amazon

Formatting for Kindle using Word – part two

 

Okay, so you’ve got everything into a single file and you’re now ready to put it into a format that will be acceptable to Amazon for upload into their Kindle publishing platform. This is not a difficult process, but one that must be done correctly, according to Amazon’s rules. So long as you take each step in turn, you shouldn’t have a problem. It might seem complicated at first, but once you’ve done it a few times, it will be easy. So let’s get started shall we?

The first step is to change the paragraph layout. First, do a global highlight by clicking ctrl + A to highlight the entire document. This will make sure that the changes you’re about to make will be made to the entire file.  To do this, you will be making use of the Paragraph Layout box. In my version of Word, it is located along the top of the page, but yours could be different and you might have to look around to find it. It will be called, Paragraph.

Click on that and another box will open.

Enter the details into the various boxes as in my example above, then click OK. Your file will now have equal margins down either side, with the first line of each paragraph indented, and the lines spaced nicely apart from each other.

The next part only applies to those people who have put a blank line in between two paragraphs, to signify a change of character or scene etc.  If you never do this, skip to the next bit. If, like me, you like the breathing space offered by such a line space, read on.

You will find that your original blank lines have now disappeared, thanks to the global justification you just did, so you will need to refer to your original file when placing the spaces back in again. What you will be doing is putting in a slightly bigger space between two paragraphs to represent the blank line you originally put in. You have two options:

Put the extra space below the paragraph before the space, or above the one after. The choice is yours but it pays to always do it the same way to avoid confusion. I do it below the paragraph before the space, so my screenshots will indicate this. The process is called, Hanging Paragraphs and is a much neater way of putting in the blank lines than simply by hitting enter again.

Highlight the paragraph immediately before where you want the blank space to be, then click on the Paragraph box again.

You will notice that a value of 12 has now been placed in the ‘After’ box, under Spacing. If you are working with the paragraph after the space, put the 12 in the ‘Before’ box. Click OK. You will notice that the two paragraphs move slightly further apart. It looks professional, far more so than simply entering another carriage return.

Now work through the entire file, doing the same thing wherever you want a blank line between two paragraphs. Only use the blank line to indicate a change of scene, a new character’s point of view, a jump in time etc. Less is more.

CHAPTER HEADINGS

Now we move onto to your chapter headings. It is time to move them to the centre.

Highlight your chapter heading and click the Paragraph box. In the very first box, under ‘General,’  change ‘Justified’ to ‘Centred.’

Underneath that, under ‘Indentation, Special,’ change the setting to ‘None’ as in my example above. If you do not remove the ‘first line’ indent setting, your centring will be slightly off to the right.

Work through all your chapter headings the same way. If you end your book with The End, you can do the same there too. You can also do your front matter and end papers, if you want them centred. At least have your title page and dedication centred, if nothing else. What you don’t want centred, leave justified.

INSERT PAGE BREAKS

Go back to the beginning of your file. Remember I told you that a kindle book doesn’t have pages like a physical book does? Well now we have to tell it that our file has some parts that we wish to be treated as separate units, a bit like pages. What you will do is insert a page break at any appropriate point where you wish the Kindle device to treat it as a separate piece of work, aka a page.

Directly beneath your title page, on a new line, go to your Insert option. As in the first pic at the top, mine is along the top of my Word page, but yours may be part of a clickable menu list. When you find Insert, click Page Break. You will see a dotted line appear across the page, beneath your title page, in the centre of which, it should say, ‘page break.’

Do the same after each page of your front matter, your copyright page, dedication, acknowledgements etc. Then do the same at the end of each chapter, before the new chapter heading. Finally, do the same after each page of your end papers, if you have any. You don’t need to put one right at the very end of the file, as it’s the end anyway.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

This is not strictly necessary, but it does give a more professional look and feel to your Kindle book, and readers will like it. I feel it’s worth the effort of putting it in, but it’s up to you. If you don’t want to, skip this bit.

The Table of Contents, or TOC for short, is placed immediately before your first chapter, and is a list of every chapter and page of interest in your book. Here you will list your chapter headings, your About the Author, your Coming Soon, etc. It enables the reader to go anywhere within the Kindle book by way of a simple click, rather than by scrolling through. I have been led to believe that some E-readers put a version of a TOC in automatically, but as with everything connected with my writing, I like to be in control.

