The World According To Mel

UMBRIEL ... Keegan's latest, launching today

2010-08-01T16:39:00.004+09:30

UMBRIEL

Mel Keegan and Jayne DeMarco

Feeling is believing

New on August 1, from DreamCraft,
and premiering an exciting new partnership in m/m fiction...

On the high moors, lonely, storm-swept and silent, stands the ruin of Saint Martin's Abbey. On a summer's afternoon, a feeling of deep peace surrounds the ruin, yet the the broken walls conceal a dark secret, a tragic mystery dating back many centuries. And in the region the abbey has earned quite a reputation. Mention St. Martins to the locals and they'll give you an odd look at once and say, "You know it's haunted."

When Rick Gray buys Rokeby cottage in the nearby village of Little Swinvale, all he's looking for is the peace and quiet to find himself again, after years of working -- succeeding -- in the difficult, demanding trade of the professional photographer. A storm is looming, close to sundown. The lighting conditions are perfect for the kind of spectacular images which have made him famous. Against all advice, he heads out to the abbey to work fast while the light holds...

And when it fades, a tiny fragment of the mystery of St. Martin's finds its way into his hands.

He calls himself John -- just John. For Rick, it's love a first sight. And the next twenty-four hours of his life will be beyond anything he ever imagined. If he had not seen and felt it all with his own senses, he would never have believed it.

But seeing ... feeling ... is believing.

•UMBRIEL
•Mel Keegan and Jayne DeMarco
•Published by DreamCraft
•ISBN: 978-0-9807092-5-4
•44,000 words
•Cover: Jade
•Heat level: 3.5
•Ebook: $5.50
•Ebook formats: PDF for PC/MAC, Kindle (for Kindle & iPad)
•epub and screenreader versions due soon: stay tuned.
•Release date: August 1, 2010
•Read an excerpt online right here! (Caveat: adult themes; glbt content)

Grab the PDF ebook to suit PC, Mac, desktop and laptop:
or,
Grab the PDF ebook designed to suit screenreaders
(BeBook, iLiad, Sony etc):

DreamCraft is working on an epub version, and within a week you'll be able to download this book in formats to suit your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and so on. Remember, Kindle and iPad read PDFs too, and iPad also reads Kindle. Convenient, right?!

oooOOOooo

This marks the first collaboration between myself and the extraordinarily talented Jayne DeMarco, and I want to say right here, it's been a real pleasure. I come up with so many storylines -- in fact, such a constant rush of them, for years now I haven't even been bothering to even jot them down. This will probably change, because Jayne is a joy to work with, a damn' fine writer, who has a way of taking an idea of mine, running with it, and sending it back to me next month with not only the bones in place but a lot of gorgeous flesh on those bones.

UMBRIEL is one of my storylines from waaaay back, but the truth is, if it had been left to me, this story would never have seen light of day. I simply don't have the time to write the short pieces. I have NARC, Hellgate, vampyres, swordsmen and a whole lot more happening, and my writing time is earmarked for years and years to come.

Jayne, however, has time and is a self-confessed creature of inspiration. Put another way, when inspiration bites, she writes, and she actually does like to take someone else's core idea and run with it. For example, some of you will have had the very great pleasure of reading DON'T GO AWAY, which is actually a free download on GLBT Bookshelf at this time (if you've missed it, click this, and enjoy). This lovely little piece was inspired by a series of renders posted to the 3D Adventures blog by our cover artist, Jade -- who certainly needs no introduction here. The Two J's work on opposite ends of the creative connection. One reads or hears words and renders up the most dazzling artwork I've seen in a long, long time. The other sees images and is inspired to write some of the most evocative and charming fiction being produced today ... and luckily for us, it's what the reading world has come to call "m/m" -- which is not acronymical for murder and mayhem! If you missed JD's debut story back in March, you missed a damned good read. (Click here and catch up.)

So keep a weather eye out for more collaborations between Keegan and DeMarco. At this point I can't tell you want or when, but I know it's out there. In the meantime, here is a new story which comes right out of the blue, and I'm completely delighted to be sharing the cover credits with a writer who will be very well respected in the years to come.

Cheers,
Mel

Keegan for your iPhone and Android -- save 25%!

2010-07-03T12:51:00.004+09:30

Want to get Keegan on your iPhone or Android, and save 25% in the process? During July 2010, you can!

Click right here to see the range of Keegans available in these formats -- at this time it's about half the list, and the others will be issued for these special applications by Christmas this year.

Here's where the magic happens: when you click to order you'll be checking out via the Smashwords server, and all you need to do to score the 25% discount is to enter this coupon code:

SWS25
...that's it! Enjoy guys. And don't forget to bookmark that pace at MK Online, because as we drive closer to Christmas all my books will be appearing on it.

Cheers,
Mel

MNDSPACE ... in paperback!

2010-07-01T16:28:00.007+09:30

If you've been waiting for MINDSPACE to be available in paperback -- today's the day you've been holding out for. The proof arrived this morning, and the book is available direct from the manufacturer:

MINDSPACE
Author: Mel Keegan
Cover: Jade
Publisher: DreamCraft
95,000 words
248 pages
Price in paperback: $21.50
(plus p&h)
Buy now in paperback *

(* this link takes you to the manufacturer's site. Purchases made there are much more lucrative to me and to DreamCraft, and right now we have an agreement: funds beyond what we'd earn from a sale via Amazon will be donated to GLBT Bookshelf. So you can support the Bookshelf without even realizing you're doing it. And ... thank you kindly for same.)

MINDSPACE is also available as an ebook in the PDF format for PC or Mac, desktop or Laptop. (Due in July 2010: files designed specifically to suit iLiad, iPad, iPhone, Sony, Pam BeBook and Kindle).

as a PDF for desktop, laptop, PC&Mac

Click here to read the full blurb; and

click here to read the sample chapters.

CAVEAT: Be aware that the book is a sexy sf romp in which same-gender sensuality, realistic violence and coarse language render the text unsuitable for younger readers. For big kids -- it's a blast.

Readers who bought MINDSPACE also bought...

AQUAMARINE GROUND ZERO DEATH'S HEAD

All Mel Keegan's titles are included in the benefit plan outlined above for Mindspace, so by buying MK SF via these links, you can support GLBT Bookshelf, and the GLBT publishing, writing and reading community, without even being aware that you've made a handsome donation -- and The Bookshelf thanks you kindly!

MINDSPACE ... launching today!

2010-06-16T15:15:00.004+09:30

MINDSPACE
Mel Keegan

ISBN 978-0-9807092-4-7

Publisher: DreamCraft

Genre: gay science fiction

Cover: Jade

95,000 words

ebook $9.95 (out now)

paperback: $20.50 (out now)

READ FOR FREE -- Chapters 1 and 2 -- click right here

On the far frontier, life is tough when you’re a transspace pilot stripped of your license to fly. The good jobs go to graduate guildsmen who make the professional grade ... and who play by the guild’s rulebook.

Jack DiFalco broke the rules. Busted, he found himself on the wrong side of the law and the rough side of the guild -- and his crime was mindspacing … playing one of the incredible high-tech games which are changing the future of humanity. Playing not in VR, but in the gamespace, the total-immersion rigs where players enters the realm of the machine. And some of them don’t make it back out.

Kieron Charig is a transspace navigator. He went through guild school with Jack, but unlike Jack he has no patience for the game, or for gamers. Mindspacing is the major tool of the navigator’s trade – the big transspace ships are flown via a symbiotic relationship where the mind/machine interface is dangerously blurry. Kieron works there; he scorns to play there -- and like all transspace flightcrews he fears the consequences.

The irony is that it’s Kieron, not Jack, who will pay the ultimate price, while Jack is plucked out of a rough, dirty underworld and propelled into places more opulent than the games he has played. But success comes with strings attached, and at a high price. Jack will pay his dues with skill, courage and even sex. For Kieron Charig, no price is high enough, and every moment is a battle to preserve what remains of his humanity.

Everything they are, everything they might be, pivots on Max Gorodin -- who stands at the helm of the aerospace giant, Jabalpur Indistries. Max’s own struggle is about sheer survival -- and if Jack DiFalco is his dream come true, Kieron Charig is the gift he could never have expected.

Max stands at a dangerous juncture where his own personal security is dubious and his enemies seem invincible. When Jack and Kieron cross his path, his life -- and the survival plans for a company and a city – have the potential to turn around. But both Jack and Kieron must forfeit everything they have … and Max will discover that falling in love is life’s ultimate complication.

Read the first two chapters in our free preview

Return to the Mel Keegan showcase

So ... give yourself a treat and as a PDF for desktop, laptop, PC&Mac; or...
Buy now in Paperback...

New Mel Keegan Novel ... new cover ... wow!

2010-06-10T10:51:00.007+09:30

What ... a new Mel Keegan book? Surely you jest! But no ... the book is launching in a few days, it's called MINDSPACE, and to prove it, here's the cover. The fantastic new cover. Wow. Jade has worked miracles on this. Have you seen the Adventures in 3D blog lately?!

I haven't blogged in months now -- I just don't have the time. In fact, there's so many things to talk about, one hardly knows where to begin...

So we'll make a start with the launch of my new book, plus a quick update on the HELLGATE series, and I'll just make the time somehow to blog about all manner of things -- the state of the industry, the shape of iPads to come, gay news, and a lot more.

Am I back -- will I be blogging daily, as I used to? Well, not if you want HELLGATE finished by the end of 2010! The work ahead of me is still looking like a hiking holiday through the Himalayas. In winter. But I've knocked a good dent in what needed to be done and there are still six months left. So -- we'll call this an update on how the series is going: nicely. Stay tuned. Take nothing for granted. Expect the unexpected. Don't applaud, throw money...

So what's MINDSPACE about? Well, I'll share that in another post because I just used up the entire 11.27 minute window for posting to this blog, and I have to run! I'll give you few hints right here: gay science fiction, transhumanism, gaming, revenge, survival, technology, love, war. And that's a potent mix.

Cheers,
Mel

Jarrat and Stone are back ... and I'm stunned

2010-03-11T09:30:00.004+10:30

Words fail me. I mean ... words ... just ... fail. What can I say? Have a look at these, and be amazed:

Ooof. It's like looking at stills from the movie. These are two "renders" out of a set of 10, all of which are online at Jade's Adventures in 3D -- and they're also uploaded at about twice this size, so go ahead, click the pic to see the larger shot. The Jarrat renders went up first, telling a scene from his POV. The Stone renders went up yesterday, telling the same scene from his POV.

They leave my fingers itching to write NARC. And I can't, because I'm churning my way steadily through Hellgate, and 2010 is about getting that whole series finished. This is sheer, unmitigated torture! I ask myself, could I possibly squeeze in a Jarrat-and-Stone short piece, something "only" around 50,000 words or so? In fact, there *is* a story which has been slated to be the high-action prologue to the next NARC novel -- and you all know what happened last time I did this. STOPOVER was supposed to be the opening "kaboom" for APHELION, and it ended up being taken right out and published on its own, because at 45,000 words it was a) too long to be an opening act, b) would have pushed the overall length of APHELION to 230,000 words, which is monstrous; and c) was quite large enough to be published as a pocket-size thriller.

Hence, I find myself literally, and enthusiastically, adrool ... and asking the question in all seriousness: can I squeeze in a NARC short, if I work, very very hard, fueled by the rush of seeing these pictures?

Stay tuned!

And please do link over to Jade's blog, where pictures like this are commonplace, what's more, she'll tell you how to do it yourself:

Cheers,
Mel

ICE, WIND AND FIRE ... break out the bubbly!

2010-02-25T16:24:00.004+10:30

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this one, above, only needs to say a half a dozen or so:

IT'S HERE, IT'S PERFECT ... THANK GODS!

To be just a little more wordy about it: the proof copy of ICE, WIND & FIRE was delivered to DreamCraft a few minutes ago. It was checked thoroughly, and Jade popped this shot and emailed it over to me. I'm uploading it right now, and I can tell you that the journey to Amazon.com has already begun. However, if you want the paperback ahead of time, you can already get it direct from the manufacturer, CreateSpace. (Amazon takes about an extra 10 days to get a title into their catalog). If you're in a hurry, you can in fact get it right now. If you need if for a birthday, something time-sensitive, here you go:

Buy the damn' thing now!

And a heart-felt apology to Rie, who donated the copy to be quite literally guillotined out of its bindings. Rie: You are looking at YOUR copy in the above image. Jade assures the both of us, it will be back in the mail to your address tomorrow -- it's too late to make it to the post office today.

Speaking of Jade, did you see this:

This was a mockup cover done to illustrate a point she was making about how 3D art is perfect for book covers ... notice the byline. The illustrious author of this piece is one John J. Doe. I took one look at that cover and said, I WANT IT. Now, don't hold your breath, folks: I have Hellgate to finish this year, and a NARC novel to do, and MINDSPACE is being packaged very soon. But this piece here is calling to me. It's seducing me. When the book comes back your way, it probably won't be called by the same title, but you will see it wrapped around a Keegan. Because every time I look at it I get this weird feeling that whispers in the back of my writer's brain, "You know this book, you've told this story, you just have to remember what it is..."

Is that weird, or what?

Cheers, guys!
Mel

ICE, WIND AND FIRE: the saga continues.

2010-02-13T11:56:00.005+10:30

ICE, WIND AND FIRE: the saga continues.

No, I'm not writing a sequel ... I'm just tracking the process of trying to get a paperback proof here from CreateSpace. And it's becoming bizarre.

CreateSpace swears up and down that they shipped it to DreamCraft eons ago -- and (get this) it was returned to them as undeliverable. They quoted Jade and Dave at DC the delivery address, and it's 100% accurate. Which means that either US Mails or Australia Post chose to sling the parcel back at CreateSpace instead of delivering it.

Now, CreateSpace appear reluctant to ship another proof: Customer Service has kicked it up to the gurus in charge of their department for "investigation."

If this process gets any longer, DreamCraft will have a major problem: CreateSpace will not send a book to Amazon without a proof being delivered, checked and approved ... and if they won't ship a proof, because the post office(s) pulled the oldest trick in the book -- and took the postage before slinging the book back as undeliverable!! -- then DC won't be able to use CS to get MK to the Big A.

The solution is to revert to Lulu.com, obviously, and this is the next step, if CS continue to mess DC and MK around.

Well ... I'm trying to make light of this, but my patience wore thin about Christmas, when the fun began. What can I tell you? We might be switching right back to Lulu.com, in which case you might or might not be able to get ICE, WIND AND FIRE from Amazon, because it's rather expensive to get a book from Lulu to Amazon, and the old, old title hardly warrants the investment.

I can only keep you posted as to developments .. you WILL be getting the book on paper as soon as humanly possible, but it could be ex-Lulu. And to Rie, who sacrificed the copy which was literally destroyed to facilitate the OCR process ... my gods, I am *so* sorry about this. We'll put this situation right one way and another: trust me.

Do you want to cal it gay art? 3D Gay art? Gay 3D --?! Call it what you like, but scroll down and feast your eyes --

This one definitely begs the "Gay Art" label. Or Gay 3D, if you prefer

And again ... gay fantasy. What *is* gay art anyway? That's far from an simple question, and it's much too easy to say "porn," or "Yaoi." Gay art, surely, should be a vastly wider field, and ... between you and me, I reckon my esteemed cover artist, Jade from DreamCraft, has got the niche down. The site, Adventures in 3D, is one of the most gloriously beautiful sites I've ever seen, and if you're unaware of it, you're in for a tremendous treat. Go there now, and enjoy.

Cheers,
Mel

Where the [expletive deleted] is that proof copy?!!

2010-02-02T17:24:00.004+10:30

Many people continue to wait with varying degrees of patience for the paperback of ICE, WIND AND FIRE, and I'm posting today to bring you up to date. We are still waiting for the proof copy, which was shipped out of CreateSpace before Christmas ... and that was the second proof to be shipped, because the first -- shipped in October -- was a no-show. (My own patience expired a loooong time ago; about the time people were trimming trees and making eggnog.)

DreamCraft informs me that if the proof isn't delivered by the end of this week (Feb 5th), a third copy will be ordered ... and this is getting absolutely ridiculous. The new copy, if needed, will take another 2-3 weeks, minimum, for delivery to Australia, by which time we'll have been trying to usher the paperback of this book into the world for four months.

To one and all: my apologies for the delay. If I knew where the proof copies were vanishing to, rest assured, I'd be in there and salvage them. The next one will be sent via some sort of shipping system that allow es for tracking. The reason this is not usually an option is the cost -- it really is the last option! However, there comes a time when they've painted you into a corner and you have no other choice.

To Rie, who put up the original book which was cut out of its bindings to facilitate the OCR process: I am so sorry about this! I couldn't possibly have imagined this would happen ... it's never happened before. Proofs have always been delivered in 9 - 21 days, max, and one never went missing before this. Now, it looks like two have vanished -- give me the odds on this! Rest assured, the third copy shipped out of CreateSpace will be sent by some international express post, with tracking, regardless of cost -- and if one of the two proofs (I don't care which!) doesn't show up by Friday, the third will be ordered at the weekend.

I know they say patience is a virtue, but this is ridiculous.

Cheers,
Mel

ICE, WIND & FIRE -- five stars at Rainbow Reviews!

2010-01-11T08:50:00.003+10:30

Many thanks to Rainbow Reviews for reviewing the twentieth anniversary reissue of ICE, WIND AND FIRE, and it's my pleasure to report ... five stars!

Here's the complete review: http://www.rainbow-reviews.com/?p=4141

Brilliant ... I'm gratified -- delighted!

Now, if the proof copy of the paperback would just be delivered. And I know it's Christmas holding everything up, but it's 10 January already and patience is wearing thin.

While I'm on the subject of thanking people vastly for their input, feedback and assistance, I must thank Jade yet again, for the most amazing NARC visualizations! Have you seen these:

Capt. Kevin Jarrat

Capt. R.J. "Stoney" Stone

Sgt. J.C. "Gil" Cronin: and look at the unit badge!!

Sgt. J.C. "Gil" Cronin displays the descant squad's much vaunted physique!

I'm reliably informed that the next character to be tackled head-on is Harry, and I can't wait to see this. Makes my fingers itch to get back into these books. However, I just picked up the threads of HELLGATE, and am promising myself that I'll go right through both books without letting myself be diverted again. (This should have been the plan for 2009, but GLBT Bookshelf came along, and the rest is history.)

So ... massive thanks to Jade, whose blog/site has developed into one of the most gloriously beautiful sites on the web: http://3d-adventures.blogspot.com/ ... and to Rainbow Reviews for a wonderful review of ICE, WIND AND FIRE!

Cheers,

Mel

Merry Christmas, 2009!

2009-12-25T10:21:00.002+10:30

May your holidays be filled with peace and joy;

may the world be a little less dangerous and painful to live in;

and may the New Year bring a whole lot of dreams come true...

Merry Christmas ... Merrie Yuletide! ... to all,

Cheers, Mel (on Christmas morning).

Jarrat and Stone on Christmas Eve...

2009-12-24T17:17:00.005+10:30

It's Christmas Eve here, but I could swear it was Christmas morning. I just received one of the best presents I ever had, and better yet, it's something I can share with you. It's this:

They came through as attachments on an email about 90 minutes ago ... and I'm floored. I am seriously still on the deck, wondering what hit me. These characters just came to life -- they just walked out of my imagination and onto the screen, as surely as if a movie were being made! Jarrat and Stone have become real, live entities.

You can see the original blog post where they appeared here, and also the excerpt from EQUINOX which they were used to illustrate, here. (I've chosen an excerpt from each of the 27 titles on my backlist, and I'm putting up 2 or 3 a week. I have half a dozen up now -- Jade put up a couple of them for me, in particular those which are ... illustrated. Like this. Jade: "thank you" is too simple a thing to say, but if there's better words, I haven't learned them!

Oof.

Christmas Eve is warm, humid; the overcast is breaking up at last -- it actually rained last night! We were supposed to get a storm, but if it broke, I didn't see it. Christmas is upon us, so...

Merry Christmas to all! May the season be happy, safe, and one to remember!

Cheers,

Mel

ICE WIND AND FIRE: the paperback and the black hole

2009-12-17T18:09:00.004+10:30

A swift update on the ICE, WIND AND FIRE situation:

We've passed the "delivery deadline" for the proof, and DreamCraft has officially categorized it as DBU -- Down Black Hole. It's been too long since it was shipped to hold out much, if any, optimism that it'll show up.

The proof has been reordered. Allow 14 days minimum for it to be delivered here, so it can be eyeballed and given the OK, and cleared for sale.

Alas, this puts us right in the middle of the holidays, so it looks like the paperback launch of IWF will have to be put back into January, 2010.

Rats. You can get it as an ebook, but ... what can I tell you? US Mails and/or Australia Post strike again.

In the meantime, here's some eye-candy, guy-candy, to put the smile back on your face:

...and it would be fair to say, in all sincerity, that I am so gobsmacked, my bog has never been so smacked. Want more: you need to be on Jade's Adventures in 3D. There's a new digital fantasy every day -- makes me feel like I'm stuck in reverse! I have GOT to get my creative act in gear in 2010. I'm supposed to be a writer, not a website administrator ... right?!

NARC ... Hellgate, The Swordsman, the Vampyre, all need to be finished. Okay: deep breath. The work starts (I said starts!) in January.

Bear with me...

Cheers,

Mel

FREE ONLINE GAY FICTION! (A post for the Google 'bot)

2009-12-14T15:21:00.005+10:30

FREE ONLINE GAY FICTION! Get your free gay stories online --

In all seriousness, folks. I'm trying to attract the attention of the Google Bot. This post is about search engines, and getting properly listed by them. So, once again, being pellucidly clear:

FREE GAY STORIES ONLINE!!! (Click here)

Well -- they're GAY, they're FREE, and they're STORIES, right?

As in,

not straight, bent, counter-het, curvy;
not charged for; without cost; sans price; gratis;
fiction, as in ... well, as in fiction. You know, stories, not documentaries or text books. In other words, interesting stuff not likely to serve as a sleeping pill.

Therefore, GAY FICTION, which is FREE, and on the Internet. Online. Downloadable. To be downloaded without payment.

(Have I jammed in enough keywords yet? You see, Google doesn't read the sense of anything you're saying. You could be William Shakespeare; Google wouldn't care. You could be trying to get the Gettysburg Address crawled, indexed and on Page One -- Google would curl its lip. You see, the 'bot reads something nasty called keyword density. It also recognizes when words are embiggened and emboldened, and made into headlines, like this:

GAY FICTION, FREE ONLINE -- GET YOURS HERE!

So, having said all that (and not forgetting to speak the 'bot's language and shove in some more associated keywords along the way, such as GLBT, and Manlove, and M/M, and Gay readers, Gay Books and GLBT publishing) where do you actually get the aforementioned (here comes the keyword again Free Gay Online Fiction ...?

This rather idiotic post is intended solely to wave a red flag at Google because I'm currently beating my brains out to launch a new blog: http://gay-romance-fiction.blogspot.com/ -- ALL GAY ROMANCE.

And if this post doesn't get Google's attention, and get the URL in front of you -- YOU, the surfer who is actually looking for (here it comes again) FREE GAY ONLINE STORIES, well, I give up. It's all about keyword density, you understand ... meaning, you only need to put in just enough semi-coherent babble between the keywords to get Google to literally count the words and divide by keywords which its peanut-sized intellect can understand. "Free gay fiction online" is a keyword. "Squashed banana" is not a keyword. However, if you put in too much semi-coherent babble between the keywords, Google can't understand what your page is about...

This next, from Google's perspective, would be the perfect paragraph:

FREE GAY ONLINE FICTION teddy bear's picnic and the pet dragon bit off Tigger's head, so Captain Ron had to glue it back on, and FREE ONLINE GAY FICTION when the aliens brought back Elvis, who'd been run over by Mad Max's new lawnmower, but FREE ONLINE GAY FICTION would be the last thing Uncle Joe expected when he tore up the old carpet to polish the floor and discovered FREE ONLINE GAY FICTION in the trunk of Eddie's rusted-up old Ford, but he'd been dead for three days before FREE ONLINE DAY FICTION.

That' to Google, makes perfect sense. It's not the beauty of the language; it's not the wisdom of the content, nor the harmony of the prose, the artistry of the literature. It's the KEYWORD DENSITY.

And according to the rules, I have to say the keyword one more time, and include a link to the pertinent subject matter at the end of the page. So here we go:

FREE ONLINE GAY FICTION ... available (free) here.

There. Let's see Google misunderstand this!

Sorry. I promise to speak English next time, and make sense to humans.

Cheers,

Mel

New blog launching ... new cover art inspiring me!

2009-12-10T14:27:00.004+10:30

Two items I *must* blog about today -- though I know I haven't blogged in a loooong time; too busy, folks; only so many hours in a day!

But -- two things to blog about today!

GLBT Bookshelf has just launched its fiction wing ... free gay fiction, online, glbt romance in any of its thousands of permutations: ALL GAY ROMANCE is launching at this time. There's quite a nice range of fiction online even now, and it's very early days as yet. A good time is being had by all, and we hope readers will soon find the site, bookmark is, and return often.

The other piece of news is personal: I just received the cover proof for my next-up novel, and to say that I'm thrilled to bits is a terrible understatement:

Will you take a look at that! It's by Jade ... who else?! ... and it was done in the new 3D art prog to which I intriduced the artist back in August. I'm still trying to figure out my specular from my ambient --! Jade, meanwhile, is doing stuff like this:

Is that amazing, or what? One of the best things about this is that Jade actually tells you how to do this stuff ... not in any great detail, of course, because these are not tutorials. But enough to point me in the right direction, and give me have a clue about where the tools are!

And I guess, now that the cover art for MINDSPACE is done and waiting for me, I better get on and finish the story! It's about 75% done, I just need to find the time to hammer out the rest of it and then send it over to DreamCraft for the edit and proof phase ... and somewhere along the line, maybe I'll find the time to blog again!

Cheers,
Mel

ICE, WIND AND FIRE ... the ebook is launching now!

