The Centauress

Just a quick post tonight as I have spent all weekend at the Inaugural Dorrigo Grassroots Writers' Festival and am rather tired.

But I wanted to say my friend Kathleen Jones  and long time commenter on this blog has just published her latest book the Centauress on Kindle

 

 I haven't had a chance to read this work yet, but I have read her biography 

Katherine Mansfield: The Story-Teller  and her previous novel The Sun's Companion  and to say I loved them would be an understatement!

Veiled in Shadows… On Amazon!

Well it has finally happened - I have managed to finally get everything together on the book front.

My first Novel is now available on Amazon in both hard and Kindle editions.
For anyone who lives outside the US or prefers not to use Amazon you can also get my work via the Book Depository. I personally buy more books from the Book Depository because they don’t charge postage for books shipped anywhere in the world.

To say I am over the moon is a slight understatement :-)

This process has taken far longer than I had originally hoped, mostly because I simply haven’t had time to get the last few things done that I needed. But now that is behind me.

Realistically an even more daunting task lies ahead. Promoting my novel is going to be a huge job. I think it will be a real challenge. Hopefully, it will have some fun moments but I guess on the whole it will simply be hard work.

Now this leads me to a few points, first this blog. My intention is to keep going exactly as I have been. I won’t turn this into an advertising site where I bang on endlessly about my book.

Naturally that doesn’t mean I’m never going to talk about Veiled in Shadows or my other writing. In fact I am working out how to share extracts of the book, perhaps on a regular basis.

Now my dear bloggy friends I have a question. Would any of you be interested in reviewing Veiled in Shadows for me?

I am only too happy to organise free copies for anyone who is interested in doing a review. Hopefully anyone who accepts a free copy would consider posting reviews on Amazon and the Book Depository.
If you are interested in a review copy you can leave a comment or email (my address is available through my blogger profile).

Now finally I am so excited by the whole event that I can’t help but share an extract.
If you click on the “Extract” tab above you can read the prologue of Veiled in Shadows.

Warning! The novel mostly takes place during the time of World War Two so it features some violence at points.
Also, for those of you who hate prologues the extract is in fact a prologue so proceed with caution! :-)

I look Very Hard For Nothing.

I swear I am getting square eyes.

I have been doing final preparation of my manuscript and cover of Veiled in Shadows.
I have decided to run with Lightning Source as my printer. They are more than competitive in terms of cost per book and they give some advantages in terms of distribution.

Like CreateSpace, the Amazon subsidiary, they have an easy path onto Amazon listings. A presence on Amazon is a vital part of my planned marketing campaign, and my main target will be the American market because it is so big in comparison to anywhere else.

Yet, if I want to sell Veiled here in Oz (or in the UK) Amazon is too expensive. It can cost as much (or even more) than the price of a book to airfreight a paperback from the US to Oz. Lightning Source is an Ingram International subsidiary, which means the potential of international distribution.

I don’t really expect many (if any) shopfront resellers will pick up Veiled, not unless I can get some real sales and interest happening. More to the point, from my perspective, is if Veiled is available at Ingram (which it will be) I may get it listed by the Book Depository. The big advantage of the UK based Book Depository is they don’t charge postage for air freight. And that’s anywhere in the world!

They are well worth checking out, I buy nearly all my books from them. Their prices are competitive with Amazon and no freight cost.

Now I am digressing from my square eyes. I have to submit my MS to Lightning Source (LS) as a PDF. No problem I thought, I already have converted it to PDF using some open source software.
Wrong! LS will only accept PDFs formatted on Adobe Acrobat.

So after a lot of hassle I manage to organise a copy of Acrobat. All good.

Wrong again!
My MS, which happily converted to a PDF using the other software, wouldn’t convert with Acrobat. One of the fonts I have used wouldn’t embed in the PDF using Acrobat (fonts have to be embedded so the printer can access them and I was using an odd one for a few pages of “letters” in the book) .

OK change the font to something similar that will embed.
Still won’t work. Acrobat reports the dodgy font is still in the document.

Much rending of clothes and tearing of hair!

When I calmed down I began a search of the MS to find wherever the font was hiding. No luck on a hard copy. So I begin trawling through an electronic copy. I can’t find it anywhere.

I realise with dismay I am probably looking for a few stray characters (of the font variety, not even Acrobat has taken a dislike to my villains).

No luck. I break the MS into separate chapters and test the most likely (the ones where I know I used the font).

Hallelujah I narrow it down to one chapter and scour that with a fine tooth comb.

Still no luck.

Then, as I contemplate retyping this chapter in a blank document, I look one last time.
I find it, a single solitary space in the wrong font. No wonder I couldn’t see it. I was effectively looking for NOTHING.

Just for your enlightenment I have included the offending space. Here it is. See there? There in front of the last carriage return. See it?

No, neither could I.

So finally last night I got the whole MS into an Acrobat PDF.

Ahh, sighs of relief all round.

Except now, I have to do another line by line check to make sure no errors in formatting have crept in with the change of font and PDF software.

At least this time I’ll be looking for things I can see.

I hope.



Now a totally random piccie, this time from my archive.
Another variety of Banksia
From the leaves I’d never guess this was a banksia, but these beautiful flowers are very distinctive.