The TOC consists of two parts; the list of contents, and the ‘back to top,’ at the end of each separate section. It is relatively straightforward, but there is a lot of highlighting and clicking involved. Before you start, make sure you will not be disturbed for half an hour as to get something wrong here will infuriate your readers. If they want to go to chapter seven, they don’t want to find themselves at chapter ten because you weren’t paying attention.

Place your TOC immediately before your first chapter heading, your Chapter One, after the preceding page break. Title it, Table of Contents, or simply, Contents. Then list your chapters by name, Chapter One, Chapter Two etc. If you have named your chapters, keep them as Chapter One, Two, Three etc in the TOC. After your chapters, list your About the Author and Coming Soon, and any Acknowledgements etc you may have as end papers. Put another page break after it.

Now comes the tedious bit. What you have to do is make each of the entries within your TOC into a clickable link. Those links will then take the readers to the right places within your file. This is achieved by using Bookmarks and Hyperlinks. You start by highlighting your chapter heading. Then click ‘Insert’ and navigate to ‘Bookmark.’

A box will appear, like this:

Before you begin, click ‘Hidden Bookmarks’ and see if anything appears within the box. If so, highlight and delete everything. If not, great. Highlight your chapter heading, then enter the name of the bookmark, in this case, something along the lines of ‘chap1’ will do fine. There should be no spaces within the name. Click ‘Add.’

Navigate to Chapter Two and scroll back to just above the page break and enter, ‘back to top.’

Move to Chapter Two and highlight it. Enter a bookmark, ‘chap2’ or something similar.

Go through the whole file, making sure to enter your ‘back to top’ at the end of each chapter, just above the page breaks. Put them also at the bottom of each of your endpapers. Your endpapers can have bookmarks that tell you what they are, as in my example above. ‘Soon,’ About,’ etc.

At the very end of the file, put another ‘back to top.’

Go back to your TOC.

Highlight the title of your TOC and enter a bookmark ‘refTOC’ or simply ‘TOC’ will do.

Now you will link those bookmarks to your TOC, creating clickable links. Highlight the first entry of your TOC, Chapter One. Navigate to ‘Insert,’ then click ‘Link.’

Clicking Link will produce a further box.

You should see all of your carefully entered bookmarks listed. First, make sure to click ‘Place in this document’ down the left hand side. Scroll to your ‘chap1’ bookmark and click it. Then click OK. You should notice the first entry in your TOC has now turned blue, indicating that it is now a clickable link.

Now work through your TOC, highlighting each entry in turn and linking it with the correct bookmark. When you’ve finished, each entry in your TOC should be blue, indicating they’re all clickable links.

You now need to make the links that allow readers to go back to the beginning of the document. This is where you will make all of those ‘back to top’ entries into links.

Go the end of Chapter One and highlight ‘back to top.’ Open the ‘Link’ box and link it with the bookmark titled, ‘TOC’ or ‘refTOC’ or whatever you called it. When you click ‘OK’ you should see the ‘back to top’ go blue.

Work through the entire file, making all the ‘back to top’ entries into links in the same way.

All that’s left for you to do now is to check each TOC link works properly and takes you to the right place. Once you’re satisfied, you’re done.

 

Congratulations, you’ve just formatted your own Kindle book. Now go to Amazon, upload it, and crow to your friends about how clever you are.

 

The self publishing tornado

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Am I the only one who finds the whole self publishing thing  a bit of a hassle?

No, I can’t be the only one. I refuse to believe no one else feels this way. There has to be more people out there like me.

I’ve only been self publishing since 2011 so I’m a relative noob to this whole thing, but even in the time I’ve been doing it, I’ve noticed the whole thing become less of a joy and more of a chore. I’m talking about publishing here, not writing. That’s a whole different thing.

When I published my first novel, Redemption, back in October 2011, it was exciting to go through the whole process and come out the other end feeling like I was finally a ‘Writer.’ Now though, it feels like I’m walking into a black cloud that will eat me up, throw me around a bit and chuck me out miles from where I started and nowhere near where I wanted to be.

Advertising is a constant source of anguish. The hassle of actually finding effective advertising/promo space that doesn’t cost a fortune aside, the sheer volume of other authors all screaming their heads off about their books is enough to make anyone feel as though you’re trying to swim upstream. What readers must feel when trying to find a book to buy, I dread to think. There are those who react to this feeling of being overwhelmed by resorting to nasty practices to try and give themselves a leg up and although we all know it goes on, no one seems to be tackling it effectively. Is it even possible to tackle it effectively? Has anyone tried just telling them that it’s not a competition? There really is room for everyone’s book out there.

