Formatting snafus and moving forward

Had a little snag in the formatting of Dissected, Lori has never worked with Createspace, so a couple pages were not being agreeable. As I'm writing this, I'm once again uploading again, so hopefully it's a done deal.

I'm in the process of designing the back cover. What do you think?

Next steps, setting up distribution with lightning source, getting barcodes. I haven't really looked into that yet, but I think it's fairly self explanatory, and setting my sale price. The book is a little longer than Never Eighteen and I'm considering donating a dollar of every sale to Mary Bridge Children's hospital here in Tacoma, so I'm thinking about a $9.99 sale price.

OH YEAH!!!! The book is done uploading and NO ISSUES THIS TIME!!! Woot! Means it's time to move forward.

I also still have to design postcards to send out to connections I made with Never Eighteen, libraries, schools, and indie bookstores, though I can't find my mailing list. knowing me, I wrote it all down by hand and threw it away, because I can be a complete idiot like that. (hopefully not, but yeah, it's been known to happen). I need to design buttons. The book cover makes that a little tricky, but I'll come up with something. And stickers. People like stickers. I also want new business cards.

I've pushed my release date back to August 27th so I can set up a local launch party, for which I need about 6 weeks lead time.

I met up with a bunch of indie writers in Tacoma last week. It was a very cool experience. I know I can learn a lot from that diverse group.

Almost done!!

Monkey Madness Monday: Indie Publishing, Getting Closer

Received my second round of the formatted version of Dissected. Oh, it's so pretty. Found just a
couple more things that needed changing, so the next version should be it, then guess what. I make it a printed book! MEEP!!!!

What comes next? I need to come up with a sale price, set up distribution and get my bar codes in place.

As far as the sale price...the book is about 246 pages. A bit longer the Never Eighteen, which was $7.99. And I'm thinking about upping the book up a buck so I can donate some to my favorite charity, Mary Bridge Children's Hospital for every sale. So, I'm thinking $9.99 or $10.99. What do you think? Is the latter too much?

Then Lori, who is formatting my book will format the e-book version for me. She's been a God send, as have many others in this crazy process. I could not have done this on my own. Well, I could have but I'm sure it would have been a fiasco. :)

I also still have to design and order buttons and I need to get postcards designs and sent to bookstores, libraries, and schools. I'm wondering, do I mention the fact that the book is indie published? Hmmm, what have you other indie authors done if you've actually published in print?

Bad case of the "justs"

As I was editing Dissected for the LAST time, I found an abundance of "justs." Mind you, I've editing this thing I don't know how many damn times, yet still, "justs" abound. I wonder why that is. Do people say "just" all that much? Do they think "just"? I use it in dialogue as well as internalizations.

And while we're on the subject of overused words, how about the "wells." This I use in dialogue and it starts just about every other sentence. "Well, he did this..." "Well, she said that..." WTF?

"Find---Next" became my favorite Word tool.

I cannot sing the praises of Autocrit.com enough. I think EVERY writer who is going to publish, whether traditionally or indie should utilize this program. It definitely tightens up your prose and makes for a smoother read.

Do you have words you use over and over again? What are they?

And here's a monkey since I forgot yesterday...

Yay Cheerios. Boo America!

Yes, people of different races sometimes marry and they sometimes have children. And they love each other and care about each other and eat breakfast cereal. OMG!! The horror!!!!

If you haven't seen it yet, Cheerios has put out a very adorable commercial starring a biracial family. I
wanted to reach into my computer monitor and hug that little girl, she's about the cutest thing I've ever seen.

This commercial is somewhat of a breakthrough. There is very little representation of multicultural relationships/families in the media. Of course, along with this kind of representation also comes backlash from those that have not caught up with modern society and tolerance. Those who still live in a world with the backwards thinking that people of different races shouldn't intermingle and breed. I cannot believe in this day and age that there are still people living in this country with that mindset.

Cheerios received so many negative, racist comments on Youtube that they had to disable them. Some commented on how "disgusting" the ad was. Others complained about getting multiculturalism jammed down their throats. Really? Take a look around you. There are beautiful, diverse couples, families all around you. You can't hide from diversity or sweep it under the carpet.

Some of the commenters said such nasty things I don't want to sully my blog by referring to them. And though Cheerios has disabled their comments, the sock puppets of the world are finding other places for their vitriol on news videos and such.

Why can't people remember what this country was built on? We emerged as a melting pot. We are a symphony of diversity that should be embraced, not repudiated.

And for you white people who are spewing this verbal venom, remember also that our race was not the first here, and some came against there will at your ancestor's hands. Then came the Irish, Italians, Germans, Hispanics, Russians, Vietnamese, Cambodians etc, etc, on and on. It's just going to continue. This isn't YOUR country. This is OUR country, built on color and culture and the differences among us.

Stop standing still and catch up with the 21st century. Biracial relationships have been around forever. And guess what? Now people of the same sex can be married. What are you going to do when the first same sex commercial comes out? If you don't like it, don't watch TV. If you don't want to see it out in public, don't leave your house or live in a cave. But leave everyone else the hell alone. That commercial, these relationships, they have nothing to do with you.

Didn't your mother ever teach you, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. So, get over yourself and shut the fuck up.