With the LEGENDS project online for about 16 hours, commenting has been already closed to halt the spam and the homophobic abuse. Didn't take long, did it? I've also "hidden" the comments, because readers don't need to be abused along with the writer. *sigh* Tells you something about human nature, doesn't it?
Alas, closing comments and making existing ones invisible means that a couple of very nice comments have vanished, and for this I apologise: it's regrettable.
Alex: if you're reading this: thanks for proofreading the uploads, which was quite kind (although perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to just post the list of typos as comments! This actually just draws them to the attention of the 95% of readers who didn't actually notice them! However, I do appreciate your noting them, and naturally I'll fix them. As I've said many times in the past, on this blog and on my website, I'm not a typist -- I'm a writer. I have a love-hate relationship with the keyboard; mostly hate).
It's worth noting, here, that LEGENDS is free fiction which issues directly from me. Because it's 100% free, I don't have the time or resources to devote to eight or ten proofing "passes" done by three of four people (extremely high "duh factor" there). You'll find a few typos, consistent with the free nature of the fiction, and many (most?) readers would call it a fair trade. If you're downloading the novel for your iPhone, Kindle, or whatever, the "compulsive copy editor" -- and I'm one myself, so I'm neither complaining nor surprised! -- can always correct the occasional typo on the fly. In fact, please do.
LEGENDS will be launching with a newsletter later today, and I do indeed apologise for the commenting being closed. If you want to leave remarks about the story and artwork, remember -- you can always do it on this blog. However, most readers will be going directly to the LEGENDS page, and those readers can live happily without being abused in coarse language, and told they're (in so many words) unhealthy, abnormal, and downward-bound to the hot place.
I just wanted to get this service message out this morning ... I'll be back later with the day's post, about the time the newsletter is going out.
Cheers,
MK
Showing posts with label proofreading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label proofreading. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Monday, November 10, 2008
POD Publishing: how to get your book ready
I've been fielding questions lately on the subject of "how do I make my book publishable?" So rather than getting into politics, human rights issues and the inequities of the system world-wide, let's give the heavy stuff a miss today and talk about something more peaceful.
POD publishing is what you make of it ... I've said this before, and it's so true, it's safe to say it again. At the level of the written word, your books will be as good as your skills can make them -- and, unless your grasp of the intricacies of the language is 110%, your work will be as well edited as you can afford.
Which is to say, editing costs big bucks! It would be perfectly possible to sell five thousand copies of a POD book, and juuuuust about break even on the costs of having the book edited. So, why not learn the language properly, as part of the task of learning how to write, publish, and market your work?
This is easier said than done, I know. Quick courses will only skim you over the surface. What you can get out of a five hundred dollar online tutorial is not actually enough to get you there -- but it's a hulluva lot better than nothing, and could cut your editing bill by two thirds. Go ahead and do the course; just be keenly aware of the shortfalls.
Can I tell you how to edit your work? Sure. But it'll take 300+ book pages to impart what you absolutely, positively need to know. Such a book wouldn't "teach" anyone how to write. The purveyors of books like, "How to Sell Everything You Write," and "How to Write a Bestselling Novel" won't like me much for saying this, but here it is anyway...
FACT: nobody, nowhere, no how, can teach you how to write. You can either string words together, or you can't ... and if you follow the $49.95 cookbook methodology of some online guru, you'll come up with cookie-cutter storytelling. 95% of the skills of the successful writer cannot be imparted. They're discovered "within," and honed, polished, perfected, by writing millions of words. No one can teach you to have an amusing turn of phrase, or the profound wisdom that comes from observing the human condition for many decades, or what constitutes the "trash" of waaay over- and under-writing. These things, you just know. One day, a penny drops in your mind, and suddenly you start "hitting the tune."
What you can learn is how to take a rough diamond and polish it. You might have been born with a wonderful turn of phrase, a million stories to tell, an uncanny ability to depict human characters, and prose that flows almost like poetry (they used to call it the gift of the blarney). But if you don't know the razor-edge fine points of grammar, punctuation, spelling, vocabulary and writer's etiquette, your work will still look and sound amateurish and awkward to the reader.
Lately, with the furore on the Internet over the American election and referenda, I've been reading a lot of material posted by "civilians" ... ordinary people who are not writers, and don't have any ambitions in that direction. And I've been shocked by the abysmal levels of literacy which seem to be commonplace in the US.
You have people who are fluent in their quotations of scripture -- they can quote you chapter and verse, where God says one is an abomination for being gay and having the temerity to indulge in a love life ... and then the same person has no concept of what the comma, the apostrophe and the colon are for. Worse yet, they can't tell the difference between "rout" and "root," or "wreck" and "wreak," and their idea of spelling is havock, and abbomination, and lisensiousness.
(Such people are perfectly capable of consigning Alexander the Great, Hans Christian Anderson, Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Sir Ian McKellen to the scrapheap of life (and the fires of hell, come to that), but they can't figure out the difference between a root and a rout. The microscopic amounts of native intelligence it takes to notice how things are spelled and punctuated while one reads -- on a screen, a page, it doesn't matter -- escapes them. They have just enough intellect to comprehend what they're told while seated in the pews. Don't get me started.)
It's a safe bet that the English you learned in class, so many years ago, won't get you through the baptism of fire of the professional writer. If if were, vast numbers of people in the US, UK and Australia would not be flirting with illiteracy ... and they are! My advice? Don't trust what you think you know, when it comes to editing. Get a book. Learn.
The most fundamental principle of science or art is the admission that one just plain doesn't know. As soon as you wrap your head around this, you're already on the right track, because now you're receptive to learning. Furthermore, you'll actively seek out what you want to know, and when you actually want to learn something, the information sticks.
So take some months out before you head to Lulu.com, or CreateSpace.com, or wherever you plan to go for POD publishing, and really, seriously learn the language. Then print out a copy of your manuscript and go over it -- not once but several times, weeding out all the booboos you used to make without even realizing you were making them.
One day, you'll be finished. You'll reach a point where the last proofing copy of the book you printed out is error-free. Drink your own health in champagne, because two things just happened. You finished the book!! (Feel free to jive around the room.) More importantly, your English language skills should now place you firmly in the 99th percentile. Meaning, if you're an American, you're ahead of 297,000,000 of your countrymen in the writing stakes.
The next step in making your book publishable is to get it properly formatted. Let's assume it's text-driven. If you have a boatload of images, its going to be more difficult, but even so, it can be done on your own desktop.
You can use a word processor ... you can use a desktop publishing package. Whichever you choose, you'll have to learn to "drive" it like a pro. Since you will definitely need a DTP package for assembling your cover -- unless you want to pay hundreds of bucks, perhaps a grand, to have it done by someone else! -- you might as well grasp this bull by the horns and wrestle it down. Get your DTP software and learn to drive it.
