Poblems, problems

Deeply immersed in updates to a Createspace paperback about to go to KDP;  been working on it for days now.  I had decided earlier this year that there were one or two updates needed, and I decided to go ahead and do them while I made the change from one site to the other. Everything is good to go except for the cover.

I changed the design, front, back and spine. I downloaded the template and fitted everything exactly. Six time now KDP have come back to me with faults that need to be rectified. The final fault is the template size which seems to change during transfer - not by a huge amount - something like 0.097 and we are talking either mm or cm. Consequently I have not got much else accomplished this week!

KDP Help Contact Us have yet to come back to me. Within 24 hours, they said; well, they have some hours to go yet, but it seems like a long wait for answers to me. Nor does it help that BT keeps dropping the internet in our locality for short periods of time.

On the plus side of daily life, the farmer's fields are greening up nicely. Hardly any bare brown earth to be seen.

Family trees

Way behind because  of Createspace and my computer. All I can say is that the people who complain about the ease of self-publishing cannot have tried to publish a paperback! Writing the book was the easy part. Editing took time and effort, the cover was fun to do, but getting it all into Createspace is driving me nuts and doing my computer no good at all. (Either that or it still doesn't like Windows 10). Now that I'm almost at the end of the process, I think the book is priced way too high, but either I go with Amazon's  recommendation or I get no royalties. Some choice!

The other problem is that Createspace wants to publish the book as a Kindle e-book for me. There's no way to tell the system that it is already out in e-book Kindle format. Maybe I'll just have to publish and then delete my "original " Kindle - what a waste of effort!

On another front entirely, dh and I have become interested in family trees, both his and mine. I've discovered that a fair few of my maternal grandfather's forebears come from Cotherstone, which I believe is a few yards on the Yorkshire side of the river Tees, but I must check that. I wish the UK Census gave the surname of females who marry, as tracking them back in almost impossible. Birth dates seem flexible, but then  back in 1800 there would be many families who existed without a calendar or a diary to keep track of events and dates. I can well believe that by the time a man had reached 83 he could not recall if he was born in 1799, 1800, 1801 or 1802. (All dates are given!)

It is a fascinating process to track the lines back, though it isn't easy. It seems many didn't bother to report to the authorities when someone died, though most births are recorded. Even after 1837 when registration became law, there seem to have been those who died "unreported."

Proof copy

Proof copy arrived this morning and it looks good!

So glad I chose larger font and 5 x 7 3/4 size. H'mm. If I say it is 7.75 inches, maybe that makes it clear? It is the size most paperbacks are published at in the UK and feels so much nicer in the hand than the larger size. I followed Createspace recommendation of 6x9 for my previous book, since they said it was the most popular size. Maybe it is in the US, but I didn't like it much. Too tall, too thin.

Amazingly this copy was posted from South Carolina on the 11th August, so it has taken fifteen days to reach me. It would seem from the post marks to have landed in France  - La poste US Reims. No doubt that accounts for the delay. So now all I have to do is read through and see if I can spot any errors. Found one on page 52 - I'd omitted the word "he" from a sentence. I hope that will be the only one!

Createspace quibbles

As a warning to anyone else who sets out to create a paperback with Createspace, be warned: if you get in a muddle with trim sizes (or whatever other problem) and decide to cut your losses, delete it all and start again, this is where the system clocks your ISBN and won't let you re-use it - not even for the same story.  So don't delete - persevere, otherwise you will lose your ISBN.

Despite my 5 complaints and 5 responses from Amazon staff all assuring me I would now be able to re-use my ISBN, I could not; it still came up as Invalid in red  text. Exasperated, I remembered they could only be bought from Nielsen in batches of ten, so I had a few still on file. I tested a different ISBN - with the trim sizes I wanted this time - and it worked. I have made progress at the cost of losing my original ISBN and considering they probably cost around £10 a time, that's quite a loss.

I suppose I can re-use the initial ISBN with another system such as Lulu, or Smashwords or whatever, It will be interesting to see if I can ever re-use it for another story on Amazon. All I can say is that Createspace has a definite slant on persuading people to use their own (free) Createspace ISBNs.

Another thing - the fifth and final response from Amazon told me I should be using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer 11. Evidently Createspace was designed to be used with Firefox because of "its encryption and security coding"- but why is that not made clear right at the point of starting out? There were other hints and tips such a reloading the page from the server, clearing out the cache on my pc so that it would work more efficiently, but if these things failed, then I should "contact my service engineer for a system revision." In other words - it was my fault.

