I'll Be Seeing You Now Available

One backlist down and more to come.

My first experience self publishing my backlist works with Amazon Kindle was, aptly put…an experience. The Kindle text conversion process has a tendency to do weird things to your original formatting, how much or how little seems to depend upon what type of file you upload.

I first uploaded my original Microsoft Word.doc. On the sample book preview I received back from them, I found that a lot of my paragraph indents were missing, one line ran into the next making conversations, especially with short sentences difficult for the reader to follow. Along with several other problems. In chapter IV, there were a couple of paragraphs that showed up with a totally different font. What? How did that happen? While I was aware that converting to different ebook systems can cause formatting problems, there were too many to just let go.

So back to the drawing board. I reformatted my book as a html document and went back through, comparing it to the book preview I’d received from Kindle, correcting all the indent and spacing problems I could find. The paragraphs with the different font change, there was nothing I could do. My document was all in Times New Roman font. Unfortunately, once you send a book to publish, it is out of your control in Never, Never Land until the process is complete and the book goes live.

Once it went live, hoping no copies were purchased with all the formatting errors, I immediately uploaded the revised html version, keeping my fingers crossed that this would correct the problems, sending it back into Never, Never Land, waiting until the Publish process was complete.

About 36 hours later, I’ll Be Seeing You again went live. I received a preview copy. Yea! All the paragraph indents were there, a few other minor problems were corrected. It looked much better…except… On this version, all the spacing between the chapter headings were no longer there. All the text seemed to run together. And the different font on the two paragraphs in Chapter IV was still there.

So do I let it go this time hoping the readers won’t have a problem with the less than obvious chapter changes? A fairly easy issue to correct. If I were to center the chapter heading and make it bold, it would be easier for the reader to recognize the new chapter.

If there is a problem with my work, put out there for readers to purchase, if there is anything I can do to make it a better reading experience, I can’t just let it go.

While I’ll Be Seeing You is now available to purchase in the last corrected version, it is now back to Never, Never Land for the next 24 to 48 hours for the hopefully improved version with the changed chapter headings.

There is a real learning curve here. Learning what works. What doesn’t. What blips and bloopers you can do nothing about, such as the weird font change. I’ve learned a lot from my first attempt at Kindle publishing. Lessons learned for formatting the next book. Hopefully that one will be to my satisfaction on the first upload.

So, for you ebook readers out there. Please be kind. Understand that while you might find some formatting errors in the books you purchase, most of them are caused by converting the author’s work from one system to the next. It is not from the authors’ lack of trying to give you the best quality work possible. Some things are simply out of their control.

I've Been Away Too Long!

Life has a way of making the unimaginable happen. Enter Rheumatoid Arthritis. Nasty fellow Arthur! Guess he figured that it would be poetic injustice to first attack the hands and wrists of a writer. Needless to say, the past couple of years I was forced to put my writing on the back burner while I struggled to get Arthur under control and do everything in my power to keep my day job…as a secretary no less. Arthur might have won that particular battle, but not the war.

It had always been my dream to be able to retire one day and write full time. Forcing me into early retirement, Arthur virtually handed me my dream on a somewhat tarnished silver platter. I just hadn’t expected it to happen this way or this soon.

So where do I go from here? Give up and settle in to “Oh Woe is me?” or Follow the dream to the best of my newly limited ability. I’ll take the dream thank you!!!! I’ve found that without being forced to push myself forty hours a week with a full time job, Arthur has become somewhat manageable. I can still type. Not fast. Not as accurately. But for now, I can type, and I now have 24/7 to write at my new pace. I can take a break whenever needed without an employer to let down. Now, the only person I have to answer to is myself, and my muse Cybill who has returned with a vengeance, along with my sense of humor. When Arthur gets out of line, I’ll simply sic Cybill on him and let them battle it out.

The plan:

Get some new work finished! I’m happy to say, I’ve been working on that one and hope to have Yours To Command finished in the next couple of weeks. Next will come Empath, the first novella in a four book paranormal series. This one is more than half way there with the other three roughly plotted.

I have the rights back to my novella, I’ll Be Seeing You. I’m working on getting that reformatted and ready to go up on Amazon Kindle and Smashwords (New cover by yours truly, on my new Blog Website). Being out of the loop for so long, Indie publishing is a totally new venue for me but I’m slowly trying to figure out how it all works. I also have the rights back for the eight stories in my Tempting Fate Holiday Fantasies collection. The goal is to get those up as Kindle and Smashword ebooks as well. From what I’ve seen, this seems to be an excellent venue for backlist work and for many authors, new books as well. Which makes this a good possibility for Yours To Command, Empath and the other three novellas in the series as well.

First and foremost, I have to be realistic. Being forced into early retirement, my finances are about as tight as they can get. If I can get enough work up on Kindle and Smashwords to generate a bit of supplemental income, I can then focus entirely on new work. But that’s getting ahead of myself. After many good years of writing and epublishing, then so much time out of the loop, so much has changed that I feel like I’m starting all over again, one step at a time.

That’s pretty much where I am at this point. The important thing is that I’M BACK. I have been blessed with so many loyal readers and author friends who have hung in there with me through the rough patch, who have been so supportive that no matter how many times I say “Thank You” the words don’t begin to express how much I appreciate each and every one of you. If that isn’t incentive to resurrect the dream and make it work, I don’t know what is. I’ll do my best not to let you down.

So now we begin… again. I’ll keep you updated…one step at a time.