A word of caution: don't pay a lot of money for DTP software!! Everything you need will be found in a program you can download for US$40. This, below, is the package DreamCraft and Keegan recommend, because it's been used on every edition of every book for ... how many years?
You'll need to get Serif PagePlus 10, and take several weeks to learn it. After that, you'll never look back, and the job of publishing -- no matter how complex the project -- is well within your grasp. Covers become simple, and the book's interior will be a template made by you, to your own specifications, which can be used over and over.
The first thing you'll need to know is what size your published book will be. It's going to be somewhere around the 6" x 9" size, if you want a trade size paperback ... and this also is the format where POD publishing gets financially friendly.
CreateSpace is cheaper than Lulu.com, if you need to (or want to) sell through Amazon. But Lulu.com just offered an economic option -- "publisher grade paper." This makes the cost to manufacture a single copy of a 300pp book just US$7, and if you've done the rest of the job yourself, you're off to a flying start.
In Serif PagePlus 10, you set the paper size, and then create your template ... save it as a template, without any content in the "frames." These "frames" are 300 page-sized text boxes which are all linked together. All you have to do is copy-paste your enture book into the box for page one, and the software will automatically flow the text through to the end. From there, you can select the whole document and turn off widow and orphan control ... change the line height ... change the paragraph indent ... the font face and size ... anything.
Serif makes it comparatively simple. The only thing you'll have to manually adjust is the position of the frames on the page: on even numbered pages they jog LEFT by 2mm to create extra space for the book binding, and on odd numbered pages (yep) they jog RIGHT by 2mm for the same reason. You do this job once. It's part of the template, never needs to be done again. Then, you're flying.
Once the type is set, print out a copy ... and proofread it again! Look out for "iffy" hyphenations. The program is brilliant, not omnipotent. Some hyphenations will look weird -- adjust these manually. Also, take your last, final opportunity to change a word here and there, add something, delete something. Key in all the corrections you scribbled onto the printed pages, and -- yes!! -- lock the document.
Done. Finished. Time, now, to look at the cover.
It's time to convert the DTP file to a PDF, and you're in luck. Serif PagePlus 10 has a very powerful PDF maker. It will do everything you need, if you configure it right. Look under "file" and choose "publish to PDF." Set it up right, and save the profile for use on your next book. Virtually all POD publishing starts with PDFs. Lulu.com will let you upload .doc and .rft files, but they're immediately converted online to PDFs, so in the end it's still POD pivoting on the PDF technology.
Check the PDF thoroughly to make sure nothing corrupted in the transfer. Done? Right. The time has come to choose your digital printing partner. I'd have to recommend either Lulu.com for its speed -- and also the fact they have printshops around the world, even in Aus -- and/or CreateSpace.com for its access to Amazon.com. In the end, it's your call. Pick the one that offers you the interface you prefer with the prices that suit you best and the sales services that are best for your budget and needs.
Set up an account with your choice (it's free. Never go with a printer who charges fees to set up an account). Now, start a project; name it; upload your interior PDF --
Aha! The digital printer will now give you the specs for your cover. They'll tell you what the "trim area" will be (the part of the cover that's amputated when the book receives its three-edge trim, after binding), and what the spine width will be, based on your page count.
Now, you can look at your cover.
Are you an artist? Do you have very good digital photos that would paste up nicely? Can you get a savvy friend to help? Would logos and artistic lettering do the job? Do you mind paying a fee to use a professional image? Could you use a classical painting? (They're often available as downloads for a credit to the collection.) Does it have to be an actual piece of artwork, such as you find on the covers of mass market books?
Does a great cover help to sell your book? Yes. Unequivocally.
Does a really lousy cover hurt your sales? Nobody's sure.. There are some butt-ugly covers out there. Go to any bookstore and look at the "literary" books. They are often ghastly. Horrible. Hideous. And someone got paid for assembling them, and there they are on the shelf ... and people are buying the book anyway, so --
The rule would seem to be (at least to me!) this: a book cover can be as ugly and horrific as anything you can imagine, providing it doesn't look amateurish. A professional eyesore is perfectly acceptable. An amateurish attempt at a professional result will hurt your sales.
What constitutes "ugly" anyway? It's all in the eye of the beholder. What isn't, though, is the balance, the design, the harmony of the cover. Make no mistake, there are professionally published and designed books out there in the stores, where the cover designer and the editor should be taken out and shot. They get away with it because of diplomas hanging on their office walls. They still churn out garbage occasionally, but it's forgiven.
As a newbie breaking into the field, you won't be forgiven. You'll have to be as good as the pros, and then some. So ... study cover design. Pull out a hundred good books from your own library, lay them out on the floor and be analytical. What works? What doesn't? Which color combinations clash? Which draw the eye? Notice the date of the artwork ... styles and fashions in cover design change. Do you want a classical or modern "look" on your book?
Decide what you want: see it in your mind's eye, and figure out a way to assemble it. The art logos are easy: the DTP software will do them for you. The background images will have to come from somewhere; you, a friend, a picture library. Caution: eventually, you'll get busted if you usurp someone's copyright. It's better to track down the exact, right image and pay $50, or $100, credit the artist or photographer, and stay on the right side of copyright law.
The final cover is published to a single-layer PDF, and uploaded...
You order a proof copy and go over it with a fine tooth comb...
And if all looks 100%, you're done. Really. Done. Seriously! You're about to start marketing the beast now, but as per publishing? Put a tick against that one.
Hope this answers all questions -- if I missed something, let me know. Sorry for being brief here; I just don't have the time to go into every detail. If I did, it wouldn't be a blog post, it would be a book. Now, there's a thought. Would such a book be worth $20 to you? Let me know, and I'll give it some serious consideration...
Cheers,
MK
POD publishing is what you make of it ... I've said this before, and it's so true, it's safe to say it again. At the level of the written word, your books will be as good as your skills can make them -- and, unless your grasp of the intricacies of the language is 110%, your work will be as well edited as you can afford.
Which is to say, editing costs big bucks! It would be perfectly possible to sell five thousand copies of a POD book, and juuuuust about break even on the costs of having the book edited. So, why not learn the language properly, as part of the task of learning how to write, publish, and market your work?
This is easier said than done, I know. Quick courses will only skim you over the surface. What you can get out of a five hundred dollar online tutorial is not actually enough to get you there -- but it's a hulluva lot better than nothing, and could cut your editing bill by two thirds. Go ahead and do the course; just be keenly aware of the shortfalls.
