. It's more striking, looks more like a proper cover (!) and hopefully is more eye-catching altogether.

Grimhilda! new cover

It was made from a variety of elements: the background only came to my attention after I'd tried a bunch of other options, such as finding something on Pixabay. It turned out none of the photographs I looked at there were going to work, but they gave me ideas for what could work.

I settled on the background, and then looked for a graphic that would connect to the title character. There were plenty of these, but most of them didn't belong with the rest of the cover. Thankfully, in the end I found the one of the witch on the broomstick, and she fitted perfectly. On the earlier cover my son had found a similar graphic that he applied over the snowy background as a shadow of the witch flying overhead. Very neat.

Today I revised the cover again...the author name seemed to stick out in a way that wasn't comfortable and the quote at the bottom of the page just cluttered things up - apart from not being readable on anything small.

Hopefully now I'm done with this cover for the time being. Might be time to tackle one of the other ones I'm not so happy about!

Kindle highlights on Goodreads

I'm just reading Penny Sansevieri's book, 5-Minute Book Marketing for Authors. I'd thought I'd read it before, but according to the record I keep of books I've read, I haven't. (Still with me?)

Maybe I started it and then it got interrupted by some other book coming along the chute, such as her other title, How to Sell Books on Amazon by the Truckload, which was really good. Anyway, this 5-Minute book is helpful, and has some good ideas in it.

I was reading it at a rehearsal for Don Giovanni, last night, in a spare moment when I wasn't required to play the piano for the singers, and, because she talks in the first chapter about Goodreads, a site I've been a member on for some years now, I decided to download the Goodreads app onto my phone. (I was reading the Kindle version of the book on there.)

To my surprise, I discovered that all my Kindle highlights are available on Goodreads, something that had never registered before. It's not as though they're hard to find, either. That's very interesting. I already keep copies of them on Evernote, because it's helpful to be able to search them, but having them at hand on my phone is also useful.

The format for the highlights is better than the one on Amazon itself where there's only one page and things stretch out for miles. Here each individual book is listed, and you can access the notes and highlights more readily.

I guess this change happened when Amazon joined forces with Goodreads, but I plainly missed noticing it at the time. Well, there you go, you catch up eventually!

Incidentally, one day I'll learn how to spell Ms Sansevieri's name correctly. She has one of those names where I always get the syllables mixed up...

Cockamamie and gallimaufry

Geraldine McCaughrean, courtesy of Oxford English Dictionary

This week, Geraldine McCaughrean won the Carnegie Medal for her novel, Where the World Ends, a book aimed at middle-grade, early secondary readers. She used her winner's speech to highlight the problems she's had directly (as have other authors) with publishers wanting to dumb down language for children. 

She warned that a new focus on “accessible” prose for younger readers will lead to “an underclass of citizens with a small but functional vocabulary: easy to manipulate and lacking in the means to reason their way out of subjugation”.

A US publisher said, for instance you use the word gallimaufry. No child is going to know what it means’. Of course they’re not. Most people don’t know what gallimaufry means, but you get it from the gist, from the context. That’s how you learn language … and who doesn’t want to come across gallimaufry?”

Classic children's writers and more modern ones, including J K Rowling, Diane Wynne Jones and Susan Creech, all offer words that are out of the experience of the children reading the books. But that's the point: they offer them these words so that the children's minds will grow.

And if they don't understand the word, then they can look it up if they can't guess its meaning from the context. Even better, with Kindle readers, you can do that as you read, something I do myself frequently, even though I'm several decades older than middle grade readers. I do it with thrillers, and classic novels, with theology and philosophy and more. None of us has every word in the language in our heads, which is why dictionaries were invented.

When it comes to writing my own books, I've shied away from soft-soaping the language, both because I agree with what McCaughrean says, and because there are words that are apt for the moment, for the sentence, for the rhythm, for the character, for the humour. Often these won't be words a child will necessarily know, but if an easier, less suitable word, is substituted, then the child will never know them.

It's as if children's publishers want to deny children the treasures of their own language.

And why cockamamie in the title? It doesn't appear in any of my books, but I recently decided to use it in the advertising of Grimhilda! the first of my children's fantasies. It's not an everyday word, but has been around a fair time, and moreover, was used for a period by children in the US as a fun word. I may not use it again, but it has a distinctness about it that makes it stand out. And that's what writing is about: using the best word for the occasion.

Chesterton's brother and Kindle formatting

By chance I recently came across a book about G K Chesterton, the famous early 20th century writer. I have some 36 of his titles on my shelves, in paperback and hardcover, and a few more on Kindle.

The book was written by Chesterton's brother, Cecil, although when it was first published his name didn't appear on the cover. It's entitled, G K Chesterton: a Criticism, and looks at the early period of GKC's writing life, when he was still establishing himself, and then suddenly becoming well-known everywhere.

I began to read it a few days ago, and it's good, but the Kindle edition has more errors in it than all the other hundreds of ebooks I've read put together. It's been scanned from an old library copy - the library details have been scanned into the book, in fact, along with the due dates! But no one has bothered to check it whether the scan was accurate. Apart from typos, there are innumerable formatting problems.

Normally when you find a typo or formatting issue, or some other error in a Kindle edition, you have the option to inform the publisher. You can see how to do that here, if you're not sure. I began to do it as I was reading this book, but because of the sheer number of problems, I gave up.

Here are some of the errors I found:

1. Letters that were in a different font at the beginning of a chapter, or section, in the original edition, not only appear as garbage in the Kindle version, but the original capitalized letter may turn up several Kindle pages further on. (It took me a while to cotton onto this.)

2. Whenever poetry is quoted, there are additional lines between the original lines, and in one case towards the end, the rest of the ordinary text has turned itself into 'verse.'