There are many who, when faced with yet another day of trying to get our name out there, look at the enormity of the task and think, “oh fuck, I’m wasting my time here.” Many days dawn finding me amongst them. On such days I go and do something else, hoping that with some time spent doing other things, the spark for the fight will return to me. I’m still waiting.

The lack of any feeling of ‘community’ among the author crowd doesn’t help either. Although they always declare themselves to be willing to help out and encourage other authors, try finding a comment by one of them on your blog or facebook author page. Try finding them among attendees at your giveaway event. Try finding them having bought your book. Try finding them having reviewed it. Yes of course there will be one or two lovely folks who genuinely care and try to help and we all give thanks for them, but there really are only one or two.

Self publishing today is something of an all-in wrestling match without a referee. It’s a dog eat dog world when you’re a self publisher, and you must be always on your guard or you’ll find someone chewing on your ankles. The lack of any real legislation is partly to blame, in my humble opinion, as is Amazon’s well known and continuing dirty tricks campaign, (that itself is a blog for another day). We all know that to get ahead, we must fight our way to the sunlight like creepers in the jungle, and just like them, the most successful are the strangler vines.

If like me you’re not the confrontational type, you will struggle as I struggle. I do not have the energy or drive to fight with other authors who are all convinced that it is imperative Merita King be kept out of the limelight as much as possible in order for the Earth to continue to revolve. Dramatic perhaps but you get my meaning here? Everyone is fighting everyone else and I’m not a fighter. Not because I don’t care about my work, I do, but because I’m not that desperate. It would be lovely to make money from writing, but that is not why I write. I think that is the difference between those who screech the loudest and those who don’t screech at all. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you which is which.

I’m like that seed that stays underground for years waiting for sunlight to hit the ground. When it does, the seed sprouts quickly and reaches for the sky. I’m just hoping that while I’m underground, writing and quietly self publishing, the sunlight hits my bit of earth before I shuffle off this mortal coil, never to return. I’ll be happy to bet my life savings that I’m one of those authors who will be extremely famous – fifty years after they’re dead!

We have lost control of our book details at Amazon

I noticed today that we are no longer able to log into our books’ details via Author Central at Amazon. We can no longer do any of the things we used to be able to do, like change the blurb, add a bold tagline, make sure the line spacing of the blurb was right, add a character outline or a review. I used to do all those things but now I can do none of them. I have no access to them, other than via the publishing platform dashboard, which does not allow me to bolden or underline, and always removes line spaces.

Just another of the rapidly increasing number of reasons never to publish with amazon ever again. I never have any of these problems at Smashwords or Lulu.

Fuck you Amazon, fuck your owners, fuck your governors, fuck your shareholders, fuck your grandmothers, and fuck the horse you rode in on.

The Shaman’s Curse

The Shaman’s Curse by Meredith Mansfield

Vatar risked his life to try to save his friend–and failed.

Now he has an implacable enemy in the vengeful shaman, who blames Vatar for the death of his only son. In his isolation, Vatar finds some comfort in daydreams. He knows the strange girl he sometimes imagines is just that–a dream. She’d better be.

Because, if she’s real things could get even worse for Vatar. The accepted magic of Vatar’s plains tribe wouldn’t enable him to see or communicate with a girl he doesn’t even know–or know where to find. That would be more like the magic passed down in certain, closely-guarded bloodlines among the ruling class of the coastal cities. And that’s bad. Very bad.

Unlike their own, Vatar’s people think the city magic is evil. If the shaman ever found out, it could be the weapon he needs to destroy Vatar. And yet, finding a way to accept the other side of his heritage may be the only way Vatar can ultimately defeat his enemy.

The two kinds of magic have always been separate–until now.

Check out The Shaman’s Curse here.

The Trials of Nahda ~ Sinclair V-Log PA884/R

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The third volume in The Sinclair V-Logs is now available for your e-reader

Many thanks once again to JL Stratton for doing the cover.

 

You know the difference between fantasy and reality, right?

Sam Sinclair thought so too, until his boss sent him to Nahda, to arrest a museum researcher for stealing an ancient artefact.

Until the pair find themselves trapped deep below an abandoned fusion reactor, Sam had never had occasion to doubt what was real and what was not.

As events unfold, forcing him to embrace the possibility that what he always believed to be just fantasy, could indeed be very real, his life comes crumbling down around him.

