Decided not to wait

My copy edit has been done for a few weeks and "the Betrothal" has basically just been sitting on my computer as a prc file all lonely, waiting for upload.  Since this isn't legacy publishing and I don't need to print anything I asked myself:  why are you waiting?  And really didn't have a good reason besides fear and anxiety and the Celt in me long ago learned not to listen to them, so I published a week early.  It turned out to be an amazingly simple process just like the rest of the experience.

"The Betrothal" now available on kindle:  here.

Nook and Smashwords will come later in the year.

The Betrothal Cover

My take on these E-Book covers is to have something simple but catchy.  We aren't talking about a physical object in a store here, neither is it a foot tall and at least 300 pages thick.  We're talking about 100x100 pixels.  That means:  go bright.

I designed the cover myself using Paint.net.  For the background you have a gradient of pink and baby blue run through the "twister" effect to make the Twilight Zone look and then the "pixelization" effect to add some blur.

As far as fonts, both are free commercial fonts available through www.fontspace.com.  The main title font is the "Action Is Shaded" font with a white paint fill to make the words pop.  "Action Is Shaded" was created by  Brain Eaters (http://www.braineaters.com/) over ten years ago.  It's also nicknamed the "Austin Powers font" because of it's 60s look.  The subtitle font is named "Big Mister C" and was created by Solar Sister.  I wanted a hand-written look and to me it was the most professional.

All in I spent a whole two hours designing the thing.  We'll see if it does the job in May.

March Stats

Words written = 20k
Chapters written = 5
Rejection Slips = 4
Rejections agents/publishers probably didn't bother even sending = 5
Days infested by influenza = 14
Days infested by family = 6

Kindle conversion

I've been screwing around with formating for my first book on the kindle.  The whole process is almost shockingly easy, converting word into html then html into a kindle prc file.  The only problem is that in manuscript paragraphs that are totally fine to read now look incredibly bulky on the kindle even at the lower font settings and probably take four or five clicks to get through at the bigger blind old people settings.  Of problems I expected, this one wasn't on the radar, and it's pretty small beans.  If only the perfectionist in me would shut up and go back in his corner.

Sick

I've been sick for two weeks straight.  It comes and goes, but never really leaves.  I'm pretty sure the whole city is feeling my pain since the medicine section of the local Wal-Mart is starting to look like a walk of the zombies, not to mention the sudden shortage of NyQuil.  There's a possibility one could chart a pandemic by the available NyQuil stocks, starting with cheap generic cherry flavor as a normal day and ending up on expensive brand name horrible green flavor in full meltdown mode.

If so then Fresno is in full meltdown mode.