I am using  Mozilla Firefox for Createspace now and by using a new ISBN I have got the book to the proofing stage without any hitches this time. Hopefully when the proof copy arrives, it will be OK. We shall see!

Third time lucky

Finally, on the third attempt, Createspace has accepted my covers. Now all I have to do is proof and publish. Was it all worth it? That's doubtful, since as far as I can tell I've sold very few paperback copies of Abduction, and I doubt the sales will suddenly streak up the charts now. It was certainly an interesting exercise getting to know Createspace, and it was a thrill to hold my paperback copy - the sort of thrill I didn't get with the Kindle books I've published. The cover is slightly different; I decided to do away with the "archaic" font on the cover and went for a plain, bolder style and colour in what some will call a sickly greenish-yellow. I may follow suit with the Kindle cover.

I'm also toying with experimenting with a bought cover and using it on Dark Whisky Road, but it is hard to find anything that will suit a Victorian story. Maybe the dark winter days will seduce me into trying to do one of my own - who knows?

Createspace ~ Unexpected trouble

I have just got myself into a lot of trouble. Deciding I wanted to carry out two corrections to the Createspace copy of Abduction as well as the Kindle copy, I went ahead and made the changes to the interior file. Then a message pops up telling me I have to reload the cover art as well. Duh. I hadn't expected that, and a terrific hunt ensued among the many versions of the cover to locate the correct cover pic. Finally found it, uploaded it and breathed a sigh of relief. Then this morning I find a post that had gone into my spam box telling me that I had failed to upload the back cover, so now my book would be available with a plain white back cover.  Just what I didn't want!

I'm beginning to think that though doing corrections on the Kindle version was easy-peasy, I wish I hadn't bothered with the Createspace paperback copy. The two correction were minor - a surplus "and" and a surplus "her" which would be a hangover from when I changed the structure of a sentence, and if anyone noticed them, the sense would have been clear. Or perhaps Amazon should put a warning note on the website so that authors are prepared to reload the entire cover as well as making changes to the interior text. Now you must excuse me while on go on a further hunt to find out exactly how I get the entire cover uploaded.

Publication Day

Any minute now, Abduction of the Scots Queen is going to be available in paperback at Amazon. It is already available in Kindle format. That means I am off the hook, free, able to ignore the PC for a while if I wish. Freedom, in other words. Yipppeeee!

Not that I would have missed the experience. Having Matho's story out there for everyone to read is a wonderful feeling after I've worked on it for so long. Some might say it's a coming of age story - how a young man goes off to try and earn fortune in the last few years of King Henry VIII's reign. Not that he and Henry ever meet. Henry never figures in the pages except as the man who bellows that he wants the Scots Queen in England so she can marry his son Edward. He has cogent reasons for that, but the story centres on Matho's experiences as he travels north across the border and runs smack bang into Lady Margaret Douglas. Characters include her father, Archibald Douglas, Marie de Guise, the Dowager Queen of Scots and Mathew Stewart, Lord Lennox.

Others might say it's a historical suspense story - will he or won't he succeed at the task he has set? Will he survive trying?

I don't think anyone will claim it is solely a romance, though there are two romance threads running through the story. For good or evil, Abduction is finally done!

Strictly, Lewis, Downton and Createspace

Soon I should be free of the Createspace thing that has dominated my life for the past fortnight. I have just submitted the third, or it might be the fourth attempt at a clean ms. Fingers crossed - I think this is almost it!
It will be a relief to get back to more normal pursuits for a while. Once Amazon has it up for sale I'll have to start the dreaded Promo work, but until then I can relax for a bit and enjoy other things. Such as Strictly Come Dancing, which was on last night. I think it is week five and I'm finding it is not so interesting as it used to be. There may be several reasons for this - one might be that I've had too much of a good thing and am simply bored. It might be that I do not recognise many of the so-called celebrities - that so overworked word these days. I don't want to watch girls - it is usually girls - who look as if they've just stepped out of ballet class. (Pixie Lot, anyone? Who is she?) I want to watch people like Steve Backshall who has a lot to learn and may be good, may be terrific, or maybe will have a disastrous night. The constant clapping, booing and hissing is turning Strictly into a juvenile arena and Tess has to take a lot of the blame for this. She is far too partisan these days - she's on the side of the contestants and appears to dislike the judges and their comments. Craig is the only one who gives an honest assessment. Darcey wants to be fair and encouraging, Bruno is usually fair
unless there is a very pretty girl or a handsome young man who takes his fancy and then he scores them high. Len usually sticks with his trademark seven unless he is in a grumpy mood, which he often is these days.