2009-11-15T17:21:00.006+10:30

At last! You might have wondered what the *&@! was going on behind the scenes, and you'd have been right to wonder. All hell has been busting loose, and several times "Mephistopheles skated to work" (as in, the day did arrive when hell actually froze over, and whatever wasn't supposed to happen before the great ice age down there ... happened).

However, we all survived, we've almost dug ourselves out from under, and we're launching the ebook version of the novel on the blog right here, right now.

It will eventually be at Kindle, but don't wait for that: it'll also be $2 more expensive at Kindle ... and *our* prices have NOT risen. Amazon whacked 20% on the price of Kindle books recently, at the same time as still paying the publishers only $3.50, and paying affiliates zip. Zero. Nada. However (and this should interest you strangely), they also have a free file conversion service. You can send a PDF to them, and they'll convert it the the Kindle format, and then you download it again, directly to your Kindle.

Whenever you do this with a book published by an indie press, the publisher gets the full price to divvy up between press, writer, editors, cover artist, advertising, review copies ...

On the other hand, whenever you buy an $11.99 direct from the Kindle store, the publisher receives just $3.50 to divvy up among the above.

Is it any wonder indie publishing is having a bloody rough time? Is it any wonder writers and artists have to work part time jobs to keep the lights on?

So do us all a favor, folks, next time you're thinking about downloading books for your Kindle: buy the PDF direct from the publisher, and use the free file conversion process --

And to get you started on this new habit, here are the buy-now buttons for ICE, WIND AND FIRE, as PDF:

EBOOK DESIGNED FOR PC & MAC: $9.99

EBOOK DESIGNED FOR SCREENREADER: $9.99

This mini-launch is actually intended for my newsletter members who know all about this book, and have known about it for a very, very long time indeed. The general book launch will be happening in a few weeks, when the paperback comes along.

The book is celebrating its own 20th Anniversary at this time! Here's the back cover material from the original edition:

"A raunchy gay adventure with a Caribbean setting..."

Alex Connor and Greg Farris are investigative journalists on holiday in Jamaica to escape their usual hectic schedule of worldwide assignments. But their tranquility is shattered by their discovery of a skeleton in the wreck of a light aircraft which went down in shallow waters just off the coast. Reporting the incident to local officials only marks the start of their troubles, and they are soon caught up in car chases, kidnapping, drug smuggling and murder, with events complicated by a hurricane and a bushfire raging across the island. Cover notes from the original printing: "Ice, Wind and Fire introduces the work of an exciting new Australian writer, in a fast-moving and colourful thriller set against the skillfully evoked background of the Caribbean."

REVIEWS: "This rip-roaring and colourful new gay thriller zooms along with a breathless enthusiasm that never flags" — Time Out.

Now, sample chapters are not available yet, but if you've been waiting to get your hands on the ebook for eons, you don't need to read the first 10% ... you've been hanging on for this moment!

If you're not a member of the above party -- bookmark this page and come back in about 48 hours. I'll be out of the office tomorrow, but on Tuesday I'll be making the pages on my own site and at the wiki, and the sample readings will be right there, in both places.

Suffice to say, the new cover looks fantastic ... this is what I imagined when I wrote the book 20 long years ago. Imagine my joy when I saw the new cover proof a few weeks ago. Jade has come to the rescue again. The book is absolutely the same, interior-wise, but the packaging (which left a lot to be desired in the original) is astonishing.

Incidentally, if you want ICE WIND AND FIRE for your Blackberry, iPhone, smartphone ... Tuesday. It's also going to Smashwords, where these formats are provided.

Cheers,
Mel

Further updates from the Keegan Zone

2009-11-10T13:52:00.004+10:30

At last! The post you thought would never actually appear here ...

GROUND ZERO has finally, and I mean finally, shown up in the Amazon engine, as a paperback. It's been month getting there. The proof was delivered and approved weeks ago, and ... well, it's probably that Amazon is fairly overwhelmed with the volume of prep work for Christmas that's going on behind the scenes. Because we've never seen them take so long to process a book through from proof to "buy it here."

Anyway --

...there is it, on PAPER. At last.

I'd intended to have a booklaunch for this one, but the fact is, the book has been out for so long now, and the ebook has been announced, advertised, tweeted, promoted, reviewed, massaged -- it's actually too late to have a booklaunch for GROUND ZERO, so ... we'll have a book punt. That is to say, the book is already out there, floating in mid-stream. It drifted off from its moorings almost unnoticed, and now is gently dragging its anchor in midwater. So let's give it a punt.

Consider it punted. If you've been waiting for the paperback, this is your chance to give yourself a Christmas gift!

So much is happening behind the scenes, one hardly knows where to begin. GLBT Bookshelf is still growing ... I just wish it would grow faster. Why? Because when it's twice the size there will be enough members to raise enough funding to hire a professional programmer and get the whole thing automated! Right now, we're in a kind of twilight zone, with about 500 members, *all* of whom would have to put up a ten-spot to get together the five grand to get the programming done. Not going to happen.

So, as the wiki sloooooowly grows, the amount of work involved in nurturing it, keeping it running smoothly, continues to increase, and increase, yet at the same time the growth curve (the rate of acceleration ... if you know anything about logarithmic curves?? No?? Don't worry about it) has flattened right out. We're riding a plateau right now, with about 10 new members per week. That's not bad at all, but it means another YEAR to get to the 1,000 member mark.

Now, what would make the wiki grow faster? Advertising! But that would also cost more funding than can be raised at this moment, so -- nose to the grindstone, Keegan! Stop being daft, get your head down and do some work. And in fact -- am doing. Am doing.

My apologies if I sound a little "out there" today. The weather is not cooperating. It's 141 degrees Fahrenheit in the courtyard at the side of the house, and if you step away from the a/c, you're swiftly reduced to a slurpy, blubbery mass of semi-congealed goo. This doesn't tend to contribute to sanity and clarity of thought.

Meanwhile, we've FINISHED the new design for the GLBT Bookshelf bookstore. It's part-way based on the Diesel Ebooks model, but with a greater depth of content, and a lot of "free listings," as well as numerous "sponsored ad" spots, with various rates of "oomph factor." They range from a big leaderboard ad which will grab anyone's attention, to "micro-ads" which give a cover and a slogan. Prices will range between $2/month (with a minimum "spend" of $4 ... now, there's a hardship...) and about $12/month for the leaderboard

Here's the plan: funds raised through the advertising on the bookstore are pumped into advertising FOR the bookstore. And we might even register a new domain for this, something like (!) gaybooksonline.com, or gay-books-galore.com, something that even Google, in its infinite density, couldn't fail to understand.

More about this in due course. Right now, we've hit a wrinkle with the OpenX code which handles the actual content placement for the page ... this is a plug-in from an external server and something got stuffed up when we set up the account. It could take a few days to sort it out, but then we'll be off and running.

Right now, I want to thank everyone who's been helping with the Bookshelf -- there's a couple of dozen people whom I'm calling "angels," and they've been amazing, indispensable. THANK YOU!

And I must give a plug to one of my favorite new blogs: Adventures In 3D. If you're missing this, you need to skedaddle over there and check it out. Here's enough to get you interested --!

...all of which brings you about halfway up to date with what's been going on in the Keegan Zone. We're getting there ... slowly but surely. My most fervent wish is for a sudden rush in memberships on the Bookshelf, and then a really, really successful fund-raising campaign, enabling us to hire a programmer, automate the whole shebang ... and I can get back to doing what I used to do. I, uh, used to be a novelist! Really.

I all seriousness, I would like to get back to writing, but I'm also completely committed to GLBT Bookshelf. This project WILL work, even if I have to get out and push.

Cheers.

Mel

DON'T PANIC!!

2009-10-02T08:48:00.002+09:30

Hi guys, don't panic: DreamCraft's ISP, iPower, is having an outtage ... it's under control and will be back up before long. My main website -- Mel Keegan OnLine -- is currently showing a blank page ... doesn't mean the site has been taken down. iPower will be back "up" before long, and my website will go right back up with it.

Sorry for the inconvenience, folks.

ICE WIND AND FIRE ... the cover proof is here!

2009-10-01T14:54:00.003+09:30

Having done several laps of the room without touching the floor, I am now back in contact with the ground, and have command of enough brain cells to blog.

About the ICE, WIND AND FIRE cover, for which I just got the proof. This is the cover I've been seeing all along ... this is what I'd imagined, when I mailed a stack of paper over to GMP, 20 years ago last March or April:

Good golly, will you look at that?! It was done using some new software ... those guys are digital. Totally. They were designed in the computer and are seeing light of day right now, as they're pasted to this blog page! Jade is romping it, with the software -- it's called DAZ Studio 3, and it has to be the most amazing app I've seen in eons.

In fact, Jade just launched a blog -- http://3d-adventures.blogspot.com/ -- which is well worth a look, if you like exotic artwork. The blog is very new, but it's already a thing of beauty. I, for one, will be watching this one unfold. Talk about eye candy?!

The OCR work for the book is 90% finished (in fact, as soon as I hit "publish" on this post, the next items on my agenda are a cup of tea, and a date with the scanner, to get it all done. With the cover designed, it'll be 4 pairs of eyeballs on the proofreading, and then the launch of the ebooks and paperback, in time for the novel's 20th Anniversary.

So, why don't I get to work, and get it done?!

Cheers,
Mel

Updates from The Keegan Zone

2009-09-30T10:30:00.004+09:30

At last -- my long neglected website has had a facelift and a minor rebuild. If you've been trying to find the "Keegan on your phone" type ebooks (those formatted for smartphones, Blackberries and so forth), and have been wondering where in the vaults of Hades they've been hidden -- you'll be relieved to know, my bookstore is now loaded for bear with the salient icons. Also, you can find the new titles right there on the homepage, rather than having to excavate for them...

(Click on the above to see it at 1:1 size ... new titles are up, and you can access the Kindles and smartphone files right there on the first screen you get when you click on a book cover to choose a title.)

So here's the 2009 "look" for the site, with 90 days left in 2009! Brilliant. I know I've neglected the site big time during this year, but seriously -- look at what's been happening with GLBT Bookshelf. Something had to go on the back burner, and my own website was tagged as "can be left till later." In fact, I think I left it a little too long. I'm sure the neglect cost me sales after mid-year, what with titles not being listed and so forth.

So, to make up some ground I'm investing in a small ad campaign .. laying down a few dollars and tracking stats. Doing very nicely so far. I love the Project Wonderful ad server. Targeted visitors for 5c a head, many of whom are turning into customers ...?! It's made in heaven, and I have to take my hat off to these guys. They nailed it. This is how advertising should work.

News re: GLBT Bookshelf is all good: the wiki appears to be virtually running itself right now. No major cockups to repair, everyone making pages and having a great time ... book sales happening, advertising chugging along nicely. Traffic is a constant average of about 5,000 pageloads per day -- double that at a time when we're advertising.

And Keegan is presently content enough with all projects to be starting to look at a new short novel, *and* a Christmas campaign of my own, *and* the imminent reissue of the 20th Anniversary special edition of ICE, WIND AND FIRE --

Speaking of which, I expect to get the cover proof later today. I might even post a second time, if I'm as blown away as I expect to be...

Cheers,

Mel

Ground Zero: five stars!

2009-09-28T10:52:00.003+09:30

Lovely news to start off the day: GROUND ZERO has just been given a five-star review at Rainbow Reviews ... am "tickled pink" as you'd expect. Hence the blog post! So --

Here's the review;
and
Here's the book itself (which is available in about 20 ebook formats, and is due in paperback next month, via Amazon, Target OnLine and so forth).

In other news, ICE, WIND AND FIRE is virtually through the OCR process, and (this is where it gets exciting) the cover is being designed at this moment.

I'm also "in talks" with DreamCraft to become an editor with them in 2010. They're slowly, sloooooowly, making the changeover from multimedia studio to publisher -- apparently there's more money and less gray hair and stomach ulcers in online publishing than in multimedia (big "duh" factor there). Stay tuned for developments ...!

Cheers,
Mel

Adventures in OCR

2009-09-19T10:35:00.006+09:30

As you know, ICE, WIND AND FIRE is going through the scanner at this time (see my previous post about why, and how), and the book will be back out in paperback and ebook form, in time for its own Twentieth Anniversary...

So, the IWF experience is all about OCR.

Now, the OCR process is actually easy; and the software today is virtually foolproof, so long as you scan an a high-enough dpi for the system to know what it's looking at...

The problem is in the hardware.

Hands up, all those people who paid $300 for a scanner in 2002, and having paid that much, don't really want to consign it to the bin?

Now, hands up, all those people who were running Win98 back in those days; and since then they've wandered through XP Home, XP Pro, Service Packs 1, 2, 3, Vista, Service Packs 1 and ... the dreaded SP2.

I have a computer that NASA would have drooled over. This Quad Core, with is 4x 2.4G processors and its 6G of Ram, and its unlimited storage space, would have run Project Apollo and sent Voyager to the planets -- at the same time.

And all it took to knock this paragon of cybernetics flat on its can was --

Vista, Service Pack 2. God alone knows what happened, but as soon as the "update" went through the system forced a re-start for the third time in a row, the computer went haywire. Wouldn't stay online. Wouldn't run the big, complex applications properly. The browser would lock up, and kill the whole thing. Restart (which takes 15 minutes or more). Over and over.

To top it off, Microsoft's security system had, in its infinite wisdom, decided that Lenovo's automatic update facility was a spam generator, and demanded that it be shut off ... so Leonovo was not even able to fix the problem on the fly.

After a week of cussing, bitching and getting very little done, I yelled from Dave from DreamCraft, who went into the system and worked magic on it. Turns out, Vista Service Pack 2 is so bad, Lenovo had to issue a patch to put right the damage; but with the auto-updates turned off at Microsquash's insistence, you had to go to Lenovo and *get* the patch...

Which got the computer back up on its four processors, so I could start to look at the OCR job.

Which brings me back to the point where I started ... if you can remember that far back.

My scanner is a few years old. It worked perfectly under XP Service Pack 1, and even 2. SP3? Nope. Vista? Wellll ... it's sudden death up to a point. To get scans, you have to reinitialize the scanner after every scan.

So here's the routine for the OCR work on ICE, WIND AND FIRE:

Start TOP OCR
Place Page 1 on the scanner
Acquire ... scan ...
20 seconds to get the page into text...
select all and copy;
paste into the open Word document...
UNPLUG the USB cable to the scanner!
Plug it back in.
Twiddle thumbs for 30 seconds...
Star TOP OCR
Place Page 2 on the scanner
Acquire ... scan ...

And by far the most critical part of the process is not the scanning or remembering to turn the page. It's UNPLUG the USB cable, then plug it back in, give it half a minute to reinitialize the scanner, and *then* start the software and acquire the scanner.

Because if you don't, the scanner crashes; it crashes the software; and sometimes the whole thing won't come back up without a reboot on the computer.

Repeat process 242 times.

But it beats the hell out of typing! And I have nothing bit good things to say about a little program called TOP OCR, which is free, and phenomenally accurate. I'm absolutely delighted to give them a plug here. http://www.topocr.com/ ... they do a range of software, too. Imagine being able to capture text with your digital camera, or your phone --! What won't they think of next?

So ... ICE, WIND AND FIRE is going through the scanner, and the process is simple. It's just a little bizarre.

Cheers,
Mel

ICE, WIND AND FIRE heads for the scanner!

2009-09-17T10:24:00.003+09:30

It's been out of print for eons, and it was published 20 years ago, in October. Its Twentieth Anniversary is coming up in a matter of weeks, and as you'd expect, it's been on my mind for a long time, to do a special edition. Especially as most people (2 out of 3) these days prefer an ebook over paper.

So ... I put the word around in my last newsletter: does anyone have an old copy of IWF that they would like to trade?? The deal was, you give us your old one ... we give you the brand new one, with a glorious new cover that you won't be embarrassed reading on the bus ... plus, we'd send the ebook version of it, which will be out virtually as soon as it's scanned and corrected ... plus, pick three other ebooks to receive right now.

Six people responded, and the first to reach us with an offer was a reader from Aus. The book has been received --

I took it over to DreamCraft, and they put it through the big paper cutter to whack the spine off it in one chop. Next: it goes onto the scanner, gets OCR'd, corrected, repackaged, rejacketed, and sent off to the ebook hosts, and Amazon itself.

The process is underway ... I'll keep you posted!

Cheers,
Mel

GROUND ZERO - Launching now!

2009-09-13T16:03:00.009+09:30

2048: the city of Adelaide – the capital of South Australia – has grown, developed, changed. The population has doubled, and the city’s livelihood is high technology. A new university has grown up since the Twenties – Franklin University, in the hills above the city. It’s the home to Doctor Robert Strachan’s Paranormal Studies department, where Lee Ronson and Brendan Scott head the data analysis team.

They’re the best in a difficult business, and they’ll be tested to their limits in an assignment handed to Strachan by Metro’s most senior criminologist, DCS Maggie Jarmin.

It’s winter when the city suffers a series of bizarre murders, robberies at high-tech labs – and a virus which sprang from nowhere. Every two days, a fresh body is discovered … entirely drained of blood. Every two days, a weapons research or energy technologies facility is robbed of a seemingly bizarre list of oddments. Meanwhile, the virus known only by a codename – 2048-3a – is so new, no part of the community is immune and the city is crippled.

Murders, robberies and virus are intimately connected in a mystery that will astonish. Lee Ronson and Brendan Scott find themselves taking point in an investigation filled with unexpected hazard – and equally unforeseen reward.

Sexy very-near-future gay action/adventure from the pen of the maestro.

Read the first 10% of the novel, free!
(Caveat: material in this free sample is not suitable for juniors. Consider youreself warned!)

Novel length: 103,000 words
Rated: R (18+; sex, violence, language)
ISBN: 978-0-9807092-0-9
Publication date: September, 2009
Publisher: DreamCraft.
Price: $9.99 - ebook; $19.95 - paper (due)
Cover: Jade

Current availability: eBook, in many formats. Paperback: due at Amazon in October 2009

eBook as PDF for iLiad, BeBook; PDB for Sony reader and iPhone; MOB for Mobipocket reader and Kindle; LRF for Sony Reader.

For iPhone, smartphone, Sony, Palm, Mobi, Blackberry...

Kindle ebook: $9.99

eBook for PC/Mac -- $9.99:

eBook for Screenreaders -- $9.99:

New Mel Keegan book: GROUND ZERO

2009-08-27T09:02:00.004+09:30

What's this -- another new book from Mel Keegan, in the same year?! In fact, it is -- and Keegan might even be able to get a third one out this side of Christmas (three books in 2009: woah).

First off, I want to hand out kudos: Jade excelled on this one. This cover is outta sight. We are talking about serious delight. I confess to performing a couple of laps of the office without touching the ground, when I received the proof.

So, what's the book about? I'm describing it as "a sexy very-near-future SF thriller, set in the fair city of Adelaide, South Australia, in the winter of 2048, where a couple of gorgeous guys are investigating a series of weird murders and high-tech robberies, which lead them to a specific location, at a certain time ... and a life and death struggle they didn't see coming."

I've had a lot of fun "tweaking" the present through four more decades. How will this city change and grow? How will technology affect us? I've had a blast with this book, and I know it shows in the narrative. The heroes are a couple of beauties, Lee Ronson and Brendan Scott. They're a couple; and one of the advantages of living in '48 is that the GLBT community is fully integrated into society -- prejudice has been left behind.

Once again, I've set the book in winter. I did this with Storm Tide too. Two Aussie gay novels set in winter. Why?? Well, for one thing, I prefer the winter. Also, by 2048, global warming is going to so rough, I have a feeling our summers will be so hot, running around, full-tilt, will be a right royal pain. Also (fact!) everyone expects an Aussie novel to be about beaches and barbies and sweating, and I wanted (and still do) to be different.

The book is about 95,000 words, about 250pp in paperback; and it'll be launching in eBook and paper, so everyone should be happy here.

Sample chapters will be up in a few days, and the eBook will be available next week. The paperback will follow in September. (Speaking of which, the paperback of Winds of Chance will also be coming out soon: I'll update you on that next time.)

So -- yes, Virginia: two new Keegans in the same year, and a possibility (no promises) of a third before Christmas.

Cheers!
Mel

Gay Rights: the more things change, the more they stay the same...

2009-07-29T10:16:00.003+09:30

Some days, you want to stand up and scream? Read this and you might weep ... but they'll be tears of anger:

The names of Seattle municipal employees who belong to an LGBT affinity group will not be released for at least a week, but the city argued yesterday before a King County judge that state law requires it to release the names to an anti-gay activist who has requested the list.

Philip Irvin, a city employee and right-wing activist who claims he’s been barred from attending the club’s meetings because he is heterosexual and opposed to gay rights, has requested that the city release the names of employees who belong to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning and Friends (LGBTQF) Club at Seattle City Light, a municipal electric utility.

Private lawyers for LGBTQF members, have asked the court to order the city not to release their names.

After a hearing yesterday, Judge John Erlick continued a temporary restraining order that blocks release of the names until at least next week when both sides will be back in court. Erlick could decide then what and how much should be released...

Read the full story here:
http://lgbtqnews.com/gaynews/Names-of-gay-city-employees-private-for-now-but-Seattle-argues-they-must-be-released.aspx

Welcome to the launch of THE WINDS OF CHANCE

2009-07-11T14:10:00.003+09:30

Welcome to the launch of Mel Keegan's

LEGENDS: The Fall of the Atlantean Empire

Book One: The Winds of Chance

At last ... fully edited, impeccably proofread, perfectly formatted for your ebook reader, desktop, laptop or netbook ... no typos, no shuffling from one blog post to another ... just read and enjoy, as a fully-featured ebook from DreamCraft!

In an era of storm and chaos, One will be born who will command the Power, but the ancient magic that flows in his veins like blood is his curse as well as his gift.

In this time of cataclysm and ordeal, the upstart Empire of Vayal has placed a bounty on the heads of all scions of the lineage of Diomedas, for the oracle foretold the doom of Vayal, and it rides on the shoulders of the One.

He lives and breathes already, hiding the old city of Zeheft and in the slowly drowning outlands. He is Faunos Phinneas Aeson, still dangerously young -- and he has one dread: the witchfinders of Vayal, who are charged with the hunting of those like himself.

Twenty years, Faunos has hidden and learned, until the gods of sea, storm and earth destroy Zeheft --and one night destiny brings Vayal's young witchfinder to the camps of the water gypsies, where a youth like Faunos should never have been. Galen lies dying; the City of the Sun is celebrating the coming of age of Soran -- althlete, hunter, beautiful as the night,  Vayal's heir and greatest witchfinder ...

The Empire of the Atlantan has one slender chance to survive, and its struggle will begin on this night.

Read the first four chapters, on GLBT Booshelf!

See the Legends art gallery -- art by Jade...

And save 30% ... indulge yourself in the "blog special," right on this page!

Published by DreamCraft
Ebook edition: July 2009
98,370 words
For PC, Mac, Laptop, desktop, netbook, BeBook, iLiad, Sony Reader, Palm Pilot, Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry, Microsoft Reader, smartphones.

Download the PDF for BeBook, Iliad, PC, Mac, desktop, laptop, netbook: $6.95 -- save $3!

Download the Mobi, PDB, epub and LRF files, for  Palm Pilot, Sony Reader, Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry etc., for $10.50

Like to see more of the Mel Keegan novels? Start here:

GLBT Bookshelf launches publicly ...!

2009-06-26T10:46:00.002+09:30

Hi guys ... you must be wondering if this blog has been abandoned -- and after it suffered the Great Google Krunch (had its page rankings zeroed out for no reason whatsoever), it probably wouldn't have surprised you if it was abandoned, right?!

However, it's not. It's just neglected, the reason being that my other project, GLBT Bookshelf, is such a time-gobbler, there's not a minute left after I get done there, to do anything here.

Today, for example, all I have time for is this personal note, and a swift paste-in of the press release which is going out even as I type! We registered a domain for the Bookshelf, and the first advertising campaign has begun. All very exciting, and -- here's the official press release!

Cheers,
Mel

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sara Lansing, Press Secretary
GLBT Bookshelf
Email: saralansing762@gmail.com

GLBT Writers and Readers
Launch Revolutionary Online Community
Gay Indie Literature Industry Unites

Adelaide, South Australia – June 25, 2009 Bestselling gay author Mel Keegan has masterminded a web-based cohesive organization combining the skills of writers, publishers, editors, agents, reviewers and artists in the GLBT community to provide an unprecedented public access portal to independent- and small-publisher titles. GLBT Bookshelf is an online resource designed to counter the perceived discriminatory practices of major players in the book retail scene.

Frustrated by the infamous “AmazonFail” fiasco of early 2009, in which the online retail giant was suspected of attempting to deny GLBT literature the benefits of its promotional systems, Keegan conceived of an online community in which all such systems were circumvented -- replaced by “community promotion” with direct links to authors’ and publishers’ pages.

Keegan is highly motivated toward the success of this venture. “Nothing convinces you to act like being forced to the margins of an already marginalized community. In a way the AmazonFail business was a desperately-needed kick in the pants. Now we have a public contact venue and direct sales channel which is not dependant on the big boys, their promotional tools, their advertising -- not even their search engines.”

In creating GLBT Bookshelf, Keegan set out to answer the needs of most GLBT writers and artists: Create a place for their works to be cataloged, described and sampled, linked to their publishers and independent sales pages -- and promoted by joint funding amounting to peppercorn contributions from community members. In this way, all writers benefit from wide media exposure while no individual foots the advertising bill.

The site takes the form of a “wiki,” where users sign up (free) and a pilot page is created for them. They then use editing tools to flesh out their pages with text, graphics and video. They develop their own virtual website within the wiki, which is built on the EditMe engine, operated by EditMe.com.

Visitors find authors, titles and publishers via multiple, categorized contents lists, as well as the fully-featured Search function. The site features user forums, book reviews, author pages, and directories for publishers and cover artists. A free PDF user’s manual is available, and the public launch is underway.

After just one month GLBT Bookshelf boasts around 200 “authors and others” online. Writers are booking low-cost advertising in high-traffic page locations, months ahead. More than 1000 user-pages have been created, and 500+ books are currently cataloged. Projected growth rates suggest this is the tip of the iceberg.