3. Quotation marks are random, sometimes appearing, sometimes not. Sometimes they're replaced by asterisks, or some other punctuation sign.

4. There are large chunks of white space where you'd just expect the next line in the paragraph. In one case there's almost a whole blank Kindle page between sentences.

5. Sometimes after a break in the lines, the next section becomes incomprehensible, as though there were actually some words missing from the text.

That may not be everything. As I said, it became impossible to keep on informing the publisher - Amazon Digital Services LLC, apparently - about each and every mistake. There would be at least one per page, if not several.

The only surprise is that I managed to read the book completely, in spite of all the errors! The Kindle version isn't expensive to buy at $3.30 US, but since I'm expected, as an Indie Author on Kindle, to provide a quality typo-free, well-formatted copy for Amazon to work with, it seems only fair that Amazon themselves should provide something much better than this.

Abridging your own book

The novel I'm supposed to review for the local newspaper turns out to be - to me - dull and not inviting to read. I've read fifty pages, and seem no further ahead than I was at the start. I won't say what the book is, because someone else may find it more to their liking than me.

So last night, when it came to going in the bath and wanting something to read, I dug around on my bookshelves and picked up That Hideous Strength by C S Lewis. I've read it twice before, but quite some time ago. Once way back when I was in my thirties, I think, or maybe even earlier, when I was still in London. And once again since at some point. The general story has stuck in my head, but little of the detail.

It turned out that the print in the Pan edition I've got has 'shrunk' over the years, making it rather hard to read. I'm having to use magnifying glasses over my ordinary glasses at present just to read the newspaper, and the computer and the music. It's surprising how many things have become just that much more difficult to read clearly in the last few years.

There’s a note in this Pan edition that says Lewis himself had abridged the original some five or six years after the first edition came out. He writes in a Preface: In reducing the original story to a length suitable for this edition, I believe I have altered nothing but the tempo and the manner. I myself prefer the more leisurely pace - I would not wish even War and Peace or The Faerie Queen any shorter - but some critics may well think this abridgement is also an improvement. 

Lewis was plainly loathe to do to abridge his story, nevertheless this second version reads so well you wouldn't think of it as being edited down, unlike the Reader's Digest abridged versions, for example, which often cut out huge swathes of material, and wound up with books less than half the length of the original.

So, with the print being very small in the Pan edition I thought I’d get a copy on Kindle.

I found a combined edition of all three of Lewis' ‘Space’ trilogy, and bought it. It was only when I compared it to the version I'd started reading that I found extra material in the first paragraph, and more beyond. It turned out to be Lewis' original version, and all sorts of additional material appears in it. His abridged version is very well done; what is missing from the later edition is often writing that adds to the characters in some way, or the general detail. Comparing the two editions would be a good exercise for any writer: Lewis shows how much can be deleted from a text without loss. The tempo is certainly quickened; we're not held up by interesting little sidepaths that add to characterization. But these sidepaths remain interesting. They're not excess.

Out of interest, I thought I'd compare a little of the opening of chapter two in the abridged version with the original. The abridged is first.

"This is a blow!" said Curry.
"Something from the N.O.?" said Busby. He and Lord Feverstone and Mark were all drinking sherry before dining with Curry. N.O., which stood for Non Olet, was the nickname of Charles Place, the Warden of Bracton.
"Yes, blast him," said Curry. "Wishes to see me on a most important matter after dinner."
"That means," said the Bursar, "that Jewel and Co. have been getting at him and want to find some way of going back on the whole business."
"Jewel! Good God!" said Busby, burying his left hand in his beard.

The original is much more expansive. Note the detail in the first paragraph alone, and the extensive background on Place, who's only a minor character, and the additional dialogue later in this extract. 

“This is a blow!” said Curry, standing in front of the fireplace in his magnificent rooms which overlooked Newton. They were the best set in College.
“Something from N.O.?” said James Busby. He and Lord Feverstone and Mark were all drinking sherry before dining with Curry. N.O., which stood for Non Olet, was the nickname of Charles Place, the Warden of Bracton. His election to this post, some fifteen years before, had been one of the earliest triumphs of the Progressive Element. By dint of saying that the College needed “new blood” and must be shaken out of its “academic grooves” they had succeeded in bringing in an elderly civil servant who had certainly never been contaminated by academic weaknesses since he left his rather obscure Cambridge college in the previous century, but who had written a monumental report on National Sanitation. The subject had, if anything, rather recommended him to the Progressive Element. They regarded it as a slap in the face for the dilettanti and Die-hards, who replied by christening their new warden Non Olet. But gradually even Place’s supporters had adopted the name. For Place had not answered their expectations, having turned out to be a dyspeptic with a taste for philately, whose voice was so seldom heard that some of the junior Fellows did not know what it sounded like.
“Yes, blast him,” said Curry. “Wishes to see me on a most important matter as soon as I can conveniently call on him after dinner.”
“That means,” said the Bursar, “that Jewel and Co. have been getting at him and want to find some way of going back on the whole business.”
“I don’t give a damn for that,” said Curry. “How can you go back on a resolution? It isn’t that. But it’s enough to muck up the whole evening.”
“Only your evening,” said Feverstone. “Don’t forget to leave out that very special brandy of yours before you go.”
“Jewel! Good God!” said Busby, burying his left hand in his beard.

Certainly a great example of how to edit your own work and do an excellent job of it!

Rosanne Higgins interviews me....

Back in December last year, I interviewed Rosanne Higgins about her books. Recently she returned the complement. You can see the original interview on her blog, but with her permission I'm reproducing it here.

Rosanne: Hi Mike, thanks for joining me. You are a musician, a composer, and, occasionally, an actor.  What made you want to write children’s books?

