Been kinda quiet round here of late. Does anyone else go through periods of finding social networking a bit of a distraction? I'll be blogging and tweeting like a mad thing again soon, I'm sure.
Thought I'd post a quick update on Perfect Circles, my planned short story anthology. As mentioned before, I aim to publish three separate genre-specific volumes : Spell Circles (fantasy), Eccentric Orbits (SF) and Life Cycles (mainstream). Plus, a combined volume called Perfect Circles that has all the stories ("One ring to rule them all, one ring to bind them"?)
One thing that has really come out of all this is how much work is involved in both editing and formatting. All the stories have been published already, so they've been through an editorial process. Even so, I'm finding I'm making changes to just about every story I include. Which I actually quite enjoy but it does consume the hours.
Right now I'm formatting for the Kindle and that's real time-consuming too. The Kindle basically wants everything in HTML and in the past I've just saved my Word documents as HTML and used that. Not this time. The HTML Word saves is just too ugly and bloated, and can give the Kindle all sorts of formatting hiccups. So I'm basically reducing everything down to raw text, then building it back up as HTML. Again, time consuming, but it gives me complete control. If anyone's interested, I might write a post detailing exactly how I'm going about all this. I keep thinking I really should write a program to automate the whole process ...
The fantasy volume will be done first. I have about 20 stories lined up for it, of which about half are now formatted. It would be real good to get this out this year but we shall see.
Artwork, artwork. Must sort out artwork ...
Greetings
-
Simon Kewin - Writer of fantasy, SF and some stories that can't make their mind up.
Member of Codex, the SF Authors Collective and co-founder of Write1Sub1. Signed to December House and Morrigan Books.
Books
Engn to be published by December House on July 15th 2013 |
Hedge Witch to be published by Morrigan Books on Hallowe'en 2013. |
The Genehunter amazon.com amazon.co.uk |
The Wrong Tom Jacks |
The Zombies of Death |
The Clone Who Didn't Know |
A Soldier Of Megiddo |
Boneyard |
Spell Circles Collected Stories of the Weird and Wonderful, 1999 - 2011 amazon.com amazon.co.uk |
Eccentric Orbits Collected Stories of Starships and Spacedust, 1999 - 2011 amazon.com amazon.co.uk |
Life Cycles Collected Stories of Life, Death and Other Stuff, 1999 - 2011 amazon.com amazon.co.uk |
Perfect Circles Spell Circles + Eccentric Orbits + Life Cycles amazon.com amazon.co.uk |
The Armageddon Machine
|
Guitar Heroes
|
Live from the Continuing Explosion
|
MuseumBeetles |
SeekAlternative Route |
RemembranceDay |
Recently, On Twitter...
Follow by Email
Stuff I'm Doing ...
Goodreads
You sound very busy.
ReplyDeleteI do find social networking distracting when there are so many other things I need to do. Best of luck to you!
Thanks, Summer. One of the reasons I always fall back in love with blogging etc. is the encouragement you get from others ...
ReplyDeleteYay for your Circle Anthologies!!! Oh I think all the hard work you're doing will be worth it to get a super duper book of your fab stories out there and maybe in print too. Hint! LOL!
ReplyDeleteBlogging a distraction? Jamais!
Take care
x
Old Kitty!
ReplyDeleteI'll aim for super duper, I really will!
Print - yes, definitely. Not sure via whom just yet, but definitely!
Take care.
Eep...that sounds rough.
ReplyDeleteMichael : It's fun really!
ReplyDeleteI can't wait for the books to come out! And great titles, by the way.
ReplyDeleteI do find blogging/forum-browsing a distraction at times. Sometimes it's all too much and I just shut it down for a week or so.
Joe,
ReplyDeleteThanks for that. And I'm glad it's not just me that feels the need to unplug from time to time. I honestly don't know how some people maintain their level of online activity!
Social networking can start to feel draining at times. When that happens, I cut back a bit, maybe stop "following" certain blogs or deleting some bookmarks until it feels, I don't know, "lighter" somehow and then I'm rejuvenated by it all again.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing all the work that goes into the e-book process. I've been considering doing something similar (just one book, not four!) next year so this is very helpful.
I just don't see how people maintain their levels of social networking. I do it, but it is so low down on my list of priorities. I don't think I will ever be one of those writers with 1000 followers.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the HTML'ing!
Madeline,
ReplyDeleteYep, I'm definitely with you on that. Sometimes we need to remember the writing is the main thing I think. And, yes, I do always come back to it fresh and ready to dive in ...
"I'm finding I'm making changes to just about every story I include" -- I do this with every reprint I submit; can't help myself.
ReplyDeleteI for one would be VERY interested on a post re: Kindle formatting. One of these days, I plan to follow in your footsteps. For now, I'm content to watch and learn.
Donna,
ReplyDeleteYep, that's pretty much how I feel. I suppose there comes a point - hopefully - where readers start dropping by as well as other writers. I can't really see how you could keep up with 1000 people!
Milo,
ReplyDeleteYep, me too. Always tweaking. Kindle formatting post - right, you're going to get one now!
I didn't know Kindles were formatted with HTML--interesting. I'm in the middle of learning HTML. :P
ReplyDeleteBlogging is distraction enough . . . I don't know how people blog and social network!
Golden - It's definitely useful if you can get your hands dirty with HTML when it comes to the Kindle, so that would be invaluable.
ReplyDelete