Can I tell you how to edit your work? Sure. But it'll take 300+ book pages to impart what you absolutely, positively need to know. Such a book wouldn't "teach" anyone how to write. The purveyors of books like, "How to Sell Everything You Write," and "How to Write a Bestselling Novel" won't like me much for saying this, but here it is anyway...
FACT: nobody, nowhere, no how, can teach you how to write. You can either string words together, or you can't ... and if you follow the $49.95 cookbook methodology of some online guru, you'll come up with cookie-cutter storytelling. 95% of the skills of the successful writer cannot be imparted. They're discovered "within," and honed, polished, perfected, by writing millions of words. No one can teach you to have an amusing turn of phrase, or the profound wisdom that comes from observing the human condition for many decades, or what constitutes the "trash" of waaay over- and under-writing. These things, you just know. One day, a penny drops in your mind, and suddenly you start "hitting the tune."
What you can learn is how to take a rough diamond and polish it. You might have been born with a wonderful turn of phrase, a million stories to tell, an uncanny ability to depict human characters, and prose that flows almost like poetry (they used to call it the gift of the blarney). But if you don't know the razor-edge fine points of grammar, punctuation, spelling, vocabulary and writer's etiquette, your work will still look and sound amateurish and awkward to the reader.
Lately, with the furore on the Internet over the American election and referenda, I've been reading a lot of material posted by "civilians" ... ordinary people who are not writers, and don't have any ambitions in that direction. And I've been shocked by the abysmal levels of literacy which seem to be commonplace in the US.
You have people who are fluent in their quotations of scripture -- they can quote you chapter and verse, where God says one is an abomination for being gay and having the temerity to indulge in a love life ... and then the same person has no concept of what the comma, the apostrophe and the colon are for. Worse yet, they can't tell the difference between "rout" and "root," or "wreck" and "wreak," and their idea of spelling is havock, and abbomination, and lisensiousness.
(Such people are perfectly capable of consigning Alexander the Great, Hans Christian Anderson, Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Sir Ian McKellen to the scrapheap of life (and the fires of hell, come to that), but they can't figure out the difference between a root and a rout. The microscopic amounts of native intelligence it takes to notice how things are spelled and punctuated while one reads -- on a screen, a page, it doesn't matter -- escapes them. They have just enough intellect to comprehend what they're told while seated in the pews. Don't get me started.)
It's a safe bet that the English you learned in class, so many years ago, won't get you through the baptism of fire of the professional writer. If if were, vast numbers of people in the US, UK and Australia would not be flirting with illiteracy ... and they are! My advice? Don't trust what you think you know, when it comes to editing. Get a book. Learn.
The most fundamental principle of science or art is the admission that one just plain doesn't know. As soon as you wrap your head around this, you're already on the right track, because now you're receptive to learning. Furthermore, you'll actively seek out what you want to know, and when you actually want to learn something, the information sticks.
So take some months out before you head to Lulu.com, or CreateSpace.com, or wherever you plan to go for POD publishing, and really, seriously learn the language. Then print out a copy of your manuscript and go over it -- not once but several times, weeding out all the booboos you used to make without even realizing you were making them.
One day, you'll be finished. You'll reach a point where the last proofing copy of the book you printed out is error-free. Drink your own health in champagne, because two things just happened. You finished the book!! (Feel free to jive around the room.) More importantly, your English language skills should now place you firmly in the 99th percentile. Meaning, if you're an American, you're ahead of 297,000,000 of your countrymen in the writing stakes.
The next step in making your book publishable is to get it properly formatted. Let's assume it's text-driven. If you have a boatload of images, its going to be more difficult, but even so, it can be done on your own desktop.
You can use a word processor ... you can use a desktop publishing package. Whichever you choose, you'll have to learn to "drive" it like a pro. Since you will definitely need a DTP package for assembling your cover -- unless you want to pay hundreds of bucks, perhaps a grand, to have it done by someone else! -- you might as well grasp this bull by the horns and wrestle it down. Get your DTP software and learn to drive it.
A word of caution: don't pay a lot of money for DTP software!! Everything you need will be found in a program you can download for US$40. This, below, is the package DreamCraft and Keegan recommend, because it's been used on every edition of every book for ... how many years?
You'll need to get Serif PagePlus 10, and take several weeks to learn it. After that, you'll never look back, and the job of publishing -- no matter how complex the project -- is well within your grasp. Covers become simple, and the book's interior will be a template made by you, to your own specifications, which can be used over and over.
The first thing you'll need to know is what size your published book will be. It's going to be somewhere around the 6" x 9" size, if you want a trade size paperback ... and this also is the format where POD publishing gets financially friendly.
CreateSpace is cheaper than Lulu.com, if you need to (or want to) sell through Amazon. But Lulu.com just offered an economic option -- "publisher grade paper." This makes the cost to manufacture a single copy of a 300pp book just US$7, and if you've done the rest of the job yourself, you're off to a flying start.
In Serif PagePlus 10, you set the paper size, and then create your template ... save it as a template, without any content in the "frames." These "frames" are 300 page-sized text boxes which are all linked together. All you have to do is copy-paste your enture book into the box for page one, and the software will automatically flow the text through to the end. From there, you can select the whole document and turn off widow and orphan control ... change the line height ... change the paragraph indent ... the font face and size ... anything.
Serif makes it comparatively simple. The only thing you'll have to manually adjust is the position of the frames on the page: on even numbered pages they jog LEFT by 2mm to create extra space for the book binding, and on odd numbered pages (yep) they jog RIGHT by 2mm for the same reason. You do this job once. It's part of the template, never needs to be done again. Then, you're flying.
Once the type is set, print out a copy ... and proofread it again! Look out for "iffy" hyphenations. The program is brilliant, not omnipotent. Some hyphenations will look weird -- adjust these manually. Also, take your last, final opportunity to change a word here and there, add something, delete something. Key in all the corrections you scribbled onto the printed pages, and -- yes!! -- lock the document.
Done. Finished. Time, now, to look at the cover.
It's time to convert the DTP file to a PDF, and you're in luck. Serif PagePlus 10 has a very powerful PDF maker. It will do everything you need, if you configure it right. Look under "file" and choose "publish to PDF." Set it up right, and save the profile for use on your next book. Virtually all POD publishing starts with PDFs. Lulu.com will let you upload .doc and .rft files, but they're immediately converted online to PDFs, so in the end it's still POD pivoting on the PDF technology.
Check the PDF thoroughly to make sure nothing corrupted in the transfer. Done? Right. The time has come to choose your digital printing partner. I'd have to recommend either Lulu.com for its speed -- and also the fact they have printshops around the world, even in Aus -- and/or CreateSpace.com for its access to Amazon.com. In the end, it's your call. Pick the one that offers you the interface you prefer with the prices that suit you best and the sales services that are best for your budget and needs.
