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.

A Few Bits and Pieces and a Grumble About the System.

Last night the Dr Who special “Waters of Mars” ran on ABC TV.
In a homage to a misspent youth I watched it. Well actually I have to admit that having never grown up, I have enjoyed most of the Dr Who series starring David Tennant.

Sorry to those American fans who haven’t yet seen it (I believe it screens on the 19th in the USA) but I found it boring. This special is basically a not very suspenseful zombie show. Some of the new series have been really worthwhile. I particularly enjoyed the 2007 episode called “Blink”, it really built suspense beautifully.
Alas no such brilliance was on display last night. For a Dr Who fan I would rate this effort 5 out of 10 and for anyone else 2 out of 10 (I suppose a die hard Zombie fan might give it 6).

I continue to format my manuscript. It is such a slooow process. Looking at every page line by line, paragraph by paragraph is likely to send me barmy. I live in dread of seeing my imaginary Uncle Harry again.

Finally a quick word about work. We heard today that one of our younger service users (I’ll call him Joe) has been hit by a car. According to one of the Royal District Nursing Service nurses we work with he is in hospital with two broken legs. Greg, my offsider, left work early to visit him.

Where the grumble comes in is that poor Joe has a previous acquired brain injury (ABI) from a car accident some years ago (one of his parents was driving). Because of the ABI Joe is unable to properly look after himself so he has ended up homeless. I find it endlessly frustrating that there are not enough resources devoted to assisting people like Joe keep their lives together.

Joe is usually confused and I have witnessed him crossing roads with very little idea of how dangerous cars are. That he is left essentially to fend for himself makes me very angry. Government services for the Joes in this state are woefully underfunded.

Joe is in hospital following a serious accident on a street he should probably never have been on. As for the driver who hit him heaven knows what sort of trauma he or she is going through, I am pretty sure Joe would have walked straight out in front of the car. That person is also potentially paying for our negligence as a society.

Now a Random photo from 2007.
The grey kind of reflects my mood tonight.I took this on the rear deck of a Manly Ferry pulling out of Sydney one evening, I think the sky looked just amazing.

Well Here I Go.

I have finally decided to stop procrastinating.

Procrastinate me? I’d be ambivalent about procrastinating except I just can’t make up my mind.

I have been tossing up for some time the question of “to self-publish or not to self-publish” well I’ve finally made a decision. I think.

No, seriously, I have been leaning towards the self-publishing side of things for some time now and I am pretty much ready to take the leap.

Except of course the whole thing is not very like a leap. It is more like planning for an expedition than jumping off anything.

So what do I need to do before I go for it?

Here is my list so far:
Work out which POD service to use. Christy Pinheiro uses CreateSpace, her partner in crime Nick Russell uses LightningSource. There are of course others as well (Like Lulu).

Revise the layout of the Manuscript so it is suitable for publishing. In terms of editing I am pretty much happy that the MS is ready to go, thanks to the efforts of a couple of others.

Format said manuscript so it looks like a professional book.

Register a business name. Then I can be a “publisher”.

Register a domain name.

Register with a Web hosting company.

Commission or self-design a web site.

Decide on a marketing strategy for myself and the book. I promise I WILL NOT start spamming people to promote the book when I get to that stage.

Pay for a commercial licence for the art I have used for my cover. (I have a non commercial licence which allows me to reuse the image on the web etc).

While on the cover I need to rewrite the blurb (I HATE trying to condense 100,000+ words into a couple of paragraphs).

Hmm, this list seems to get longer all the time, I am sure there is a heap more but I’ll start with this lot.

So what do you think? Have I missed anything glaringly obvious (so far at least). Any suggestions? To be honest this is a bit scary and I would appreciate any comments.

Now a random photo. This timber slab shack is the remains of a pioneer farm in The Australian Alps at Namadgi National Park.

On the Subject of Snakes

Last Weekend we stayed close to home, only venturing up the Yarra Valley to Warburton (again) and a little past there to the Upper Yarra Reservoir.
This photo shows the dam wall and spillway. Due to prolonged drought I believe there has been no water on this spillway for over a decade.Melbourne’s water supply, of which this reservoir forms part, is down to 31 %. Although the Upper Yarra is at about 68% capacity.
As you can see from this photo, of the bridge over the spillway, the bulk of the dam wall is constructed using rock-fill.This surface is fairly unstable and the Melbourne Water Authority has erected signs warning yahoos to keep off.However yahoos and galahs are aptly named and I suspect the aforesaid signs were not doing their job.
Hence (I suspect) these signs.
I really think these signs are a case of; if you can’t get people to be sensible then scare them into complying.

What am I implying?
That there are no snakes living in the rock fill of the walls?

