An Author's Work Is Never Done

I've been going back over my books, making corrections, creating new covers, and changing blurbs. I'm a bit disappointed at myself because I found mistakes in my books after having gone over them several times before publication. Fortunately, ebooks allow you to make corrections and re-publish them, unlike print books which are much more expensive to correct.

I've been using Microsoft Word to help me search for errors and I must say, it's a god-sent. It's not perfect though. Word has been insisting that I should use "its" in place of "it's." It made me think that I've been using "it's" incorrectly all my life. I did some research on the internet and found I had been doing it correctly. It also keeps insisting that I use the active voice (can't blame it for that). I believe there are instances where the passive voice is more appropriate. The makers of MS Word, intelligent people, are careful to say that you should "consider" using the active voice, implying that it was just a suggestion. I did, however, take their advice on several occasions.

I have also been changing covers. I make my own using MS Powerpoint, not Photoshop or any other imaging software. I've already changed Legend of the Moon and am working on Funny Stories from My Travels.

Here's a comparison; the one on the left is the old cover and on the right is the new cover.

Maybe one of these days, I'll make a post on how to make covers using MS PowerPoint. It'll be a bit of a challenge for me but rewarding as well.

New Book - Hamelin

I've been neglecting my blog. My last entry was last year, 27 May 27 2014 to be exact. A lot has happened in 14 months of course but I probably won't be writing everything down. Some things need to stay private.

What's new?

Well, for starters, I retired from my job starting 1 July 2015. Yes, I finally took the plunge and filed for early retirement. I'm only 53 but I've got 21 years of service with the company. I've been wanting to concentrate on programming, training, and writing for sometime and I didn't want to wait for normal retirement. If I did, I'd probably be too old to start.

Next, I finished reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I started reading it in January of this year and turned the last page a few days ago. Why'd it take six months?

I only read in the mornings when I'm in the factory canteen eating breakfast. I'd get in a chapter or two but sometimes a friend would join me at my table forcing me to stop to give him/her my undivided attention. 

I'm not going to talk about Les Miserables here. I'm going to make a book review about it in the next installment of this blog.

Finally, I've got another book out!

Hamelin is a short (7,140 words) story about the return of the Pied Piper to Hamelin, seven hundred years after the events told in the original folktale. Like all of my other books, it started out as a series of notes in my Facebook account. What was supposed to be about three notes long turned into twelve. I compiled all the notes and pasted them to a Word document. After a little editing and formatting, I uploaded it to Smashwords yesterday and that was it. 24 hours later it has 29 downloads. If you want to check it out, go to:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/564065?ref=dejmarcelo and download it. It's free, by the way.

The cover was created using MS PowerPoint. I think it turned out quite well, even if I say so myself. I considered going to a professional book cover artist to make one for me but they're expensive. I have some talent working with drawing so I decided go DIY.

That's it for this entry. I hope I can be more productive in the future. It'll be easier if someone makes a comment every now and then. :-)

Book Review - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

This is the next book in my reading list. It took some time to read since I had to divide my reading time with other things. Most of my reading is done during breakfast at the factory. I usually take an empty table, set up my phone on the tray (it tilts the phone up just enough for easy reading) and turn the pages in between mouthfuls. I also try to squeeze in several minutes before sleeping. I used to read books from cover to cover in one sitting but I haven't done that in a long time.

Jane Eyre was written by Charlotte Bronte and published in 1847. This was her second book though it was her first published work. It is written in first person narrative, which means it's as if Jane Eyre herself was telling the story. There are numerous points in the book where Jane seems to be talking directly to the reader. I have not read many books written in this style and I must say it came out quite well.

The story runs like an autobiography of Jane's life from the time she was ten years old until she was around thirty. Most of the story comes from her years between eighteen and twenty. Mistreated as a child, she experiences friendships, education, and care which seems to remove any bitterness she had and develops into quite a proper woman. She is fortunate in that sense. How many penniless orphans do you know get an education and grow up to be intelligent, wise, and kind?

Jane's story is about herself and her experiences and central, I guess, is her love story with Edward Rochester of Thornfield Hall, her employer, whom she often refers to as "Sir" even after they confess their love for each other. It is a sad, happy story and, just as I did with the last book review (Ivanhoe), I will avoid telling the story too much.

Any difficulties?

Well, I kept wondering if people really spoke that way in Charlotte's days. Here's an excerpt from the part where Mr. Rochester deceives Jane into thinking that he was going to marry a rich and beautiful woman and Jane admits to having feelings for her master.

"I tell you I must go!" I retorted, roused to something like passion. "Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton? -- a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! -- I have as much soul as you, -- and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; -- it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal, -- as we are!"

Next, there are a number of coincidences in the story which I find a bit unlikely.

First, Jane meets her master after he meets an accident and helps him—completely unaware it was him. This is not very unusual as it has a higher probability of happening than the next ones.

Jane later discovers that she has a living relative, an uncle, whom she writes to, saying that she was soon going to marry Mr. Rochester. Her uncle happened to know a person in Mr. Rochester's life who spoils their marriage plans causing her to run away from Thornfield Hall.

After Jane runs from Thornfield Hall, and from Mr. Rochester, she comes upon a village and meets a family of two sisters and one brother who take her in. Amazingly, they turn out to be her cousins!

What I liked about the story:

Jane certainly lived an interesting life but I liked the way the story went from poverty and persecution for young Jane, to what seemed a good life for her around the middle of the story. Then comes a fall back to poverty and quickly to recovery. I'm a stickler for happy endings and Jane Eyre certainly has one.