Me: I’ve been a writer for at least as long as I’ve been a musician, so writing is nothing new. It’s just taken me a long time to get to the point of publishing books.

In the past all the books I’ve written (but not necessarily finished) have been for adults, with one exception. However, there have been some children’s short stories in the past, at least a couple of which have been published. The first children’s book I completed (Grimhilda!) was based on a musical a friend and I had written a couple of years earlier. I thought it had some ‘life’ beyond the theatrical version, and that’s proved to be the case.

How do you balance your writing with your other creative pursuits?

It can be a bit of a juggling act, but usually it’s a matter of which creative venture needs priority. A deadline helps, but at the moment I have deadlines in two different areas, one musical and one writing. It’s not unusual for two things to be running along together: they just have to give each other elbow room.

You have referred to The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret as a sequel of sorts to your first children’s book, Grimhilda!.  Please explain what you meant by that.

In terms of the ‘sequel of sorts’ I mean that only two of the characters from the earlier book appear (though Grimhilda is mentioned several times). In other words, it’s a story about a new lot of characters who have some connections to what happened in the previous book.

You mentioned that Grimhilda! was adapted from a musical that you wrote. What motivated you to write The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret?

I’d had a sequel in mind for Grimhilda! when we produced the musical, partly because some of the cast talked about what happened next and were enthusiastic about me writing another musical. However, the idea I had in mind didn’t seem to work as a musical, or as something that could be done on stage. And I enjoyed the freedom a book version gave me to let things happen that would have been far too complicated to put in a script.

Do you foresee a third book in the Grimhilda series? 

I’ve since written a draft of a third story which will probably be described as a prequel: it’ll take place some twenty years before the events in Grimhilda! and will again only have a couple of characters in common with the first book. But it will (probably) also explain how something that was rather curious in Grimhilda! actually came about.

You have 10 grandchildren and one foster grandchild.  Have they read your books?  If so, what did they think of them?

Strangely I don’t think any of my grandchildren have read the books! They are all readers (at least those who are of an age are) but it’s mostly been their parents who've read them. I think it’s probably not entirely unusual that family members are so close to you they can’t see you as someone separate: a person who writes books. However a number of the grandchildren did come to the musical, and enjoyed it, so I’ll have to do a bit of promotion amongst them in terms of the books… Thanks for the reminder!

What are the challenges unique to writing children’s books in your opinion?

I think everything has to keep moving; you can’t have too much reflection on what’s happening, or too much description of things that aren’t immediately related to the action. On the other hand, someone did comment that The Blood Secret didn’t seem to have any breathing places as the book headed towards its climax. It’s a tricky balance.

I’ve just been reading more of Diana Wynne Jones’ books. She wrote a large number of fantasy stories, with lots of magic and big events. She was a highly successful author of books for children, and yet the books vary enormously in pacing. The one I read most recently had a rather long patch towards the end when things went rather slowly and then suddenly, all of a rush, everything was sorted out and the book was over. Even one of J K Rowling’s books ˗ I think it was the last ˗ had a long stretch in it where very little seemed to be happening. They tightened this up considerably in the movie. I’m not sure that children worry too much about these things; maybe it’s adult readers who do. (I think adults should read children’s books regularly; I certainly do.)

I have noticed that your blog covers a wide variety of topics, some are about writing, some are religious in nature and some are observations.  What motivates you to write your blog?

As I said earlier, I’ve written since I was young, and it seems part and parcel of my nature to record what I think about things. Before blogging came along I used to do it in exercise books or in diaries or journals on the computer. Blogging just became a way of making these things more public! I wrote a weeklycolumn for a local newspaper back in the 90s, for five years, and in it I was free to write on anything I fancied. I guess the blogging is an extension of that. For me, blogs that keep on hammering away at the same subject week in and week out get a bit uninteresting after a while, just the same as newspaper columns that are focused only on one thing. I like variety!

Do you find social media to be more useful in marketing or in helping you to learn more about the self publishing universe?

I don’t know that I’ve made a distinction like that between them. I tend to read anything and everything that’s going when I’m first learning about something. Social media’s certainly been helpful in discerning what’s useful in terms of marketing ˗ though you have to sift between what are often opposing viewpoints. Equally there’s a heap of information about self-publishing out there: some of it is excellent, some rubbish, some marginally informative and so on. It’s the nature of the Internet. But it often points you to books that are of value: I’ve discovered several books about self-publishing/marketing, and these have probably been more helpful because they’re more focused. Deb Vanasse’s book What Every Author Should Know is one I’ve read recently that I found very good all round.

If you could ask any question on social media about self publishing and get an honest answer, what would it be?

“How can I guarantee that my books will sell very well?” I’m sure I’d get plenty of honest answers, but I don’t think I’ll get one that will guarantee sales!

I would ask “How many books have you sold?” There are so many of us out there and I think it would help to have a better understanding of the goals (in terms of sales) that other authors set for themselves and the timeline they set for achieving them.

With e-books by relatively unknown authors, the secret seems to be perseverance: keep on reminding people about the books through social media. But don’t do it in a way that makes it sound like you’re insisting on a sale, or like you’re advertising. Make it part of the overall conversation. Encourage people to help your books to sell by word of mouth. An endorsement from someone who’s enjoyed your books to one or more of their friends is still one of the best ways of getting the books known, even better than good reviews.

I was pleased this morning to find a tweet from a friend saying: My daughter is again reading Grimhilda, by @mcrowl. She thinks it’s ‘awesome’.  That sort of publicity is invaluable, because it’s sincere.

Well, judging by your reviews on Amazon, others find Grimhilda! awesome as well! I really enjoyed The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret and I look forward to reading Grimhilda! (I agree with you that adults should read children’s books, and I do!). Mike, thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. I wish you success in all of your endeavours!