Set up an account with your choice (it's free. Never go with a printer who charges fees to set up an account). Now, start a project; name it; upload your interior PDF --
Aha! The digital printer will now give you the specs for your cover. They'll tell you what the "trim area" will be (the part of the cover that's amputated when the book receives its three-edge trim, after binding), and what the spine width will be, based on your page count.
Now, you can look at your cover.
Are you an artist? Do you have very good digital photos that would paste up nicely? Can you get a savvy friend to help? Would logos and artistic lettering do the job? Do you mind paying a fee to use a professional image? Could you use a classical painting? (They're often available as downloads for a credit to the collection.) Does it have to be an actual piece of artwork, such as you find on the covers of mass market books?
Does a great cover help to sell your book? Yes. Unequivocally.
Does a really lousy cover hurt your sales? Nobody's sure.. There are some butt-ugly covers out there. Go to any bookstore and look at the "literary" books. They are often ghastly. Horrible. Hideous. And someone got paid for assembling them, and there they are on the shelf ... and people are buying the book anyway, so --
The rule would seem to be (at least to me!) this: a book cover can be as ugly and horrific as anything you can imagine, providing it doesn't look amateurish. A professional eyesore is perfectly acceptable. An amateurish attempt at a professional result will hurt your sales.
What constitutes "ugly" anyway? It's all in the eye of the beholder. What isn't, though, is the balance, the design, the harmony of the cover. Make no mistake, there are professionally published and designed books out there in the stores, where the cover designer and the editor should be taken out and shot. They get away with it because of diplomas hanging on their office walls. They still churn out garbage occasionally, but it's forgiven.
As a newbie breaking into the field, you won't be forgiven. You'll have to be as good as the pros, and then some. So ... study cover design. Pull out a hundred good books from your own library, lay them out on the floor and be analytical. What works? What doesn't? Which color combinations clash? Which draw the eye? Notice the date of the artwork ... styles and fashions in cover design change. Do you want a classical or modern "look" on your book?
Decide what you want: see it in your mind's eye, and figure out a way to assemble it. The art logos are easy: the DTP software will do them for you. The background images will have to come from somewhere; you, a friend, a picture library. Caution: eventually, you'll get busted if you usurp someone's copyright. It's better to track down the exact, right image and pay $50, or $100, credit the artist or photographer, and stay on the right side of copyright law.
The final cover is published to a single-layer PDF, and uploaded...
You order a proof copy and go over it with a fine tooth comb...
And if all looks 100%, you're done. Really. Done. Seriously! You're about to start marketing the beast now, but as per publishing? Put a tick against that one.
Hope this answers all questions -- if I missed something, let me know. Sorry for being brief here; I just don't have the time to go into every detail. If I did, it wouldn't be a blog post, it would be a book. Now, there's a thought. Would such a book be worth $20 to you? Let me know, and I'll give it some serious consideration...
Cheers,
MK
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Better late than never
Done and done: the screenreader version of WHITE ROSE OF NIGHT is online, and my apologies for the delays in getting this one done. Work kept getting in the way. Better late than never, I guess, the format for Palm and Pocket PC, iLiad and Sony Reader is up now; get it from the ebook kiosk or the bookstore (links to your right).
The other big news today is that we're expecting the ISBN for AQUAMARINE tomorrow, latest, and the book will be available next week -- just as soon as we've uploaded it, ordered up a copy, and made sure there are no (hacking sounds) font issues. It only takes five days to get a book from Lulu now: they secured an Australian digital partner at last.
(This didn't make the books any cheaper, but it sure makes them faster. We had expected the cost to Aussie readers to come down a bit, but it didn't, and the reason dawns on you eventually. Things are a lot more expensive in this country than in the States. They wouldn't be able to lower their prices, even though the books are made and shipped locally.) Ah, the thrills of POD work.
We're quite excited about the reissue of Aquamarine. It's been a fantastic opportunity for me to go through the manuscript and MEND IT. As you probably recall, this was the novel that went to the printer, in 1999, without even being proofread, much less edited. Millivres appeared to print exactly what I sent them -- I never saw a galley proof. One day I emailed the files to London; six or eight months later, a box of books appeared in the mailbox, and you can imagine my reaction. Stunned mullet? Whacked silly? Jaw trailing on floor? It's a writer's worst nightmare come true, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, when it's happened.
To this day, I hear remarks like, "Keegan needs a better editor" (they mean, I need a good PROOFREADER, which was true till I signed with DreamCraft, and I have nothing but praise for them. Even worse, "Aquamarine has spelling mistakes." They mean TYPOGRAPHICAL errors. Doesn't it carbonize your noodles, the way some people call a typo a spelling error? As if you don't know how to spell cat, which is why your tired old fingers typed cta.)
For ten years, I've wanted to get into Aquamarine and fix the bloody thing. Well --
It's fixed. And the new covers are glorious. Jade has delivered in spades this time, not only with the feature art for the cover, but with a whole raft more, which we just zipped into a free screensaver --
These and a bunch more like them have been zipped into a seductively tropical (or tropically seductive) show. Download it here:
The screensaver for Vista ... doesn't self-install. Extract it from this zip archive onto your desktop and right-click for a pop-up menu; and ...
The screensaver for XP ... DOES self-install. Extract it from this zip archive onto your desktop and double-click on it; the executable will do the rest.
"Watch This Space," to know instantly when AQUAMARINE goes up. (Incidentally, if you'd like to read outtakes, you can find them here: 40% of the book is online, right on the blog. The whole project goes up to the wesite next week.)
For the moment, enjoy the screensaver ... Sad to say, I gotta get back to work.
Cheers,
MK
The other big news today is that we're expecting the ISBN for AQUAMARINE tomorrow, latest, and the book will be available next week -- just as soon as we've uploaded it, ordered up a copy, and made sure there are no (hacking sounds) font issues. It only takes five days to get a book from Lulu now: they secured an Australian digital partner at last.
(This didn't make the books any cheaper, but it sure makes them faster. We had expected the cost to Aussie readers to come down a bit, but it didn't, and the reason dawns on you eventually. Things are a lot more expensive in this country than in the States. They wouldn't be able to lower their prices, even though the books are made and shipped locally.) Ah, the thrills of POD work.
We're quite excited about the reissue of Aquamarine. It's been a fantastic opportunity for me to go through the manuscript and MEND IT. As you probably recall, this was the novel that went to the printer, in 1999, without even being proofread, much less edited. Millivres appeared to print exactly what I sent them -- I never saw a galley proof. One day I emailed the files to London; six or eight months later, a box of books appeared in the mailbox, and you can imagine my reaction. Stunned mullet? Whacked silly? Jaw trailing on floor? It's a writer's worst nightmare come true, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, when it's happened.