Finding himself now a fugitive of the law, left for dead by his prisoner, and still trapped within the underground city, Sam struggles to accept the evidence of his own eyes.

Some things are impossible aren’t they?  Sam thought so too, but what he experienced forced him to look at the universe in a different light.

The Trials of Nahda can be purchased at Amazon and Smashwords on the following links.  Paperback copies will be available in a few days.

Amazon usa

Amazon uk

Smashwords

 

Why readers don’t leave reviews

All authors know how frustratingly difficult it is to get genuine reviews that you don’t have to pay for, and which don’t  involve family or friends doing you a favour. I’m talking about genuine reviews from genuine readers here.  Ever since I published my first novel, I’ve wondered why readers don’t leave reviews, so yesterday I decided to ask them.

In my totally unofficial poll on facebook, the answers I received were as follows:

I only review if I like the book.  I only review indie/self published books. I only review if no other reviews say what I want to say.  I didn’t realise you could.  I can’t be bothered.  I do.

The first two of these are fine, I’ve no problems with these at all.  My problem is that if these are true of all readers, then 99% of the people who have read my books, hated them and/or did not realise I self published them.

The third is very odd to me.  Why decide not to review just because someone else thought the same as you?  Surely a product (whatever it is) with multiple reviews saying similar things, would help you to decide whether to buy?  If ten reviews all say they love the book, then other potential readers would be more likely to buy?  Or am I missing something relevant here?

I’m totally surprised to find someone did not realise you could leave a review.  There can’t be many people who don’t buy things on Amazon and other internet sites, and everyone (but everyone) knows Amazon is full of reviews.  If this answer was genuine, then I’m shocked.

The “I can’t be bothered” answer is, well, um, sigh…!  Sometimes, just occasionally, say for instance, when I read that people just can’t be bothered to leave reviews, I fail to find a reason to have much respect for people.  I do however, think this is the actual reason why 99% of people don’t review.

The last answer, the “I do” answer made me laugh, and I’ll tell you why.  The person who said this, told me some time ago that they bought at least a couple of my books.  They never reviewed them.  So, they either haven’t read them yet, or they didn’t buy them at all.  Someone just sharted in public I think..!

So what does this teach us as writers?  It teaches us that people just can’t be bothered to review, unless they are book reviewers or other authors.  Despite most people saying they do read the reviews when deciding whether to purchase an item, they can’t be bothered to leave one themselves.  This doesn’t help us as authors, and there is obviously nothing we can do to encourage people to leave a review, when they just can’t be bothered.

At least we know that there is no need for us to blame our lack of reviews on the quality (or lack thereof) of our work.

New blurbs, New categories and more updates

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I’ve decided to take a few steps toward trying to build my brand.  I’m always the first to admit that I suck cock at promoting myself, and my efforts so far have proved a waste of time.  With lots of encouragement, and a kick in the ass from time to time from my facebook friend Tammie Clarke Gibbs, I’ve taken a couple of steps towards getting a bit more visibility for my brand.

The first thing I did was update my blurbs.  Although they weren’t bad, they benefitted from a bit of sharpening here and there, and I like the results, which you can see on my book pages here this site (in the nav bar up top).

The second thing I did was to add another category at Amazon.  Up till now, I’ve just placed my work in Science Fiction/Space Opera, which is what the book are, but I added Science Fiction/Action and Adventure.  Hopefully this will give them more scope to be found by browsers and may result in a sale or two.

Next, I re-did the keywords on Amazon.  Keywords is getting towards territory I know practically zip about, but after taking advice, I changed them, and I hope they help increase the number of times my work pops up in searches.  Fingers crossed.

I’m also trying to make more use of Pinterest, as I’ve heard that this place is a great venue for getting your brand noticed.  I’ve renamed some of my boards, and added a couple of new ones that give my pinterest a more science fiction angle.  I hope this will attract more sci fi type folks who may then decide to take a chance on my books.  You never know, it costs nothing to try huh?

I’ve finished the first full read through and edit of my next book, which is a stand alone science fiction romance.  This is the book for which I’ve invented an alien language, and because of this, the first edit took longer than it usually does.  I also took this opportunity to add words to bring each chapter up to my preferred 5k size.  This allowed me to expand in some places that needed it, to go into the characters’ thoughts and emotions in a deeper way, which was a challenge at times but such a worthwhile learning curve.  I hope to publish this in March 2014.