Find GLBT Bookshelf at www.glbtbookshelf.com, and watch for developments in the months ahead. While it remains early days, Mel Keegan is highly optimistic. “We could be seeing a quiet revolution in GLBT book marketing, in which the community takes its fortunes into its own hands. Technology has freed us from the restrictive practices of the traditional industry -- the Bookshelf is the joint venture of a lifetime. We must evolve new ways of thinking to take full advantage of our opportunities.”

Mel Keegan lives with an eccentric family in South Australia and is the author of more than 25 books. “The Deceivers” won the Stonewall Fact and Fable Award in 2003, while “Death’s Head” was nominated for the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1992. GLBT Bookshelf is the culmination of Keegan’s creative vision.

###

Flotsam and Jetsam, Take Two

2009-05-31T15:01:00.004+09:30

Flotsam and jetsam on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I'm taking a break from other work ... tomorrow is my day off, when the rest of the world is back down the salt mines and saying "I hate Mondays." (I'm not too partial to Mondays either, but they're nicer when you don't have to work on them.)

The news is all wiki news, so I'll be brief. GLBT Bookshelf is growing at a fantastic rate, and looking so good, the boss at EditMe (the company which owns and hosts the engine) has complimented it, and has Twittered about it.

All this is fantastic ... but I have to admit that it's turned into a hell of a lot more work than I thought it would. I still haven't tackled the two remaining HELLGATE books, and tomorrow is July. I want (passionately, desperately) to have the series finished by Christmas, and these are going to be two very, VERY large books... hmmm.

Anyway, the wiki might be a lot of work, but it's also immensely satisfying. It's coming together into something that's already looking superb, and it's only been a month since I started with a blank page.

A few bugs have come out of the woodwork -- for instance, we've discovered the hard way that Mac users can't "shake hands" properly with the interfac, so can't build their own pages. This is damned annoying (and that's a euphemism!), and in the short term, the only solution we've been able to offer is, "so long as you have your materials together, we'll build your pages for you."

So, if there are Mac users out there who are cussing up a storm, don't give up just yet. Get over to the wiki and drop us a line.

In other news, AQUAMARINE has appeared on Kindle: and oddly enough, my Kindle sales have more than doubled lately. They're still not as wide, nor as lucrative, as one would have imagined, given that there are such vast numbers of Kindles out there, but we're coming along...

...That makes eight Keegans available for your Kindle now -- the 9th will be Storm Tide, next week. And then the whole NARC series will "go up" all of a piece -- they'll also go up to Smashwords at the same time, so if you've been waiting for Jarrat and Stone on the phone (and there's a thought worthy of the warm fuzzies), you don't have much longer to wait!

Little else is happening in this neck of the woods. It's just work, same old same old, although I will say that watching the wiki grow is quite exciting.

Cheers,
MK

Fricassee of GLBT author, with fries

2009-05-27T10:07:00.006+09:30

Times must be rough. I mean, times must be so crappy for online business, you and I can only guess at what's going on. And it's hitting Lulu.com so hard, they're out there, now, as a seller, touting their "serious" authors on Amazon ... with a 30% markup on the books. Every Keegan they have is on Amazon now --

Which means the price of their ordinary paperback is shooting skywards at disastrous rates, due to the markup situation:

That's US$29, give or take loose change. Add $16 for postage. Run the conversion to Aussie dollars ... about A$65.

And what about the hard covers? Well there are several, and they come in at about US$46. Plus postage, and run the exchange rate ... A$88.75 or so. Yeeeouch.

Well, Lulu won't be selling many copies with a 30% markup over the Amazon paperbacks, but I guess I appreciate the effort. Also (as rotten as this sounds) this might help sales in a kind of backward-forwards-logicky kind of way. Potential Customer arrives on Amazon, searches on Mel Keegan, clicks 'see all copies' and all the prices are showcased, from the high to the low. S/he finds out s/he can get a paperback of (say) The Swordsman for US$22.50 rather than a hardcover for US$46 ... and the numbers are so widely disparate, the CreateSpace paperback looks comparatively cheap. This fosters the "impulse buy," and -- click.

It's not going to do much for Lulu, though. At these prices, I just can't see people buying. I ask myself, would I? Could I?! However, it could be great for Keegan, because right now, two things come out of this. One: everything I put at Lulu is showing up on Amazon without me doing one damned thing. My listings at Amazon blow out way high, which means, Two: I can call in some favors from pals, have them go in and do "clever" reviews that remark on how you don't have to pay top-dollar for the Hellgates, for instance. You can "buy direct and bank the difference.

Say, what?

In other words, I'll bribe Aricia with chocolate, coffee and Kirby Crow books, and hopefully she'll buzz off over to Amazon, review the Hellgate books (which she loves, if the way I'm getting harassed to finish the series is anything to go by; AG, get off my case while I get the bloody wiki up and running!) ... and in the course of the review, she'll mention that they're far cheaper if you go to Lulu and buy direct.

This whole thing is a barometer of what's going on in the POD industry since the global economic bust-up, and in the immortal words of numerous movies, "well, this can't be good."

Right now, Lulu is masking the desperate necessity to go out there as a seller with an email: "Congratulations! Your novel has been selected to enter the Amazon markeplace." Uh ... yeah, right. They used to charge A$140 for this service, and the fact is, there is no way they can compete out there, with a 30% markup.

Now, with many writers, it might work for them. Not every writer who's at Lulu has managed to get themselves onto Amazon also. I hopes Lulu *does* manage to scare up enough business to keep their oars in the water, because they've been the best in the POD printshop trade -- they have an extremely nice product, and they'll do business with people outside the USA. Lately, however, they have to be feeling the pressure from the CreateSpace competition, and I sympathize. I really do.

However, this is cool --

Ol' Mel just scored an Author Page at Amazon ... which is good going, because this is *not* something you make yourself. You can edit it, but THEY make the page. Which means someone decided it was worth making a page for MK. Right now there isn't a whole lot on it; I need to add rafts of titles (they have 4, most of then 15 years old), a bio (I'm the Invisible Author at present) and so on. But it's nice to have this.

Wiki news? It's growing like the proverbial mushroom. It's also a lot more work than I'd originally hoped. I'm manning the Help Desk, and am not-quite-surprised that people are finding an astonishing variety of ways to make it go wrong! It's not totally intuitive, it's true -- but, honest engine, guys, it's the best one out there. Trust me: after the EditMe engine, it gets progressively more complex. EditMe is simple, streamlined, and fairly inexpensive ... one hell of a lot less expensive than trying to do this with the originally-planned Joomla interface.

There have been about 60 sign-ups since I announced the wiki, and we're waiting for those folks to feed content into their pages. About half have been *very* busy, adding reams of material (thank you, all!) and it's going to be astonishing by the time everyone has added their stuff. Give it a couple more weeks.

The only downside is that it's taking a lot of my time, while my own pages are being neglected; and as for writing ...?! It's not happening! Maybe in June. I've promised HELLGATE, and good golly, HELLGATE it will be.

Cheers,

Announcing GLBT Bookshelf

2009-05-23T14:03:00.007+09:30

You might have wondered where I've been for the last 10 days or so ... and the answer to this would have to be: busy, launching something else!

A few posts ago (before the Wolverine review, I mentioned that I was working on something in the background, and would have a new project to launch soon.

It launched a few days ago, and it's already doing fine. Looking superb:

It's a wiki! Not just a book wiki (or a writing, or publishing, wiki) but specifically a GLBT book wiki, for writers, editors, publishers, reviewers, bookseller and, of course, readers.

It's also a bookstore:

...and with better than 30 writers coming online in the first few days, and many, many more about to join us in the next couple of weeks, this is certainly going to become *the* place to shop for GLBT titles ... rub shoulders with writers, check up on the community's publishing news, find a Beta reader or a cover artist, and -- so on!

Where in the world did this idea come from?

The AmazonFail three-ring circus was actually the trigger. I blogged a little about it here: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2009/04/amazon-apoloigizes-profusely-hands-up.html

...in fact, I just don't/can't believe it happened as a result of human error. I have the strongest intuition that it was a covert attempt to "filter out" content that, frankly, various pundits high up in the Amazonian stratosphere, where the Board of Directors convenes, would rather not see on Amazon. Or anywhere else for that matter.

There are numerous reasons for company directors to want to see GLBT books out. They're not quite the thing you want your eight year olds stumbling into accidentally. They're inclined to make "GLBT" sound actually legitimate to the ears of older teens who know they've grown up gay and are in the process of "guilting themselves straight." And of course, since we're all going to burn in hell for our sins, we have to be saved from ourselves ... it's the only decent thing to do, evangelically speaking. Amazon lives in the States, and ... 'nuff said. (Old Glory flutters proudly over the Land of God. Oh, dear.)

Anyway, to cut to the chase: I've been aware for a long, long time that there remains a high degree of discrimination in online culture. Now, one can shrug off (or sigh off) the snarky remarks you see in YouTube comments, and so forth, as being not worth the pixels it takes to display them.

(Example: Person A uploads a video of Irish dancer Michael Flatley, Person B responds with, "Amazing! The man is absolutely fantastic, never seen anything like it!" And something (god knows what) makes Person B add, "except for th fact hes gay ha ha ha lol" (and you notice the typo, the lack of punctuation, and the vapid 'ha ha ha' and 'lol' -- which are supposedly one's permit to do and say anything in cyberspace ... because it's funny. Sorry guys: not laughing.)

That kind of stupidity is something you have to live with. I wish there were a magic trick to make it vanish, but, people being what they are, we're stuck with it, permanently. However, when mega-business -- like Google, like Amazon -- decides to filter you out, it would be perfectly possible for them to make vast swathes of the world literally vanish.

Many of us (indie writers and publishers, for a start) have very little more visible profile than our online presence. Take this away from us, and we're as good as invisible. And that can't be good.

My hackles tend to rise when this sort of thing happens. I get ... motivated.

We need a hedge, I thought, against possible (probable?) filtering. Because the reason Amazon got caught is that the technology wan't quite up to the task. Yet. The reason Google has been clearly seen, filtering gay content in broad daylight, is because the programming is a few years short of where it needs to be, to get the job done invisibly.

Fast forward to 2011 or 2012. They try it again, and because of the exponential development rates in the realms of code ... yup, it works. GLBT writers and publishers will vanish off the face of the Internet --

Unless we have a hedge of some kind against this: we get together and make a noise. We develop a community that's big enough to generate its own weather patterns. We kick in about a buck apiece and buy the advertising we need to make us high-visibility...

In which case, Google, Amazon and the rest can do a lot less to hurt us than they could, say ... now. Most of us are still shockingly isolated; small groups have knotted together, but there still isn't anything remotely like the vast community which would be needed to ensure immunity to discrimination. The "power of community" blows me away. So --

The first platforms I researched were Joolma, SQL and their accompanying Apache -- and these are wonderful. They're also bloody expensive. I did look at this. I also passed on, when I saw the pricetag and the time lag. How's six months and upwards of five grand sound? Doubtless, about November we'd have launched a GLBT Bookshelf that looked a lot like Amazon itself! But who's going to put up the investment capital?! (Why are you all looking at me, suddenly?!)

So... the whole thing turned into a wiki.

If you can blog, you can wiki. In fact, even if you can't blog, you can wiki. It's no more complex than the Blogger interface ... and it's a lot of fun.

Writers are coming aboard rapidly, and I hope we're also going to attract cover artists, editors, reviewers, publishers, booksellers. It's exciting. It's very exciting. It's a place where we can not only blog and talk, but post articles, artwork galore, and (better yet) SELL our books.

Now, there are lots of book community sites around, like Author's Den and Book Hitch. But "GLBT" is yet another careful quarantine zone at these sites. In fact, Author's Den states emphatically that they don't want, won't have, "adult content" on their site, becausesaid site is open to children. That's fair enough, too, but ... where does it leave GLBT writers, whose content is always lumped in with the "adult" stuff, even when it's mild by comparison (because we're going to burn, and oughtta be saved from ourselves) ...? And also, there's no provision for using Author's Den, Book Hitch, Shelfari and so on, as a bookstore --

Got it covered, guys. GLBT Bookshelf has a bookstore designed in, and you're exhorted to get your affiliate code from Amazon, B&N, Diesel, wherever, and plug it right into the pages that are created and maintained by yourself.

From my perspective, the whole thing is the answer to a prayer.

Go over there, have a look, and ... join us. Register (FREE), and log in to start making your own pages. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Wolverine: Keegan's take on a movie that's being bashed

2009-05-13T17:05:00.008+09:30

The reviews of Wolverine are so bad, they're intriguing. In fact, I found them irresistible. How in the hell could a bunch of extremely talented people (including Stan Lee and Hugh Jackman) get it so incredibly wrong?

So I went along to the 2:00pm session yesterday at the Megaplex.

Keegan's verdict? For godsakes stop reading the reviews, go and see the bloody movie, and you will discover several things.

The CG effects are nowhere near as poor as the critics are blathering on about. A couple of the shots look a little bit "fake" by the standards of 2009, but in 1999, the same shots would have blown your brains out. (Get real here: a couple of less-than-perfect CGI shots do not make unmitigated crap out of an entire movie. )

There are two, maybe three, genuinely wobbly bits in the plotting. (Get real, again: it's a comic book. Turn a blind eye to the wobbly bits and concentrate on the important element: Hugh Jackman is the sexiest thing on two legs.) Unless you are terminally heterosexual, and male, or a terminally hetero female in lust for a pixie like Elijah Wood, there is no way in any world that you could call the movie "dull" or "dry." In fact, you may need a bib, because you'll spend just under two hours in a full-on drool.

The plot is NOT "overly complex," and my guess is that the critics who employed this old chestnut as a reason to smack Wolverine with a D or an F spent one half of the time texting and the other half running out to the bathroom and/or parking lot for a smoke. The plot is not complex at all, so long as you're wide awake. The same bozo-grade critics levelled the identical lame criticism at the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Guys, let me give you a tip: drink less at the press meeting before you go to the theater, and stop blaming the movie after you anaesthetised yourself on several gallons of free champagne. I hope you had the hangovers you damned-well deserve.

And no, I am NOT blind to the fact that a couple of the CG shots are less than staggering by current standards; and the plot has a hole you could drive a Mack truck through. However, Hugh Jackman acted his a$$ off, and lived in the gym while making this opus. The results are somewhat spectacular. And in Keegan's not so humble opinion (which comes to you complete with fresh bib), he's more than enough to make up for the shortcomings of the rest of the movie. And I know, I'm biased. I paid for the movie ticket (while critics get theirs free!) so I'm allowed a degree of bias. I bought the bias option with my ten bucks.

Now, let me give you the POSITIVES that 1001 critics are falling over themselves to utterly ignore ... and it beats hell out of me why they do this:

Fully 95% of the CG work is just fine.
A solid cast gives sterling performances.
The dialog is, on the whole, realistic and believable.
The film offers unexpected, and welcome, humor.
The cinematography is stunning, with marvelous wilderness locations.
The sets are extremely atmospheric and evocative.
It's an ACTION movie, hence the ACTION sequences, and there are plenty ... would you go to the ballet and then call it rubbish because of all the dancing?!
The SOUND balance is crystal clear, sharp and admirable. I never missed a word.
The FOLEY work is spot-on. Most of the bozo-brigade critics who're currently rubbishing this movie wouldn't even know what the word "foley" means.
The film's visual editing is crisp and clear. There is NEVER any ambiguity in the denouement, which is more than can be said for numerous movies which have been lauded by the same critics.
The film score, or soundtrack music, is extremely good...
... and did I mention that Hugh Jackman is the sexiest thing on two legs?

So ends Keegan's verdict. I'm giving the movie 4 out of 5 stars, because you certainly can drive a tank through the most major hole in the plot. For myself, I don't actually give that much of a "stuff" about a couple of off-kilter CG shots; and the remainder of the production is of a very high standard.

So ... why all the rotten reviews?

There are many reasons, I'm sure. Far too many action movies have jaded the critics, since the early 1980s, when Arnie and Sly got into overdrive. Then again, is it vaguely possible that US film critics harbor a deep-seated, possibly even unconscious resentment about the fact that Hugh Jackman is an Aussie, born and bred? More than a decade of massive special effects movies have made some people so "CG happy" that when a shot or two fall short of the expected standard, they bin the entire movie ... which would be like dumping the whole live symphony orchestra performance in the bin because a few individual musicians hit blue notes here and there. I do believe that certain critics have just had enough, more than enough, of these big action movies, and would much rather be watching something else (which is fair enough; I just wish they'd bugger off and review something else, and leave someone who still enjoys actioners to cover them) ... and lastly, I wonder how many of these critics watched the movie with their partner going consistently gaga over Jackman for two hours in the seat beside them, and growled at the screen, "I'll get you for this, you Aussie bastard, if it's the last thing I do!" The pen being mightier than the claw in our own world, they unsheathed their own ballpoint weapon and did their worst -- secure in the knowledge that professional motion picture folk never, never ever respond to critics, no matter what stupidity is printed. Such is the etiquette of the trade. If you're a movie critic, you have an official license to literally babble through your hat and say what you like. And my gods, they do.

Lastly, there's also safety in numbers. When everyone else is calling a certain movie crap, you run the risk of not being "one of us," if you tell the truth and say you enjoyed the hell out of it, and could clearly see the 85% of the movie that was brilliant -- as well as the faults!

Well Keegan -- being Keegan -- is giving Wolverine four out of five stars, and is going to go see it again next week.

And no, I don't like movie critics.

To Hugh Jackman, if anyone significant sees this and forwards it: Cheers, mate. You did good.

Ciao for now,

The new interview is up at the Smashwords Blog...

2009-05-12T10:03:00.003+09:30

Many thanks to Mark Coker for giving me the opportunity to speak at length about many topics which surround the GLBT publishing (and self-marketing) industry. Doing the interview made me stop and think, quantify what I known, and hammer it into a useful model:

Exploring the Outer Reaches of Literature with Author Mel Keegan

I do know that a good number of writers and self-marketers read this blog, and I'd like to exhort you to go over to Mark's for the interview. Keegan being Keegan, there's some interesting stuff in there ... it's also tremendously interesting to take time out and look around the Smashwords blog itself. Shows you how far you can come, in a single year; http://blog.smashwords.com/

In other news, more Keegans are appearing in the Amazon engine, with "Lulu Press" as the seller. Stopover (one of the NARC books) has appeared in the last few hours; and if they're going to be out there marketing one NARC book, they'll do all five. This is incredibly odd -- to reiterate, I have no agreement with them, to facilitate this, have signed nothing, know nothing about this! To use Lulu as a springboard to get to Amazon used to cost you A$140 per book -- and technically, still does. I haven't paid a bean. What goes on? I have the strongest, unhappiest suspicion that Lulu is out there touting for business because the marketplace has "slowed down" to critical levels.

What can you say? I wish them well. If they can drive sales to the Lulu printshops (in other words, get them away from CreateSpace, which is Amazon's wholly owned subsidiary, and until extremely recently was the only easy and affordable way to get to Amazon, for a writer living in a Country Not America), then more power to them. So long as Keegan gets the royalty, I don't have a syllable to say in opposition. Go for it, kids.

And now ... back to work. I'm about a week off the launch of a brand-new project which is going to take everyone by surprise. It's not just good, it's looking great -- and it goes back to that Bright Idea I had at the time of the AmazonFail debacle.

Give me one more week -- perhaps less -- and watch out for a newsletter!

Cheers,
MK

Updates from Keegan Country

2009-05-11T16:14:00.005+09:30

The plot continues to thicken, as THE SWORDSMAN and DANGEROUS MOONLIGHT appear in different editions, at Amazon, from Lulu.com, without me signing anything, paying anything, agreeing to anything. O...kay.

Suffice to say, I have zip, zero, nada, nil as per any idea of what goes on; but I have a sneaky feeling I might just know. And alas, it ain't good news.

Lulu is out there touting for business, right? They're actively pushing books -- mine, among those of numerous other writers, I could guess. They're doing it for nothing?? This can only mean that they, too, are feeling the recession biting, and are actively out there, selling books -- which is something they never did before.

Times are getting tougher, guys.

And audiences are getting harder to please: good gods, have you seen the WOLVERINE reviews?!!! I don't think I've ever seen a movie pounded so hard. Now, I haven't seen the movie -- and might not get the chance to, before the DVD comes out, but I really don't believe any company could spend a couple of years and about fifty million dollars on a project, and have it be as bad as the critics are saying...

Fans of the many comic books in which Wolverine has featured will rue what has become of their favourite characters.
Falling somewhere between noble failure and modest success, 'Wolverine' is ultimately a generic Summer film actioneer that will quickly be forgotten
If, in real time, the dull X-Men Origins prequel actually were the first X-Men film produced, it might have been the last.
The amount of muscle on display is the film's most remarkable aspect, unless you count how unforgivably dull it is.
...A story line that isn't emotionally involving and action sequences that for the most part aren't that exciting, presented within a story that's full of potholes.
X-Men Origins is really a series of action sequences, the usual mix of bangs, chases and fights, held together by a plot so predictable that you get no points for guessing right.
It's dull, bone-crushing, special-effects stuff, of interest only to hardcore fans who've probably read it all in Marvel comics.
Each CGI set piece erases distance, space, weight, gravity and wit. It’s empty, soulless action -- visual noise.
Everything that happens seems to play out as if following a checklist. It’s Paint by Numbers: The Movie.

Eep. Could it really be that bad? Could it really be that hard to sit in the dark, eating, for two hours, while watching Hugh Jackman smoldering all over the screen and rippling his abs? Maybe these reviewers are allergic to muscles.

Ciao for now,
MK

Wondrous things in the CyberWorld leave Keegan scratching head

2009-05-10T15:24:00.009+09:30

Curiouser and curiouser. Anyone who's "in the pipeline" knows that when you whack a book onto Amazon, you can either go with an outside printshop -- like Lulu.com, if you're in a "foreign" country (few other print on demand companies will work with us "foreigners" ... for instance, forget about Lightning Source and Booklocker) -- or you can go through Amazon's wholly owned subsidiary, CreateSpace, and the road to Amazon, though long and soporific, is also automatic.

So far, so good: here's where the plot thickens. And I'll tell you, you could stand a spoon up in this one!

If you use Lulu.com as your printer, you pay a very hefty whack of cash to get a global distribution package for your title, which gets you onto the Big A. It costs about A$140 (US$100) for this service -- which I never optioned, because I have no need of it, and (!!) because in any case it's only available to writers residing in the USA! Being downunder, I always curled my lip at this as yet another door closed in the face of "foreigners" ... even though I admit, it didn't want to go through it in any case. Ahem. (Suppose I'd wanted to.)

So, there is no way in any world that one of my books could show up on Amazon as PUBLISHED by DreamCraft, and SOLD by Lulu, right?

You'd think so. But something weird is going on -- click this image to get the full-size, readable one, and notice where it says, Seller: LULU PRESS.

And meanwhile, here's the listing from lower down the page in the details:

No mistake there. Published by DreamCraft.

Does anyone have the slightest inkling as to what what's going on? Lulu (the printer!) is out there selling at least one of my books, which is something that isn't supposed to happen, can't happen, couldn't happen until the day arrived when Satan skated to work --

Anyone looked outside lately?

As I began: curiouser and curiouser. Not that I'm complaining ... so long as I get paid, if they want to get on the stick and sell copies for me -- kids, go for it!

In fact, let's give them a little help. If you've been wanting the classic second edition cover but didn't want to order from Lulu direct, well, order from Amazon and Lulu can ship it (which is exactly what they'd do if you ordered from Lulu direct!

Here you go:

And speaking of things Amazon, take a squizz at this:
http://seattlest.com/2008/06/18/amazons_vanishing_buy_buttons.php

Goog golly.

Cheers,

Swordsman in review ... so nice!

2009-05-04T16:41:00.003+09:30

Just a quick post here to link to the wonderful review of The Swordsman that's appeared at Rainbow reviews:

The Swordsman by Mel Keegan

...marvelous review, for which I'm most grateful.

Behind the scenes, I'm very, VERY busy with a new project which will be sprung on you soon. This one is exciting -- it's also extremely time consuming, which is why I'm blogging less lately. There's only 24 hours in day, and I have to sleep. Occasionally.

Back to work!

Ciao for now,
MK

Adios, Ma Google!

2009-05-04T16:16:00.004+09:30

Get ready to wave bye-bye to Google ... and frankly, good riddance. Speaking personally, I've had a very rough deal from the Big G, and will be extremely glad when it's bumped off the stage, and something newer, better ... stronger and more sentient comes along -- which is due later in the year. Like this:

An invention that could change the internet for ever

Revolutionary new web software could put giants such as Google in the shade when it comes out later this month. Andrew Johnson reports...

Sunday, 3 May 2009

The biggest internet revolution for a generation will be unveiled this month with the launch of software that will understand questions and give specific, tailored answers in a way that the web has never managed before.

The new system, Wolfram Alpha, showcased at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet's Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.

Although the system is still new, it has already produced massive interest and excitement among technology pundits and internet watchers.

Computer experts believe the new search engine will be an evolutionary leap in the development of the internet. Nova Spivack, an internet and computer expert, said that Wolfram Alpha could prove just as important as Google. "It is really impressive and significant," he wrote. "In fact it may be as important for the web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose.

Tom Simpson, of the blog Convergenceofeverything.com, said: "What are the wider implications exactly? A new paradigm for using computers and the web? Probably. Emerging artificial intelligence and a step towards a self-organising internet? Possibly... I think this could be big."

Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as "how high is Mount Everest?", but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.

The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out "on the fly", according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in "10 flips for four heads" and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.

...read the full feature here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/an-invention-that-could-change-the-internet-for-ever-1678109.html

...It's brilliant. Admittedly, Wolfram Alpha still an uneducated genius at this point (read the article!) but ... how long does it take a genius with a mind the size of the WWW to soak up, cross-reference and comprehend the entirety of human culture?

Give them six months. And then, Google will have to compete with the OTHER thousand pound gorilla in its forest. And at that point, the question will be, "Who's in charge?"