To this day, I hear remarks like, "Keegan needs a better editor" (they mean, I need a good PROOFREADER, which was true till I signed with DreamCraft, and I have nothing but praise for them. Even worse, "Aquamarine has spelling mistakes." They mean TYPOGRAPHICAL errors. Doesn't it carbonize your noodles, the way some people call a typo a spelling error? As if you don't know how to spell cat, which is why your tired old fingers typed cta.)
For ten years, I've wanted to get into Aquamarine and fix the bloody thing. Well --
It's fixed. And the new covers are glorious. Jade has delivered in spades this time, not only with the feature art for the cover, but with a whole raft more, which we just zipped into a free screensaver --
These and a bunch more like them have been zipped into a seductively tropical (or tropically seductive) show. Download it here:
The screensaver for Vista ... doesn't self-install. Extract it from this zip archive onto your desktop and right-click for a pop-up menu; and ...
The screensaver for XP ... DOES self-install. Extract it from this zip archive onto your desktop and double-click on it; the executable will do the rest.
"Watch This Space," to know instantly when AQUAMARINE goes up. (Incidentally, if you'd like to read outtakes, you can find them here: 40% of the book is online, right on the blog. The whole project goes up to the wesite next week.)
For the moment, enjoy the screensaver ... Sad to say, I gotta get back to work.
Cheers,
MK
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Computers, plumbing, and the way of the future
Update on the Great Vanishing Acrobat story: AVG Antivirus reports nada, so there's no Trojan responsible for the complete disappearance of Acrobat Reader 8 ... which is what I was a tad-bit concerned about yesterday. Not that I actually wanted to find viruses in the system, but -- it would have been nice to know what caused a program to vanish utterly. Hmmm. Interesting, no? Good one. Gremlins?
Winter is meandering toward spring, with native trees in bloom wherever you look, and the air thick with pollen. Tis the season to be seezin'. In Australia things tend to happen backwards -- which is not to say it's not beautiful down here (it is) or that tourists don't love the place (they do). But even after having lived here since I was a little kid, I'm still noticing that things happen backwards.
Sure, winter is in June, July, August; everybody knows that. But the native trees don't shed their leaves, they shed their bark. And they don't bloom in summer, they bloom in winter. The only thing that does NOT run backwards (no matter what you saw on The Simpsons) is the toilets. Sorry to disappoint, but the whirlpool effect you guys are seeing in the US is the product of the mechanism. Our loos use a different mechanism ... ain't no whirlpoor effect at all, going in any direction.
And that's a whole lot more than you needed to know about toilets, right? (Anybody used the loo in a really big international airport, and chanced a peek into some of the stalls designed to accommodate folks from Asia and the mid-east?! Man, there's some weird porcelaine out there.)
Work continues on the new website: it's in the aggravatingly slow debugging stage, where eyeballs get fried as code is taken apart line by line, and the general consensus is that the guy who invented Javascript should be taken out and strung up by some part of his anatomy ... and we'll leave which part to the person who's been taking apart the coding!
Having said which -- the site is almost done and ready to launch. My own thoughts are turning more and more to new projects, and it seems I'll be working on two, in tandem. One is obviously the haunted house story. That one should almost write itself, since I have a prior version to work from and a pile of notes and research spanning the last couple of years. The other project is something that just came my way, and it's ... interesting.
I've been asked to participate in a kind of teaching venture, though it's nothing as structured as 'course materials' and 'lesson plans.' It's more like a wide-scale information sharing, on the subject of (duh) writing. This one will be interesting to watch as it unfolds. Writing is a field that's been close to my heart since I was a little kit (to wit, the typewriter story I was telling the other day. What other six year old do you know who actually asks Santa for a typewriter?!)
The way website projects work (especially 'group builds' like this one), it's probably going to be a couple of months before I can point you at a web address, but I'll keep you posted. Turns out, a lot of readers are either already writers or would love to be; and of the writers, a good many are wondering how to make the breakthrough and 'go pro.'
There are so many options, these days. It used to be that if you couldn't scale the heights and sign with a company in New York or London, you were doomed before you began. in 2008, the whole picture has changed utterly: publishing isn't what it used to be. Some of us would say, it was time for a change! But the sheer proliferation of ebooks out there is bemusing --
We were uploading a few more to Payloadz just today, and our recently allocated numbers are up over the 470,000 mark. That's 20,000 ebooks hitting the Payloadz lists in a matter of days. Gives you pause to reflect.
Of course, I can't imagine what the quality is like; and some of those 20,000 items will be software, too. But the vast majority of titles going up are ebooks, to be privately sold through personal websites everywhere.
Speaking of ebooks, I have a URL for you: Diesel Ebooks. That's an impressive pile, and they have quite an impressive gay list. It's nice to see gay books, gay publishing, right alongside the mainstream, and Diesel is an 'equal opportunity' storefront.
Some of the best gay writing, lately, isn't going through the meat-grinder system of traditional publishing, and if you take a look at Diesel, you might glimpse the way of the future. The truth is, it's a little too soon to tell which way the industry will go in the long term, but one thing is for sure: the reading public is driving its direction, not the power-publishers. The power of choice is in the hands of writers and their readers, as never before. I have to approve, yet a part or me is on tenterhooks, waiting to see how it turns out! Five years ago, ebooks were just making their real debut, and many people (myself included) had little faith in them. Why? Because I'll always like a real book; paper. I like the feel of it in my hands, like the way it sits on the shelf -- and looking at paper doesn't fry your eyeblls.
Ebooks are just -- mind you, just -- starting to come of age, but like anything that's growing up, there's something of a mess happening too. There are conflicting formats (reminiscent of the Betamax and VHS war of yonks ago, and of the DVD v. BlueRay wars which are about to begin). And there's one hell of a lot of dross out there. People are publshing their own work before it's ready; before it's been properly proofread, much less edited. Which is fine, if these works are free; but some of these ebooks are forty bucks! One would hope that if writers are going to charge (and get) high prices for their books, they'll have the integrity to make sure they're well written and edited. Or at the very least, proofread. Don't get me started on the subject of proofreading ... yet, it's a major part of the writing process, and without a thorough proofread and a good edit to fine-tune things, most writing suffers.