An interview with Traci Lawrence

Traci Lawrence is the author of the e-book Accept No Trash Talk, which I read recently. I've been in touch with Traci and asked if I could send her some questions about the book. She's sent me the answers and here's the result. [My questions and comments are in italics.]

This is your first book, I believe. Has it taken a long time for you to get this book off the ground?

In a word: yes. About a year and a half passed from the time when I got the idea for the book until it was first published. I have spent the past five weeks editing it for the publication of the second edition. Editing is an important, seemingly never-ending process.

I can agree with that! I see you’ve had some very positive reviews from readers. Have you had similar reactions from people on a more personal level as well?

In the beginning, my beta readers (people who an author asks to read an early, pre-publication manuscript) gave me more constructive criticism than positive feedback. However, since that first awkward stage, I have been given mainly positive responses. Relatives, friends, and colleagues who have read the book usually say that it’s inspiring. At the very least, they tell me that they appreciate the stories of prominent figures overcoming the odds.

I believe you’re preparing a revised version of the book. Is this based on feedback from other people, or is it because you’ve rethought some of the things you’ve written?

The main motivation for my edit was the advice of a publishing industry professional. She felt that the message of my book was important, but I needed to tighten up the formatting and content. Also, she felt that I needed to shorten the book,

On my own, I had decided that I wanted to update the examples that I used. I added, deleted, and edited stories. I wanted to bring a more positive, updated outlook to my work. I took some of the focus off of me and shifted it more to the stories of other people.

One of the great advantages of e-publishing, especially when we self-publish, is that we can correct things, or improve them, even after the book has gone out to customers. Will your updated version be the last word on this book?

It’s hard to say. I understand that some authors publish many editions of a certain book, and I am a perfectionist. Aside from that, there will always be new stories to tell of how individuals interact.

Did you find the self-publishing process difficult, overwhelming, straightforward...? Were there people who could help you with the task?

I made the choice to publish only on Amazon for now. Publishing in electronic format is not difficult. I followed the links for publishing to the Kindle starting from the Amazon home page. My book was available for download by the next day. There are no fees involved for this process. It is straightforward.

Amazon Kindle publishing experts are available by e-mail only. They did help me with a few simple formatting questions at no cost to myself. However, it was inconvenient to only be able to contact them by e-mail. I really would have appreciated more help in a timely manner.

[For those wanting to self-publish with Kindle, I'd recommend the free e-book, Building Your Book for Kindle which I've used for all three of my books. It takes you through the process without missing any vital information!]

Do you have any other books in mind? If so, will they be on the same sort of topic, or on other areas of concern?

I am currently doing research for a book that is a sort of continuation of my first book. It will feature specific examples of prominent figures and everyday people overcoming ridiculous odds.  Some examples of the famous people it will feature are King George VI of England (who conquered a debilitating stutter) and the French Impressionists (who conquered a lack of acceptance by the mainstream art community).

How easy do you think it is for sensitive people to confront bullies or controlling people?  Is it better to avoid confrontation, to ‘tune-out any sort of inappropriate negativity’ as you say at one point?

Confrontation is difficult for many people, especially sensitive ones. Some delicate individuals may shy away from conflict altogether. In some cases, we must ask ourselves if the clash is really worth it. If our rights, or needs, will be trampled unless we address a particular issue, perhaps we should choose to face the situation—if feasible. However (in my humble opinion) if confronting a situation will be unproductive, it’s best to avoid an altercation. I have never been a big fan of wasting my own time.

I don’t know if it’s feasible to say that confrontation is always right, or always wrong. Individuals should use their own judgment. That’s the safest answer. When I mentioned tuning out negativity, I was referring to tuning out people who, generally, demean us. I wasn’t mentioning people who might be a real threat to us in any way. There will always be naysayers out there, and we can’t afford to give weight constantly to what they say and do.

You say at one point that you’ve ‘heard it said that every person...has a particular section of the body which is more prone to disease.’ I wasn’t sure that I agreed with this. Is there any actual research done along these lines that you know of?

I’m no expert on this subject, and I’m not aware of any scientific research on the subject. However, I have seen references to this issue in non-medical literature (such as New Age literature). To me, it’s an interesting field to observe. There does seem to be a pattern: ulcers may occur in people with a certain personality type. Other gastrointestinal issues may happen in people who are more sensitive. These conclusions are based on my non-scientific observations, and research, only. Of course, I can’t say that my observations are true for everyone.

One of the things the book made me do was look at my own behaviour. I don’t like confrontation much, but I’m also capable of being a controlling type of person in some areas at times. Do you think that many people have tendencies to swing between one or the other?

Again, I don’t pretend to be an expert in this area. I only know what I’ve researched, and observed. Some researchers of personality types, such as Tim LaHaye, feel that every person is an unique amalgam of characteristics. It’s a fact that few mentally stable people are controlling, or submissive, 100% of the time. It’s probably true that most people swing between the two depending on the situation. For instance, I may feel comfortable taking the lead on a small group project at work while I may be submissive to my supervisor.

People are complicated. Most of us can’t be put into boxes that read “Continual manipulator”, or “Shy and awkward”.

Thanks, Traci. Good to have some background to your book. I know it will encourage a great many people, whichever version of it they read...

Review of Accept No Trash Talk, by Traci Lawrence

I read Traci’s book over the last week, and as usual with an e-book, highlighted a number of things that struck me, or that I ‘argued’ with. This is one great advantage of e-books, that you keep track of the notes you make so easily. It’s the equivalent of scribbling on the printed page or putting in exclamation or question marks.