The rot didn't set in at Google till after the original business was sold off, and a bunch of dollar-greedy morality police got hold of it. All the money grubbing, the cheating of publishing partners in the Adsense program, the filtering-out of content the high-mucky-mucks in the Boardroom don't like (anything gay, or gay-friendly, for a start). All this is the result of human intervention in the search engine's protocols...

And the same thing could happen to the Wolfram Alpha model. If money-grubbing morality police get hold of it, it'll just do a faster, smarter, better job of cooking the books and skewing the internet off kilter --

In fact, in a worst case scenario, Google will buy it, or controlling shares of it, and promptly reshape it in the Big G's image, so that more money sluices home to The Goog, advertising continues to stuff the web like a Christmas turkey, some people get ripped off royally, and others vanish off the face of the internet because they've been filtered out of existence.

But maybe, just maybe, the owners and developers of the new search engine will have a leeetle bit more integrity, and won't sell out. Settle for twenty billion dollars instead of shooting for the cool half trillion. Maybe the "self organizing internet" is something that can actually come to pass. Maybe the self-styled morality police won't be able to get in there and organize the internet from the standpoint of Creationism, Republicanism, or some brand of 'ism which seeks to shape the thinking patterns of the whole globe in its own image.

We can hope. I, for one, am hoping! You know me ... the eternal; optimist.

Ciao for now,
MK

That bloody pulp mill project is back!

2009-04-29T09:02:00.004+09:30

The Gunns pulp mill project is rearing its haggish head again. Click on this to see the campaign ad full-sized and readable:

for more info, or to be involved, go here:
https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/NoPulpMill&id=622

gay ebooks: adventures in bookseller country

2009-04-25T13:02:00.007+09:30

I have my bookseller's hat on today. I won't morph back into a writer for at least another week. This week, and for the next 4-6 days (in a lull from work), I'm a bookseller. And the challenge is ...

How the blithering heck do you draw readers' attention to new formats for old titles?

It's dead easy to draw their attention to books that are new; but unless you're a hack producing a brand spanking new 35,000 word shortie very month, your basic list won't change appreciably over six months. What's changing is the formats in which books are available, and the venues they're available from.

And readers don't seem to notice.

So here's the experiment: a bloody great icon that actually SHOUTS a fair bit. Check this out:

Amazing what you can do in 84k, isn't it? Anyway, this whopping great attention-grabber is getting pasted to the browser pages for each of the books as they appear at Smashwords and Kindle -- I'll get around to Mobipocket later. Just don't have the time to get to it right now.

And when you "click here to buy..." you're teleported to a new page in my bookstore with this header -- which again is shouting, deliberately:

Interestingly, I've had readers in Finland, new Zealand and Japan who downloaded all of LEGENDS to their iPhone. That was amazing and gratifying --

Speaking of LEGENDS: it's being hammered into shape right now. Proofread (at last!) and formatted. It'll be on its way to market in about ten days, I do believe. It wasn't until I'd assembled the whole thing into one file to export it to the DTP program that I realized how long it was. According to Microsquash, it runs close to 94,000 words. Which is a lot longer than I thought it was.

Anyway, today I'm a bookseller, and while I've got this particular hat on, I guess I can talk a little bit about the new bookstore which is being designed right now. It's going to be very slick indeed ... SQL and Joomla and Apache whatever, and so forth. I've been looking at designs, and was a little bit drawn to this one:

That one is a template from a company called vjtemplates (http://www.vjtemplates.com/) -- and they have some great templates, but they all suffer from the same problem: they're "off the shelf." Nothing exactly fits what I want and need, at the same time as being fairly expensive (A$125 or so). The above template is not bad, but I find it too bright, too "in your face" for my own tastes. Which isn't to say it's not a great design -- it is. It's just not for me.

So there's nothing for it: the new bookstore is going to get done from scratch. DreamCraft to the rescue. Joomla, SQL, Apache and ... ummmmm. Right. It's also going to get a new domain to live on (or does one live IN a domain?)

This is where I am today. The bookseller has taken over, and I admit, I remain uneasy about the situation with Amazon. I went to the Big A t'other day and searched on "gay romance." I paged down through 200 books, and not a single Keegan title was anywhere in the list. Meaning, if you don't know who Keegan is, you won't be finding me at Amazon by browsing!

Lately, I've been spending a few hours here and there analysing traffic stats (Statcounter is marvelous for this), working out where readers and coming from, how the find me, what course they navigate around the sites and blogs, and what they buy in the end. It's actually extremely interesting.

Here's the info that fell out of the data: over 90% of all my sales are "driven" from my own pages. Not Amazon, not Kindle, not nuthin'. Almost all sales are coming from my own pages.

Okay, then. That's the ball I need to take up and run with. It was suggested to me a looong time ago that Amazon was a great place to be in, because people would find you by browsing. But I don't think the pundits who say this know too much about how "adult content" books are squirrelled away into the darker, dustier corners of the search engine! Thanks to the balls-up of a couple of weeks ago, everyone knows that something is not quite right at the Big A.

Since then, I've been working on a way to ... well, not to "beat the system," but to make the system work FOR me, instead of against me. I mentioned on Live Journal a little while ago that I had a Bright Idea --

It looks even brighter now than it did then, guys. Seriously, stay tuned. It'll take a wee while, because it's a lot more complex than I'd imagined, but I'm into something good here.

Gotta go back to work now, so --

Ciao for now,
MK

Keegan's Week: "proper" gay books. Uh huh.

2009-04-24T12:12:00.010+09:30

I fielded a weird question the other day -- and the worst part of it was, the person was absolutely serious, and intended at least half of it as a sincere compliment. "Your work is so wonderfully written," she said, "why don't you write proper books?"

And I went blank. Utterly. For about ten seconds. You might have thought I was having a "senior moment," but in fact the processor was whirring, trying to make sense if the question, only to land back at the hurdle --

What the bloody hell is a "proper" book?

Of course, what she meant was, why don't I write heterosexual books? Or, to slightly rephrase the question so it'll make sense to the rest of us, "Your work is so wonderfully written, why do you write gay books instead of proper ones?"

Deep breath, now. Be calm. Count to ten. In Klingon.

Well ... who in the [expletive deleted] says that gay books aren't proper books? The next thing these people will be saying is, John Barrowman isn't a "proper" singer or actor. And Tchaikovsky wasn't a "proper" composer, and T.E. Lawrence wasn't a "proper" army officer, and Nijinsky wasn't a "proper" dancer. Or that gay people are not "proper" people. And I'm Not. Going. To. Go. There. Period.

Be happy: have a nice day, yes?

In fact, the properness of gay books is increasing greatly -- not exponentially, but nicely. It turns out that 10% of the male half of the population is gay anyway; and about another 15% on the male side of the fence is ac/dc by inclination, which makes 25% of the part of the population that shaves and dreams of power tools would enjoy a gay narrative ... and about 25% of folks on the female side of the fence like to read gay books, for boatloads of reasons. Some are themselves gay; some are straight enough to fancy the hell out of beautiful guys; some get a kick out of the homoerotic; some love a romance but don't like guy/gal romance, because it almost always seems like the gal is getting s/exploited. Some are "modern age" enough to see as far as the romance, and genuinely don't believe gender matters.

That's 25% of the population as a whole, folks.

So, for every million literate people who read, there's 250,000 who would enjoy a gay book, in the highly unlikely event they were ever in a position to see one, and have the opportunity to actuallt buy it.

That's eight times the population of Fairbanks, Alaska. It's about equivalent to the entire population of South Australia that lives outside the metropolitan area. It's about 8.5% of the entire population of New Zealand (I think; if I'm wrong on this one, it won't be by much -- and feel free to give me a kick).

In a country like Australia with something like 20 - 24 million souls, depending on who you talk to, and who's being counted into the complement, you probably have something in the order of about 16 million literate adults, and about 12 million who actually read --

So, three million Aussies would enjoy a gay narrative, if they were allowed to make the reading choice, at the store, or wherever they get their books.

But if you walk into a bookstore down here and look for gay books, you'll soon start to wonder if anyone's publishing them at all. And the reason is that every bookstore down here is an outlet for a chain. It's B&N, it Dymocks, it's A&N, it's the book department in Kmart or WalMart or Target or Myer, or whatever.

No gay books. Why? Because gay books do not sell enough copies, per title, to attract the attention of the distributor. Each individual title might sell 400 right across this country, IF they were shelved with the generosity or impunity with which het books are shelved. But they're not shelved with such catholic generosity...

Why? Many reasons. Management is terribly aware of minors and the elderly, who form a significant part of their customer base; they're equally aware of the religious minority, for whom the "god" books are shelved alongside yoga, holistic food and Relaxation for Uptight Dummies.

Not wanting to offend anyone, Management literally hides the gay books: top shelves, bottom shelves, dark corners, out of reach, out of sight. And -- what a surprise! -- the books sell poorly.

Gay books are seldom advertised on magazine pages or in windows where the average reader would see them. Same reason for not putting a nice, big ad in the window down at Dymocks. And as per magazine advertising --

Do you know what an ad in a major literary magazine costs?!! An ad to run in one issue would put about $2 on the checkout price of each copy of a gay title! Not going to happen, people. (Few mainstream, print media book reviewers will review a gay book ... saaaame reason. Minors, the elderly, and the God Squad.)

So ... gay books don't sell bigtime, and another reason for this is that they're double-marginalized. They're already in the "gay" category at any online bookstore. Then, they're ... what? Gay-SF, or gay-fantasy, or thriller, or western, or historical, or romance, or erotica, or ...

Uh huh. Double-marginalized. So you have someone saying, "Gee, I'd love a new gay book, but I don't want SF, and I've read enough breeches-rippers (the gay equivalent of the bodice-ripper) to last me a lifetime. Uh ... I don't like westerns. I'm not in the mood for a murder mystery..."

Double jeopardy. The gay writer has two hurdles to get over, not one, and if each hurdle is a "filter," then gay books get filtered twice, before any sale is made.

Meaning, a hell of a lot of gay books are sold, but not that many of any individual title.

Another thing that's killing gay book sales, at least in this country, is that books are so expensive. Small printruns make for expensive books, and few people can afford to buy many, when the damned things are $32 and upwards. A lot of readers are landing at the book exchanges, where you can trade something you've read and pay $2 to the store, and get something you haven't read before --

Guess what doesn't often get traded? Right. Gay books are seldom traded (for which the reasons are many), so you probably won't be able to pick up a new one at the book exchange ... and even if you could, the publisher and the writer wouldn't know a thing about it.

Here is where it gets mildly interesting. A few years ago, when readers were still in the habit of sending a few words of feedback, I used to hear that someone had picked up one of my books at a book exchange in, say, Madrid or Munich or Manchester -- Europe, where gay books are treated with a lot more generosity by booksellers. Secondhand dealers in Europe will trade in gay books, where many (most?) of our local dealers are still not quite "there" yet -- inordinately concerned about the minors and elders and religious bods ... which is no bad, thing, in reality. Taking care of kids, and not giving cardiac episodes to others is a laudable goal in itself.

Fact is, the Internet is a far better place to do business. The people who find you deliberately came a-hunting. One seldom has to deal with folks who arrived on a gay page by accident.

There's also a "book swap" subculture out there, where books are changing hands in every direction...

And a writer has to wonder how many sales he or she has actually achieved. Say, 5,000 or 10,000 when the book was new (depending on the printrun -- and they're all over the place, there's no "norm"), plus an extra 1,000 or 2,000 per reprint ... and then, the swaps, the trades, the book exchanges -- for decades.

So, actual "sales" might be way ahead of anything the publisher knows about. Think about that. Nice. I mean, we don't earn royalties on the swaps and trades, but it's so nice to know that new people are buying the old books.

The last thing that makes it tough for gay writers is the sheer volume of the competition. It's astonishing. There are so many gay titles being published these days -- it's a a lit-fest. Heaven on a stick for anyone who has an ebook reader gizmo -- most of these books are available digitally, thank heavens. Makes them reachable for Aussies and Kiwis, because there's no shipping to pay. Postage across the Pacific. Yee-ouch!

Speaking of ebooks and gizmos, I'm still looking for just the right deal on a bit of hardware to do the job, and my hunt has brought me to this quarry:

The Acer Aspire One netbook. It's at least as functional as even the most advanced dedicated ebook reader, with a color crystal brite screen, and a keyboard that some reviewers say is a joy to use ... and it's less than half the price of a good, dedicated ebook reader. On sale, you can get the thing for A$350, which is just about right for my budget. So my fingers are itching to reach for the credit cards... 8" screen, weighs under a kilo, like handling a hardcover book. Boots up in 8 seconds, loads a browser in another 10, wireless, 2 card readers, 3 USB ports and VGA out. And you have GOT to like that. Yes, I know, the battery life is about 2.5 hours, running the browser and modem with the screen at 60% brightness. Now, turn the screen down to 30% and run just the Mobipocket reader on the local system -- no connectivity, no graphics. Ebook reader. Check. Should go about 4 hours between recharges, even with the silly little 3-cell battery that ships with the machine; and that'll do fine.

Still on the subject of ebooks -- I've been busy in the last week, making more available at Smashwords:

$10.95, for iPhone, Mobipocket, Palm Pilot, and more...

$10.95, for iPhone, Mobipocket, Palm Pilot, and more...

...so, there you are. Proper books for your proper ebook reader. Proper gay books, at that. Somebody try telling John Barrowman that he isn't a "proper singer," and his albums are not "proper" albums, because when he sings a lovesong, he's singing about a guy he adores not a gal. I'm not saying JB would bestow a black eye; but if he did, I do believe Scott and Mel would be standing there shaking hands, patting backs and saying, "Well done, mate."

I mean -- seriously!

Cheers,
MK

Gay ebooks galore ... and loving it!

2009-04-19T14:04:00.006+09:30

New titles at Smashwords -- if you've been hankering after your favorite Keegans in a format to suit your iPhone, you've come to the right place!

US$10.95 for iPhone, Palm Pilot, Kindle, Mobi and more!

US$10.95 for iPhone, Palm Pilot, Kindle, Mobi and more!
The intention is to have 12 or so titles at Smashwords by the end of April ... and then, a major newsletter. I the same time frame, there NARC and HELLGATE series will be going up to Kindle, and the whole shebang will be online at Mobipocket. Then --

We'll be launching a new bookstore. This is the exciting part, and I don't want to say too much about it at this point, because it's very, VERY complicated. But I will add this: it's the most exciting thing that's happened in a rather long time.

Oh -- there are five Keegans at Smashwords now (a good glbt book haul for your smartphone), and the next titles planned to go up are Aquamarine; Fortunes of War; The Deceivers; Storm Tide; Windrage; Tiger, Tiger; The Winds of Chance ... and then I'll catch my breath.

Seriously -- it's easy. This generation of the "Meatgrinder" is like clockwork. Books slide into the Smashwords catalog without a hiccup -- it's easier than Mobi, and I thought that was simple.

One more thing that should be of interest to both writers and readers:

Jim and Tim Hutchinson have a fine idea: One Chapter Challenge, wherein authors park an attractive sample of their work on a new website that's being robustly marketed. For writers, this looks like an excellent opportunity. For readers too -- the theory is, you'll get saddled with a lot less dross if you can read a swatch of the book before you lay down your plastic! Most writers are offering a chapter or five online on their webpages ... but in its infinite wisdom, Amazon has no such facility. You have to buy "cold." Bad idea, that. So I was in at One Chapter Challenge with The Swordsman, Nocturne and Twilight, and am wishing the brothers Hutchinson all the best in the project. It deserves to succeed. How about a little support, guys? Check it out!

Gay vampires on the phone!

2009-04-17T15:24:00.004+09:30

On your phone, specifically. On your iPhone, that is. And not any old gay vampires ... Mel Keegan's, uh, gay vampires.

In fact, NOCTURNE and TWILIGHT are at Smashwords as of this writing, which means these books are now available for Palm Pilot, Sony Reader, any device that can work with the Mobi Reader app, and of course -- Stanza, which your iPhone is going to love.

Gay vampires on your phone. Seriously!

This is something I have come to envy keenly: folks who have an ebook reader. I don't have one, because you could buy a used car for the price of the dadblasted things, in this country. I'm starting to look at a thingamajig called a netbook. They're about A$600 here, and all I want the thing to do is display ebooks and maybe YouTube videos, and possibly play music.

And if there were any remotest chance of getting gay vampires on said device --!

Anyway, if you're into the ebooks for iPhone, this one is for you:

US$10.95 for iPhone, Palm Pilot, Kindle, Mobi and more!

US$10.95 for iPhone, Palm Pilot, Kindle, Mobi and more!
So there you are -- and just to make sure the pea-brained Googlebot can make heads and tails of this page, I'm going to say it a couple more times (the next part is for pea-brained spiders, not humans, so feel free to ignore the following) ... gay vampire ebooks for your iPhone! Yes, at last, gay books in ebook format, featuring romance, adventure and vampires ... gay style, the way Keegan readers like it best!

There. All done!

Independent publishing -- and bookselling -- rock!

2009-04-17T13:51:00.003+09:30

I'm still on the subject of Amazon censorship -- last time, honest engine! -- and I'd like to give you something to think on.

Thanks to Vashtan at Live Journal for this:
http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/13973.html

And to pique your interest -- so that you buzz off over there and read the rest! -- here's a couple of choice paragraphs:

Amazon’s "Glitch" Myth Debunked
by Francine Saint Marie

I am the author of the LAMBDA Notable Book, The Secret Keeping [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419682369], as well as The Secret Trilogy [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1438240570], Girl Trouble [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1438202105] and several other popular LGBT paperbacks sold on Amazon.com.

All of my novels have been aggressively censored by Amazon since (at least) January of 2008, when they were first released as Kindle editions and promptly rigged in the Kindle store so as not to register any sales ranks and bestselling categories, or to show up properly in Amazon search results. I have also experienced mysterious "sourcing fees" applied by Amazon to the list prices of my LGBT paperbacks, as well as the deletion of five-star customer reviews of them, the removal of their "in stock" status, and a host of other handicapping techniques which are still in effect today.

Since the first quarter of 2008 to the date hereof, I (and my team) have, in vain, relentlessly pursued Amazon about their insidious censorship of my titles. Through telephone calls, e-mails and forum posts, we have repeatedly demanded that they cease and desist burying my novels in their browse tree and otherwise hindering my sales. We have also urged them to provide all authors with "equal access" to their site features and a "level playing field" upon which to compete. As Amazon can confirm, the cry "missing sales ranks" and "discrimination" was Team Saint Marie’s mantra in 2008, and it was even the title of a widely read "thread" we posted in the Kindle publishers’ forum, which Amazon hastily deleted. Indeed, "missing sales ranks" and "discrimination" was the subject of many circular (and recorded) phone conversations with Amazon’s representatives, not to mention an awesome number of e-mails!

-----end of quote!

Now, please! Go and read the rest ... and maybe Keegan won't be sounding so paranoid.

You know me: I'm a LOUD supporter of indie anything, being it writing, publishing, film making, bookselling, the works. Indie Rules. Indie is best -- globalize the "power," beat monopolization. In my world view, it's all about human rights, of which gay rights is a crucial (in fact, watershed) subcategory.

Couple of URLs for you!

2009-04-16T13:20:00.002+09:30

A brief update on Amazon apologizes profusely ... hands up, anyone who believes any of this ...

If you think I'm just being paranoid, you have GOT to see these:
http://blog.vromans.com/amazonfail-the-cost-of-freedom/
and
http://www.slate.com/id/2213037

Woah. Paranoia is the least of it, guys! "...they aim to be nothing less than the sole provider of media on the planet." Eeep.

Cheers,
MK

Swordsman for visually impaired readers ... the proof arrives!

2009-04-16T12:14:00.006+09:30

And then the doorbell rang, and it was the Aussie Post courier. With a box ... a bookbox, specifically. I've been waiting for this since before Easter (the four-day long weekend always busts up the mails), and at last, here it is ... the large print edition of The Swordsman, intended for visually impaired readers:

I have to say, this is absolutely beautiful. It's one of my mother's gifts for Mother's Day (in a few weeks), but I'll be delighted to work with this format and issue most or all of the Keegans -- stand by for a special page.

This is also my first experiment with the "publisher grade paper" which is now an option at Lulu.com ... and again, I'm impressed. It's a beautiful job. The paper is top-notch: whiter and smoother than the regular paper, and yet a lot more opaque, so there's no strike through. Lovely. The only downside is that the book is very slightly smaller than the fill-sized US trade size (6" x 9"). This is fine by me -- it's still larger in both axes than the old GMP editions. And, being large print, it's over 600pp ... which is impressive.

Nice!

I just went over to Lulu and gave the book the "nudge" to the public list, and you can now order this item:

The Swordsman, large print edition, 609pp. US$23.95.

In the coming weeks, I'll be getting together a good list for visually impaired glbt readers, and then we'll do a press release and a newsletter. If you're "blind and gay," or are supportive of someone who is ... and if you could spread the word ... this would be marvelous, and Keegan thanks you.

Cheers (again),
MK

The Swordsman ... on your iPhone!

2009-04-16T11:17:00.004+09:30

At last, some great news! If you've been following this saga, you're probably aware that the last time (which was the first time) we tried to get onto Smashwords, we had upload problems. The great news? Fixed. Mark Coker recently announced a new Meatgrinder -- which is the Smashwords proprietorial document converter -- and it functions like clockwork. You upload a .doc file, and nominate the file formats you prefer. Wait a few minutes (long enough to go get a coffee or tea), and when you return to the computer ... done.

The really good news is that you can now get The Swordsman formatted specifically for any Mobi Reader, Kindle (Mobi again), your Phone (Stanza), your Palm Pilot, your Sony reader ... and of course if you can an iLiad or a netbook, you can still get the PDFs to fit from my bookstore, plus the Kindle download from the Kindle store, the paperback from Amazon, and the hardcover from Lulu.

I'd say I've got this one covered. Next?!

Well ... The Deceivers appeared in the Amazon engine a few days ago, and The Lords of Harbendane is at Mobi, plus Dangerous Moonlight was formatted specifically for Smashwords, at the time we had upload woes. So I think I'll start with these three, plus maybe two more, and then -- a newsletter.

Keegan is smiling this morning.

Cheers,
MK

Amazon apologizes profusely ... hands up, anyone who believes any of this

2009-04-14T11:21:00.006+09:30

Today, from SeattlePI.com...

Amazon calls mistake 'embarrassing and ham-fisted'

Amazon.com has offered a response to the AmazonFail fiasco.

Because there's so much attention to this, I'll offer spokesman Drew Herdener's comments unfiltered:

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.
It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

and:

Former Amazonian Mike Daisey offers some insight.

"After hearing from people on the inside at Amazon, I am convinced it was in fact, a 'glitch,'" he says on his Web site. "Well, more like user error--some idiot editing code for one of the many international versions of Amazon mixed up the difference between 'adult' and 'erotic' and 'sexuality.' All the sites are tied together, so editing one affected all for blacklisting, and ta-da, you get the situation."

According to Daisey's inside sources, "A guy from Amazon France got confused on how he was editing the site, and mixed up 'adult,' which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like 'erotic' and 'sexuality.' That browse node editor is universal, so by doing that there he affected ALL of Amazon."

[end of quote]

We have a term for this.

We call it damage control.

You blame a human, who can be fired ... this is sooooo convenient. I'd say it's far too convenient. It's the backdoor route onto the fire escape you leave yourself when you're going to try to censor anything to do with human sexuality, in the event you get caught.

They got caught and roasted, and they fled for the fire escape.

What really needles me is that people are genuinely going to believe it. I'm not usually into conspiracy theory, but to me this just looks blatant. Put it this way: I'm far from convinced. It'll take years of loyalty to the GLBT community before Amazon will woo me back into the truth faith worship of the 1,000lb gorilla.

I'm old enough by now to be a lot more suspicious. What I can see is that the attempt at censorship was made -- and didn't work; it was a ham-fisted attempt, along exactly the same lines as those navigated by Kevin bloody Rudd in his vain and moronic attempts to enforce Internet censorship on Australia. Amazon was caught red-handed, and had been "canny" enough to leave themselves an escape chute.

They're out and free today, having learned the hard way that K.Rudd-style Censorship doesn't work; therefore, switch to Plan B, which is "swift, slick damage control ... and whole new generation of brilliant, subtle code that'll sneak through the desired results in 2010 or '11.

Put it this way, guys: I'll believe it's NOT happening when we reach 2012 and it hasn't happened. In the meantime -- seriously! -- having seem the writing very clearly on the wall, I'm already exploring other avenues which will either not involve Amazon, or, if they do, they'll use the Big A merely as a checkout and drop-shipping service.

I don't have the trust today that I had back in March. Do I sound cynical? Well ... I guess I am. 25 years in this game has made me fairly cynical -- though I prefer the word pragmatical.

Got to get to work now...

UPDATED on April 16 with a couple of backlinks:

If you think I'm just being paranoid, you have GOT to see these:

http://blog.vromans.com/amazonfail-the-cost-of-freedom/
and
http://www.slate.com/id/2213037

Woah. Paranoia is the least of it, guys.

Ciao for now,
MK

Amazon headhunting in the GLBT community ...!

2009-04-13T11:46:00.004+09:30

Hi, guys ... I'm back, and with something significant to say. The "bad news" is breaking across the GLBT writing community right now ...

Amazon under fire for perceived anti-gay policy

Here's an outtake in a thimble, to give you the gist:

The number one word being used over and over on Twitter at this moment is "AmazonFail."

Why?

Users are angry about a perceived anti-gay policy that removes lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender books from appearing in sales rankings.

Author Mark Probst writes on his blog that two days ago, "mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: 'Transgressions' by Erastes and 'False Colors' by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book 'The Filly.'"

Probst eventually got a response from Amazon.com Advantage member services, he says.

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn DMember ServicesAmazon.com Advantage

In other words, what about the children? Protect the children. Get gay content out of any area of the net that minors could possibly access.