The last update I have, is that I’ve decided to put together another anthology.  This one will be more paranormal based than straight  horror, and I have the first two stories already.  As for size, I think twenty is a good number, it will give my anthologies a consistency if they all contain twenty stories.

On a more personal note, I’m celebrating having successfully persuaded my mother to sell up and leave Cornwall and come and live near me.  She’s 82 this coming July, and very obese, diabetic, and has damaged hips and knees.  Her nearest shop is a mile away, and she can’t walk anywhere near that far, and while it’s not a problem as she still drives, it won’t be long before she can’t drive anymore.  When that happens, she’ll be stuffed like the proverbial Christmas turkey.  If she lives near me, I can lend her a helping hand and keep her independent whenever she needs me.  I’m so relieved my months of nagging has finally borne fruit, and quite excited to see her get a nice place around here.

Formatting for e-book – Amazon Kindle

Many people find the process of formatting their manuscript, a little daunting.  A lot of people pay someone to do it for them but that is not necessary at all.  Once you get everything into a routine, you can format a full length novel in a couple of hours.

There are many different sites that allow you to upload your e-book file, and most have their own formatting rules. For this reason, this blog will focus entirely on Amazon Kindle.

The first thing to do, is not to panic.  It seems daunting but it isn’t really that hard.  You just need to go through the steps in order and make sure you don’t miss any out.

Formatting for e-books is way easier than formatting for paperbacks, believe me.  I fought with one particular aspect of paperback formatting every single time I released a new novel and it wasn’t until I released my sixth novel that I finally found out how to avoid this problem.

The most important thing to remember, is that an e-book is not a paperback.  Sounds obvious I know but as you format your e-book, you may think everything looks weird and you will have to avoid the temptation to try and make it look like a paperback.  Kindles, and all e-reading devices, display your e-book as one long continuous file, without separate pages like paperbacks have.

Once your manuscript has been edited to your satisfaction, you will need to typeset it.  This is where you choose whether to indent your paragraphs, or do the block style, whether to bold your chapter headings or not and other such stylistic things.  I won’t go into detail about how to set out paragraphs/chapter headings etc, as that would make this blog prohibitively long.

Amazon Kindle likes your e-book file to be set out as justified text.  Justified is where both right and left margins are straight. The photo below shows what I mean.

justified text

 

Set out all of your chapters in this way, and centre your chapter headings.

Next, get your front matter together.  Front matter is the title page, copyright page, dedication etc.  Set it out as you wish it to look, I usually centre the front matter but it’s a personal preference thing.  Do the same with any end papers (coming soon, about the author etc).

Amazon Kindle requires your sections to be separated by page breaks.  You need to insert a page break at the end of each page of your front matter, at the end of each chapter, and between any end papers.

Amazon Kindle also requires your e-book file to have a linked table of contents, TOC for short.  A TOC is the bit at the front that says Chapter 1, Chapter 2 etc.  Remember not to put page numbers in your TOC, just the chapter headings.  This is done so that readers can click and go straight to whatever chapter they want without having to scroll through the previous chapters.

Type your TOC as you wish it to look.  Title it, Table of Contents and then type your chapter headings underneath.

Next, go to the start of your first chapter.  I call my chapters by number but no matter whether you’ve called it Chapter 1 or anything else, go there and highlight the chapter heading.

Click ‘insert’ and then click ‘bookmark’ (I always use Word but whatever word processing system you use, find the ‘insert’ option and click it, then click ‘bookmark.’

A box will pop up, asking you to name the new bookmark.  Name it the same as your chapter heading, making sure you avoid putting spaces in the name.  Click ‘add’ and the box will disappear.

insert bookmark

Do the same for every chapter heading, naming each new bookmark the same as the chapter it bookmarks.

Also bookmark any end papers.

Next, go to your TOC and highlight its heading and bookmark it, naming it – refTOC.

Then, go through and put ‘back to top’ at the very end of each chapter, underneath the last line of text and above the page break.  This will allow readers to go straight back to the start of your book, without having to scroll back up through the whole document.

Now you have to link those chapter headings, to your TOC so that when readers click on the contents list, they will go to the right place.  For this, you will work entirely with your TOC.

In your TOC, highlight your first chapter heading, ‘chapter 1’ or whatever.

Right click and choose ‘hyperlink’

hyperlink

Choose ‘place in this document’

You will then see your list of bookmarks that you just made.  Choose the one for chapter 1 and click ‘okay’

place in doc

Hightlight your second chapter heading, chapter 2 or whatever and do the same.