Not a bit of it. In fact knowing more than average about Aussie snakes, I would guarantee there are a good number of snakes taking advantage of the habitat and shelter provided by the rock fill.
There are snakes pretty much everywhere in Oz. Including, sometimes, in the absolute centre of our capital cities.

In fact as I have said before getting bitten by snakes is pretty much a national pastime.
But I also guarantee the danger people face on this rock wall is broken bones and not snakebites. I suspect people would be as likely to come across a snake in their back garden as they would be on this rock wall.
Why?

Simple, as much as people hate and fear snakes, snakes fear us a whole lot more. We are big and dangerous to them and they nearly always try to avoid confrontation. So on ground like this the most you are ever likely to see is a snake’s tail disappearing into a crack as it hightails (sorry I just couldn’t resist that pun).

The interesting thing about snake bites in Oz is that well over 80% occur on young males as they either attempt to catch, or more likely kill snakes with inappropriate gear such as sticks.
So the moral of the story is leave them alone and they will leave you alone.

What I suspect has happened here is that a clever chief ranger is trying to protect people from their own stupidity. It could just backfire, as those same yahoos who might think it fun to climb down these rocks are just as likely to think it fun to try and find a snake to kill.

I think my sympathy is with the snakes in that contest.

By the way I am being a good boy, I did a couple of hours on the manuscript last night.

Madder Than a Cut Snake

Well I’ve officially gone mad.

“Whadda ya mean gone mad? You’ve always been madder than a cut snake!”

Uncle Harry, I hate to say it mate, but as a figment of my imagination you’ve probably proved the case.

I seem to have been doing almost anything to avoid finishing off the corrections to my manuscript suggested by Cheryl some weeks ago.
For a while I was fairly diligent, now I think I am only a few hours away from completing. My problem is I just seem to use any excuse to avoid those last few hours of work.

I don’t count blogging, although it is dangerously addictive. Some of my avoidance tactics have been fairly constructive such as: researching for the sequel; a little writing of the sequel; house work, mowing the lawn etc.

But most of them have been a sheer waste of time, like watching TV including: Aussie Rules Football (I don’t even barrack for a team) or Netball (ditto).

In short I have been procrastinating.

I thought I would share one of my procrastinations.
In a supreme effort to waste time I have designed a cover for my novel.

Mind you I haven’t the foggiest notion of why I think I need to design a cover.

Here are a few of the reasons I don’t need a cover:
- I haven’t got an agent yet, let alone a publisher.
- When I finally get a publisher they are not likely to be at all interested in my design.
- My artistic tendencies are in writing not graphic design.
- I don’t think I am likely to self publish.

But reason be damned, I was doing one anyway.
The creation of this piece has been a supreme effort of procrastination. Initially, a rough idea for the cover popped into my head: I thought it should feature a vivid blue eye because one of my leading characters features an impressive pair of peepers; then the working title is Veiled in Shadows so the obvious thing was a veiled face with a blue eye.

So armed with this nugget I went searching through stock photos.
I eventually found this image and bought a $5 limited licence.
I cropped it a bit and added some text and had a first draft, so to speak.
While this said “veiled” alright it kind of didn’t quite work for me.
So I had to add something but what?

Then quite by chance I happened to walk past a little militaria shop in Melbourne. In the window I saw among other things some Nazi documents.
I bought this one for $45 (as an aside is anyone’s German good enough for a translation? I have a minute amount of German and much of the officialese in this goes right over my head)

So after a fair bit of scanning and learning how to drive a photo editor to (do more than crop), coupled with a lot of hair tearing (my procrastination can be carried to absurd levels) I ended up with this.
To which I have added a spine and a back cover. The blurb probably deserves an apology; I really struggle at distilling 120,000 words and multiple sub-plots to half a page of text and at the same time trying to make it catchy. I hope I haven’t made the work sound trashy, I don’t think it is.

Now I have to go because I have procrastinated long enough.

A Heartfelt Thanks

A quick one tonight. A while ago I posted about a visiting editor from the UK having a look at my manuscript. Then I posted about her having really liked it. In the tail end of the second post there was a sentence about my other half Deb’s colleague hanging onto the MS so she could read it now her editor daughter had finished with it.
Well she read it.
She liked it.
… and she copyedited it for me.

Now the MS has been copyedited before, but we all know that if you go over a work again you will find more errors.
Now I have only had a chance to glance at what she has done, but It looks like Cheryl has gone over the MS with a fine tooth comb not only looking for punctuation etc, but also suggesting grammatical and structural improvements.
All this on her own initiative and entirely voluntarily.

In a lovely letter she has included with my returned manuscript, she absolutely minimises the amount of effort she has put into my work. She describes her hard work as “fun”.
As an ex-English teacher and literature enthusiast she may have found the job fun, but Cheryl, like my Deb, is an overworked senior-executive. Her generosity in taking the time to do this for me cannot be overstated. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you Cheryl.