Uh huh. Fair enough. I suppose. But it's going to be a long, slow clean-up for the Big A, because protecting kids also means shielding them from violence, coarse language and heterosexual pornowhatsessz. Massive amounts of Amazon will have to VANISH, pronto, for Amazon to be able to support its claim that glbt writers are not being discriminated against. It ain't just glbt writers who're going to get slapped. Normal Mailer, Harold Robbins, Jilly Cooper, Ann Rice ... all vanishing into the A-search bye and bye...

In fact, the new Amazon censorship is a lot of "same old, same old." Google is very discriminatory too; in fact, discrimination against glbt writers is so common on the web, one learns to live and deal with it. (Example: I've heard of e-zines that sell ad space, and "guarantee" a review of any book for which advertising is bought ... but they don't review glbt titles, even though they'll take the advertising dollar. The scene goes downhill from there,
with glbt-friendly pages and blogs now getting paid out less than a penny for clicks on their Google Ads, though they used to earn up to 75c for a click on the same ad, before company policy changed.)

Amazon's policy shift is subtle ... they seem to be reading tags. If your book is user-tagged "gay," you lose your page rankings ... if your books are not tagged, you keep your rankings.

Say, what?!

My books still have their rankings (!) because I never bothered to go in and tag them for Amazon search ... I know they're called "user tags," but it's the writers and publishers who are far, far more likely to add the tags, not customers. (A customer bookmarks the page where the book lives -- why would they want to run around tagging books, when they've already found the damned book?!) I've been advised (!) to get in there and tag my books for Amazon Search. Uh huh. So, writers and publishers tag their books to make them visible and searchable ... hence, it's dead easy for Amazon to figure out whose page rankings to yank!

They haven't yanked my sales rankings (yet??) because I don't carry the tags. Never bothered to go and do it, because at least 70% of all my sales are driven via my own bookstore, which lives here: http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/catalog.htm

Meanwhile, however ... something else is happening at Amazon, which has nothing to do with tags (I'm untagged) or sales ranking (rankings are still there), and for the life of me I can't figure it out. My Amazon sales are down 80% this month, so far. My sales switched off, as if someone had killed the power, at the end of March. I did great in February and March (actually super-great in March), and then very poorly indeed so far in April ... with the sales rankings still "on" and attached. Go figure

Fortunately Keegan ain't Amazon-centric; they can't hurt me very much. And I know this is going to sound self-centered, so let me hint, here and now before I say it -- behind the scenes, I'm thinking long and hard, and coming up with a way to turn this whole lousy situation not only to my own advantage, but to the advantage of all glbt writers. I think I have a terrific idea, but I need to thrash it out, think it through, research the costs involved, before I share it publicly. However -- hang on, because the light I'm seeing at the end of the tunnel is NOT the train; and it's a nice, bright light ... bear with me a while.

As I said, fortunately (for me; and I'm not being selfish here) Amazon/Kindle only ever accounted for about 30% of my sales overall, so I still have 3 out of 4 of my oars in the water. But I know that other writers absolutely rely on Amazon, and they're in dire straits.

My titles are also retailed via Payloadz, and 70% of all sales are driven via my own bookstore -- so, the violent drop in Amazon sales might smart, but it's not going to kill me stone dead. Other writers are not so lucky -- and I'm not talking, here, about self-publishers!

Most of the writers with whom I'm in touch (about a dozen full-professional) are publishing with
print-media companies in the US; a few are with ebook publishers. Amazon sales are a huge part of the income they get from writing. And this discrimination is going to hurt them badly. As I just said in a comment on the previous post, it's enough to make you weep tears of blood.

Now, as you probably know, my publisher went defunct about eight years ago, leaving me with a big backlist and two thumbs to twiddle! I got busy and have marketed my old stuff while writing new. Amazon was very kind to me, sales-wise, till the end of March '09. I still have no idea of what happened then; however, I'd only gotten around to putting 12 books there, out of 27 on my list -- and as for Kindle, there's only 6 there. So their ability to hurt me is limited.

The number of other venues for selling books online is growing all the time -- Smashwords comes to mind. (Speaking of which, Mark Coker tells me they just went online with a new "meatgrinder," which is their industrial strength, wide-scale document converter. You upload a .doc file or an .rtf, and tell it what formats to spit out. It does the whole thing. Should be easy ... we had problems with it last month, but I'm 95% sure it was all about time-out woes. Will be taking another crack at it shortly, and with luck it'll work just fine.)

Amazon doesn't have a monopoly -- it's important to realize this. I also acknowledge that they're the "1000lb gorilla" in this neck of the woods. For some weird reason, READERS trust Amazon over Lulu or anyone else. This is where Amazon can really hurt writers. Customers trust Amazon, and are more likely to buy a book from them than, for instance, Lulu.com or Smashwords.com, or whatever.

The trick will be to find a way to get around the discrimination ... without taking on Amazon in a stand-up fight. Because one does not trade blows with King Kong and expect to come out of it with one's nose in the same place where nature intended. Picture Daffy Duck with his bear on top of his head.

Our mission (and we'd better damned choose to accept it!) is to either persuade readers that it's safe, and good, to buy books elsewhere ... or, to find other ways to bend the existing Amazon model (discriminatory tactics and all) to our advantage.

Stay tuned.

Cheers,
MK

From the depths of the Easter long weekend

2009-04-12T14:24:00.005+09:30

'Tis a season of chocolate rabbits and eggs you could never make an omelet with; days prompting that old classic joke about "Save me a hot cross bun, I'll be back on Monday." A four-day weekend where the country is closed, Thursday to Tuesday, and if you happen to have forgotten to get a printer cartridge or a spindle of DVD blanks, tough luck.

It's Easter. That time of picnic horse races and the aroma of Aztec mild hallucinogens wafting out of the malls, and blazing-eyed zealots actually, physically, in reality, having themselves nailed (with real nails and real hammers) to big wooden crosses on the beach in major cities, while the crowd looks on in aghast awe, wondering at their sanity, and perhaps asking themselves the inevitable question. Think about it. Or, don't. It's a subject that'll cost you sleep.

Anyway --

Keegan is still alive, still working! Just not blogging here as much as I used to -- Google having buried me in the page rankings! In fact --

I've been blogging elsewhere in the last week:

I've been contributing to this blog, which lives over at http://write-edit-publish.blogspot.com/ ... and it's a lot of fun, actually. It's interesting to quantify the subjects of writing, editing, publishing. It's also a great blog, and growing like a mushroom. From here on, when readers ask questions about the trade of the writer, editor, publisher, this is where I'll be answering them -- I'll just post briefly here and give the link.

And I've been on Digital Kosmos too:

The dome of the sky

Focus and contrast: red hot pokers imitate art

Cafe culture goes way upmarket

In the time warp ... Adelaide, of course!

Fossils, front and center!

Reflections teasing eyes and brain

...and in the background I'm working on the ebook/paperback version of the first of the LEGENDS novels; and if I can ever get a spare afternoon or two, I'll be rereading the Hellgate novels, ready to start writing. I hope to get a start in May. If I get get a start then, and nothing too bad happens, I can be done by Christmas -- both books. Personally, I can't wait to have them finished. This project has been "on" for about 20 years, at least for me. I wrote the first version of The Rabelais Alliance in 1989, about the same time as Ice, Wind and Fire came out with GMP. Naturally, I had high hopes of being able to sell a gay SF series to them ... and/but the rest is history. Rabelais has a longer pedigree than the British Royal Family, and having the whole story told will be a dream come true.

Little else is happening in the Mel-o-Sphere. Life is mostly about work, right now. Family is okay, if you stretch a point. Some are limping around waiting to heal, some are being deployed in the military, some are waiting for eye surgery! Me? Oh, surviving. Wishing I could crack some code and crank up sales, so I could tell the day job to go buzz off (and that's a euphemism).

Look for updates, tweaks, additions and rebuilds in the main website in the next few weeks, too. The work has been mapped and planned, just has to be done. I think LEGENDS goes to press first, and then the website gets its work next. April or May.

In short, life is a yawn, so --

Ciao for now,
MK

Gay book covers and the "wow" factor

2009-04-06T10:40:00.004+09:30

Being gobmacked is coming more and more naturally to me; it happens quite often. I just got the first mockup design from DreamCraft, for the cover that's about to be slapped on the paperback of Legends. Get a load of this:

Click on the sample to see the image at 800 pixels wide ... woah.

This is the "rough" which is done at 100dpi, where elements are pushed around, recolored, resized, swapped over, dropped completely ... fonts get changed, colors are corrected. ((n other words, the final printed cover could be very different, but this gives us a starting place.)

This is the first generation of the "rough," and I'm (yet again) struck speechless.

I'm TRYING to take a day off today, but it's not happening. Too many problems -- it would be afternoon before I even got out of here, and the sky seems to want to drop weird little globules of water. I'd been thinking ... a long hike in one of the national parks. Scott Creek or whatever. Not going happen today -- try again next week.

So, in the background here, the first book of Legends is being reassembled, turning from a blog to a manuscript. It's literally being copied and pasted out of Blogger into Word. This is a little weird and wonderful ... first time I've done a novel this way.

I'm also being asked by several younger writers if I would produce something -- book or blog -- like a "hand holding" exercise, where I talk folks through the process, from the initial stages of getting a book onto paper, right through to marketing the finished book. Sure -- but not on this blog! Google has me dead and buried. With page rankings set to "0" ... well, the only people inside the USA (and that's 90% of one's audience!) who can find anything I write on this page are folks who already know it's here. Shades of Pirates of the Caribbean.

So -- sure, I can do this, and I'll float an appropriate blog, perhaps as early as this afternoon (since my day off ain't gonna be happenin' ... again).

Ciao for now,
MK

Here ends the first book of the Fall of the Atlantean Empire

2009-04-04T17:26:00.004+10:30

Good news from the Mel-o-Sphere: LEGENDS is complete, up to the "End of Book One" marker, which is where I'm going onto hiatus with it, in order to turn my attention to Hellgate.

Rather than string it out into next week, I put the last half dozen posts up at the same time:
65. The Winds of Chance (part one)
66. The Winds of Chance (part two)
67. The Winds of Chance (part three)
68. The Winds of Chance (part four)
69. The Winds of Chance (part five)
70. The Oracle Dreams
71. Afterword
72. The art gallery

Please do note the art gallery on the tag-end of that list! A couple of new pieces have been done recently, and one of them blows me away. Click on this piece to see it at full size -- the shrunk-to-fit version pasted in by Blogger doesn't do it justice ... this piece has the quality of classical art, and I'm still in the "wow" stage:

The feedback on the format in which this novel was published as been varied indeed:

25% of people were blissfully happy to swing by every day or few days, and get a free hit.

25% of readers said, "I can't read this in bits -- tell me when it's finished, I'll download it all together."

10% of readers said, "I can't read this much on screen. Tell me when a paperback comes out, I'd be happy to buy it."

10% said, "I don't have the time to deal with little bits of reading. I want a properly formatted ebook, even if you charge for it."

15% of readers said, "I like the concept of a free serial novel, but I don't care for fantasy. Tell me when you bring out an SF or thriller novel."

10% of readers said, "I like ebooks, but I can't stand serials (I hate cliffhangers). Tell me when the whole thing's finished.

5% of readers said, "I like fantasy, and serials are okay. but I like my gay fantasy red-hot sexy. Can I get an uncut version of Legends? Would be happy to pay for an ebook.

This seems to cover everything, and leaves everyone happy.

It's great to have some firm data. So we're doing a newsletter this afternoon, informing people that (drum roll)... the first book of the trilogy is finished (download it all of a piece, if this is what you needed); and a properly structured ebook is being prepared; there can also be a Legends Uncut version, for those who wanted this; and a stunning cover is being put around this novel; it'll be available as a paperback in a few weeks.

I might vanish for a couple of days now ... I have the priceless opportunity to take a couple off, and I think I'm going to grab the opportunity. Might pack the HELLGATE books, start reading them while I kick back and unwind.

Reading the whole thing properly is the first thing I must do ... these characters have to "talk" to me in their own unique voices. Mick Vidal doesn't sound like Harry Shapiro, who doesn't sound like Neil Travers, who doesn't sound like Barb Jazinsky. And so on. These characters are never far from "in my head," but I need to really, seriously get back into their world. Then, two BIG books by Christmas, and the series is finished. Woah.

Hence -- a couple of days off while I have the chance!

Ciao for now,
MK

Updates from the Mel-o-Sphere

2009-04-02T11:55:00.004+10:30

Not much doing in the Mel-o-sphere lately, but other blogs have been updated, and rather than repeat the whole lot here, let me give you the links:

This will bring you up to date with LEGENDS:
54. Zeheft is Burning (part one)
55. Zeheft is Burning (part two)
56. Zeheft is Burning (part three)
57. The Tomb of Knowledge (part one)
58. The Tomb of Knowledge (part two)
59. The Tomb of Knowledge (part three)
60. Red Sails (part one)
61. Red Sails (part two)
62. Red Sails (part three)
63. Red Sails (part four)
64. Red Sails (part five)

I finally found a spare few minutes to post to DIGITAL KOSMOS:
Reflections teasing eyes and brain
(Will be posting more very soon; work is about to hit a lull ... if it didn't, I'd be out there looking for a high building with some inviting-looking concrete at the bottom.)

And I've been over Live Journal...
Cool way to spend a morning
Good gods, they want HOW MUCH to ship it???
Google Book Search is OFF, thank gods
King Kong 5, Keegan 0

I also stumbled into something fairly interesting -- or at least potentially interesting for folks who're promoting their self-administered backlists, or who are with publishers who expect you to go out and promote your own books. Visit this: http://www.freepublicitygroup.com/ ... and/but be prepared to do a lot of reading. It's all free, meaning there's an epic to read in the form of PDFs.

My kingdom for a netbook or something similar. I long for the old days when you kicked back on the couch with a cup of tea and a cat and a book.

Lastly, many thanks to AG for running a news item on one of her blogs:
Blind and gay ... looking for a good read? At last, a Large Print Edition of Mel Keegan!
...thanks, kiddo. It all helps!

Ciao for now,
MK

Gay and visually impaired ... what are you reading, and how?!

2009-03-30T11:02:00.006+10:30

It's only very recently that this question has hit me -- and it's hit me like a brick. No, Keegan isn't going blind! But my mother is. Life-long, my mother has been the most major supporter of whatever I wanted to be, do, and write. I'm one of the incredibly lucky ones. My mother was a professional musician with experience of performers from the legitimate stage to what, today, would be called "pub rock." (In her day it wasn't rock, of course, but the popular music of the era.) That breadth of experience makes a person wise, compassionate, tolerant. However your kids grow up, you know that they're bright, savvy, talented, as "normal" as any human being ever is (since there's no such thing as "normal" anyway), and if they're going to work hard, they deserve the best shot at success a person can have.

I had this fantastic lady behind me from Day One. Friends, partners, life partner and so on -- all that came along later, and some friends disappeared as smoothly as they appeared. There's been one constant, however -- yep. Your Mom isn't going to disappear on you. Mine calls herself "Mel's #1 fan," and although she hasn't read everything I've written (a few titles are too hot, too "down and dirty" for a lady of her years and refinement), she's read a hell of a lot of it. The Swordsman, Dangerous Moonlight, Lords of Harbendane, Nocture and Twilight, Tiger, Tiger and so on -- these are among her favorite reads...

Except, she can't read them any longer.

Just after Christmas, she was diagnosed with advanced glaucoma, and right now her specialists are struggling to stop the condition worsening (yes, it's the laser treatment, starting next week). We've gotten her every big magnifying glass and reading light you can name, but the fact is, small type is beyond her.

So naturally (Keegan being far from dumb even now, though I have no doubt a considerable number of brain cells have gone bye-bye), I went back to the software, reset the type in BIG fonts, and hit "print."

Joy. She can read again, so long as the type is up there around the 16 point mark. Problem solved ... I can also download loads of stuff from the web and do the big-type printouts.

But all this got me to thinking: If you're blind and gay, or visually impaired and gay, how many publishers out there are making books available in extra-large type? What are blind gay readers reading?

So I hit the web, and discovered a lot more than I'd imagined. There's a page at Writers' Services, for a start: http://www.writersservices.com/wps/s2_visually_impaired.htm ... and here is an outtake:

"Anybody who does not require glasses for reading by the age of 40 is a freak. A bit shocking perhaps but it makes the point that eyesight degrades with age for absolutely everybody. The little muscles and membranes in the eye are truly remarkable but they do wear out. Anybody who could design a modern material as durable as the components of the human eye would make a fortune.

So reading and seeing is a problem that everybody will have to deal with. The only question is the age and the severity. A few are blind from birth but a much larger group are not blind but have problems reading text. The ability to read was not, after all, a factor driving our evolution.

There are about 2 million people in UK with sight problems. According to RNIB, ‘another 100 people will start to loose their sight’ each day within the UK. Figures from the American Foundation for the Blind, (ABF) ‘approximately 1.3 million Americans are legally blind’ of which 55,200 are children and a further ‘5.5 million are visually impaired’. The Blind people’s Association of India estimate that there are over a [m]illion people on the sub-continent are blind because of cataracts.

Demographics makes it likely that the problems people have reading are going to increase in spite of medical advances. It is important that publishers address the issue both on the grounds of social exclusion but increasingly for good market motives. In the UK 96 per cent of the books published cannot be accessed by those with sight loss or dyslexia. By 2030 the number of people with sight loss will have doubled, and eight out of ten people say that they would want to continue reading if their sight deteriorated."

I'm sitting here being shocked. Appalled. And I can imagine how much more difficult it must be to be blind or visually impaired, and gay, and wanting desperately to read a good gay book, and not having a damned thing available.

Now, ebooks are starting to make this easier. You can always use a PDF and go up to 200% or whatever you need on the text size. The little palm-top screenreaders will be a right royal pain though -- first, they're bloody damned expensive, and if you're on a budget ... well, I don't have one myself yet, because of the price of the things. And if you're seriously visually impaired, the screen will be displaying about six words at a time. Gak. So, to read an ebook you have to sit at a desk for many, many hours. Again -- gak.

And (fair go, here) you want the same reading comfort that a sighted person would have -- to be able to curl up in a lounge chair with your feet up. Can't do this when you're chained to a desk.

And there isn't a single publisher, not one, which caters to these needs.

Keegan is appalled. Again. Keegan is remembering a 79 year old lady hunched over with a big magnifying glass, trying to plow through The Lords of Harbendane -- and that problem got fixed in about an hour flat, as fast as the printer could run.

Blind, or visually impaired, and gay -- or know someone who is? Tag yourself onto my mailing list and watch your emails, because in the very near future I'm publishing a range of books in large type. I can't speak for other publishers, but I can certainly address this deficiency in the system myself.

The books will be produced by Lulu.com, and will be "the real deal," properly designed and laid out, with text around the average 16 point mark. (If my mother can read it, almost anyone can.)

Let me show you what I'm doing. Here's the first 10pp of The Swordsman as a PDF, as a sample. Download it, guys, and print it out. Find out if it suits you (or your friend, whoever needs the large print) ... http://www.box.net/shared/17ldr0d141

Give me some feedback here. Is this good for your vision? Can you read comfortably? This is what my mother is reading without a problem, but before I go ahead and hit "publish" I'd like to have feedback from a group of people. So -- let me know! Leave comments right here.

Need a little perspective? This is excellent: http://www.chanton.com/blindandgay.html

Thanks! Stay tuned.

Cheers,
MK

Writer beware: marketing deals? Be very, very cautious

2009-03-28T10:18:00.008+10:30

I'm wondering how many other writers reading this blog (and there are about a dozen that I know of ... hi, guys!) received this rather outrageous piece of unsolicited advertising ... you want to call it spam, go ahead and call it spam ... and since they spammed me, I'll consider myself at liberty to paste the whole thing in here, verbatim -- and then talk about it below:

You've published a book. What's next?

The hard part about writing a book should be writing the book. You're not a digital marketing guru - you're an author.

So let AuthorWeb take care of the digital stuff. Here are some of the things we can do for you:

Upload your manuscript to Google for Google Book Search
Upload your manuscript to Amazon for sale on the Kindle
Upload your manuscript to "Smashwords" for all other ebook distribution
Make sure you are listed with Bowker's Books in Print program so your book is listed on all e-commerce sites
Work with Barnes & Noble.com's Small Press division for web (and possible store) distribution
Work with your POD service (Lightning Source, Lulu, Xlibris, etc.) to make sure you are getting the value you've paid forList you on author sites such as Filedby

Other services may include:
Enrolling you in AuthorsGlobe and other services, so you can get virtual speaking engagements
Setting up Facebook/MySpace/Twitter accounts so you can jump on that social networking thingSetting up a blog so you can tell the world what you're doing

How do we do this? We've been in this business for 22 years. We've watched it evolve from a print-and-paper world to a digital world - so fast that many authors are left hanging with no support. How do you navigate all the rules and forms? Why is an ISBN essential for selling your book? Once you've got your book listed on Amazon, how do you get the word out so people can buy it?

What we do

Basic Services - $1000 Upload files to Google for Google Book SearchNegotiating author's agreement with GoogleUpload files to Amazon for Kindle ebook sales Get listed (or enhance existing listing) on Amazon/B&N.com for print salesNegotiate the best distribution deal possible for both Amazon and B&NWork with your POD service for any further (independent) distribution - getting all those forms filled outEnhance your listing with Books in PrintEnhance your listing on FiledbyAuthor and other websites

Viral Marketing Services - $1500 Creation of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pages
Creation of blogSocial networking tutorial, so you can maintain these pages yourself

We have helped authors for 22 years.

Contact us today to learn more about how AuthorWeb can help you.

Exclusive: I've negotiated a special deal with mediabistro.com to offer all of you a $10 discount on a premium AvantGuild membership. Members get access to a wealth of professional resources and information, including their "Pitching an Agent" series, health insurance options for freelancers, and discounts on mediabistro.com courses and instructional videos. Just make sure to click on this link in order to claim your discounted membership.

END OF SPAM

Now, I don't appreciate spam any more than the next person does, and the only reason these people are not getting a very annoyed email from me is that they dropped two names that are new to me. Author's Globe and MediaBistro have not yet crossed my path -- and that path has cut swathes all over the Internet. I'd have stumbled over them all on my lonesome sooner or later.

I'll trade: no stinging email from Mel in exchange for two dropped names by them.

The rest of this stuff? I've already done it. YOU've already done it. EVERY author who has the talent and courage to call him/herself a professional has already done it.

The only writers who haven't done this stuff are amateurs, whose books are (sorry guys; it's nothing personal -- it's just unavoidably truth) not yet up to snuff. Amateurs who have several years and another 250,000 words of writing, self-correcting and learning to go before they can work their way into the entry-level of the professional arena. (Notice that the above spiel begins, "You've published a book." A book. One. It had better be the 3rd or 5th or 10th book you've writtenbefore you tried publishing one, because 99.7% of first books are tripe -- this much is fact.)

Almost without exception, first outing writers are not ready to sell copies. They'll get stinking reviews, lose a lot of money, get a lousy reputation as artists, and very likely have the "heart" knocked out of them. They might never write again, even though the latent ability is very probably there inside them.

The only people making money out of this kind of deal are the shrewd manipulators at the controls.

For gods' sake, all genuine writers (even the upper ranks of the wannabe authors) already have blogs, and websites, and Amazon listings, and ISBNs, and a thorough knowledge of Bowker, and Lulu, and ... so on.

You and I -- having been there, done that -- would rate the above list of chores to be worth about $250, max. And some of the items on that list are professional suicide.

I just went through a wringer to get my books OUT of the Google Book Search program, and these jokers are advocating it! They actually recommend a system that would upload 20% of an Agatha Christie novel -- including the END. Get this straight: You want to beat your brains out writing something like Death on the Nile, and then have Google "tell the ending" to everyone who searches on your name or title ... for free?!

Other forms of slow suicide are FaceBook and similar. Chatchatchatchatchatchat... Amateur and wannabe writers, take note and beware: Very soon, you'll be spending the time you ought to be investing in learning your craft, and WRITING, in chatting. You won't be writing; at best you'll be blogging, and at worst you'll be babbling. Writing and studying time goes down the chute, and -- it happens routinely -- you can wind up with carpal tunnel syndrome, with nothing to show for it.

Every pro or semi-pro writer reading this has already filled the above list, and a lot more besides. Personally? I've got that list quadrupled in terms of initiatives I've undertaken. I also have 26 titles on my backlist ... and I still occasionally get "dead days," or days without sales.

Here's a fact you might not like: the average professional writer earns about US$3000 from writing, per annum. Some of us earn a hell of a lot more, and I'm privileged to be among them ... but it didn't happen overnight, or even swiftly. I've been in this game for 25 years.

If you're an aspiring writer, you cannot afford to shell out $2,500 for services you could perform yourself. A day arrives very soon in your career (long before you find a publisher or take the plunge and POD it yourself) when you must commit to what you're doing. LEARN. You'll have to be your own must ruthless editor, your own most ingenious publicist, your own dynamo of a marketing analyst, and your own demon accountant.

The first thing an accountant will tell you is to "plug the leaks: Look after the pennies and the dollars will look after themselves." Writing is your business. If you were a chef, you'd expect to work long, hard hours for nothing in the early days while building up your restaurant. If you didn't want to do this, you'd go work for someone else.

Writing is no different. You'll work for years to gather and hone your skills; then you'll work for months or years writing not one but several books. This is how you become good enough to charge money for your work, have people pay you, call it money well spent, and buy your next book.

My heart aches for aspiring writers who get drawn into deals like the one outlined in the above spam. I wish there were some regulatory body to stop these people, but alas, there isn't. It's down to folks like me -- us -- to speak up.

Uh ... pass it on.

Cheers,
MK

Keegan at Target.com --!

2009-03-25T08:42:00.003+10:30

Good news from the Mel-o-sphere: you can now buy your Keegans at Target.com -- check out the picture, it tells the whole story. Click the image to see it at full size:

At this point, Amazon is still loading the database, and 11 out of the 12 books are visible at Target.com. The "missing" item is DEATH'S HEAD UNABRIDGED, and it ought to pop up automatically in a day or two.