Do this for each of the chapter headings within your contents list.

Next, scroll through to where you’ve typed ‘back to top’ at the end of each chapter.

Highlight ‘back to top’

right click and choose ‘hyperlink’

Choose, ‘place in this document’

Again, your list of bookmarks will be there.  Choose the one you named refTOC and click ‘okay’

Go through and do this for every ‘back to top’

Check your TOC works by clicking on the links and make sure you go to the right places.

That’s basically it.  You should now be able to upload your e-book file straight to Amazon Kindle.  It’s a really simple procedure and once you’ve done it a couple of times, you’ll see how straight forward it is.  Good luck with that manuscript.

The new ad-free me

I’ve come to a momentous decision today.  Thanks to the general public’s total lack of interest in my work, I shall no longer be doing any advertising of my books.

I’m not the world’s greatest saleswoman, I’m the first to admit that, and I don’t have a rich husband/parents/boyfriend/wife;/girlfriend/son/daughter etc to pay for one of the many over priced ‘advertise your book here’ websites or a publicist to do the work for me.  All I have is me.

I’ve said many times that authors are a selfish and competitive breed of creature.  They don’t give real help without a fight and they happily use bribery and outright fraud to jemmy their book’s way up the ladder of apparent success.  From getting other writer chums to write glowing reviews, to giving away kindles and amazon gift cards in return for reviews, anything and everything is fair in the book game.

You can’t just do a giveaway anymore, that doesn’t work.  Without the promise of a brand new kindle or $50 in amazon money, no one is interested in actually reading a good book these days.  It doesn’t matter how badly written the book is, how atrocious the spelling or how lackluster the grammar, so long as that kindle or gift card is in the post, they’ll give a glowing 5 star review.

I’ve just run a giveaway event for my latest novel and I’m not offering kindles or money.  I don’t need to bribe anyone, the book is good enough on its own to more than compensate for the time involved in reading.  The trouble is that people don’t actually read books anymore, even their buddies’ ones that they review.  They just skim without taking anything in.

I set an easy and fun competition and was offering ten free e-copies of my latest novel as the prize.  All I was asking was that people write a little story of 300 words about a celebrity and I would read and pick ten winners.  Guess how many signed up for the event.  Go on, guess.  Thirty eight.  Now guess how many actually did a story.  Two.

Officially the event runs until Friday but I’m confident no one else will bother to enter and, as per the rules set by me, if less than twenty enter, the whole shebang will be cancelled.

One thing that people really should try to get into their brains is that all those who are offering kindles and money as bribes to you for reading and reviewing their books, are doing it because they need to.  Think about it for a second; why would someone who has written a brilliant book need to give expensive gifts away to people to tempt them to read it?  Answer – because they probably wouldn’t go within a mile of it if they didn’t.

I recently watched a hilarious conversation on facebook where an female author was moaning loudly to her chums about someone who had given her latest tome a bad review.  Her little buddies jumped in and commiserated with her, called the reviewer all sorts of a obscene names and some even threatened violence if they ever met the person.  I went to Amazon and read the free preview and was appalled at the spelling and grammar, the punctuation mistakes and continuity errors I saw in the just the few pages the preview offered.

The standard of writing has fallen through the floor since the advent of self publishing and most people now have so little real knowledge of how to use their own language correctly, that their work often isn’t fit to read.

I’m not going to start offering kindles and amazon gift cards to bribe folks to read my books.  In fact I’m not going to actively advertise them at all anymore.  I shall do my usual post when I publish a new novel and continue with my weekly tweet/excerpt group as that helps out others, a couple of whom are very nice people.  I write because my soul aches to write.  I write because the universe demands I write.  I write because it’s the only thing I can do well.  I shall continue to write books of quality and publish them.  Whether you read them is up to you, but I won’t be offering you anything for doing it.

Brand new release – Acts of Life

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I have great pleasure in being able to finally announce that my latest science fiction novel is finally out.  It will take a day or two or Amazon links to go live, but paperbacks can be purchased now from Lulu.com and e-books from smashwords,com

I wrote Acts of Life in twenty days during last November’s NaNoWriMo and am very proud of it.  I hope you enjoy it.

Here is the link to the Acts of Life page, where the blurb and buy links can be found.

Here is the link to the page where you can read 3 excerpts from Acts of Life.