Traci’s book looks at the difficulties people face who have limitations, or who are more sensitive than others, or who struggle to make themselves heard against those with stronger personalities. The limitations may be physical or mental disabilities, or health problems. The one struggling may be part of a minority, someone who's been brought up in an abusive family, or someone currently living in an abusive situation. Traci’s book applies to any of these and more.

It also looks a great deal at bullies and controlling people.

One of the lines that really struck home to me was: Controlling people do not like to be controlled. Controlling people do not like to have their agendas obstructed. I’ve found this true in my own life too. I know several controlling people: they usually have positions of authority and can abuse that authority, often without realising it. I’ve even been guilty of being a bit of a control freak at times myself, so in a sense I know it from both sides. Controllers don’t like to be confronted about their behaviour, however. Mainly, I think, it’s because they don’t see it at the time, and perhaps don’t even believe they’re doing it.

I’ve found that some of them eventually come to understand they’re controllers, but the behaviour is so habitual that controlling usually happens before they can deal with it. They have to eat humble pie afterwards. Still, better to eat humble pie than never to acknowledge it.

Traci makes a point about bullying: I think that the overarching reason for the bullying...can be condensed down to the fact that many of these people [are] self-righteous. Self-righteousness can be loosely defined as the attitude of a person who feels that he is superior to people who don’t think, look, act, talk, or believe as he does. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector immediately comes to mind! [Luke 18:9-14]

The self-righteous often don’t see their own behaviour. I had experience of corporate bullying in the last three years of my working life. I wasn’t directly in the line of fire, but my immediate boss was. The self-righteous bully eventually closed down our office because he felt he was right about his views. And unfortunately, as is often the case with such bullies, there were also cronies and yes-men surrounding him who endorsed his self-righteousness. Standing up to such people is an enormous, energy-draining task, as my boss found.

This is a personal book, and Traci discusses her own successes and failures honestly. She also gives credit to those who've helped her, and in one passage talks about her husband who saw her potential, affirmed her, encouraged her and validated her. ‘Since he believes in me,’ she writes, ‘I believe in myself.’

In spite of the difficulties of Traci’s life she has managed to build up a positive attitude. I like this paragraph from her book: When one door closes, a new door to a better life usually opens. Sometimes, we just have to be patient. At first, newly-opened doors may not always look like fresh opportunities. Opportunities may not always manifest themselves immediately. In fact, opportunities may first present themselves as unexpected, undesired challenges. The good news is that those challenges are what prepare us for new levels in life.

There’s a lot more packed in that paragraph than I realised when I first noted it.

This is a book that will encourage those who struggle, whatever their situation. It will also make you stop and think: am I guilty of this kind of behaviour?

I might not have discovered this book if I hadn’t discovered Traci on Google+. Increasingly I’m finding that site is full of people who are willing to make strangers into friends, and help and support each other.  

You can buy Accept No Trash Talk here. 

The Blood Secret uploaded

I've been very neglectful in not telling people who read this blog that my latest e-book, The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, is now available from Kindle, and Smashwords. I'd love to say it was also available in print, but that's not the case at the moment, although it's a possibility. One of the many options I've explored that haven't quite got off the ground yet.

Anyway, last Saturday the book was uploaded online, and is sitting waiting for people to buy it....

The Blood Secret is the sequel to Grimhilda! the story that began life back in the late 70s, and finally turned into the musical which we presented in Dunedin in 2012. And then it became the book. At the time some of the cast asked when the sequel was going to happen. They were thinking of another musical but such a venture is fairly overwhelming, even with a good team behind you, and so the sequel, now that it's finally arrived, is also in story form rather than musical.

It would be interesting to adapt The Blood Secret for the stage, however: though it has a number of challenges that might be tricky to overcome: a car that changes its colour, skateboarders whizzing around at impossible speed, a huge door that doesn't want to be a door, and something special that wants to remain invisible.

Only a few minor technical problems...!

I'd have loved to have given the four actors Grimhilda! the chance to fly, as they were supposed to do in the script, but in the end the audience had to imagine this. Another production, however, might achieve it. It would certainly add a Wow factor to the stage version. There's one moment of 'flying' in The Blood Secret too, but that would be a challenge even greater than the one in the musical...

Read it and see what I'm talking about!

The joy of new words

Much of the joy of writing comes from shopping from the hundreds of thousands of words that English makes available, and it’s good to remember that each of them was a neologism in its day. The new entries in AHD 5* are a showcase for the linguistic exuberance and recent cultural history of the Anglosphere: Abrahamic, air rage, amuse-bouche, backward-compatible, brain freeze, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, camel toe, community policing, crowdsourcing, Disneyfication, dispensationalism, dream catcher, earbud, emo, encephalization, farklempt, fashionista, fast-twitch, Goldilocks zone, grayscale, Grinch, hall of mirrors, hat hair, heterochrony, infographics, interoperable, Islamofascism, jelly sandal, jiggy, judicial activism, ka-ching, kegger, kerfuffle, leet, liminal, lipstick lesbian, manboob, McMansion, metabolic syndrome, nanobot, neuroethics, nonperforming, off the grid, Onesie, overdiagnosis, parkour, patriline, phish, quantum entanglement, queer theory, quilling, race-bait, recursive, rope-a-dope, scattergram, semifreddo, sexting, tag-team, time-suck, tranche, ubuntu, unfunny, universal Turing machine, vacuum energy, velociraptor, vocal percussion, waterboard, webmistress, wetware, Xanax, xenoestrogen, x-ray fish, yadda yadda yadda, yellow dog, yutz, Zelig, zettabyte, zipline If I were allowed to take just one book to the proverbial desert island, it might be a dictionary.\

Stephen Pinker, in The Sense of Style, page 56 (Kindle edition)

*The American Heritage Dictionary: 5th edition. 