And this is why I'm so interested in the 'want to write a novel' project, in which I've been asked to participate. Publishing is heading in new directions that could barely be predicted a few years ago. The key point will be to maintain quality in the published work -- and this is a writer's duty, especially in a publishing scenario where no one is breathing down your neck to edit and proofread, and where, increasingly, sloppy grammar is becoming not merely common, but accepted. Typographical errors seem to be taken for granted whereas, before computers and texting over phones, you'd get your knuckles rapped for a typo! (One idiot called typos 'spelling' mistakes, as if you didn't know how to spell c-a-t, and thought it was spelled cta. Take a deep breath Keegan. Count to ten. There's at least half a dozen born every minute ... the birth rate's faster than it used to be, you see.)
Ciao for now,
MK
Winter is meandering toward spring, with native trees in bloom wherever you look, and the air thick with pollen. Tis the season to be seezin'. In Australia things tend to happen backwards -- which is not to say it's not beautiful down here (it is) or that tourists don't love the place (they do). But even after having lived here since I was a little kid, I'm still noticing that things happen backwards.
Sure, winter is in June, July, August; everybody knows that. But the native trees don't shed their leaves, they shed their bark. And they don't bloom in summer, they bloom in winter. The only thing that does NOT run backwards (no matter what you saw on The Simpsons) is the toilets. Sorry to disappoint, but the whirlpool effect you guys are seeing in the US is the product of the mechanism. Our loos use a different mechanism ... ain't no whirlpoor effect at all, going in any direction.
And that's a whole lot more than you needed to know about toilets, right? (Anybody used the loo in a really big international airport, and chanced a peek into some of the stalls designed to accommodate folks from Asia and the mid-east?! Man, there's some weird porcelaine out there.)
Work continues on the new website: it's in the aggravatingly slow debugging stage, where eyeballs get fried as code is taken apart line by line, and the general consensus is that the guy who invented Javascript should be taken out and strung up by some part of his anatomy ... and we'll leave which part to the person who's been taking apart the coding!
Having said which -- the site is almost done and ready to launch. My own thoughts are turning more and more to new projects, and it seems I'll be working on two, in tandem. One is obviously the haunted house story. That one should almost write itself, since I have a prior version to work from and a pile of notes and research spanning the last couple of years. The other project is something that just came my way, and it's ... interesting.
I've been asked to participate in a kind of teaching venture, though it's nothing as structured as 'course materials' and 'lesson plans.' It's more like a wide-scale information sharing, on the subject of (duh) writing. This one will be interesting to watch as it unfolds. Writing is a field that's been close to my heart since I was a little kit (to wit, the typewriter story I was telling the other day. What other six year old do you know who actually asks Santa for a typewriter?!)
The way website projects work (especially 'group builds' like this one), it's probably going to be a couple of months before I can point you at a web address, but I'll keep you posted. Turns out, a lot of readers are either already writers or would love to be; and of the writers, a good many are wondering how to make the breakthrough and 'go pro.'
There are so many options, these days. It used to be that if you couldn't scale the heights and sign with a company in New York or London, you were doomed before you began. in 2008, the whole picture has changed utterly: publishing isn't what it used to be. Some of us would say, it was time for a change! But the sheer proliferation of ebooks out there is bemusing --
We were uploading a few more to Payloadz just today, and our recently allocated numbers are up over the 470,000 mark. That's 20,000 ebooks hitting the Payloadz lists in a matter of days. Gives you pause to reflect.
Of course, I can't imagine what the quality is like; and some of those 20,000 items will be software, too. But the vast majority of titles going up are ebooks, to be privately sold through personal websites everywhere.
Speaking of ebooks, I have a URL for you: Diesel Ebooks. That's an impressive pile, and they have quite an impressive gay list. It's nice to see gay books, gay publishing, right alongside the mainstream, and Diesel is an 'equal opportunity' storefront.
Some of the best gay writing, lately, isn't going through the meat-grinder system of traditional publishing, and if you take a look at Diesel, you might glimpse the way of the future. The truth is, it's a little too soon to tell which way the industry will go in the long term, but one thing is for sure: the reading public is driving its direction, not the power-publishers. The power of choice is in the hands of writers and their readers, as never before. I have to approve, yet a part or me is on tenterhooks, waiting to see how it turns out! Five years ago, ebooks were just making their real debut, and many people (myself included) had little faith in them. Why? Because I'll always like a real book; paper. I like the feel of it in my hands, like the way it sits on the shelf -- and looking at paper doesn't fry your eyeblls.
Ebooks are just -- mind you, just -- starting to come of age, but like anything that's growing up, there's something of a mess happening too. There are conflicting formats (reminiscent of the Betamax and VHS war of yonks ago, and of the DVD v. BlueRay wars which are about to begin). And there's one hell of a lot of dross out there. People are publshing their own work before it's ready; before it's been properly proofread, much less edited. Which is fine, if these works are free; but some of these ebooks are forty bucks! One would hope that if writers are going to charge (and get) high prices for their books, they'll have the integrity to make sure they're well written and edited. Or at the very least, proofread. Don't get me started on the subject of proofreading ... yet, it's a major part of the writing process, and without a thorough proofread and a good edit to fine-tune things, most writing suffers.
And this is why I'm so interested in the 'want to write a novel' project, in which I've been asked to participate. Publishing is heading in new directions that could barely be predicted a few years ago. The key point will be to maintain quality in the published work -- and this is a writer's duty, especially in a publishing scenario where no one is breathing down your neck to edit and proofread, and where, increasingly, sloppy grammar is becoming not merely common, but accepted. Typographical errors seem to be taken for granted whereas, before computers and texting over phones, you'd get your knuckles rapped for a typo! (One idiot called typos 'spelling' mistakes, as if you didn't know how to spell c-a-t, and thought it was spelled cta. Take a deep breath Keegan. Count to ten. There's at least half a dozen born every minute ... the birth rate's faster than it used to be, you see.)
Ciao for now,
MK
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Poofredding. Pruefreadig. PROOFREADING, damnit!.
Have you ever noticed how typographical errors hide among the pixels on your screen? No, seriously. They lurk there, close to invisible. When you're looking at the monitor you don't see them -- but as soon as you send them to the printer, WHAM! The little buggers have no place to hide on paper (because it's a static medim, unlike the computer, which is entirely dynamic). Having no place to hide, they're instantly visible. Anyone and his uncle can see them. A chimpanzee can see them on paper ... but on the screen, the little darlings can hide, and they do.
Now, I've put this to the test in exhaustive experimentation over many years, and it doesn't matter what kind of monitor you use, they always find a way to hide. I've tried using cathode ray tube type monitors, and LCD type, and crystal brite type things ... typographical errors evade the human eye with enviable aplomb.
So, if the type of monitor has no effect on their hiding capabilities, yet they're instantly visible on paper, the result of this research program is so obvious, we should have seen it all along. There's only one possible answer: When you and I are looking at the cursor, or out the window, or at the time, or the cat ... the typos, fleet as a toupe of performing fleas, jump behind the images, and underneath the menu bars, and sit there shivering in glee, trying not to give themselves away with audible chuckles --
And regular readers of this blog know, by now, that when Keegan rabbits on this way it means the topic of today's column is probably unutterably boring.