Lewis seemed a bit odd on Friday, though dh assures me it was me and not the programme. Watch it again, he advises, and you'll catch on. I prefer it in its two hour slots when I could settle down and really concentrate. Having one hour episodes a week apart means I forget all the clues in the previous segment, and then can't join in the detection. Thank goodness there's Downton to watch tonight, and double thank goodness it has found it way again after the first two episodes were fairly lacklustre. I think there will be a glass or two of wine to be had in chez Black this evening. Cheers!

Pictures taken on a walk on Friday. Good weather actually, though I photographed the worrying moments when we thought we were going to have to run for it!

Cobwebs and proof copies

My proof copy of Abduction of the Scots Queen arrived on schedule yesterday. I had such reluctance to open it in case I was going to be disappointed, but when dh opened the parcel, he was complimentary. I looked, and was pleasantly surprised. The glossy cover looks good. The text inside could maybe be a tad darker, but the size is OK.

I didn't start reading it until today. In the first 33 pages there are 7 corrections to make. I thought it was going to be perfect! What worries me now is how many more there will be as I read on - and will it be easy to do them? At least three of the faults are where the font has slipped from Garamond to Times New Roman and that might be difficult to change back.

So it is head down, post-its and orange marker pens to hand. I'm using a ruler to keep my attention on the line in question instead of flicking about. It's all work, work work, this writing game. We wouldn't do it if we didn't love it!

I've been using a pedometer (when I remember) as I walk the dog and keeping a record of the number of steps taken in a day. Soon I'm going to add them all up and frighten myself silly. Already today Tim and I have managed 6,500 steps and it is only midday. He'll want to go out again before nightfall. I feel so much fitter than I did before he came into my life. Another plus is feeling in tune with nature and seeing things I wouldn't have otherwise seen - such as the sun shining through a cobweb. A gorse bush down on the riverside was a network of cobwebs like this one, dotted with dew and shining like silver. Another day, a different time, no sun, and I couldn't see a single one.

Createspace covers

Trying to  make a cover for my book in Createspace had me tearing my hair for a day or two because I got absolutely nowhere. I had ignored Cover Creator because I'd read somewhere on the internet that CC was crap and produced lousy covers.So there I was trying to load a PDF file and believe me I'm no computer geek. Nothing worked. I decided it would have to be Cover Creator or nothing, and after all this work I wasn't prepared to give up.

I turned to the Cover Creator Community files, and learned that there were many, many cover designs to choose from, and that everything would be formatted for me.
 I chose my design and hopefully uploaded the front cover. It proved remarkably easy, but the title ran off the very edge of the cover by one letter and guess what? I couldn't change it because the file was saved and locked.

Stalemate again. I contemplated going back to the beginning with my original photograph, and actually did half an hour's work on it before deciding it wasn't working as I wanted. The original cover was so much brighter and  well, just better.

Reading the instruction manual for Photoshop persuaded me I could unlock the file so I looked at it again, and had a bright idea. Carefully matching the background cover colour, I painted out the title and reloaded it at a slightly tighter level. I am pleased to report that it works. I loaded the front cover then the back cover and Cover Creator loaded the spine for me. It all looks fine to me. So now we're
on the last lap - check, check and double check before I click the final button. Moral of the story is - don't believe all you read on the internet - and don't give up!

Struggles with Createspace

They say Createspace is easy - well, I beg to differ.
The interior (ie the words of the story) was not a problem. All it takes is patience, an eagle eye and knowledge of the system. It will go easier next time, now I know what is required.

But the covers - mon Dieu! I don't even understand the instructions! And Amazon instructions are always somewhat odd.

I've found and downloaded the cover template. I have a front cover, a back cover and a spine waiting in Photoshop. How to transfer them to the Createspace template is the problem. I struggled all day yesterday and have nothing to show for it. There must be a set of clear, simple instructions somewhere, but I haven't found them. All this talk of layers, opacity, bleed and trim lines - not to mention 300 dpi and 40MB is too much....!

So I took a day off today, gave Tim a long walk and then went into town and had my hair done. Flicking through a copy of Hello, I saw  photo of Anna Wintour and  golly, she and I have the same hairstyle. She's had hers for years and mine is just reaching the stage of all one layer, but even so, its enough to make me grin.

Not so the thought of going back to Createspace tomorrow. A grimace is more the thing. Perhaps I'll hit lucky and muddle through. Wish me luck!