This is extremely cool! Full marks to Amazon for this one.

Cheers,
MK

Mel Keegan March 2009 Newsletter

2009-03-24T14:00:00.002+10:30

The newsletter, as dispatched from DreamCraft this morning...

Mel Keegan March 2009 Newsletter
All five NARC books are now available at Amazon!!

Before I tell you all about this wonderous event let me remind you how easy it is to subscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter.

Just go to Mel's blog
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/
or any of the pages at the Mel Keegan Online site
http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/home.htm
and check out the sidebars until you see big, friendly newsletter banners with sub and unsub links, no worries. With no further ado... Here's all the goodies in this newsletter:

*****************************************
NARC! Jarrat and Stone! At Amazon!
*****************************************
At last! It's the event many people -- MK included -- had begun to think would never arrive.
We've finally got all of Mel Keegan's NARC books available at Amazon. Death's Head, Equinox, Scorpio, Stopover, and Aphelion. Don't worry as this is NOT the end of Jarrat and Stone though. Mel has several more NARC stories mapped out.

We've been able to do this because CreateSpace is partnered with Amazon, so that every book that goes through them also goes through Amazon. Very Cool. We're thrilled to have finally come to this day.

Not only does each NARC book have its own page at CreateSpace with a push button shopping cart...

Death's Headhttps://www.createspace.com/3366014
Equinoxhttps://www.createspace.com/3366557
Scorpiohttps://www.createspace.com/3367130
Stopoverhttps://www.createspace.com/3367219
Aphelionhttps://www.createspace.com/3368313

But we've also put all the Amazon shopping cart buttons onthe main NARC page:
http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/narc_order.htm

You'll notice the LuLu shopping cart buttons are still there and still active, no worries.
And of course you can just go to Amazon.com and search onyour favorite author ... Mel Keegan.

*****************************************
Mel Keegan: LEGENDS
*****************************************
Mel's foray into the world of online serial gay fiction is moving along at a brisk pace. Every day there's a new post up at the Legends blog and Book One is close to completion. (Yep, it's a trilogy, with each book ending in a solid punctuation point, so you really do reach a point where you can say, "The End" ... for now.)

Are you interested in a grand Atlantean Saga? Pop on over to:
http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/
to find out what you've been missing.

You will probably want to start at the beginning though:
http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/01/1.html

Be ready to download a lot! There's currently 53 episodes online, and they're good, bite-sized chunks of reading each.

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Have you checked out DIGITAL KOSMOS lately --?*****************************************
You might remember that MK began to contribute to a new photoblog a few months ago. (Mel has been aprofessional photographer for more years than you might care to remember...) The blog is Digital Kosmos, and it took us all by surprise.

There are currently more than 160 images online -- at one pic per post. How's that for a blog that went online only eight weeks ago?! The images are all astonishing, and many of the most amazing are MK's work.

Here's the url for Mel's photoblog:
http://photographyfan.blogspot.com/

Now, it's very true that MK has been working too hard to contribute much to DK lately, but the blog itself is very beautiful, and Mel will be back with rafts of images in the next couple of weeks. So ... enjoy!

You can also "follow" the photo blog and be updated when brilliant new images go online ... which is every day.

A massive thanks to Doctor Mike for keeping DK up and running while things in Keegan Country went berserk. As they calm back down to normality, we'll see more entries from MK and our cover artist, Jade.

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KINDLE!
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Do you like your Kindle? We now have four Mel Keegan novels available for your Amazon Kindle, with more to come soon!

The Lords of Harbendanehttp://www.amazon.com/The-Lords-of-Harbendane/dp/B001UV4FH2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1237857891&sr=1-1

Dangerous Moonlighthttp://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Moonlight/dp/B001V7PR9A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1237857891&sr=1-2

Fortunes of Warhttp://www.amazon.com/Fortunes-of-War/dp/B001V5KEHC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1237857891&sr=1-3

Nocturnehttp://www.amazon.com/New-Title-1-Nocturne/dp/B001VH7P90/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1237857891&sr=1-4

And for users of the popular Mobipocket format, you'll be pleased to know that the Keegans are starting to appear there too. The first title online at Mobi is The Lords of Harbendane ... the other25 MK titles will be going up as 2009 progresses -- they'll also be appearing at Amazon, and later, at Smashwords. (We seem to have upload "issues" with Smashwords, probably due to being outside the US. These issues will be answered, and you'll find us at Smashwords before long.)

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Aricia Gavrial at large:
Launching a new Gay Book Shoppe
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It's amazing what our resident proofie, AG, is doing -- when't the last time you looked at her two blogs?!

In total, AG has now reviewed (or touched down on)more than 50 books, and there are SIX MK reviews, and THE INTERVIEW.

What's this you say ... an interview with Mel? You bet.This rare item is informative and fun, and you can find it right here:

http://ariciasgaybookblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/author-interview-talking-with-mel.html

Here's the book blog itself:
http://ariciasgaybookblog.blogspot.com/

and here is AG's Lords of Harbendane review:
http://ariciasgaybookblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/epic-gay-fantasy-lords-of-harbendane.html

The latest reviews added are for The Lords of Harbendane,The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks, China Mountain Zhang,The Jade Owl ... and lots more.

One of the most impressive developments is Aricia's Gay Book Shoppe, which is an Amazon Store filled with *only* hand-picked titles. Every single book and video on these pages has been added byAG. You'll find Mel Keegan, Josh Lanyon, Alex Beecroft, and more than 150 books and videos -- all gay titles, and all recommended.

Here is it:
Aricia's Gay Book Shoppe,http://astore.amazon.com/arsgabo-20

There's more (there's always more, right?) ...

Way back on January 22, AG's other blog launched. Remember the spiel? "Welcome to Aricia's album of delicious decadence, hot goss and hotter bods, gay goodies, celebs being silly, sweet treats and candy for your senses!"

Have you looked at this blog lately? There are about100 posts online now ... Brad, Orlando, Hugh, Elijah, Viggo, Capn' Jack (both of them!), Philip Morris, Mr. Gyllenhaal, Mr. McGregor, and an amazing collecton of goodies.

In fact, this blog is starting to gallop. It was recently featured on Huffington, and you don't do that without having something great to offer.

Here are some recent posts:

Elijah Wood ... as Iggy Pop?!
Johnny Depp: vampires rock!
To Liam Neeson and family: our deepest sympathies
Twits, nuisances, lawbreakers: where does Twitter draw the line?
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: Brangelina to the rescue
David Tennant: what's next?Jack Harkness: immortalized in comics!
Rutger Hauer ... ice up a cold one. Wow!
The Ultimate Movie, starring Depp, Jolie, Smith and Knightly
The boy from Barcelona is back!
Viggo, Orlando -- and that other cute dude from TROY
Star Trek was never like this; or was it? Come to think of it...

No, they're not links. Go over there and browse:
Aricia's Album: http://ariciasalbum.blogspot.com/

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What's next in 2009 for Mel Keegan?
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In a word: HELLGATE. Two books (big ones) to go, and both finished by Christmas. That's the plan. The books are quite huge, so you can expect the work to devour the rest of the year. As 2009 progresses,you'll also see the Keegan titles appearing en masse at Kindle, Mobi, eXcessica, and other places, too. "Social networking" is where we're going right now --

In fact, MK now has a Live Journal page:
http://mkeegan.livejournal.com/

From that page, you can keep updated with events in the Mel-o-Sphere. Or even add MK to your 'friends' list. Cool stuff, this Live Journal.

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Remember, to keep up with everything Keegan, just check out
www.melkeegan.com
and
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/

More on Google ... and it ain't pretty

2009-03-23T17:26:00.004+10:30

Gotta see this!
The whole story is here: http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/3/google-sucks-life-out-of-old-media-huge-2007-share-shift, but to capture your interest, read on...

Total US ad revenue across all 17 companies grew 9% from 2006 to 2007, from $53 billion to $58 billion

Online ad revenue grew 28%, from $14 billion to $18 billion.

Offline grew only 3%, from $39.5 billion to 40.6 billion. This was helped significantly by the inclusion of affiliate fees and (and global revenue) at CBS, Viacom, and News Corp.

Online ad revenue grew by $4 billion.

Offline ad revenue--in all other media--grew by $1 billion.

So advertising revenue is flowing online at a frantic rate. That's the whole story? No. Let's look at how that online revenue breaks down.

Online ad revenue grew 28%, or $4 billion.

Online ad revenue at Google grew 44%, or $2.7 billion.

[end of snippet...]

...and here's Keegan, trying to get Google bloody Book Search to stop giving away, free and gratis, the ends to a whole range of action-mystery novels, before they kill me!

Fact: writers who somehow get dragged into Google Book Search are providing vitually infinite free web content, so Google can park advertising on it.

Oh ... brother.

Cheers,
MK

Google Book Search is the ultimate ripoff

2009-03-23T14:17:00.004+10:30

No kidding, folks. I just discovered that Google has been displaying my entire NARC series -- with a few pages omitted here and there to "legitimize" this ripoff.

These are MYSTERY novels ... and the endings are out there for all to see, for free. Like reading the end of the whodunnit while standing in the store, and then not bothering to buy the novel, because you already know who did it.

This is not fair; it shouldn't even be legal. This is just Google using writers at large (like yours truly) to create virtually unlimited content, so they can park their bloody stupid Adsense commercials next to material from which we're trying to earn a crust.

Then, they can make anything from 50c to $100 per click on the commercials -- while the writers get paid nothing ... and meanwhile, the END of the mystery has been displayed, so who in hell is going to buy it? Writers are going to be in the unemployment lines at this rate -- while the Google bosses get richer and richer on the commerials.

I'm steaming mad. Can't you tell?

Google has turned into a massive rip off merchant. In two words: Google sucks. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is putting it in polite terms.

Now, Keegan is in the middle of a labyrinthine process, trying to get the NARC books OUT of the book search engine. You fill a form, give the ISBNs, and --

Hope for the best. There is no human contact. They could take six months over giving me back my livelihood. There's no court of appeal. They could utterly ignore the take-down request, if they chose to, because there's no one to contact about it.

Hope for the best, right?

I'll post again if/when anything is done to remedy this situation. But I have to say, I consider the whole thing shameful.

Ciao,
MK

UPDATE ON THIS POST. March 28th ...

I'm pleased to be able to report that the situation was remedied much faster than I'd anticipated, and without a big scene at Google. I did indeed receive a personal response, and the books were removed without further ado. Problem solved, and full marks to Google on the way this was handled, once I'd made my case.

Save the Internet ... somebody!

2009-03-21T10:39:00.001+10:30

----- Original Message -----
From: 'GetUp'
Sent: Fri Mar 20 12:22
Subject: Your ideas could save the net

Dear Mel,

Yesterday Senator Conroy confirmed1 that websites on the Government's closely guarded 'blacklist' of censored sites had been leaked. News outlets are reporting that if the Government's censorship plan went ahead, a dentist and a tour operator are just two of the many legitimate Australian businesses whose websites would be blocked.

We've reached hundreds of thousands of Australians through our petition and online advertising campaign. Now we're after your creative ideas so that together we reach millions.We're producing a TV ad to turn up the heat, and we want your ideas. Script ideas, images, music, video content or just a good pun - your brainwave could end up on national TV! We'll turn the best ideas into a TV advertising campaign ready to hit the airwaves in April.

Click here to find out more:www.getup.org.au/campaign/CensorThis

The internet isn't about control, censorship and government interference. It's about collaboration. Working together we can create and broadcast a message the whole nation will see. This is our opportunity to drive a nail into the coffin of internet censorship. Send in your ideas for a hard-hitting TV ad, and we'll use the best ones to create a unique TV ad:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/CensorThis

Our online ads, running all over the internet since December, have been seen over 3.5 million times. Internet users are firing up the bloggersphere against the proposed censorship. Now it's time to take our message to TV screens around the nation.

A hard-hitting TV ad delivered now can protect that most important of freedoms - the freedom of the community to stand up and defend rights we perceive to be under threat. Let's harness the power of the internet to create the best ad to defend our rights.

Thanks for being a part of the solution,The GetUp teamPS - If you're in Canberra, come join the 'March in March' against the internet filter: 1pm tomorrow, Saturday March 21, Federation Mall outside Parliament House. Organised by the Digital Liberty Coalition and supported by GetUp!

1'There are some common URLs to those on the ACMA blacklist' stated Senator Conroy, Minister for Communications: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/website-blacklist-leaked-on-internet-20090319-931c.html

Death by Google

2009-03-20T10:23:00.004+10:30

Well, I said I'd be back -- and I'm only a day late. Only. The wifi connection was "up," but there was no opportunity to blog ... as well as nothing significant to blog about. You certainly don't need to know about w.o.r.k, and how it totally screws up your life!

However, I'm back in a lull where I can transform myself from drone-for-hire to optimistic-and-opportunistic-writer. [short pause while Keegan puts on Writer's Hat]

You can probably tell from the relative brevity and occasional invisibility of recent posts, that life ain't what it used to be! The global economic downslide has hit everyone, everywhere -- physical bookstores are closing, publishers ain't publishing too much anymore, and writers are writing less and reading the employment ads more. And Keegan is no different. Middle of '08, we were screaming along and I was hoping to "give up the day job" by about May or June of '09. Not going to happen this year, guys --

In fact, in the immediate future, I'm going to have a good deal less time than usual to spend blogging and chatting: I have to get my priorities hammered out. I need time to write, and to do promotional activities, and blogging, alas, is going to be shuffled waaaaay down the list.

Add to this the fact that Google never did respond to my request to get my page rankings restored for this blog (they zeroed me out five months ago now, and apparently refuse to talk about it), and you have a blog with 350+ posts up, which is struggling to get 10 visitors per day ... which sadly (in fact, it's tragic) means that the time I invest in this blog is a dead loss, speaking in purely "business" terms.

Why did Big G zero out my page rankings? I'm clueless. I've read their rules. I've abided by all of them. I have been critical of their policies regarding Adsense on gay-friendly pages (where publishers are paid out in fractions of a penny per click on ads for which the advertiser paid to Google dollars, plural, for said click). I've begun to suspect there is a human monitor who reviews criticisms of The Goog, and when they recognize criticism, you get ... terminated. I can think of nothing else to account for what's going on.

So --

Time to shuffle my priorities. I need more time to write and do promotional work; I have less "spare" time to simply chat. I can certainly continue to post to this blog about book launches and special deals, and reviews, and webpage rebuilds. Hey, that's "promotion." But -- and I really am sad to be saying this -- I won't be able to write about every subject under the sun, as I have done for nine months!

Eventually, I'll be recutting this blog into two or three new blogs -- but again, this is a very time-consuming project. Put it this way: if we want Legends finished, and Hellgate finished, the time has to come from somewhere!

This is a very sad occasion for me: I've enjoyed blogging, and if there were any way to keep on doing it ... I would.

Blame the global recession if you like. Or blame Google (which is probably far closer to the mark!) for being a righteous, "true faith" prima dona who disapproves of gay-friendly sites and punishes criticism harshly.

To those readers (you know who you are!) who have been following this blog for months now: thank you! It's been a tremendous learning experience for me. Tune in occasionally, because when I get Hellgate finished (Christmas '09??) I'll have the time to cut The World According to Mel into Keegan's World, plus at least one other blog besides. And since those blogs won't have been "Googled to Death," theoretically I should be able to chat again. When you're chatting for a wide daily readership, you can rationalize the time invested as (!) promotional activities.

What's next, for me? Heavy-duty marketing. All titles available at Kindle, Mobi and Smashwords. All titles available as hardcovers. Press releases and review copies going in every direction; and ... so on.

Summer is winding down into fall ... the rain won't be far away now. Cool weather is good for getting some work done, and I do feel inspiration starting to bite. So --

Ciao for a while: I will be back, but not daily!
Thanks for reading, I appreciate it...
MK

Blogger at dawn

2009-03-18T07:32:00.002+10:30

Keegan here ... signing in and letting the world know I'm still alive -- and this is THE chance I'm going to get for a post today. I'll be lucky to get within reach of a keyboard or internet connection before midnight. Working...

Hence, I have no idea what's going on in the world, or how I'm going at Amazon, etcerea and so forth, so --

This is Keegan's Message to Creaton for today: I'm alive. I didn't get hit by a truck. And like someone said in some movie, "I'll be back."

Bear with me...

Cheers,
MK

Feeling your mortality ... just a little

2009-03-17T08:06:00.003+10:30

If I want to blog at all today, this is my window of opportunity do to it -- and (thank whatever guardian angel looks after these things) the Internet connection is behaving itself.

So, naturally, there's nothing remotely interesting to blog about --

Except this:

"...over the past 50 years more than 75,000 chemicals have been introduced into the environment with -- yes count them -- 300 synthetic chemicals now found in the bodies of almost every American man, woman, child and even newborn.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-dejong/the-dirty-word-in-clean_b_171464.html

That little gem is from a story, "The Dirty Word in Clean," which is running on Huffington ... and I challenge you to read the whole thing. Your blood will run cold.

Do you ever get days when you feel barely human? When you're sure you're turning green and moldy, and maybe growing a second head or a third leg? There you go. Now you know why.

I've been something of a "fresh air fascist" since I watched my father die of lung cancer. It's the kind of experience that turns your life around. At one time, I had my father, a grandmother and two aunts dying of cancer, all at the same time; then my cousin (only three months older than me -- and this was 10 or 12 years ago, so said cousin was still only about 40) had a series of strokes resulting in paralysis and wheelchair dependency. I guess I became super-sensitive to the crap we live among, what we put into our bodies by just breathing ...

In your 20s and 30s, you know for a fact, you're indestructible. I certainly was. I lost my immortality at about the age of 43 or 44. I don't know quite how it happened, but one day I woke up and realized, hey, time is catching me up. I might not be immortal after all. To misquote the commercial, "well, shoot, what a feeling."

Today, as I run off in the direction of work, I leave you with this parting shot from that feature on Huffington: "The Soap and Detergent Association is a one-hundred plus member trade association representing the $30 billion U.S. cleaning products market and -- oops -- it seems that they kinda' forgot to inform their brand loyal customers that their products might be killing them." Go read the whole story. I dare you.

Cheers,
MK

Monday morning blues (and greens)

2009-03-16T09:11:00.004+10:30

Regular readers couldn't have failed to notice ... no post yesterday. For the first time ever. I just spoiled my perfect record of posting every day since June 20th '08 ... well, rats. I had an extremely narrow "window of opportunity" through which to launch a blog post, and when it came around the wifi connection was jacking around. No Internet connection.

It's not till your connection goes down that you realize the extent to which we have become Internet dependent these days. No connection?? Count three, two, one, and we're ready to spit the dummy. I certainly was. No blog post? [screaming sound issuing from general Adelaide area]

Not that there was actually anything much worth blogging about yesterday -- but it's the principle of the thing.

Today, however, there's something quite nice to report: another title is up at Kindle, and also The Lords of Harbendane has been unstuck. So there are now four Kindle titles:

The next titles in the Kindle Store will be The Swordsman, Aquamarine, Twilight ... and then, the big news.

Next week we'll be having something of a launch, because the whole NARC series will be hitting Amazon, all of a piece. Now ... believe it or not, guys, they're actually there now, but to find them you'd have to go to Amazon and search on Mel Keegan. Next week, we'll be having a full-on launch, including a new webpage, a newsletter, a press release, and so on.

But for regular readers ... well, check this out, folks:

That's pretty cool. Right after we launch the paperback range, we'll organize the Kindle copies -- and Mobipocket, too.

So it's going to be busy in the next week or so.

Legends is coming along nicely, with getting close to 50 "episodes" online, and I have to admit that lately it's been getting some very nice traffic, with about 35-40% of visitors coming back to read the whole thing. The only thing that surprises and confounds me is that financial support in the way of Google patronage (those pesky swatches of text that you can never get away from, where the publisher gets about a dime when someone, somewhere, clicks one), Amazon shopping, and Paypal $1 donations, is ... weak. It takes (get this) 3,000 page impressions to get a single click on a Google ad, or a donation; and then Ma Goog pays in copper coins for said click.

Anyway -- the experiment continues, but for writers out there who are interested to see how this turns out, here's what we know so far: you'll be lucky to get about $5 in a week from the advertising parked on the site, but (!) the words DOWNLOAD FREE GAY FICTION bring in new readers by the swarms. Significant numbers of them go on to check out your web page, your blog, your landing page, and you'll notice a steep uptick in your sales figures. So ... the advertising is very close to a waste of time, but the volume of potential readers checking you out is quite large, and a number of them, uh, buy books or ebooks. And that is what it's all about.

Legends has been a lot of fun, and it currently maybe 20 posts away from hitting the spot where you're at "Here Ends the First Book of the Fall of the Atlantean Empire." I will be putting it onto hiatus there but the site will stay up perpetually. At that point, I'll properly format the book and put it into all the PDFs and so forth that people need for their gizmos. Also, there'll be artwork -- screensavers, desktops, cards, mugs, mousepads whatever --

And, as I do believe I've mentioned somewhere, my brain is switching gears already. I'm in HELLGATE mode. Seriously. It's Travers, Marin and Vidal going through my gray cells ... and three more delicious dudes never came alive off the page of one of my novels. I'm looking forward very much to finishing out the whole series in one haul -- two books, not three, and each of them about the size of Dangerous Moonlight. Yes, it's going to be a lot of work ... it's also going to be a load of fun.

Then, next year -- back to the Legends project, get that finished. Then ... we'll see.

Right now, I have to run: work. That other four letter word ending in K.

Ciao for now,
MK

And now for something entirely different

2009-03-14T17:14:00.004+10:30

About a decade ago -- when nanotechnology was entering the common vocabulary -- I read an SF book called Bloom (quite a good novel, actually), and then forgot all about it.

Much later, I read a feature article in some magazine, about how nano is being used in PAINT and COSMETICS these days; how the damned things, being so itsy-bitsy, can and do get right through the barrier of your skin and ... golly only knows what they're going to do to odd items like your heart, your liver. Your brain.

Well, far be it from me to be a doomsayer and a disaster monger. Heaven only knows, the worlds of NARC and Hellgate aren't likely to come to pass without nano. Turns out, we need those little guys.

Still, it makes you wonder -- when you know that the very cells of our bodies are turning to plastic. And then (all the while wondering) you stumble over a video like this:

Like I said, makes you wonder! And I think I'm going to pull our Will McCarth's SF novel, Bloom, and read it again. Last time I read it, I was on a plane halfway between Anchorage, Alaska and Tokyo. (I remember, I was also reading William Gibson's The Difference Engine -- that one, I finished while lying flat on my back in a departure lounge at Narita Airport.)

And I think ... just maybe ... I feel a novel idea coming on!

So, when someone asks you, "Where do you get your ideas from?" Well, blame the nano -- in all probability, your brain is already full of them. Like mine.

Bizarre concept, isn't it?

POD Publishing: Mobipocket has made it so simple.

2009-03-13T15:13:00.003+10:30

Regular readers of this blog will know that The Lords of Harbendane seemed to be under a cloud from the get-go. No matter what we did, things seldom went right, and often went wrong ... including javascript cockups at CreateSpace and other stuff that you just wouldn't believe.

The "jinx" continued when we tried to get Harbendane to the Kindle Store! We uploaded three books; two were published like greased lightning -- automatic. The third got "stuck" in the "publish process," and it's going to take customer support and a tech crew with a large screwdriver to get it unstuck, make it available to you --

And you guessed. It's The Lords of Harbendane that had to be the one to get stuck!

So, it was with a degree of healthy trepidation that we approached the Mobipocket store. And it's with the same degree of absolute relief that I can report ...

The process of publishing to Mobi is easy, simple, a breeze. Harbendane went through so easily, we were left looking at each other, waiting for the other shoe to drop! It never did. It's done.

Try this for size:
BUY THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE FROM MOBIPOCKET

Yep. You can go there right now, buy the book for your Kindle, PC or Mac, screenreader, Palm Pilot, iLiad, Blackberry, Pocket PC, smartphone, whatever ...! It was just that easy.

The Mobipocket publishing process, in a thimble, is this:

Have your book ready in HTML, DOC or PDF.
Open a Publisher account with Mobipocket.
Download the Mobipocket Creator, Publisher Edition.
"Build" your ebook on your own desktop.
Make a project, set the metadata, add your cover.
Click on "deploy," which logs you in.
Upload the file from Creator.
Set the price.
Activate the book
Get your affiliate link.

And you're done. And all the instructions for every last thing are right there on screen. You're listening to sighs of utter relief here.

And in the coming days you'll see a lot more Keegans appearing at Mobipocket ... and, end of next week, we'll have a launch. Get the champagne on ice.

Cheers,
MK

Ice Dreams

2009-03-12T10:24:00.008+10:30

It's that time of the year when memory takes me to Fairbanks, Alaska ... and part of me is glad I'm not there, and part of me wishes to be there so bad, I've been looking at plane fares --

The World Ice Art Championships were just judged. This is an amazing event, held in Fairbanks every year in March. In 1999, I photographed it -- at night, under lights. Here's the rub: being a pro photographer at the time, I did it "properly." I shot transparencies. Which were all packed away safely when we moved house in 2004 ... and haven't been unpacked yet. They're in storage -- with 90% of my best pro work -- and are unlikely to be unpacked anytime soon.

So I can't show you my own ice art photos ... but I can give you a link through to the World Ice Art Championships website, and show you the winners here, in the hopes that it'll inspire you to go there and see the show!

So here is Ice Alaska (dot com, believe it or not)...

And here's the winners ... and having said that, the competition must have been close to impossible to judge, because there isn't a hair's breadth of difference between #1 and #10 ...

...and yes, it's cold beyond your concept of cold (unless your from Alaska, Finland, Siberia, Manchuria ...!), and yes, I wish I could be there again. I know. I'm weird.

Cheers,
MK

Live from somewhere near Seattle...

2009-03-11T10:03:00.003+10:30

This has to be worth a swift post before I run out the door (duty calls)...

The first title we uploaded to the Kindle Store was The Lords of Harbendane, swiftly followed by Dangerous Moonlight and Fortunes of War ... in fact, Harbendane is still waiting to publish while the other two have gone "live" --!