Proofreading.
Damnit, I hate proofreading. Not because what I'm reading is boring (it better not be; I wrote it, and if I'm boring myself, what chance does the reader stand?!) but
because every typo points out what a lousy typist I am.
I got my first typewriter for Christmas when I was about six. It was something called a Petit Elite, and though it was actually a toy it typed nicely on bright blue ribbons, where the ink only came off all over you if you deliberately smeared it. I got my first real typewriter when I was 12 ... a big, ages-old Remmington office model, cold steel, massive, would have made a good boat anchor. A few years later I got a newer model (still a big office job), a Facit, made in Yugoslavia or one of those countries that no longer exists. When I was 16 I bought myself a neat little portable, an Olympia Traveler de luxe. I loved that typewriter. Then came an IBM Selectric II (anybody remember golfball fonts? Ever had one jump off the machine while you were trying to fit it, and hit you in the eye?? My Prestige Elite was always jumping off. I learned to duck).
I got the IBM Selectric when I was about 20, and I beat it up till I was about 30 and it was (in comparative typewriter years) about 140. One day it made a monstrous clunking sound and quit forever, but by that time I was glad it had died, because then I didn't have to use it anymore. Around about then, I bought an electronic typewriter by Brother, which lasted several years (doubled as a computer printer too), and also a portable Adler, which I ended up selling to an elderly lady who, in her retirement, wanted to learn how to type. (At which point in the conversation my jaw went slack, and I wisely made no remark.)
The Adler was the last typewriter I bought, and if you actually want to buy a typewriter today, you have to go a long way to find a new one. Brother still makes one model, but it's one of those with a small LED display, where you can take a crack at PROOFREADING your ramblings before you hit RET, ENT, or whatever, and your sentiments are immortalized.
All through these years of typewriters and paper, the typographical errors were easy to find. You could lasso them with an elastic band or skewer them with a toothpick, or bash them with your coffee mug. They breed a great deal faster than one can hunt them down, of course; in fact, one imagines the world would be suffocating in them by now, if it were not for dedicated, intrepid proofreaders -- hunters so determined that rather than stalking the little buggers among the pixels, they hit PRINT, corner them on paper, and then subject them to mass extermination. From the typos' point of view, it must seem like a kind of ruthless ethnic cleansing, but the proofreader assumes godlike characteristics and proportions, winkling them out of their world of pixels and electrons, herding them onto paper, and then -- WHAM! Letting them have it with both barrels.
And there are some beauties out there. Typos that can change the entire gist of a sentence. Typos that could invalidate the constitution of one's nation, and undermine one's literary heritage. Finding them is critical.
Also stultifyingly boring. What I want to know is, when is Micro-whomever going to get on the stick and invent a proofreading program that WORKS? I don't mean a grammatical checker, one of those dim-bulb rote-read things which tells you to insert a comma and a 'that' every six words through every sentence. I mean a program capable of reading a language contextually, building sentence structure ... in other words, understanding what it's reading, and able to pick out one's typographical booboos.
Guys, there's a billion dollars out there for the company that comes out with a program designed to rescue people from the hapless, vile oblivion of profreading.
Speaking of which, I still have 20 pages to do, and I'd best get on with it!
Ciao for now,
MK.
Now, I've put this to the test in exhaustive experimentation over many years, and it doesn't matter what kind of monitor you use, they always find a way to hide. I've tried using cathode ray tube type monitors, and LCD type, and crystal brite type things ... typographical errors evade the human eye with enviable aplomb.
So, if the type of monitor has no effect on their hiding capabilities, yet they're instantly visible on paper, the result of this research program is so obvious, we should have seen it all along. There's only one possible answer: When you and I are looking at the cursor, or out the window, or at the time, or the cat ... the typos, fleet as a toupe of performing fleas, jump behind the images, and underneath the menu bars, and sit there shivering in glee, trying not to give themselves away with audible chuckles --
And regular readers of this blog know, by now, that when Keegan rabbits on this way it means the topic of today's column is probably unutterably boring.
Proofreading.
Damnit, I hate proofreading. Not because what I'm reading is boring (it better not be; I wrote it, and if I'm boring myself, what chance does the reader stand?!) but
because every typo points out what a lousy typist I am.
I got my first typewriter for Christmas when I was about six. It was something called a Petit Elite, and though it was actually a toy it typed nicely on bright blue ribbons, where the ink only came off all over you if you deliberately smeared it. I got my first real typewriter when I was 12 ... a big, ages-old Remmington office model, cold steel, massive, would have made a good boat anchor. A few years later I got a newer model (still a big office job), a Facit, made in Yugoslavia or one of those countries that no longer exists. When I was 16 I bought myself a neat little portable, an Olympia Traveler de luxe. I loved that typewriter. Then came an IBM Selectric II (anybody remember golfball fonts? Ever had one jump off the machine while you were trying to fit it, and hit you in the eye?? My Prestige Elite was always jumping off. I learned to duck).
I got the IBM Selectric when I was about 20, and I beat it up till I was about 30 and it was (in comparative typewriter years) about 140. One day it made a monstrous clunking sound and quit forever, but by that time I was glad it had died, because then I didn't have to use it anymore. Around about then, I bought an electronic typewriter by Brother, which lasted several years (doubled as a computer printer too), and also a portable Adler, which I ended up selling to an elderly lady who, in her retirement, wanted to learn how to type. (At which point in the conversation my jaw went slack, and I wisely made no remark.)
The Adler was the last typewriter I bought, and if you actually want to buy a typewriter today, you have to go a long way to find a new one. Brother still makes one model, but it's one of those with a small LED display, where you can take a crack at PROOFREADING your ramblings before you hit RET, ENT, or whatever, and your sentiments are immortalized.
All through these years of typewriters and paper, the typographical errors were easy to find. You could lasso them with an elastic band or skewer them with a toothpick, or bash them with your coffee mug. They breed a great deal faster than one can hunt them down, of course; in fact, one imagines the world would be suffocating in them by now, if it were not for dedicated, intrepid proofreaders -- hunters so determined that rather than stalking the little buggers among the pixels, they hit PRINT, corner them on paper, and then subject them to mass extermination. From the typos' point of view, it must seem like a kind of ruthless ethnic cleansing, but the proofreader assumes godlike characteristics and proportions, winkling them out of their world of pixels and electrons, herding them onto paper, and then -- WHAM! Letting them have it with both barrels.