Editing for Createspace

Still plodding on with editing Matho for Createspace. If I write dialogue with a French accent, I wanted  the character Lennox drop his aitches and I represented this as follows: 'there is nothing 'e will do for you.' Sometime Createspace formatted it perfectly and sometimes it ignored the apostrophe and just printed the letter e. There's probably a reason, but I haven't figured it out. After three tries I rewrote the phrase and did not use a dropped aitch!

Otherwise it seems to be going well. I've removed a lot of unnecessary commas and corrected the occasional missing letter or word, but on the whole things are proceeding well. The trouble with editing is it seems to go on for ever and a day! The book is running out at 104,000 word count and I have the last 60 pages still to do. I've been at it all week, and find I can only do it in relatively short snatches otherwise I start "reading" instead of "checking." Maybe I'll think about paying someone to do it next time. It is not a job I would like to do day in and day out.

The other thing is the temptation to keep on tinkering and phrasing things differently - I hope, in a better and more pleasing way. Once I get this portion of the work done, I will have to think about covers, and for Createspace I need not only a front cover, but a spine and back cover too. Another learning curve to master, and my deadline approaches with a steady beat. I don't think I need a list of chapters formatted for searching, as you do with Kindle, because in a print book that's not possible. I am thinking about including a simple map of the main places. It's OK for me since I live in the area and know where Stirling and Dumbarton, Carlisle and Corbridge are, but  I can't expect everyone else to know.

Final edits and Createspace

I'm up to Chapter Thirty in my "final edit" of Capture a Queen. What I've discovered on this go through is that I'm getting really good at combining two sentences into one, and doing it more elegantly than I used to. Practice does improve one's technique, if not make it quite perfect yet! I've also found that around chapter 27 I've screwed up the time line. Things happen out of sequence, so that will need a major re-shuffle. I'm going to work it out on a paper copy and then transfer the finished result to the computer. Otherwise I'd always be afraid I'd deleted something instead of transferring it.

I've put final edit in quotation marks because of course this is a major operation. First of all it's on
the computer, and I have several runs at each chapter, tweaking and pruning as I go. When I'm finally happy with it, I print it out. The pages go into a file, and I'm not going to read them until I've got to the end. Then I'll sit down and read it as I would a Rebus or any other novel. Things are bound to leap out at me, even at that stage. I shall attempt to read it aloud but have to admit to feeling silly unless I'm sure I'm alone in the house. Tim doesn't mind. I think he even likes it. He goes to sleep, anyway!

Smoothing out the time sequence among three major characters is going to be difficult, but it has to be done, otherwise it will irritate the reader. I'm thinking about Createspace this time, to give me a paperback as well as an e-book, so I'm reading up on how to do it in between bursts of editing. I suppose I have nothing to lose except my time and effort, and who knows? It might pay dividends. It seems to be the way forward at the moment, and when changes in publishing are speeding up I'd better not miss the chance.

Domestica and writing

Drowning in domestic things with no time for blogging for the last few days.  Getting ready to go to France, and that is where my next blog will come from just as soon as I can get myself set up electronically. We've also been very social this week. Everyone seems to want to make the most of the warm evenings with the happy clink of wine glasses and conversation. Last night we enjoyed an enclosed log burner in a neighbour's garden. It provided a lovely glow, kept us warm and also kept the nasty little flies away. I recommend one for any garden.

Almost done with the washing and ironing. Now the problem is what to take and what to leave behind. Then of course there's the tennis from Roland Garros, and I'm watching every Rafa match because, as I say to my long suffering dh, you never know when it might suddenly be his last match. Not that I'm ill-wishing him - I want him to go on for years or as long as he wants to. There's Djokovich to keep an eye on, and Fed to watch when we get the chance. It all takes up a lot of time, and then there's Tim to walk. The thing that is suffering is my writing, but that will soon be rectified. The one I suppose I should watch is Murray, but he is so graceless. I know his tennis is good, but I  always want to shout at Andy - Stand up straight, get your head up, move like an athlete....why he shambles around I can't imagine. There's nothing wrong with his physique or his looks, and yet he refuses to present himself to best advantage.

Viking Magic is out and doing well on Amazon Kindle, so I'm concentrating on  Capture a Queen. That's the  one that has been going on in the background of my life for so long now that you would think there would be nothing to alter. But I'm amazed to find I'm still editing. Simplifying text, making it flow more elegantly, tightening the drama where possible, changing a few -ing endings where I spot them. Also, cutting where I think it needs it. I'm hoping to have this finished and published on Kindle this year, hopefully in the autumn when people start reading on cold winter nights.

I'm also wondering about Createspace. It would be nice to have a book in my hands again and Capture a Queen is aimed at Historical fiction rather than historical romance. If anyone has comments on Createspace, do let me know.