Promoting the ebooks

While working on the sequel to Grimhilda! I haven't had much time to give to promoting that good lady herself, nor my non-fiction book, Diary of a Prostate Wimp. Both were published as ebooks earlier this year, one in January, the other in April, and while they had some interest from customers at the beginning, before I began writing the sequel (currently going under the name of The Mumbersons), they've languished over the last three months for want of sufficient attention. It's difficult to write and promote at the same time. The energy required for one tends to consume the energy required for the other.

Now that The Mumbersons is well on its way, and is awaiting a reading by a friend, I'm doing some work on getting the other two books back on their feet. I'd kept copies of a number of articles (on Evernote, of course) about promoting the books, and yesterday, while trolling through these looking for promotional ideas, came across a note about a site called Good Kindles, which, for a one-off (and reasonable fee) will promote your ebooks. I've listed Grimhilda! with them for starters, and we'll see how she goes. 

On top of that it was nice to find an unsolicited review of Grimhilda! had turned up on Amazon. Short and sweet, but nicely to the point: I was intrigued and delighted by this story. Great fun to read. It was contributed by a person who does a fair number of short reviews: Ruby,owl.  Thanks, Ruby!

Grimhilda! - a fantasy for children and their parents is available on Smashwords and a variety of other ebook sites, including Apple and Kobo.
The same applies to Diary of a Prostate Wimp.

clippings.io

I've been using Clippings Converter for two or three years. It began as a way of uploading clippings from my Kindle into a format like Word or Evernote (I prefer the latter) and being able to access them more readily while using my PC. They've now shortened their name from Clippings Converter to clippings.io, and are heading for another step up in their online journey, with added features that will enhance their site considerably. The main addition is the Google Chrome extension, which you can use to speed up the shift from the Kindle itself to your PC or Mac. There is a small charge per month for this extension (previously Clippings Converter was free), and no doubt there will be many people who take advantage of it. At $2.49NZ it's a good deal. With this extension you no longer have to plug in your Kindle to your PC; the extension will read clippings from your phone or iPad or other Windows devices. It'll be interesting to see how that works. 

If you're already a follower of this site, you can encourage others to use it through Twitter, FB or Google+. Just click on any of the links below. 

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Grimhilda takes a flying leap

A couple of days ago I wrote about the new book that I've nearly finished writing: Diary of a Prostate Wimp. Today, however, I uploaded my previous book, Grimhilda! - a fantasy for children and their parents, which has only been available so far on Kindle, onto Smashwords, where it is now available in other ebook formats, and will soon be available on Kobo, iPad and so on.

I've just spent an interesting half hour doing an 'interview' with Smashwords...all by computer, of course. You can find the result here, and you're welcome to pass along the link to anyone else who might be interested.

So Grimhilda! has now expanded herself further, from a musical seen by a fair number of people here in Dunedin, in 2012, to a novel that went on sale on Kindle in January this year, to this latest leap out into the wider world. She's finding it all to her satisfaction, and is keen for more customers! Pretty good for an old girl who started out life in the late 70s...

Uploading to Smashwords

I'm just about to upload my book, Grimhilda!, to Smashwords. Or rather, I was going to, except that I needed to ask them one question, and now have to wait until they get back to me. Which hopefully won't be more than 24 hours.

It's been an interesting process. The original document I used for uploading to Kindle wasn't able to be used for the Smashwords site, not even as an epub version. I had to strip the Word doc right down to the bare bones and start again, which was a bit of a pain, as it meant putting in italics and bolds and such all over again, and reformatting the headings and taking out colour. This version is the super simplified one, but at least it should be of a quality that it will adapt to any e-reader going, pretty much. That's the Smashword promise.

I spent Friday reading through the enormous Smashwords instruction page - I'd already worked my way through the e-book, Smashwords Style Guide, while reformatting the book, so I was familiar with a lot of what was in the instructions page, but there seemed to be considerably more detail, and repetition. Anyway, I went through it and marked it and made notes and updated some things on my file, and so on. All in all, I'm hoping that the document I now have should be ready to be uploaded without any hitch. But we'll see. Both the book and the instructions page warn that it's normal for the first upload to produce a few Autovettor 'errors' which have to be repaired before you can proceed.

Patience is required. At least I'm not waiting around for months before the book appears. That's one of the great wonders of the digital age that we can produce books (of varying kinds) in such a short time. Such services as Eoncode web to print solutions make the process remarkably speedy. Of course, you still have to have something ready for the printer that will pass muster, but that's all part of the learning process. This year has been full of learning curves, and I don't suppose they're over yet.

Promoting Grimhilda!

I've been working hard on promoting my ebook, Grimhilda!, but it takes a lot of time, of course. Still, the great advantage of ebooks is that you don't have piles of unsold stock lying around eating up your income.

At present the book is restricted to Kindle, but from the 20th April will be available much more widely. I'm hoping this will make a difference in its sales. I've been working with a company called Wheelers, too. They supply ebooks to libraries around NZ, and possibly Australia. (I think they supply to Australia, but trying to find where I saw that is proving a little difficult.) They've been very friendly and helpful, and respond quickly to emails. Grimhilda! is now in their capable hands and hopefully will begin to make her way around some of the NZ libraries from mid-April onwards.

I won't restrict my next book to Kindle - it's restricted to them for the first three months, if you choose that option, an option that's supposed to make it more visible, but obviously hasn't. Some advice I got from elsewhere has suggested that even though Kindle appears to be top-dog in the ebook world, it isn't, in fact, and there are a wide number of other opportunities out there. I'm preparing Grimhilda! for Smashwords too, at the moment, so it's all go.