...and what's more, Amazon.com is having a mark-down special for some kind, so you can get these books for $7.99 ... gotta like that. I do believe that's the cheapest price we've ever seen on these novels.

We'll keep you posted as the list goes up -- and also, as they go up to Mobipocket, which is essentially the same service, but available globally.

More later,

Cheers,
MK

The Flat Calm Follies

2009-03-10T18:16:00.005+10:30

It would be wonderful to bounce back at the end of the day's work with a colossal post, rich in valuable thematic material. Unfortunately, nothing is happening. At all. Zip. Nada.

No lottery win, no desperate email from Steven Spielberg saying he's dying to buy that script I wrote and will US$8m be acceptable? No card inviting me to Frankfurt to participate in a high-six-figure deal at the book fair. Nicholas Cage and Orlando Bloom didn't pull up on the driveway demanding that Keegan autograph their copies of some vampire book I may or may not have written --

Incidentally the casual reader should not get my novel, Twilight, mixed up with the PG-rated chick flick of the same name. Guys the globe over are calling the movie one of the most boring things ever filmed ... I wouldn't know, I ain't seen it! My novel is a gay vampire story which is ... anything but boring, I promise you!

Um ... steak for dinner. It's been a bright, beautiful day but I've been stuck inside working. Got quite a lot done ... modems running in the background, three books up at the Kindle Store, slogging their way through the publication process. Do a couple more tomorrow, with luck ... feeling like a beer, right now!

Two posts at Legends today:
40. Fear (part three)
41. Thus Spake Iridan

And a couple of links of interest, in the event that anyone is still interested in ebooks after I've been talking your ear off about them for the last week:
http://www.itexaminer.com/two-million-germans-want-to-buy-ebooks.aspx
http://www.itworld.com/personal-tech/63812/salacious-content-driving-adoption-ebooks

And so, from the uninterrupted flat calm of the Mel-o-Sphere on this Tuesday arvo, whilst hoping that something, anything, will actually HAPPEN tomorrow (work doesn't count) --

Ciao for now,
MK

Among the 93,036 at Amazon Kindle...

2009-03-10T10:33:00.006+10:30

Just a "service message" at the moment: you can actually go to the Kindle Store, search on "Mel Keegan," and have The Lords of Harbendane pop up. It's still in the "publishing" process, meaning it's starting to filter its way into the global engine, but you can already "sign up to be notified when the item becomes available" :

And as of a few days ago, you can get the Kindle reader application for your iPhone. Cool stuff, this. We'll keep you posted. (And yes, Harbendane is probably title number 93,036 at the Kindle Store ... that being the number of titles quotes as being inthe catalog, with Harbendane still working its way in.)

Cheers,
MK

Sneaking in via the backdoor

2009-03-09T14:29:00.004+10:30

Some of you will have been waiting for this news for several weeks now, and I'm delighted to be able to deliver it! We did indeed find a way in through the back door, and we've snuck into Kindle. The Lords of Harbendane will be the first title to show up in the engine -- in "12 to 72 hours," according to the system. Could be later today, could be Wednesday, but certainly by the middle of the week you will be able to read Keegan on your Kindle.

Next books on their way: Dangerous Moonlight, Fortunes of War, Nocturne, Twilight and Swordsman. These ought to be showing up in the next ten days.

We've left the price the same as you'd pay over on Payloadz -- $9.99 -- which seems fair for the books. Amazon keeps 65% of that price, and DreamCraft and Keegan will split the rest. The theory is that you may earn less from the sale, but you get a lot more sales. So here's the grand experiment ... let's take this for a spin!

We're also working to get the same books up to Mobipocket, in the same time frame, and I only just discovered that if you need to read on a smartphone (though not YET yet iPhone), you can get a Mobipocker Reader (free download) for your device.

I have no idea if Mobi is going to be available for the iPhone anytime soon, but I know that Kindle is already available for the Apple gadget, and since (!) Amazon owns Mobipocket, one suspects that compatibility can't be far behind.

You might find this interesting and useful: http://www.teddypig.com/2008/10/stanza-mobipocket-on-mac-osx-and-so-much-more/ ... if you need to juggle formats. What won't they be doing next?!

And here is the homepage of the company behind the Stanza format which is about to put Keegan on your phone: http://www.lexcycle.com/.

But if you're into both Kindle and iPhone, it's as simple as this:
Amazon's Kindle for iPhone hits the App Store. "Sure, Amazon could pit the Kindle squarely against phone- and PDA-based e-book apps, but why not play both sides? The company had previously mentioned its desire to embrace non-Kindle devices in its digital delivery ecosystem, and the first fruits of that labor have now hit the iPhone App Store. The uncreatively-named Kindle for iPhone allows you access to all of your Kindle content right from the comfort of your iPhone or iPod touch ..."

...and so on, and so forth, and such like.

Meaning, any time around about now (that story started to run a few days ago), the iPhone fraternity and sorority will be looking to the Kindle Store for readable goodies.

Time to get on board before the bus leaves! Hence, we're working very hard to get popular titles online, and into the "global catalogs."

Speaking of popular titles, the proof of NARC: Aphelion should be in the mail, tomorrow or Wednesday, latest -- so look for a newsletter from us later in the week, when the whole series launches in paperback at Amazon. And yes, the Kindle launch will be about a week later.

Chapter Fourteen is up at Legends...

Otherwise the long weekend (Adelaide Cup Day -- a horseracing carnival) is all about work. I'll be taking a day off next week -- and if not, then I'll seize a couple of days the week following. By then, I'll need the break, big time.

And now, back to work.

Cheers,
MK

A little social networking on Sunday

2009-03-08T15:40:00.006+10:30

This will be a little brief: Real Life has stuck its nose in, with domestic problems which need o be sorted, asap. In other words, chatting time on this Sunday downunder is out of stock, and though it's on back-order, it'll be a couple of days before we can expect delivery!

So I'll confine myself to the news, such as it is:

Due to the aforementioned Real Life Intervention, we haven't been able to get to either Mobipocket or Smashwords to see if we can get uploads to go through and books to publish in the various engines: try again tomorrow.

However, Support at Smashwords is looking at the word-count problem, and as soon as this is fixed, I can just call up my dashboard there, and hit "republish." Dangerous Moonlight will reappear, and the Keegan fix will be available for you iPhone readers...

Through a tip (thanks, Erastes!) I found an excellent place (a newsletter) to get Legends listed. I've not only made contact, I actually set up a LiveJournal account. I tried everything I could think of to get the name of "Mel Keegan" into a form LJ would accept it, but there's another Mel Keegan who has well and truly beaten me to it there, so it's "mkeegan," and like it.

So the LiveJournal page is http://mkeegan.livejournal.com/, and currently it looks like this:

This is the first experience I've had of LJ, and it seems to be a blog engine, not unlike Blogger. I certainly won't be able to post there with great frequency, but I can put things up, like pasting them into a scrapbook. The object seems to be that people will find you there when they didn't find you here! Let's see how it works -- my mind is open, and I'm genuinely curious.

Also, LJ has certainly made the process easy -- perhaps even easier than Blogger, and much easier than Word Press. I had a brief flirtation with WP, and found too many problems with it. (I also notice that Jade & Co. have let go the Exploring South Australia blog, which was at WP -- and I understand it's for similar reasons. Too many problems in the interface.)

Thanks to Erastes for this networking: left to Google, I'd never have found the newsletter.

Domestic strife and all, I did manage to get Chapter Fourteen up to Legends...

And, work-wise, that'll probably be about it for the day! Well ... it's Sunday, after all, so maybe I need to take one off anyway.

Right now, I have to put on my red cape and go get things fixed. Something along the lines of changing the Earth's rotation to turn back time, putting a mountain back on its foundations, parting the Red Sea. Just trivial things like that. So --

Ciao for now,
MK

Mobipocket adventures ... and a Very Good Mystery

2009-03-07T16:26:00.008+10:30

In answer to the four people who got in touch, asking why the heck they can't find Dangerous Moonlight at Smashwords today ... bear with me, guys: we're not out of the woods.

To begin with, Smashwords is having server issues which is slowing everything down -- and no one is immune, in this area. There were problems at Amazon last week, and CreateSpace is prone to difficulties. Be a little bit patient here, and thou shalt be rewarded...

Dangerous Moonlight was uploaded, and IS at Smashwords even as we speak, but you won't be finding it until a tiny bit of fine-tuning is done in the book's "order me" page. The system (which Smashwords calls the Meatgrinder, with excellent reason!) performs the word count on auto ... problem is, right now it's only firing on four out of five cylinders.

For the iPhone (Stanza) edition of Dangerous, it gives a word count of just under 20,000 words (which is 10% shorter than Callisto Switch), and for the Kindle (Mobi) edition it gives a count of about 40,000 -- 10% shorter than Windrage ... so you know something is way off the beam, because Dangerous Moonlight is 208,000, according to every word processor and DTP program I have! We "unpublished" the book, making it disappear temporarily, because to the casual browser who doesn't know it, an $11 pricetag on 20,000 words looks outrageous -- not the first impression we want to make. Then the server started to jack around, and it'll be tomorrow, earliest, before we can get back in and make adjustments.

Patience, guys: I'm in touch with Support at Smashwords, and they are both knowledgeable and helpful. It's just a minor hiccup that will be straightened out before you know it.

Rest assured, I'll update you on the blog here when we're up and running. In fact, if you want to be in on the launch, just make sure you're on the mailing list, and watch your mailbox!

Next piece of good news: the proof for STOPOVER was delivered and looks fantastic. CreateSpace has done another great job. We're now just waiting on the proof for APHELION, and the NARC books will be launching at Amazon ... next week, I hope.

The Mobipocket experience has also begun, behind the scenes. In fact, DreamCraft has gone in and set up the account as the publisher.

The way it works is this: I'm the writer, DreamCraft is the publisher, Mobi is the distributor, and virtually thousands of affiliate sites all over the web correspond to the bookstores. I'm almost a passenger on this one, just sitting back and watching. The way the financial aspect works out is interesting. Mobi pays 35% of the gross, meaning, $3.50 from a $10.00 book will come back here, to be divvied up between writer and publisher. There is also another 10% fee up for grabs -- the affiliate fee, in the event that someone passing through my websites and blogs buys a Keegan for his or her Kindle or smartphone as they jet through. Say it's a sale from the bookstore on my website -- that's another dollar that lands in the account here, helping to cover the expenses of running this show ... and bolstering Keegan's daydreams of quitting the day job to write full time!

So that's how the Mobipocket thing works. My understanding at this time is that they have affiliate members left and right, all over the globe, who will be on the lookout for books to sell off their sites. Each sale, no matter how or where it's generated, brings 35% back to base. And you know what my backlist looks like right now:

(The Hellgate series will be done by Christmas, adding two; unless there's a miracle, the LEGENDS project will be curtailing online at Book One, leaving the whole project to be released in various formats ... and so on. And yes, the haunted house book and Dead of Winter are still on my list of to-do jobs.)

Tomorrow, with the Mobipocket account set up and operational, and the conversion software downloaded, we'll see about running Fortunes of War, Dangerous Moonlight and The Lords of Harbendane through their publishing process ... and I'll let you know how it goes. The sheer size and complexity of Mobipocket is a little intimidating, but it seems simple -- they just have the loose ends tied off, legally, in French braids and sheepshanks, half-hitches and granny knots. The legal-beagle jargon is dense, but the interface is simple.

We downloaded the Mobipocket Reader, and I like the interface a lot: dead easy, and it works offline. If/when I get myself a screenreader (and right now I'm examining netbooks), I would be able to download direct to the gadget.

The other place where the Mobipocket publishing process is very different is in the file conversion system. Basically, with Amazon, Smashwords, CreateSpace, Lulu, whatnot, you upload your files to them and the conversion happens at their end. This is neat and tidy -- so long as you're inside the US. If you're not, you time out a lot, and when a file isn't quite right and has to be uploaded again, you can have hours to sweat through, to get a usable version.

Now, Mobipocket does it ... backwards. You download the free conversion software, do the work at your end, get it perfect and (hopefully) upload the little bugger ONCE. It's simple by comparison, because Mobipocket offers ONE file format, whereas Smashwords offers a whole range. With Mobi, you just make sure you download and install the correct reader for your device -- PC, Mac, desktop, netbook, screenreader, phone, whatever.

It's ... ludicrously complicated. Reminds you of the days of VHS and Beta. Of PC and Mac, before the advent of the PDF. Of SD and XD. (One longs to say, of Ford and Holden...)

Today, I leave you with a mystery. As you know if you're a regular reader here, I submitted the LEGENDS blog/site/novel to a directory called BlogCatalog and got it chucked back, rejected. Now, Aricia, being Aricia, was both incensed about that and curious as to the process. So she submitted her celebrity gossip blog, Aricia's Album, to the same venue. And something unspeakably weird went on.

Get this ... and explain it, if you can. We're still trying. After the submission, AG turns off the computer and leaves it for maybe 14 hours. Next day, checks her Gmail, and the are (count them) THREE messages from BlogCatalog.

1) Your blog is unacceptable. Here are the problems ... fix them, resubmit, and we'll reconsider your application.
2) Changes approved!
3) Welcome to BlogCatalog.

Hunh?! She did NOTHING, the computer was turned off. Also, the original message outlining whatever the problems were had vanished from the dashboard when the situation was rectified, so AG never will know what the perceived problems were. And then it was "welcome to BlogCatalog," without a line of text being changed, a picture deleted, or an ad moved.

Does this make any sense to anyone?

No, me neither. So --

Chapter Thirteen concluded at Legends today...

Ciao for now!
MK

Ebooks ... and other seven-headed monsters

2009-03-06T16:09:00.008+10:30

I can honestly say that I've learned a lot today ... about code; about myself; about persistence; about going cross-eyed in front of a monitor and not giving up; keeping a cool(er) head when all about me people were losing theirs and blaming it on me --

[And before you say, "Hey, that reminds me of something," it's a tangential misquotation (deliberate, damnit!) from Kipling's poem, "If." And yes, you can source it on the web -- wonderful poem; find it here: http://www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html]

--It's taken a couple of days to get the code right, but Dangerous Moonlight is now online at Smashwords, where you can download it for your iPhone, your Kindle, your Palm Pilot, your Sony Reader...!

Click on this image to, uh, "buy now from Smashwords"

We had wanted to launch with three books, but it's more of a wrestling match than we'd expected, to get really good results in all formats. Mind you, it's well worth the effort, because now Dangerous is going to perform properly on everything short of Microsoft Reader. I'm holding off on offering it in the LIT format for several reasons...

I've heard that the new Reader has "issues;" and also, there's no way short of paying too much money to be able to secure the file to prevent people just copying the text right out into a DTP program and printing it by the case. I don't like that.

Anyway, Keegan is on your smartphone, and on your Kindle (in Mobi format), via Smashwords -- at least with Dangerous Moonlight! The next up will be Lords of Harbendane, but Fortunes of War is being a little devil. A few days ago I rattled off the book's pedigree, which was received by howls of disbelief. To say that the manuscript is a mutt, a moggy, a mule, is too kind ... to call the finished book "moving and inspirational" is not helping me get it bashed into shape for a new edition.

However, we persist. The Smashwords interface is certainly easy. We did time-out a few times when trying to upload/convert files -- but hey, this is Australia, which has a backbone like like a pygmy shrew.

And -- well, that's where we are today. Want Dangerous Moonlight ... Harry and Nick ... on your iPhone or Kindle? Then (here are the magic words) BUY NOW FROM SMASHWORDS. And yes, that's a link, takes you right to the page where you can download the goods.

Chapter Thirteen has commenced at Legends, but otherwise the day has been devoted to CODE. And I have to give credit where it's due.

Jade can actually read this gibberish:

When all else failed (and it did), she loaded it into a progaming editor (Notebook++) and took the css gobbledygook apart. Rebuilt it. Make the gibberish actually work. Ye gods, there's something seriously wrong with the woman. It's not normal. (And Mel Keegan is going to prognosticate about normality?!)

I think this one is going to cost me a bottle of wine.

Ciao for now,
MK

Gay books gone gaga at Google

2009-03-05T16:24:00.004+10:30

Is it just me, or does Google seem to be "all over the shop" lately?

I'm still thinking along similar lines to my post yesterday, which was about getting seen, recognized, and plucked out of the ocean by the Searchbot. It used to be about keywords and relevance. Now? I have no idea.

Looking for blog venues where one could reasonably expect "free online gay fiction" to be listed, I search on (wait for it -- this is going to astonish you) "free online gay fiction."

Woah. Have you picked yourself up off the floor, where you collapsed in shock? Then, let us continue:

Now, you couldn't be much more pellucid in your keywords. And the results? Curious, to say the least.

My own post from yesterday was top of the list, but only because I'm searching from an address NOT inside the US. Remember, Google has my page rankings zeroed out, so anyone searching from an US address won't be seing me in any search results.

Next: a rather nice personal book blog with a handful of posts looking at gay novels, none of them free or online.

Next: an article repository, where features are FREE, and stored ONLINED, and *one* of them talks about a GAY individual who was busted for perving on minors.

Next: a personal blog with a post asking, "Why did President Lincoln FREE the slaves," and considering ONLINE resources. The words "gay" and "fiction" do not appear anywhere.

Next: at last, a real one. "Finding Free Ebooks" at blogger -- where (shockingly) free ebooks are listed. Good range of titles -- bit difficult to navigate the blog due to the slightly odd template design, but there's some gay ebooks there, and they're free. (Won't do me any good to pursue a listing there, because "serial" fiction is not listed.)

Next: personal book blog featuring ... books. Handful of gay topics, none free or online.

Next: political blog with a post having a (justified) rant about anti-gay sentiment, featuring the terms "free advice" and "online newsletters." The term "fiction" was never mentioned.

Next: personal blog with a post talking about an SF party to be held at an address on Gay Street -- inquiries online.

Next: Canadian radio station talks about pulp fiction, one character in which is "nerdy and gay."

Next: personal blog with a post giving the blogger's top ten recommendations for published gay fiction. Not online, not free.

Then you get onto page two, and it really goes haywire, getting worse and worse with each horrific shot in the dark. At the top of the page Google proudly announces, "Results 1 - 10 of about 80,664 for free online gay fiction," and "Sorted by relevance."

Out of the first page, the Bot was right in 2 instances: me (yesterday's post -- I was absolutely, bloody determined to get through to the Bot what I was talking about, if you recall!) and the Finding Free Ebooks blog which would be difficult to miss because it's CALLED "Finding Free Ebooks." Missing that one would be a lot like missing "Aricia's Gay Book Blog."

(If you Google the term "gay book", so long as you're OUTSIDE America, you should find yours truly at #5 with http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2009/02/gay-book-making-news-for-all-wrong.html, and Aricia at #8 with http://ariciasgaybookblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/gay-mystery-and-ancient-chinese-magic.html. If you Google "gay book" from INSIDE America, you won't find me at all -- Google killed my page rankings, if you recall, so it doesn't matter what I write about, what keywords I use, or what I entitle the post!)

So here's the question: WTF is going on with Google? They're just so wrong, they're hardly useful anymore! Thoughts, anyone??

In other news --

Chapter Twelve concluded at Legends today,
and
AG has uploaded the interview we did a few days ago, to her book blog...

Otherwise, the Mel-o-Sphere is a vacuum. Which is kind of restful, in a way.

Ciao for now,
MK

FREE online gay fiction! (And other goodies)

2009-03-04T15:29:00.011+10:30

The title of this post is FREE ONLINE GAY FICTION.

And just in case the Googlebot (which is infamous for the peanut-like dimensions of its brain) is having a hard time interpreting that, allow me to expound:

FREE, as in "at no cost, no charge;"
ONLINE, as in, "on the Internet, in cyberspace;"
GAY, as in "not straight; bent; queer; you know ... gay;"
FICTION, as in, "a story, a novel, a plot; not a documentary."

So: FREE ONLINE GAY FICTION could be interpreted as "no-cost Internet-driven bent stories." Or "cost-free web published queer novels." Or, "no charge cyberspace not-straight plots."

I wonder if there enough KEYWORDS in this post to get some Bot's attention, and get through to its microscopic mind that I'm talking about --

You guessed. Free online gay novels.

Because, I'll tell you something ... you have a hard time giving the damned things away! I mean, there's Legends, commencing Chapter Twelve with about 35,000 words online, and I'm increasingly at a loss as to how to get people's attention.

I can't just make the novel itself searchable by Google, because the very thing you don't want is for some twinkie, underage and all, searching for hair care tips or skin care products, pulling up a page in which two very male males are getting ... companionable. Why did the page pull up? Because the text on said page speaks of "hair" and "skin." Bad, bad idea to let the engines index it.

So, since 0% of traffic is going to be coming from search engines, visitors can only come from directories.

And this is where it gets interesting!

I don't recall Google Directories being the same animal as DMOZ, when first I started marketing my work ... back in those days, Goog was Goog and DMOZ seemed to be a bunch of dessicated old wannabe academics with the power of god to award lesser mortals a place among the halcyon pages of their divine directory -- or not. And it was usually not. At the time, you could submit your blog or site to multiple Google Directories, which gave you half a chance of being discovered since you had cross-referenced and indexed yourself.

Turns out, Goog and DMOZ are now the same thing. The dessicated drivellers have gotten control of Google Directories, meaning -- yep -- you can now only have one submission category. (And tough luck if you're fantasy, AND gay, AND a novel, AND a serial!) Playing it safe, asking nicely for Legends to be listed under Gay, means a work of serious fiction is going to be listed along with the oceans of pornography, the rivers of erotica and similar ... stuff.

Not that it's likely to be an issue, because the DMOZ people are reported to be so far "down" on sites carrying commercials, your name could be Moses, you could be uploading the word of God himself, and if you carry commercials in the margin for Guttenberg, the local Synagogue, and Kosher groceries by mailorder -- DMOZ will take a great delight in rejecting you, and chucking God out right along with you.

So ... directories are a little bit thin on the ground. I spoke yesterday about something called http://www.blogcatalog.com/ ... and utterly to my confusion, Legends was rejected by these bods, too. Here is some vaguest clue as to why the blog isn't good enough for them:

Dear Mel Keegan,
Thank you for submitting your blog LEGENDS: a digital novel by Mel Keegan
(http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/01/1.html) to BlogCatalog.

Unfortunately upon reviewing your blog we are unable to grant it access to the directory.

The most common reasons for not getting into Blog Catalog are:

We could not verify ownership of your blog. A link back, widget or meta-tag is required to verify site ownership.
The URL you submitted is not a blog.
The URL you submitted is solely for commercial purposes, or is suspected to be spam.
Your blog is brand new and/or doesn't have enough content to make it truly valuable.
If this is the case, please resubmit after you have made more postings.
Your blog contains pornographic material.
At the time of review your blog was unavailable or there was a typo in your submission URL.
Please make sure the URL submitted is correct and accessible.

The above list is complete twaddle: the backlink was there (meaning, I'm potentially feeding them traffic even now! I'm about to delete it, naturally); the URL is at blogger -- duh; it's not "solely commercial" -- it's a bloody novel; it's not spam; it's not brand new -- there's 35,000 words of fiction and a half dozen works of art there; there is no pornographic material there -- you'd have to be a puritan of the first water to file the love scene under "porn"; Blogger was not "down" at the time -- it hasn't been "down" in months; and the URL is both correct and accessible.

I have the strongest feeling that someone at BlogCatalog got as far as the Caveat (which is required by law and decency), and cut corners to save time on the job. They hit the "reject" button as soon as they saw the words "adult themes, realistic violence, and material of a sensual nature." In their world, the literal translation for the above is PORN. They're dead wrong, but I can do nothing about it. On this criteria, everything from Highlander to Conan the Barbarian would be filed under porn. It's so moronic, I'm astonished.

At the same time I also contacted a third directory, with an application for a listing ... no reply. I think the word "gay" probably gives them a rash.

It's going to get tougher from here on, because I've already hit the high spots, and I do believe homophobia is at work in at least a couple of cases. (Plus commerciophobia, in the case of DMOZ, where it's advertising of any description that brings the dusty old dears out in hives.)

Okay ... back to the drawing board, think of something new!

So I started surfing, looking for opportunities -- and after having been locked out of the Kindle Store (not through homophobia, but through xenophobia! Amazon Kindle is a privilege not -- yet?? -- permitted to foreign devils, such as Aussies, and Brits, and all souls born beyond those fabled shores) ... so, well, let's say I was surprised and delighted to be made welcome --

At the Mobipocket Store. Publishers wanting to sign up? The line forms to the left! I alerted DreamCraft to the possibilities, and it was "on" at once.

Right now we're looking into Mobi as a serious alternative to the Kindle store. To begin with, Kindle users can read Mobi files. Then, the store is almost as big as the Kindle store, with over 120,000 titles. And -- being a French company -- Mobi is not as hidebound as Amazon. They do have a gay/lesbian category, but most gay books are not listed there. They're listed under SF or Fantasy, or Romance or whatever, because Europeans are not so touchy on the subject: the word "gay" doesn't make too many people in Span, France, Germany, start to itch and sneeze. (The titles listed under Gay/lesbian are sizzling hot and short on plot. Uh huh.)

So here's where we are right now: we'd have been at Smashwords with three titles today (!) if only the upload server wasn't "down." Since it is -- well, we'll try again tomorrow. And we'll be at the Mobipocket store by the weekend, all being well.

The only downside I can see with Mobi is the DRM thing ... Digital Rights Management is, at this time, a bit of a mess. However, it does prevent people from just sending copies to friends, willy nilly -- which is, alas, what happens with unprotected PDFs. (If your name is Jeffrey Archer or Stephen King, you sell so many thousands of the things, you don't care; but if you're still celebrating each sale, as most self-marketers are, the file-sharing hurts).

So, the DRM protection of Mobi files is certainly going to get up a lot of readers' noses, but if you can live with this, people --

Keegan on your Kindle is a reality ... no thanks, mind you, to Amazon! You'll be able to get Fortunes of War, Lords of Harbendane and Dangerous Moonlight for your Kindle in a few days. We'll issue the backlist a few at a time this way.