Now to anyone who reads my blog I must apologise (in advance) if I don’t post quite as frequently in the near future. Because I expect over the next little while, I will be a bit busy going over my MS and making the most of Cheryl’s kindness.

Now to keep you busy, a photoCan anyone guess what this is?
Aussies, I know you’ll probably know, don’t spoil the fun!

Of Editors and Agents

A very Quick post tonight. We have been out having dinner with some dear friends from Queensland and it is past my bed time.

I promised the other day to talk about the editor who has just finished reading my manuscript. I think I will simply post the text of the email I received from her mother (my other half’s colleague) when she had to return to England.

I have omitted her name, as they say in many a TV drama, to protect the innocent.

“.... managed to read Allan’s novel and was really impressed.
Her comments were:

• A clean, well thought out script – ready now to go to a publisher. She was very complimentary of the formatting, layout, with absolutely minimal corrections.
• The opening scene is a good hook and just the sort of thing a publisher would be looking for.
• The concept is good
• The structure works well – she commented on the skill in keeping the narrative ongoing whilst telling the story from different perspectives.
• She thought the characters were a little underdeveloped but could see why, but it wasn’t a weakness as the story itself is important.
• She is confident he could hand it in as is.
• Advises doing some research on which publishers are producing this kind of genre and targeting them
• Says no need to worry about making changes – the nature of any further improvements would be a personal preference and more a subject of the publishing house.
• If not accepted don’t be disheartened because it may be because of the economic climate and current circumstances and that you should resubmit at a later time – but she emphasized to keep trying because it’s good and worthy of publication.
• She also thinks it would make a great film
She suggested I should read it – do you mind if I keep the script for a while? I would really like to after she raved about it.”

So all you agents and publishers out there here is one fellow who is awaiting your call :-)

Sorry if it seems like I am boasting, but I just can’t help it. This feels really promising to me.

Now I am off to bed, talk to you next time.

Wish Me Luck!

I have had an interesting possibility come up regarding my manuscript. In a case of who you know rather than what you know, I have an editor from a UK publishing house reading my manuscript.
Oddly she is the daughter of a colleague of my other half. Does that make sense?

She is home in Oz to see her family and the cheeky approach has paid off.
There are still a lot of if, buts and maybes. Firstly, she has to like the book. Secondly, although she is in publishing, her field is not fiction. So even if she likes it, the most she is able to do is suggest me as a possibility to some of her colleagues. Still this is the closest I have got to getting someone on the inside to read the piece so I am happy.

And of course nervous

Cold, cold, cold again today.
Once I came home from work (among other things I run a breakfast service for homeless people) our eldest was bouncing around saying "Let's go to the snow today. There's bound to be snow on Donna Buang."
So after warming up with a cuppa' we piled into the car and drove about an hour up to Mount Donna Buang.
There was snow, I took a photo of it (of all of it I might add) just to prove it was there.
And just to prove it here it is! See it does get cold in Australia.

The sign in the picture (which I accidentally cropped) says "no tobogganing", I suspect there is not much danger of that rule needing to be enforced at the moment.
It was cold and wet, but apparently not enough for snow. What was there has well and truly melted.

So after waiting in the cold for someone who shall remain nameless,

we piled back into the car and drove back to Warburton at the bottom of the mountain for the much more civilized pursuit of drinking hot coffee in one of our favourite cafes.

This evening, for a change I went out in the cold again. I have been wanting to get some shots of the city at night. Tonight was a first experimental foray. I spent a lot of time driving around looking for places safe enough to stop (traffic, even on Sunday night is quite busy around the city).
I was moderately happy with some of the results, but I think two things will improve my shots:
I had the ISO set too high and most of the shots are over exposed; and a darker sky would give better contrast, tonight there was low cloud hence a lot of reflected light from the buildings below.
Anyway I was happy enough with what I took to try again another night.

Just a couple of photos I took tonight to finish off.

This one is St Patricks Catholic Cathedral, just east of Melbourn CBD.

This is the Bolte Bridge down at the docklands area of Melbourne.

The Journey Continues

When Pat Stone warned me getting published was the hard part she spoke words of wisdom.

With a manuscript I was more or less happy with under my belt, I began the usual trick of querying Agents and the odd publisher. What a painfully slow process it is. Send out the usual letter, synopsis, and sample chapters that their submission guidelines ask for and wait and wait…
Then when finally something arrives…
A rejection, not surprising, not unexpected, yet still surprisingly distressing.
Then you begin again, and again.

When I have talked about my writing in the past I have always said that it was an end in itself. I have always said that if nothing I write ever sees the light of day it will not matter.

That is still true, but also it is not, not quite. I still write mainly for myself, but now somehow, it is not quite enough. Now I want to share my work with others, to have an audience.

