Monday morning blues (and greens)

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

POD Publishing: Mobipocket has made it so simple.

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

Sneaking in via the backdoor

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

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

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

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

FREE online gay fiction! (And other goodies)

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