I've hammered away at promoting on Twitter and Facebook, and have had some interest there...and a few sales. It's slow, but then Grimhilda! is competing against thousands upon thousands of other titles around the world, so she's got her work cut out.

Sales here in Dunedin have been rather sluggish, which surprised me considering that the musical version was presented here, and had good feedback. Several people have told me they'll get a copy, but it's easy to say that and then forget. Perhaps I should purchase a number of large vinyl banners and get the City Council to hang them from their banner poles around the city. Might be a slightly expensive option, considering the skimpiness of my advertising budget!

The other thing that's held up promotion has been the writing of my other book, on my experience of having a prostate operation. It's difficult to write and promote at the same time, something I've always had a problem with. I'm better at writing than promoting, although I do the latter because I have to, and a great deal of the promotion for the musical version of Grimhilda! fell into in my hands. A steep learning curve, as the cliche goes.

Anyway, that's where things are at present.  No doubt there'll be more news in due course!

Book preparation

Took some time off yesterday from the prostate book. It's heading towards its final form, I think, and I need to step back a bit and get some different perspective on it.

In the interim, I began work on preparing my other book, Grimhilda!, for publication on Smashwords. This turned out to be a lot more complicated than I expected, and I had to work through their manual very slowly to work out what I need to do to ensure the book format is right for their processing. (The 'meatgrinder' as the writer calls it.)

Firstly I had to pare the whole text back to its bare bones, which is a bit annoying, as not only does all the formatting go, but italics go as well, and will have to be replaced manually. However, Smashwords works from a Word document, surprisingly, rather than an epub version, and the Word version has to be as simple as...no colours, no large fonts, or peculiar ones, no this, no that. It's because Smashwords takes your file and distributes it to a wide range of e-formats. The simpler the original file is, the better. It's noticeable that the look of Grimhilda! on the iPad is different to the look of it on Kindle. Certain things change. So I won't be trying to do anything fancy this time; just keeping it simple and hoping that that will do the trick.

I want to get it up and running by mid-April, at the latest, so I thought I'd better get on and get started. Just as well I did. It's going to take longer than I anticipated!

Grimhilda! goes live

Been a busy week in which I've not only learned how to do the final processes required for getting my e-book, Grimhilda!, up onto Kindle, but also how to turn the original Word document into an .epub or .mobi file. I realised yesterday I had to have a copy in either one of these formats in order to fulfil my requirements with the National Library of NZ, which holds a copy of every e-book published in the country that's had an ISBN given to it by that library. The library acts as a kind of clearing house for ISBN numbers in NZ; it requires two copies of every printed book. Of course, it's difficult for a library to 'hold' a copy of an electronic book, soGrimhilda! has done her first 90 days on Kindle's promotional level, I'll need the book to be in those formats for sending it off to other devices, such as Kobo.
they have to have it in a format that's usable to them. .Epub and .mobi are the same formats public libraries use for their electronic books.  And, once

If you're still with me, that's great. Don't get too fussed, it's all a learning curve, for you and for me.

Anyway, Kindle says that the normal turnaround time for getting a book online with them is between 12 and 24 hours. I uploaded the final version of the book at 4.27 on Monday (I noted the time exactly!) and, when my wife came home told her she wouldn't be able to see it till the next morning. Nothing daunted, she checked anyway, and there, at 6.15, the book was up and running online. So of course she had to be the first to buy a copy, which rather puts our profits out of kilter, but at least it meant someone bought it. Later on, we were unexpectedly called over to my son's house to babysit, because my daughter-in-law had cut herself rather badly and was down at A&E. So Grimhilda! got its first 'reading to a grandchild' - or at least two or three chapters did. This same grandson, who'd seen the musical version back in 2012, and declared it 'awesome' at the time (so generous!), two years later struggled to remember it. Such is the price of fame. However, I gave him a few details to remind him, and he did remember actually going to it. I'm not sure that he realised the book was telling the same story. Well, that's the advantage of being able to take the same material and re-do it...

You can find Grimhilda! here.  Currently it's available for Kindle readers of all sorts, as well as Kindle apps on PCs and Macs, and on iPads and iPhones. And the Kindle apps on android phones too.

Progress on the e-book

The e-book version of Grimhilda! is making good progress. I've actually put a preliminary version online at Kindle's site, so that I can check out to see what it looks like on various devices. As a result, my son and I spent a good deal of time last night sorting certain elements out such as spacing, and changing a little design feature, and altering the way the cast list showed up (somewhat randomly instead of in neat columns) and checking out links and photos and so on.

And we worked on the cover as well, though this hasn't been uploaded as yet. This draft version isn't available for anyone else to view online yet, though hopefully the finished product won't be far away.

The Kindle site is very informative - sometimes overwhelmingly so - but in general I found, even though I'm not a whizz kid on computer things (except in certain specialized areas) that I understood what was required, and have managed to do it. That's been very satisfying!

Initially the e-book will appear just on Kindle (which means of course that it can still be read in iPads and iPhones, plus other smartphones). This will be for the first three months; after that it will also appear on other platforms, such as Kobo.

Evernote

Having some fun with Evernote in the last couple of days.  Nothing serious, and this isn't a complaint about Evernote, which for the most part I really love. (I don't like the way you can't change the font or the font size as easily as on Word, but that's a small issue. Although I did discover recently that highlighting the whole note and using Ctl + increases the font size, which is good.)

Anyway, the first of the 'issues' was that when I went to use ClippingsConverter, the website that takes the highlighted notes off your Kindle and exports them to wherever you want to export them to (Word or Excel are options) I couldn't export to Evernote.  It kept telling me ClippingsConverter wasn't authorized to do so, and I'd need to authorize it.  Well, I'd already authorized it some time back, and didn't actually need to do so again.  But I couldn't get past this point.  I unauthorized and re-authorized, but to no avail. Evernote wasn't able to help, saying it was an issue with CC - admittedly the latter has recently updated their website, so maybe there's a change that's causing the problem.  I went back to my friend, Jim, at CC, and he's doing his best to sort it out.  But so far we haven't got anywhere. (Jim, incidentally, is a great guy, and very willing to sort out problems as soon as he can.)