Yet the process of trying to get published is very trying. I suppose it is a major character flaw, but I find myself getting very wrapped up the rejections, in trying to craft “a better query”, and then brooding on a reply.

The worst thing about the process is it takes so much energy away from what I would really like to be doing, writing the next novel.

Enough moaning for today.

It has been cold winter weather here for the past few weeks. Not miserable enough to stop us getting out and about though.
I know, I know, days with a maximum of 15° C (59° F) don’t seem very cold to many in the Northern Hemisphere, but we are used to summer temperatures in the 30s to 40s (86 to 104) in fact this past summer we had a days up to 47° (116° F) in February.
Also here in Southern Victoria the wind comes straight in off the Bass Straight and Southern Ocean so it feels much colder than it is.

Anyway last weekend we went for a quick run (about 2 ½ hours drive) down to Wilson’s Promontory (the most southerly point on the Australian mainland) It was wet so we didn’t walk much.

This photo shows the state of some of the walking tracks at the moment.

I did snap a heap of photos (don’t you love digital) but the light was not good so I don’t think many were worth the effort.
Towards evening, the cloud broke up a bit and in the pale watery light, I got a few shots that were almost worthwhile.

Doesn’t that water look cold.
Almost at the end of the day this chap showed up with a couple of mates and let me get close enough for this.

He/she is a Crimson Rosella, one of the many, many parrot species we enjoy in Oz. If being in such a beautiful environment (even with the wind) wasn’t enough, how could anyone grumble too much with such a bright creature on hand.

My Journey

As I mentioned all too briefly in my first post I have ambitions about getting the manuscript for my first novel Veiled in Shadows published.

Wait, stop right there Al!

I should say something about my work. Veiled in Shadows is a thriller/espionage piece set in Europe during World War II against a backdrop of the Holocaust. It explores a number of themes from the point of view of several major characters. Included in the themes are: loyalty and treachery; notions of good and evil and how different frameworks can alter individual's ideas of what is right; the capacity human beings have to endure almost anything; perhaps most important is an exploration of the differing effects years of suffering and inhumanity can have on people.

So what is my problem? Getting published of course!

I finished a draft I was finally quite happy with about eighteen months ago.
I'd done all the usual stuff, inflicting it on friends and family etc.
Next I thought I'd get a professional opinion. I sent it off to a manuscript assessor, I chose Driftwood Manuscripts in South Australia.
I had a couple of months of anxious wait, to be sure friends and family had all been positive, but that comes with the territory.

The response I received from Driftwood was on the whole really positive, with the assessor using terms like "enchanting package" to describe the work. The assessor also provided some really helpful advice on a few sections he/she (Driftwood maintain the anonymity of their assessors) thought were problematic. In particular a section of the plot relied too much on coincidence. They also suggested I get a copy edit to improve saleability. I would like to stress here that this was not a sales pitch from Driftwood, they neither offered a service nor recommended any service provider.

I went with Pat Stone from Canberra as a copy editor. I was very impressed with her fast turn around and very reasonable rates. Also she did my ego no end of good with more positive comments about the work. Pat also warned me that what I had done so far was the easy bit. She warned that getting published would be much harder than writing a book of any length.

How right Pat was.

Enough about my book for now.

Just for something completely different a couple of photo's I took last autumn at Merimbula.
These fellows are soldier crabs. They feed along tidal flats at low tide in numbers of hundreds or thousands.

They are cute little guys, the little ones about an inch across. The biggest I have seen are maybe three inches across.
They do this amazing little dance to see which is the biggest and toughest.
Mostly they just seem to measure each others size; but if they are about equal, there is often a bit of pushing and shoving to see who is boss

And just to close a sunset, also at Merimbula.

My First Post

Well here I go, embarking on a brand new blog.

In this blog I am planning to make my main focus my efforts at getting the manuscript of my first novel “Veiled in Shadows” published.

Along the way I will probably also talk about other stuff that interests me.

I might talk about stuff including, in no particular order (except the first, which should come first):

My Family

History (in general, but in particular military history with a focus on WWII)

Bush Walking (I think those from much of the rest of the world call this pursuit Hiking)

Photography (I take a lot of photos, some of which come out, but most are very bad)

Wildlife (a lot of my photos are of this)

Here is an example;

This little fellow is a Gang Gang cockatoo that I photographed in southern NSW.

Archaeology (my other half complained that I came back from Europe with 100s of photos of what she disparagingly calls rocks and hardly any of people).

Like this one of Mile Castle 37 on Hadrian’s wall

Yes they might be rocks. But I think they are nice ones!

Travel (when I can afford it) see above

Reading (I read a lot, almost anything but mostly history, biology or a wide range of fiction).

My latest read is:

I just Wish Wish Wish I had more time to read

So that is what I aim to do with my blog.

But then again, knowing me, I am just as likely to ramble about anything that comes to mind.