Book Review - Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

A few weeks ago, I took a quiz to find out how many books—among a list of about a hundred—had I read. I was a bit dismayed to find I could only check five books. I didn't count the movie version since that would be cheating. So, I decided I'd go to look for the books I haven't read and load them into my Android phone. This was the first book: Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott.

Having just written Legend of the Moon, which has a medieval setting, I naturally gravitated toward Ivanhoe. I knew about the book but nothing about the story. I remembered there was a movie once that I saw on TV back in the 1960's (I later learned the movie was from 1952) but couldn't remember much about it. I went to www.gutenburg.com because I found several old books there that were free. A few touches on my phone's screen and I had Ivanhoe in my hands.

Ivanhoe was written in 1820 by Sir Walter Scott and was set in 12th century England. More than a hundred years before, the Normans (from France), led by Duke William II fought and defeated the Saxons (from England) at the Battle of Hastings and became masters of the Saxon locals and nobles. Oppressed but proud, the Saxons grudgingly submitted to their Norman conquerors but the divide between these two peoples was very wide. With this setting, the book took off.

The book's title is Ivanhoe but the main character's real name was Wilfred. The word 'Ivanhoe' is actually appended to his name, Wilfred of Ivanhoe, and seems to imply that Wilfred comes from a place named Ivanhoe. There is, however, no mention of such a place in the book and the names Wilfred and Ivanhoe are used almost equally in the story. Other characters such as his father, Cedric of Rotherwood (also known as Cedric the Saxon) is called Cedric and never Rotherwood. The only other character who seems to use his origin/hometown as his name is Locksley. His real name came out later in the story, Robin Hood.

Difficulties with the book:
I like to read aloud and try to duplicate the accents if I can. As other people who have read Ivanhoe would know, the dialogues are difficult. If you haven't read the book but have read the King James Version of the Bible, you'll know what I mean. If thou must read this book, prepare thyself to suffer twisting of the tongue (actually, it's more difficult than my example).

Aside from the Old English way of talking, I found most of the dialogue too lengthy to be practical. Maybe they spoke that way in the 12th century but I wouldn't know.

The Normans are French, first and foremost, so Ivanhoe's principal opponents had French names, which is difficult to pronounce if you don't know the language (and I happen to be one of those). Examples are: Ivanhoe's antagonist, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Brian's friend Reginald Front de Boeuf, and the Grand Master of the Knights Templars, Lucas de Beaumanoir. I had to take a little time off from reading to actually learn how to pronounce them.

What I like about the book:
I don't want to be a spoiler by telling the story, even a short version (in case someone becomes interested in reading the book himself), but I liked the way Sir Walter hid certain things or deliberately misled the reader to make a surprising revelation later.

Surprisingly, Ivanhoe's love interest, the Lady Rowena, has a relatively minor role compared to another woman, Rebecca, a Jewish woman of exceptional beauty. This does not diminish the romantic aspect of the book in anyway, though. In fact, it makes it more interesting.

What I didn't like about the book:
My biggest disappointment was the duel between Ivanhoe and Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert. Again, I don't want to be a spoiler but the duel had been building up and when it occurred, it was over in a flash.

So now I can tick off another book. Next up, Jane Eyre. (",)

Legend of the Moon - first sale

Well, here it is, my first sale for Legend of the Moon. Depending on who you are, $2.40 may seem small but, for me, it means that someone at least liked the sample enough to purchase it. For an author who is new at this, it made me so deliriously happy that I posted this same picture on my Facebook timeline.

Got a book in your head? Get it out and write it. Putting it out on the web was satisfaction in itself so making sales is a bonus. Maybe you just do it once and never again or you come out with a whole string of them, it depends on your purpose and your passion.

Legend of the Moon is Published!

Finally, Legend of the Moon has been uploaded into the Smashwords website! Five and a half months in writing, four months editing and formatting, three weeks creating a cover, whew!

Ten months from start to finish, it was a lot of fun. There were times though when I was tempted to stop editing after two rounds though. It was only the thought that if I'm going to publish a book, I might as well make it as good as I can make it.

So what's next? Another book of course! (",)

Alternative Sources of Income

I've done editing the book and am now working on formatting. I made four editing runs to try and catch errors and improve some passages. I hope I did a good enough job.

Formatting is easier but still time consuming. Smashwords needs to have the book in a strict format so they can convert it into the different file types suitable for ebook readers. They provided the Smashwords Style Guide that gives easy-to-follow instructions to do this. In fact, I've been thinking of offering my own services to other authors to do their formatting for them.

I haven't been working on the book 100% of the time, unfortunately. I still have to work and other things also need to be done. Can I make a living out of being an author? According to numerous articles I've read around the web, probably not. Out of tens of thousands of authors (maybe more), only a few actually earn enough from their books to do nothing else except write.

I'm sure, however, that there are people out there who would say, "don't give up," and cite several famous authors who went through countless rejections before they became successful. To them I will say:

I'm not giving up. I'm just making sure my family and I can survive while I'm working on it.

I've already filed notice of retirement from my employer and I said I would be leaving the company in June next year. I cannot hope to support my family if we just live off my retirement pay so we need to have an alternative source of income.

My wife's a good cook so one of the options is a restaurant or catering service. I couldn't contribute to that since my cooking skill is limited to boiling water for the thermos. Besides, every piece of business advice I read says to have more than one income stream. So what, other than writing, can I do.

I have been in instrumentation and control since 1986, that's 28 years of experience. I can put that to good use by consulting and/or training. With regards to training, however, I don't intend to limit myself to my profession. I've been a Toastmaster for 11 years. I can train people on public speaking and offer my services as a speech coach. So, if I add formatting services for Smashwords authors, I'd have my alternative sources of income.

Can I do it?

'Course I can. (",)