And then today, I wanted to export files from Zotero into Evernote.  I'd never done this before, but it turned out to be a piece of cake, except that the files consisted of individual book titles, and every single one of them was turned into a separate note in Evernote, increasing my notes from some 3,000 to well over 4,000.  Not so hot.  I deleted them all again, but it would be good to be able to export into a single note, which is what I wanted to do. Can't have everything.

I see that Evernote is upgrading to version 5 soon, and promising new things. Hopefully there won't be things missing that are currently of value.  It doesn't seem as if that's the case, but sometimes developers like changing things for the sake of changing them....don't they, Microsoft?

By the way, I'm using Evernote on my smartphone too, these days.  It works really well on there - better than on the iPad, in fact. 

Recent books

I've had a rash of finishing books in the last week or so; here's the list:

Orthodoxy – (re-read, on Kindle) – G K Chesterton – 18.7.13
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce – 19.7.13
Into the Woods – John Yorke – 24.7.13
Being a Christian – Helmut Thielicke – 25.7.13
Leadership and Self-Deception (on Kindle)– Arbinger Institute – 26.7.13

As noted, I'd read Orthodoxy before, but basically I remembered almost nothing of it, so I guess it's several decades since I first worked my way through it.  It was nothing like I expected, except that being a book by Chesterton it was full of wonderful inventiveness, delightful arguments against godlessness, and marvellous debunking of people who were his contemporaries.  It makes you long for a 'Chesterton' for the 21st century.  Unfortunately, he was one of a kind.  I highlighted so much of the book on Kindle that Amazon couldn't cope and hasn't recorded many of the later ones.  At least my copy on the PC and the Kindle copy, and the iPad copy, all synched, show all of the highlightings.  I just can't access the unrecorded ones via ClippingsConverter, or Kindle online.

Here's just one longer example of Chesterton in full flight (and he's only just getting started at this point):

I do not see how this book can avoid being egotistical; and I do not quite see (to tell the truth) how it can avoid being dull. Dullness will, however, free me from the charge which I most lament; the charge of being flippant. Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that this is the thing of which I am generally accused. I know nothing so contemptible as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence of the indefensible. If it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for a man of his mental activity could invent a sophistry every six minutes. It is as easy as lying; because it is lying. The truth is, of course, that Mr. Shaw is cruelly hampered by the fact that he cannot tell any lie unless he thinks it is the truth. I find myself under the same intolerable bondage. I never in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny; though, of course, I have had ordinary human vain-glory, and may have thought it funny because I had said it. It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't. One searches for truth, but it may be that one pursues instinctively the more extraordinary truths.

And a much shorter one, what might be called a Chesterton one-liner:

Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.

I've already written about Rachel Joyce's book in another post, so I won't elaborate further on it here. 

Into the Woods, which is subtitled a five act journey into story, has a blurb on the back from scriptwriter, Jimmy McGovern, along the lines of 'when I first saw this book I thought, not another book on scriptwriting.'  McGovern goes on to commend the book however, and overall, I would too.  I think its great feature is using examples from movies and TV shows we've all seen, though some of them it overuses (Thelma and Louise, in particular), and there is some other repetition which felt as though he'd run out of pertinent examples.  Yorke is good at insisting that the underlying structure (or the purposeful attempt to go against that structure) of virtually all stories has been around as long as good stories have; it's almost something we can't avoid if we want to make a good story.  Of course it's often used badly, and unimaginatively, but the essential structure also makes its presence felt in the best movies, TV and books.  If that structure is missing, or if the writer doesn't appear to be aware of it, the creation, in general, fails. Certainly the viewer or reader is aware that something is not quite right with the work. Yorke offers some argument against his own thesis, but manages still to say that even those who rail against the structure tend to use it unconsciously, and lays out the way in which they've done so: Being John Malkovich, for example, turns out to be 'properly' structured, even though its creator Charlie Kaufman claims it's not!

I picked up Helmut Thielicke's book earlier this year and have been reading it a chapter at a time when so inclined.  I don't know that it's his best book, by any means, but as always with Thielicke there's some good stuff in it.



Leadership and Self-Deception is a bit of a phenomenon, apparently.  I was alerted to it by a colleague who said that it could be useful for reading in relation to the pastoral supervision work I do.  Seemingly it's used in big and small companies around the world as a way of helping staff to work together for 'results' and good relationships rather than destroying each other.  But I found it's also useful in terms of thinking about my own relationships with other people, and I've been particularly reflecting on a work relationship I had a few years back that seemed to sour when it shouldn't have.  It gets to grips with blame, and self-justification.

It's written as 'fiction' though what that actually means is that the theory behind the 'getting out of the box' thesis is written out in dialogue form with three or four fairly cardboard characters instead of being presented as straight non-fiction.  The narrator comes across reasonably well as a 'person', but those teaching him are a bit bland in terms of personality.  Nevertheless, the material itself is of value, and, if taken on board, would certainly be of help within a family or a firm. It boils down, in essence, to do unto others as you would wish to them do unto you, and it's perhaps not surprising, when you go and investigate who the Arbinger Institute actually is, that the man who initiated the ideas in the book and its subsequent self-perpetuating life, C. Terry Warner, is a Mormon. His books in general, though listed as self-help, come out of a stream that uses Christian underpinnings to show people how to live (without necessarily having to become Christians).