Errors - Caught in Time

When General Dwight David Eisenhower wrote Crusade in Europe, his memoir about his time as Commander in Chief in WWII, he wanted it to be perfect.  Typing errors annoyed him in his own reading so he wanted to make sure there were none in his own book.  He gave the proofs of the book to his friends and asked them to read the book for mistakes.  They did so and proclaimed it a wonderful book in every way.

The book was published.  There was a typographical error on the first page.

It isn't easy to proof read. If the book is interesting, our minds don't notice errors. A fast reader tends to skip over articles like "a", "an", and "the".

I've been proof reading this book one way or another for years through many edits.  When I put it into the paper back, I thought I had caught everything.  I was wrong.  Today I found eight errors.  Most of them were minor, a missing "a" here, a paragraph indentation there.  I corrected them all.

But one was pretty noticeable and funny, too.  My heroine has "ears running down here cheek".  I put the "t" in.

I can make the corrections but I must be very, very careful to not change the top or bottom of a page because it could throw off the entire book.

It will all be finished tomorrow.  My guess is that the book can be ordered next week.  My copies will be sent ahead to Gary so I can take them with me.  And that, I hope, will be that!

***************
For some reason, our short story blog has taken off. For months, the most "hits" we had hovered around a hundred.  Now we have caught on.  Almost 600 readers a week are checking us out.  That is very gratifying.

Check out http://blackcoffeefiction.blogpost.com  This week's story is a sample of microfiction.  Wade wrote the story.  I have tried my hand on it, but I need more than 350 words to tell a story.

Books

We had some snow this morning, not a lot and I could have left it alone since it will probably melt tomorrow, but I was restless.  Waiting to see how things work out in so many arenas was getting on my nerves. I want some things settled before I leave.

So I grabbed a shovel and cleared the sidewalks and driveway.  I was just finishing when the mail carrier showed up and bless her heart, she had a box for me.  It was the proof copy of the novel.

I brought it inside and immediately admired it.

It's an attractive cover, but how about the interior.  First I looked at the margins.  I managed to get them right on. How about the pages?  Again, perfect.   Everything is structurally right.  Now I have to read the thing for mistakes, typos and logic.  So far, so good.  I've gone over the first three chapters.  I found one "a" was missing in a sentence and a little centering error on a paragraph.  That's not bad and if the rest of the book is like that, I won't have to make any corrections and order another proof. I'll finish the proofing tomorrow.  I'm hoping I can go ahead and place it in Amazon.com and have some copies sent to me in Dixon.  The time frame seems about right.

I first began the book in the 1980's. I typed the first two drafts on a typewriter.  The third was on a Kaypro computer, storing it on those big disks.  The fourth was on the smaller floppy disk.  The fifth and final edits were on this computer.

After all these re-writes, I confess I am thoroughly sick of this book.

I went down to the library to pick up a book and show off this one.  There I found Black Coffee Fiction sitting on a book shelf.

Readers can now check the book out.  We are listed in the library district's catalog.  Slowly, we are gaining our readership.

So I sit and re-read Yesterday's Secrets, Tomorrow's Promises one more time.  Then it's on to other things.

Waiting

These are days of waiting.

The proof copy of the novel is on the way.  It could arrive any time now.  Until it arrives, I can do nothing about publication.  I wait at the front window each day, waiting for the postal carrier.  Maybe tomorrow.  All my writing has come to a stop.

I wanted to begin packing the car today for the trip, but with frigid temperatures I couldn't do that.  It will wait for a warmer day.  I can gather the camping gear together until then.

I have to look presentable when I tell stories.  Today I tried on my costumes and washed the ones that needed it.  I went to Hair Graphics to get a haircut from Melissa.  She is a wonder at her craft.  She even trims my eyebrows!

I worked on my itinerary.
On January 29:

            1:30 p.m Performance

            Parkway Cove Assisted Living

            805 Bert Johnston Avenue

           Covington TN 38019

           901 313-8618

After the performance, drive to Grenada 2-1/2 hours

            Motel 6 Grenada, MS (if the weather is cold)

            I-55 and Exit 206 Hwy 8W

           234 Frontage Road

           Grenada, MS 38901

           662-226-1111

Motel 6's are inexpensive.  No frills but since I only need a place to sleep, that's all I need. Motel 6's have the advantage of good internet service. 

That night I could also drive to Goodman, Mississippi - 3 hours   (If the weather is warm enough)

         Holmes State Park

         5369 State Park Road

         Durant, MS 39063

         662-653-6888     (Hunting season so there will be dogs in the park.)  

This time of year, I have to have alternate plans depending on the weather. I don't mind rain, but these old bones now ache when the weather is too cold.  For each performance, each stop, there will be a map.  

And so the itinerary goes, all the way to the Gulf and back. Of course, there are always adaptations as a trip progresses.  When I traveled through the West for over a month, I only stayed where I expected to stay three nights.  

I wait, too for news from Gary.  His aunt has become unresponsive and will not live long.  

So he waits, as do I.   

Mississippi camping

Today I turned my attention from writing to storytelling.  I'm leaving for the Mississippi tour in nine days so I have to get ready.

I pulled out my camping gear from under the desk.  Yes, I do plan on camping once I get into Mississippi.  I checked Accuweather to see what I can expect once I get into Mississippi.  It will be warm enough during the day, but cool at night.  As long as the temperatures are above freezing, I should be OK.  I'll have a warm sleeping bag and a second bag to throw over that.  I have fleece sleepwear, woolen socks and a knit hat.  No slinky negligees for me!  I'll fill my hot water bottle and heat up the sleeping bag before I climb into it.