And at the same time (as soon as the Smashwords server is back up) you'll be able to say you've got Keegan on the phone ... Smartphones and iPhones are catered to here: Stanza. We'll start with the same set of three, and go on, and out, from there.

To see what it's going to be like reading on a phone, I resized a browser:
That's not too bad at all, is it? I could live with that.

So there you have it. Progress is being made, albeit slowly. Legends remains problematical, not because of itself, but because it's a heck of a lot harder than I would ever have expected, getting listed in any location where interested will see it. Also, the "viral url" concept, where the address is emailed from person to person, is a non-starter. No go. The worst that can happen is that I'll finish the thing and issue it via Payloads, Smashwords, Mobi, Amazon, Lulu and whatever else has come along by then.

In other words, we'll see how we go.

Cheers,
MK

Blogging in the rain -- really!

2009-03-03T15:19:00.007+10:30

Can't blog ... I'm too busy watching the rain. Not that you guys would call it rain, of course, but hey -- this is the first time WATER has dropped willy-nilly out of the sky, since something like October! So even though it hasn't rained much (most of the time you could count the splashes as they hit the pavers) you just had to stop and stare.

Of course, its all over now. The radar map shows blue skies behind the current overcast, and since the wind just got up these clouds will be gone before long.

But it was nice while it lasted:
There you are ... WET and everything. Water on the sidewalk. Clouds in the sky. Makes a difference, I'll tell you.

The rain is one of a couple of Significant Happenings in the last 24 hours. The second is that the proof copies of Equinox and Scorpio have arrived, and they are superb. CreateSpace has done a marvelous job, as usual. Now, we're waiting on the proofs for Stopover and Aphelion, and then -- the book launch at Amazon for the whole NARC series, all of a piece. For which, expect a newsletter...

Otherwise, it's work as usual. The Kindle situation remains in limbo ... I'm working on the reformatting for Smashwords, but it's going to be slow, due to the fact that I'm converting some very old, eccentric documents --

For example, Fortunes of War. This one was typed in Juniper Computing's Softword program (circa 1985), and SAVED TO TAPE. Much later, the tape-memory files were recalled, it was printed out, scanned in, run through OCR software and fed one page at a time into Lotus AMI Pro; the final edit was done, and hard copies were sent to GMP for publication in the early 1990s. The files were then stored on single density 3.5" floppy disks. These were, much later, read back into Lotus Word Pro and stored on an IEEE Firewire external harddrive that, at 30MB, looked incalculably vast when it was new. The "new" lotus files on the Firewire drive were of the LWF type ... which, thank gods, Serif PagePlus 10 reads extremely well. So, the DreamCraft version is in a Serif DTP format, a PPP document. For Lulu.com, this was published to PDF.

There is no simple .doc file ... nor has there ever been! ... for Fortunes of War. However, you can (!) select-all/copy a Serif PPP file to the clipboard, and dump it into Microsoft Word 2003 (not later versions; the more clever Microsquash gets, the less it shakes hands with other formats). Then, you save back the Word document -- not as a .doc, but as a Web Page Unfiltered. This gets rid of most of the passenger trash. Now, use Word to reopen the HTML file, and you're ready to run it through the process required by Smashwords to get rid of all remaining formatting.

Now, it's true that the new(er) books will be easy by comparison. But I have several golden oldies that are reader favorites from yonks ago. For instance, Fortunes is among my February bestsellers! Would you believe this? A book that's been out for over 15 years and has been through more editions (with more stupid covers designed by moronic artists) than you can shake a stick at, is still out there, selling so well --

Put it like this: if GMP were still handling this book, I'd have had to sell about 115 copies of this oldie in the month of February, to make the income it generated for me at Amazon (paperbacks), Payloadz (ebooks) and Lulu (hardcovers). I'm amazed, and pleased.

So -- yep, we're heading for Smashwords, one step at a time. In fact, after I finish this post I'm going to run one of the very new books through the conversion process, and with any luck, in a couple of days I might be able to run up a flag and tell you, you can get Dangerous Moonlight and The Lords of Harbendane for your iPhone, and as Mobi, readable on your Kindle.

Bear with me.

Speaking of all this stuff -- the Keegan sales figures were just tallied up for February, and I can tell you that we did more than double the business in Feb that we did in January. Nice, that. About 50% was ebooks, 45% paperbacks, 5% hardcovers. Of the ebooks, 75% were the regular PC/Mac version, 25% were specifically for the screenreaders, though I have no idea what kind ... the ones that can read a properly designed PDF, is all I know!

The book launch for The Lords of Harbendane obviously put that title out in front, with decent sales ... not brilliant, but in fact better than I'd secretly hoped for. Don't underestimate 1) the global recession, 2) the length of the unemployment lines, 3) the price of gas, and 4) the idiotic price of importing a Keegan into Aus and New Zealand --

It costs US$38.04 to buy The Lords of Harbendane in paperback and have it shipped via Amazon to Aus or NZ. Run the exchange rate (at .63c, as of this morning) and you get a price of A$60.38, ppd. That's two tanks of gas for a small car, or a week's groceries for a frugal couple.

So, if you drop out the "lost" Aussie and Kiwi readers, and factor in an adjustment percentage for the global recession etc., the fact is, Harbendane is doing very nicely. There was a time (2002/3) when DreamCraft would organize a book launch and we'd ship about 250 copies of the new title in THE FIRST WEEK. That doesn't happen these days, and I don't expect it to; but I have high hopes for the future, when advertising, technology and economic recovery have conspired to change the way things currently are. For the moment, I'm extremely pleased with sales -- and looking forward to seeing how the books' availability for iPhone and Kindle, via Smashwords, will add to the numbers.

Interest in the Legends digital novel project could be higher, I'll admit -- fact: a lot of people just don't have a use for electronic files, or else have no interest in a serial! However, the emerging book has a strong core of about 50 - 75 readers who swing by either every day or once a week ... not bad going for a project that only launched three weeks ago and has had very, very limited promotional exposure.

Right now, I'm looking out for listings, directories, where Legends can be, uh, listed. There are loads of them, but almost all have a downside. Either they're owned and operated by people who have a problem with gay fiction (and that's okay, because where a directory is a personal project, the list-mom/dad has the right to decide what gets into their list) or else the automated systems are so vast, one will vanish into the primordial ooze --

For example, www.blogcatalog.com is an amazing directory, but it's the size of the Death Star. Searchable -- yes; but the tag "gay" pulls up 42,884 items. "Fiction" pulls up 28,272 items. "Books" = 130,260. "Gay fiction" = 1,746 ... getting warmer, but at 10 results per search page, you're still looking at 174 pages -- and if it's anything like Google (and it is) people don't look past Page One.

Legends needs a lot more of a shove to get it properly launched. I had hoped, initially, that "viral marketing" would take over, that people would email people who emailed people ... with the URL. This happened for the first few days, tapered off and stopped. Now, you and I both know the readership is vastly bigger than this! But it seems one can't look for much in the way of user participation -- which is fair enough, too. (It's an experiment, and this is one of the facts that just fell out of the data.)

Statistically? About 500 "unique" visitors checked out Legends in the first week; about 50 of those are still reading; 20 more have come on board in the last couple of weeks. So you had about 10% of the check-out crowd (those who like to read; like fantasy; like Keegan; have the fascination and/or patience to stick around; and like ebooks) who became regulars, plus 10 new readers per week finding the book and becoming followers of this serial.

This is actually pretty good. If the numbers remain stable, it means 250+ regulars by the time the book is finished, and 500 new readers finding it, and grabbing the whole thing, during any one year. That's a reader base which is quite vigorous enough to support the advertising with the occasional shopping spree at Amazon which started out on the Legends page, and so on.

Speaking of Legends -- two posts are up today:
A Bargain by the Jackal Throne (conclusion)
and
The Oracle Speaks

And now, I'm going to spend a fascinating hour or so shoving Dangerous Moonlight headfirst through what Smashwords terms as the "meatgrinder." If everything comes up Keegan, I'll let you know tomorrow!

Cheers,
MK

Save the planet? According to Kevin Rudd, why bother?!

2009-03-03T09:18:00.003+10:30

Just a quickie this morning -- I'll be back later with something significant to say, but right now I have something rather significant to show! It's been a long time since I supported Kevin Rudd and the Australian labor government, even though [sounds of retching] I actually voted for them, because at the time it seemed that any change from "Jackboot John" Howard would have to be an improvement. A lot of people thought that way, which is why KRudd rode into office so easily. But time (and it didn't take much of it) proved us dead wrong. Like so:

Obviously, click the pic for the lare, readable version -- it's the ad which is circulating down here right now ...

Right now, you've got a rampaging Christian in the Responsibility Seat, who takes a dim view of gay marriage rights, is ambivalent about foreign policy, wants all of Australia to drop off the Internet to save a handful of parentally neglected children from the faint possibility of blundering into disgusting websites ... and frankly he doesn't give the proverbial stuff about the environment.

And I voted for this guy. Gee-Zeus. I swear it, I'm going back to voting for Daffy Duck, even though Brendan Fraser said he was (and I quote), an a$$hole to work with...

TTFN,
MK

PayPal off the rails, the Gay Gal and Microsoft, and ebooks run amok

2009-03-02T17:22:00.005+10:30

Sometimes, you have to wonder. I was sent a link, and followed it to this story which I'm going to share with you here:

Identifying Yourself As A Lesbian Gets You Banned On XBOX Live

Read it and weep. I'll give you the short version, but you have GOT to read the whole thing -- and scan down the comments, too: they get crazy. Makes you take another look at your fellow human being...

"Teresa says that she was harassed by other players and later suspended from XBOX Live because she identified herself as a lesbian in her profile. When she appealed to Microsoft, she says they told her that other gamers found her sexual orientation "offensive."

The whole story leaves you scratching your head, not least about Microsquash. Anybody who knows the slightest thing about XBox Live knows that it's a place where sexism, racism, homophobia, ill-feeling toward women, runaway violence, crass behavior, the most extreme of non-stop coarse language, the whole gamut of social nasties, run rampant.

And they're all bent out of shape because some gal says, "Hey, I'm gay, you got a problem with that?"

Apparently Microsoft has a major problem with that. The rest of the twaddle that abounds on XBox Live is, it seems, fine and dandy. Say what you like, in any terms you like, as poisonously as you like --

Just don't say you're gay.

O...kay. And this is legal? And, if it's legal, this is desirable because...?

While I was over there at The Consumerist (dot com) reading that piece, I couldn't help being whapped between the eyeballs by a couple of their other headlines. Stay with me, guys, because this one is chin-hit-knees time:

PayPal Charges $81,400,836,908 For $26 Tank Of Gas
Juan Zamora fed his 1994 Chevy Camaro $26 worth of gas, a transaction for which PayPal charged his debit card $81,400,836,908. Unsurprisingly, PayPal saw nothing wrong with the charge and demanded that Juan prove that he didn't actually buy $81.4 billion worth of gas.

He only learned of the astounding figure when he received an email later that afternoon informing him that his debit card, which started out with $90 on it, was maxed out.

Initially, Mr. Zamora thought it must've been a joke. But after contacting PayPal customer service he was surprised to see that the company treated it as anything but a laughing matter.

"Somebody from a foreign country who spoke in broken English argued with me for 10 to 15 minutes," Zamora said. " ‘Did you get the gas?' he asked. Like I had to prove that I didn't pump $81,400,836,908 in gas!"
He would have needed more than 3 billion fill-ups of the amount he actually pumped into his tank in order to reach that outrageous sum.

Eventually, Zamora said, he was finally able to convince the representative that he didn't deserve to be in the same position as General Motors, who has lost roughly 80 billion dollars since 2005.

When Zamora returned to the Conoco gas station, he said, the attendant would not believe him until he showed her the printout of the PayPal receipt.

What moral is Juan taking away from the story? "Pay cash."

!!!!!!!!!! There's no answer to that. Here it is again, on another news service -- this is so delicious, you have to read it twice:
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2009/02/27/driver-fills-up-gas-tank-receives-bill-for-86-billion/

And there's one more story at The Consumer you really have to look at while you're there (in fact, this is such a great page, I'm going to bookmark it and go back often ... they get the absolutely choice stories):

Outcry Prompts Amazon To Stop Overcharging For Digital Edition
Wait for it: "Kevin couldn't understand why Amazon charged $29.95 for the digital version of Confessions of a Butcher when the paperback cost only $11.95. Amazon tried to gussy up the Kindle edition by offering what looked like a steep 45% discount, but the digital edition still cost $5 more than the print edition. Even the author's wife chimed in to Amazon's discussion forum to pan the discrepancy, adding, "what's really ridiculous is that we sell more ebooks at $20 than we do new paperbacks for $11.95."

And that's far from all, guys. You might have thought I was over-reacting the other day when I broke the news that Amazon Kindle is an Americans-only club. Turns out, I didn't know the full shock-horror stuff when I wrote The road to Amazon.com is land-mined...

Here's the rub:
Amazon is heavily discounting the price of eBooks to spur Kindle sales, but eBooks won't always be so cheap. Writing over at Slate, Farhad Manjoo warns that if the Kindle becomes as ubiquitous as the iPod, eBooks, which can't be shared, traded, or resold, may soon cost more than their print counterparts. "As the master of the e-book universe," Manjoo claims, "Amazon will eventually call the shots on pricing, marketing, and everything else associated with the new medium." Can you see yourself paying $30 for an eBook anytime soon?
http://consumerist.com/5161348/outcry-prompts-amazon-to-stop-overcharging-for-digital-edition?skyline=true&s=x

Now, there's actually an upside to this ... from Keegan's admittedly skewed perspective. The damned Kindle also reads Mobi, and HTML, and a bunch of other stuff. They're even fiddling around, trying to get it to read a PDF. The third incarnation of Kindle will almost certainly be tweaked to read PDFs properly.

Now, given that Amazon has the desire to dominate the entire ebook field, bet your bottom dollar they'll make their gadget read everything. Then, they'll be charging US$30/A$40 for an ebook ????

Actually, they're welcome to go ahead and see what the audience will tolerate. Because you'll still be able to get a 450pp Keegan for $10, and download it cleanly to your PC, and feed it to your shiny new Kindle via the smartcard slot (!) and read to your heart's content.

Nostrakeeganus, he seeing huge marketplace of desperate people looking for affordable books after they saddled themselves with a Kindle and found out they can't afford to use it...

The greed behind a $30 pricetag for an ebook edition is nothing less than gobsmacking. And who in this world would contest the fact that it will serve the greedy buggers right to engineer an absolutely fantastic, peerless device and then have customers feed it with an SD card, with all kinds of goodies from all over the web -- and never touch down at the Kindle Store, where the same item costs three times the price ... besides which, you can only get American authors anyway!

Is it me, or is this getting just plain bizarre?

Oh -- and speaking of ebooks, the next segment of Legends is up, too...

Ciao for now,
Mel

Aussie internet filtering: score one for the good guys!

2009-03-01T17:25:00.004+10:30

Don't start celebrating just yet -- it's far from over, but Reason and Logic have scored a major point for Australian Internet users:

Xenophon opposes mandatory ISP filtering, but fight not over yet

That's Senator Nick Xenophon using his vote to effectively -- though temporarily -- block the impending Internet filtering package which has been bearing down on Australians like Darth Vader and his TIE fighters closing in.

However -- Sen. Xenophon's motives could be somewhat less than pure: he's playing the power politics game, where you support the government in something it desperately wants to do, if they offer you what you desperately want/need in return.

However, the block, however temporary it may be, remains good news because it's a time-buyer ... and time is what has been needed to prove that the whole Internet filtering concept is ludicrous and patently unnecessary.

We don't have the infrastructure to carry the system -- bandwidth is thin on the ground downunder. Too thin. The web is already slow as a tired snail; slow it down yet again by imposing upon everyone the measures needed to protect the children of a few, and the www will do a face plant. With broadband running at the speed of the old dial-ups, most of the web will vanish between the time-outs; and as for dial-up accounts (on which rural areas rely), those users won't be able to "get on" at all. The web would be reduced to the simplest email accounts; and I've heard rumblings about the Aussie government wanting to filter email content too -- as if they think that having robots spy on people is acceptable, while the human spying preferred in countries like China is dreadful. I put this to you: what are the robots looking for, and to whom do the little cyber-buggers report?! And what happens next??!!

Also ... is it just me saying this? PARENTS ought to be the ones responsible for protecting their offspring. They were given the opportunity, over the space of years, to get a free Net Nanny. Few bothered; of those, only a handful are still using the thing. What's going on here? Don't they care if their little ones are exposed to adult content? The numbers say -- they don't.

Therefore, the government must ride to the rescue ... but why don't they just make it an offence worth a fine of up to $25,000 to have an unprotected computer in a home, school, office, church or whatever, where kids are likely to be present? This should light a fire under the brainless, careless individuals who were ready to a) make babies and b) buy computers, but don't have the intelligence or decency to protect A from B. Said individuals would then hurry out and buy a bloody Net Nanny license and run the damned software -- out of fear of getting caught red-handed and fined within an inch of their mortgaged homes. There: problem solved.

But I must be the only one saying this. Maybe I'm not saying it loudly enough or to the right people?! And of course it doesn't help that Google zeroed out my page ranking, so the only people reading this column are the Regulars (yourself!) ... and you'll all be saying, "Find a different song, Keegan, we've heard this one so often, we could sing it for you!"

And you're absolutely right, of course.

I'll find something fresh to ramble on about tomorrow.

Cheers,
MK

The road to Amazon.com is land-mined

2009-02-28T14:00:00.007+10:30

Puffs of steam are coming out of my ears: I'm going to have a RANT today, so -- bear with me.

Good gods, they make it hard. I'm within eight seconds of saying, "stuff Kindle." And this, after I've blown off two days formatting documents to suit them.

What goes on --? Amazon.com just slammed the door in Keegan's face, is what's wrong.

In order to sell my books to Kindle readers -- and bear in mind, Amazon is out there, hyper-marketing their platform in order to command an ever-growing market share! -- I have to have the following:

American TIN number for tax purposes (done: got one).
American bank account access (done: no problem).
American mailing address (how the hell do they expect me to have this?)
American phone number (ditto).

To all intents and purposes, Amazon Kindle is open ONLY to American writers and authors ... at the same time as the American marketplace is 90% of everything, and Amazon is actively at war with all other ebook platforms, to command the lion's share of the market.

Does this sound kosher to you? Point one: non-American writers are being shut out of the market -- at the same time as Amazon.com makes a ton of money dumping cheap goods on the rest of the world (books for 10c, for instance!) ... and Point two: American readers are soon going to have vastly limited access to foreign works --

Foreign works which, for example, express the global point of view, the cosmopolitan concept of humanity, in which the thoughts, dreams and dreads of people living in -- oh, Paris, Rome, London, Tokyo, Beijing, the centers where culture was born many centuries before America was even dreamed of! -- are reckoned, in the wider scheme of the cosmos, to be just as important as those of people who are curiously gifted enough to live between the borders of Canada and Mexico.

Moreover, there is one additional thing that carbonizes my noodles:

The simple statement: "Non-Americans need not apply" is not posted until you get five layers deep into the publication process.

There is no easily accessible FAQ. There is a labyrinthine forum with all the welcoming characteristics of an asylum, filled with abusive inmates who seem to believe one has nothing better to do with one's time than to read "threads" which have run 11 months, and are now forty yards long -- filled with poison-pen retorts for non-Americans, blatantly WRONG answers, hapless misinformation, helpful responses to questions that were NOT ASKED, and --!!

The situation regarding Keegan on your Kindle right now is this: I'm going to try negotiating with family in the States, to use an acceptable address and phone number. If for any reason the other half of the family has a problem with this, you won't be reading Keegan on you Kindle. Before that happens, Amazon.com will have to come out of this self-imposed shell of isolation, drop the parochial behavior, join the global community (which it has ambitions to dominate) and play nice.

Till then, my Kindle ambitions are snookered. Which, as I said above, burns my noodles ... because Kindle is already a millions-strong marketplace. When people change over to Kindle they cease to buy paperbacks --

Meaning, there is a millions-strong sector of the reading community that's a dead zone for any writer or publisher who does not have a physical foothold, complete with phone number, between the borders of Mexico and Canada.

Now, Amazon has made squeaking noises about trying to get Kindle to work in Europe and Australia, but so far they haven't even been able to swing a reliable deal with wireless providers in the UK. Down here in Aus and NZ? Forget it. The infrastructure doesn't exist. Not going to happen.

Here's the bottom line: If Amazon wins the marketing battle (as it intends to), if Kindle becomes The Platform of the future ... if enormous numbers of readers change over and don't want paperbacks any longer ... and if only American writers and publishers are allowed to sell on Kindle ...

There's going to be a whole lot of professional writers, globally (myself being one of them) who will just jack it in and get a proper job. Literature itself will suffer, because the only people publishing on the massive platform will be a small nucleus of real professional writers who are just geographically lucky ... plus about fifty million semi-literate wannabe authors, none of whom would know good grammar if they tripped over it in the street, who are not just allowed to publish -- they're invited. They're exhorted. They're marketed alongside the giants of literature, as if they belong there; and why?

The privilege of geography. No matter that Amazon's marketplace is global and vast amounts of its profits are raked in from overseas customers.

You bet, I'm PO'd. Wasting my time (or, having my time wasted for me) tends to do that to me.

Now I have to take on the challenge of Smashwords. Go back and reformat all the documents over again. But at least Smashwords is playing nice -- I can put my books there. If you were asking me, Amazon could learn a thing or two from Smashwords.

Mark Coker's new company at the very least lives in the right century, with both feet planted firmly in the global community. Meanwhile, whoever designed and built the apology for the architecture supporting Kindle appears to live in some parochial cyber territory, temporally and psychologically analogous to the 1950s.

Message to Amazon.com: get real people. There's a world out here, and if you want to dump cheap goods into it for your own profit, you have to wake up to the fact the conduit must run both ways. Or are you actually trying to shut out the global voice, lock in the all-American point of view, raise a generation of Kindle-users who couldn't find Belgium on a map? This might result in a generation of more American Americans, but I ask you, does this kind of intellectual isolationism have any place in the twenty first century?

Okay: I'm done ranting for now.

Yeah, yeah ... I posted the next segment of Legends before I threw away the rest of my time. Find out what happens when Soran wakes up...

And people, email the Legends URL to your friends, please!!! At this point, according to Statcounter, I have loads of people coming in to collect only Chapter Ten, folks who have never touched down on Legends before -- which says clearly, the files are being emailed, not the URL. Remember, to make this work we need people on the page, taking advantage of the advertising: sending the files to your mate won't help! Thanks for your help here.

And, uh, I imagine I'll be in a better mood tomorrow! Meanwhile, the ebooks are available at PayLoads, and will be appearing at Smashwords when I've had the chance to thrash through the conversion process.

Ciao for,
ML

Patience, Keegan, patience! (My kingdom for a bloody ebook gizmo ... revisited)

2009-02-27T17:20:00.007+10:30

Okay, Keegan, be patient. Hold your horses. It's already the end of February ... it's going to be 2010 before you can turn around and spit: you DON'T want to spend a grand on something that's going to be virtually obsolete before it's paid for itself --

Like an ebook screenreader (fingers itch to make grab for credit card and order something like Bebook or Omnia). Because look what's coming out next year:

It's called epaper. It's from a company called Plastic Logic, and get a load of this:

...and here's the a-b-c right off the company's own webpage:
"Our foray into the market will begin in the second half of 2009 with pilots, and trials with key partners. We expect to accelerate the momentum of our sales in 2010.

Differentiated by a stunning form factor (the size of 8.5 x 11-inch paper), the Plastic Logic reader features a big readable display. Yet it's thinner than a pad of paper, lighter than many business periodicals, and offers a high-quality reading experience - better than alternatives of paper or other electronic readers on the market today.

The Plastic Logic reader supports a full range of business document formats, such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and Adobe PDFs, as well as newspapers, periodicals and books. It has an easy gesture-based user interface and powerful software tools that will help business users to organize and manage their information. Users can connect to their information either wired or wirelessly and store thousands of documents on the device. The reader incorporates E Ink technology for great readability and features low power consumption and long battery life.
http://www.plasticlogic.com/product.html

How much the thing will cost is another question, of course. These guys have to know they're up against Kindle (about US$350) and what have you, so if the Plastic Logic thingamajig cost about US$550, that's about as high as they would dare go; you can get the iPhone from Walmart for about US$100 just now, and the Omnia is tickling US$200, reducing in price all the time.

Also, it's a new, proprietary technology: "Traditional displays consist of millions of transistors that are etched onto silicon using photolithographic techniques. Plastic Logic displays use polymer (plastic) transistors that are sprayed and painted onto a sheet of plastic and an E Ink sheet (the same technology used in the Kindle)."
http://www.examiner.com/x-1652-Gadgets-Examiner~y2009m2d26-Move-over-Kindle-a-plastic-ereader-is-coming

So long as they don't price it way out the consumer's reach ... and if they wise up and make them in colors instead of the funeral-shroud white plastic as the Henry Ford option ("You can have any color you like, as long as it's black") I, for one, will be at the head of the queue with the magic plastic in hand. I just want a black one.

In fact ... Nostrakeeganus, he going to make prediction. He see price war coming. He see big, big undercutting fight, where Plastic Logic tries to kill Kindle, and Kindle then Plastic Logic gang up and try to kill Sony, and then all three gang up on Apple and beat the iPhone's brains out.

Frankly ... I've waited this long to get an ebook reader, I can suffer a little longer. 2010 sounds just right as the Great Purchase Date; wt which point it'll be all about who's got the best price for the best service. But I have to admit --

The lure of having a full-sized screen is powerful. It also places formatting, nice design, illustration and all, squarely back into the hands of publishers, rather than having to drop out everything except the italic, boldface and justification! For instance, Legends might be ebooked complete with the full suite of artwork.

One wonders if the Plastic Logic device will offer a color display version?

Speaking of Legends, Chapter Ten concluded today ...

Cheers,
MK