And there are some beauties out there. Typos that can change the entire gist of a sentence. Typos that could invalidate the constitution of one's nation, and undermine one's literary heritage. Finding them is critical.
Also stultifyingly boring. What I want to know is, when is Micro-whomever going to get on the stick and invent a proofreading program that WORKS? I don't mean a grammatical checker, one of those dim-bulb rote-read things which tells you to insert a comma and a 'that' every six words through every sentence. I mean a program capable of reading a language contextually, building sentence structure ... in other words, understanding what it's reading, and able to pick out one's typographical booboos.
Guys, there's a billion dollars out there for the company that comes out with a program designed to rescue people from the hapless, vile oblivion of profreading.
Speaking of which, I still have 20 pages to do, and I'd best get on with it!
Ciao for now,
MK.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Getting artistic on you
We're working hard to put the last finishing touches to the new website before it goes 'live' in a couple of weeks. This afternoon's endeavor was the 'send an e-card' segment, which works beautifully, is extremely friendly, and colorful. Check this out:
We did over thirty 'cards,' which use the artwork from bookcovers and the calendar. They're quite eye-catching. I'm impressed ...
...and this is also a chance to show around some of the very new artwork, such as the cover for the 2008 edition of AQUAMARINE. Oh, yes, I'm proofing it. Even after all these years I can't believe what happened with the Millivres edition. Put yourself in the writer's shoes for a moment (or his hat, if you prefer), and imagine that the manuscript you turned in was published just as-is, without even a fresh pair of eyeballs to proofread it and pick up whatever typos! I'd been waiting to get the galley back, so I could go over it myself, and what did I receive? A box of presentation copies! Jaw hit ground, heart stood still for a moment, and then I do believe I screamed. Hmmm. [sound of sighing]
The chance to go back into AQUAMARINE and take another crack at it is very welcome. This will be the next Keegan book online, and it'll be up in July. (I have a mammoth amount of work to do on other projects, but this one is easy, and I'm actually looking forward to it. The last time I read this novel was about seven years ago, and I always liked these characters a lot.)
One of the jobs I have waiting for me is to sit down and talk lucidly (ha!) for an hour or two with the designers from DreamCraft. Subject: the NARC armor. The bloody NARC riot armor. Which has become another cause for screaming. No matter how the helmet is drawn, it's not right ... it's weird; I can 'see' it in my mind's eye, but the instant it drops to two dimensions on paper, it's wrong. Or at least, not right. What I see is something oddly graceful and yet deadly with menace.
A few folks have wondered if the armor from IRON MAN is close to what I see as the NARC armor ... and it is, and it isn't. (Incidentally, I liked the movie a lot. If anyone was asking moi, I'd have to say it's the best Marvel movie since the first X-MEN, and Robert Downey Jr. is so perfectly cast as that dissipated heap of debauchery, Tony Stark, the casting could have been done in heaven. If you haven't seen the movie yet: see it on the big screen if you can. It'll look great on DVD, but this is one film which really uses the massive screen, and is advantaged by it. And yes, it's a power trip. I get a very similar kick out of it as I do from the NARC stories ... and that's saying a lot. Kudos to Marvel on this one; cheers also to Robert D., who pulled a neat trick of acting with the character change in the middle of the picture. You really dislike him in the first reel, and the fact is, you don't have a lot of sympathy for him when he gets caught by his own weapon and taken prisoner. Rather than have him change utterly and become a moralizing goodie-two-shoes, the writers had him LEARN, and WAKE UP. In the last couple of reels, the character of Tony is still an SOB, still dissipated, but he's also a nice guy. I found the character very believable. As for the suit -- it's fun. It's only meant to be fun. Leave your grasp of physics in the bottom of your coat pocket, along with the turned-off cell phone and the cough candy (yes, it's mid-winter here. Cough drops. Donte leave home without them).
I'll paste in one more picture here, and leave you for today ... got to get some work done...
We did over thirty 'cards,' which use the artwork from bookcovers and the calendar. They're quite eye-catching. I'm impressed ...
...and this is also a chance to show around some of the very new artwork, such as the cover for the 2008 edition of AQUAMARINE. Oh, yes, I'm proofing it. Even after all these years I can't believe what happened with the Millivres edition. Put yourself in the writer's shoes for a moment (or his hat, if you prefer), and imagine that the manuscript you turned in was published just as-is, without even a fresh pair of eyeballs to proofread it and pick up whatever typos! I'd been waiting to get the galley back, so I could go over it myself, and what did I receive? A box of presentation copies! Jaw hit ground, heart stood still for a moment, and then I do believe I screamed. Hmmm. [sound of sighing]
The chance to go back into AQUAMARINE and take another crack at it is very welcome. This will be the next Keegan book online, and it'll be up in July. (I have a mammoth amount of work to do on other projects, but this one is easy, and I'm actually looking forward to it. The last time I read this novel was about seven years ago, and I always liked these characters a lot.)
One of the jobs I have waiting for me is to sit down and talk lucidly (ha!) for an hour or two with the designers from DreamCraft. Subject: the NARC armor. The bloody NARC riot armor. Which has become another cause for screaming. No matter how the helmet is drawn, it's not right ... it's weird; I can 'see' it in my mind's eye, but the instant it drops to two dimensions on paper, it's wrong. Or at least, not right. What I see is something oddly graceful and yet deadly with menace.
A few folks have wondered if the armor from IRON MAN is close to what I see as the NARC armor ... and it is, and it isn't. (Incidentally, I liked the movie a lot. If anyone was asking moi, I'd have to say it's the best Marvel movie since the first X-MEN, and Robert Downey Jr. is so perfectly cast as that dissipated heap of debauchery, Tony Stark, the casting could have been done in heaven. If you haven't seen the movie yet: see it on the big screen if you can. It'll look great on DVD, but this is one film which really uses the massive screen, and is advantaged by it. And yes, it's a power trip. I get a very similar kick out of it as I do from the NARC stories ... and that's saying a lot. Kudos to Marvel on this one; cheers also to Robert D., who pulled a neat trick of acting with the character change in the middle of the picture. You really dislike him in the first reel, and the fact is, you don't have a lot of sympathy for him when he gets caught by his own weapon and taken prisoner. Rather than have him change utterly and become a moralizing goodie-two-shoes, the writers had him LEARN, and WAKE UP. In the last couple of reels, the character of Tony is still an SOB, still dissipated, but he's also a nice guy. I found the character very believable. As for the suit -- it's fun. It's only meant to be fun. Leave your grasp of physics in the bottom of your coat pocket, along with the turned-off cell phone and the cough candy (yes, it's mid-winter here. Cough drops. Donte leave home without them).
I'll paste in one more picture here, and leave you for today ... got to get some work done...
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