I'll make some nice herbal tea before I go to sleep to get my body temperature warm and fill a thermos with hot water before I go to bed to sip on in the middle of the night.

Using these same procedures, I once camped comfortably in my tent in the Rocky Mountains.  The water bottles froze solids but I stayed toasty warm.

In the morning, I'll turn on my little camp stove and boil water in my kettle for oatmeal and cappuccino before I take down my tent and move to the next location.

There's a little lantern and a flashlight, a pan, a spoon, and Chinese pot scraper. I don't really need much beyond that.  I have breakfast at the campsite, soup or salad at a fast food restaurant, and something from a deli for supper.  Anything I cook must be dried in a packet.  I don't like to have any food around my tent to avoid critters. Here in Wisconsin it would be bears or raccoon but in Mississippi I have to worry about alligators. All my cooking gear fits into a plastic orange crate.  

The tent and a canvas chair are already in the car.  I still have to pull the inflatable mattress from under the bed.  The chair and the inflatable mattress are my two concessions to age.

Tomorrow, I'll finish working on the itinerary, working out the miles between performances and campgrounds.  

The Paperback Process Goes On

This morning I found out that the Create Space reviewing process found my work good and we proceeded to the next stage.  I ordered the proof of Yesterday's Secrets, Tomorrow's Promises, which should reach me by Friday or Saturday.

When I receive it, I have to go through the book three times:
-- I have to check the format, page numbers and the spacing.
-- I will check the Chapter Headings to make sure they are consistent
-- I will look for typos or grammatical errors while being fully aware that you never catch them all.  

Next I'll have to arrange for someone else to read it to get a second opinion, though in fact, the book has already been read as an e-book.  My friends told me problems there which I then corrected.

I have to get everything in the proof checked over as soon as possible so that I can order copies to take with me on the tour. It will take another five or six days for them to be shipped.  Since I will be leaving on the tour, I will have the book sent to Gary down in Illinois where I will be staying for two or three days at the beginning of the tour.

So it is a matter of timing on this.  If the books fail to arrive, I won't be able to sell them at any of the libraries I visit down South.

Even if I don't have the Yesterday's Secrets, Tomorrow's Promises, I will have copies of Black Coffee Fiction with me.

Both books will be with me at a book signing on February 16 and again the first Saturday in March during a workshop for Fox Valley Technical College.

My life is like a jigsaw puzzle.  Much planning is required to make all the parts fit together.  

Adapting

In the end, I got my novel prepared for self-publication by fudging.

The inside of each page is called the gutter, the extra space needed to adapt for the binding.  I kept trying to get my program to make that very important adjustment, but got nowhere. I am certainly NOT computerate literate.  I finally started to wonder why I needed a program when it was just a matter of adapting the page. I could do that manually.  That's what I did.

The pages started to make sense until I tried to do headers and footers.  Those spaces threw off every page. OK, maybe I could work around those, too.

First I looked at the headers.  That would be where I could put the name of the book in small gray print, repeated over and over, page after page.  It makes the book look more elegant but my book is a trashy romance, not a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize.  I decided to dispense with the headers. The pages started to look better.

Next I looked at the footers. This would be where I would put the page numbers.  That would be essential, but every time I tried to add them, the numbers showed up everywhere and that meant on the title, acknowledgement and dedication pages, where you don't want them.

After working on the problem for almost two hours, I re-read the handout page from Karen McQuestion, the mystery author who originally taught the Fox Valley Technical College course on self-publishing I took a couple of years ago.  She had the same problem and she solved it by manually typing the numbers on each and every page. That's what I did. It took almost hour to do that, since I had to adjust the document as I went.  But finally, it was done.

I entered the document on the Create Page web page, added the cover I designed two days ago, and worked out how much the book should sell for ($11.99) and what the royalties would be.  At about 4:15 I hit the button to complete the project.

The next step is to wait for approval from Create Page.  When I get that, I will order a proof copy which should arrive in a week.  If it looks good to me, I'll order twenty copies of the book and add it to my account at Amazon.com.  

If everything goes smoothly, I'll have a romance novel book signing with two other authors on February 16 when I get back from Mississippi.  I'll also teach two workshops for Fox Valley Technical College on writing a short story blog and turning stories into self-published books.

After that I'll start work on putting my short stories about love into yet another collection.

AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!

I've been working on my romance novel for several days now.  I got the cover done, that was the easy part, but getting the interior, or word part, done, that is another matter.

I have the words, all seventeen chapters.  I quickly managed to figure out how to put the 8-1/2 X 11 inch pages into 6 X 9 inch pages. That took only an hour.  In the e-book version that was easy because there are no "gutters".   The gutter is the extra space on the interior of the pages that is taken up by binding.  Open a book and you will see what I mean. E-books don't need gutters. After two hours, I got that done, or so I hope.  I won't know for sure until I see the proof copy.

What I still must do is pagination, or numbering of the pages.  This is not important in an e-book because there a reader can enlarge or change the fonts for easy reading.  The number of pages change accordingly. When the reader turns off the Kindle or Nook, the spot is marked and easily returned to. However, readers of paperbacks want those numbered pages as a reference in case they lose their bookmarks.

The header is the little line on the top of the page that gives the title on the left side and the chapter title on the right.  Again, headers are useful for the reader when trying to find his or her place.

I worked on headers and pagination for two hours and still have not worked out how to do it.  It may be that my Open Office system isn't up to the job.

The problem is time.  I need to have this book ready to go by tomorrow so that I get my proof back before I leave for Mississippi.  If I can approve the proof before I leave, I should have my books ready for a book signing on February 16.  No proof, no signing and money lost.

Every time the program doesn't work for me, people down the street can hear me scream at the computer with a huge AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!

Such are the joys of being a novelist.