New Site, Who Dis?

Hi, hello! It's been a minute. 

Several minutes, and life events, and world changes, specifically. I'm still alive, but now findable at www.puzzledrhino.com with a more writerly/publishy focus.

It's early days yet, but I'm working on it. 

🧩 🦏

The Challenge of Being

Oh Baby Celebrating #TypewriterDay 2018 with a Swiss friend #hermes #typewriter #vintage #typography

A post shared by Michael P. Clemens (@mpclemens) on Jun 23, 2018 at 7:19am PDT

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I think my "new" blogging methodology is to try to remember my password every 6-9 months or so, post, and then vanish into the fog again. The good Professor Polt has commented that social media looks like it's usurped straight-up blogging, and I'm certainly guilty of that, though I've also given myself a hard diet from it. Except for Instagram (follow, like & share!) I have all but dropped off the Social Media train -- or is it trainwreck? -- and I attribute that to making me feel happier, too. But I'm still here, cyber-stalking as one does on teh Cyberz.

I will say that despite there being fewer voices in the blog world, the typewriter community at large feels even larger and livelier than ever. The Yahoo groups are still (still!) hanging on, and there's no shortage of restorers, resellers, and admirers out there. It's heartening, because I feel like we've adapted as a community, even as the winds of what's "cool" have changed. For myself, I do claim a much longer personal history with the image than with the written word. I truly didn't get "in" to writing until joining up with the Typewriter Brigade all those (Duffy) Moons ago.  So my gradual upgrading of a better phone and camera, and obsessively snapping pictures of office buildings and random architectural details is nothing new. It's just easier to share: practically frictionless, like social media was designed to be.

One massive disadvantage to willfully dropping off social media -- and perpetually being bad at blog upkeep -- is that I cannot pester people remotely and incessantly for personal gain. If you're still in the NaNoWriMo Typewriter Brigade, you may know that I attempted some Bravery last year and asked people for donations and dressed up and carried a typewriter to San Francisco on a train and talked with strangers and had a great time. I count all of these as Major Achievements, especially the dressing-up part. And I'm doing it again, or am hoping to:

I'm fundraising to attend the NaNoWriMo Night of Writing Dangerously, held in San Francisco. It took me a decade of self-convincing to believe that I could do it, and now I'm trying to stamp out that regret by going back. Last year I took a travel 'writer, and my hands and arms paid dearly. This year, we type in style -- I'm thinking Olympia SM9 -- and damn the consequences and possible hernia.

But I need your help...

I have a fundraising page set up, and all proceeds go to the fine folks at NaNoWriMo.org for their educational programs and outreach. I wrote more about it on the page, it's goofy and pleading, just like me in real life. If you're able to contribute even a small amount, I and the NaNo folks, would be most grateful. U.S. contributions are tax-deductible, and if you're a lapsed Wrimo, this is a good way to help out an organization and promote the Typosphere. I was the only typewriter-bearer in the ballroom last year, and I made a welcome racket (seriously: so many people complemented me on the industrious noise.)

Thank you in advance for your support, and I hope you all have a delightful Typewriter Day.

One Third

We're one third of the way into November, and the dreaded "week two Sucks" of NaNoWriMoare chipping away at the Typewriter Brigade. It's hard enough to stay motivated to write every day, but week two is when the realization hits home of just how bad a fast-written first draft can be. I've reached the point where I drop missing words into sentences after the fact, and then re-start the sentence again. Pessimistically, I'd say my word count is over-inflated by a third. Edits are going to be brutal.

In a more coherent time (i.e., October) I got contacted by the NaNo organizers about the Typewriter Brigade. I'm quick to point out that unleashing this thing on the world was not my doing -- blame is still laid at the feet of the one they call "Duffy Moon." But I have wheedled myself into being an annoying cheerleader of sorts, in this great beast-without-a-head that is the annual running of the Brigade.

I have a slight problem with self-editing, and the NaNo blog had limited space (I guess? It's a tumblr, so... bit conservation.) Here's the hit piece as published on their blog and below follows the original replies I sent them, less one "secret" question for the next interviewee, and with some answers I cut down for space before submission.

Despite being largely camera-shy, I am happy with the way the lead photo came out -- a selfie, no less, with everybody's favorite tiny rhino pal. Black and white photos really accentuate gray hairs, don't they? Hmm. Added bonus: the uncropped photo of my writing space, which shows the utter blandness and mild grubbiness of our coat closet. Enjoy.

# # #




1. Tell us a little bit about the Typewriter Brigade and what makes it great. Tout it like crazy.

The Typewriter Brigade is a worldwide group of typewriter enthusiasts, smooshed together into a moderately dysfunctional noveling family. We offer advice on machine repairs and restoration, encourage impulse machine buying, and try to slog through a high-velocity month in low-technology style.

Occasionally we even get writing done.

2. What do you think is the best thing about noveling on a typewriter?

There are a lot of benefits, but the biggest one is no distractions. It's simply not possible for me to waste my writing time by fooling around on Twitter or the forums when I'm typing, and thank goodness. I have the attention span of a gnat.

Having no "Delete" key is a huge benefit, too, and because I'm such a poor typist, every typo equals a free word. The end-of-line bell is a wordcount cheerleader, and I've never managed to crash a typewriter or run low on battery.

3. What is your favorite typewriter model? Geek out a bit; we don't mind. We encourage it, in fact.

My personal favorite is the Olympia SM3, which is a portable typewriter from Germany built in the 1950s. It's built like a clock crossed with a tank, came in many colors, and is very stylish with lots of chrome. I own a few of these. My wife wishes I collected something smaller. For write-ins, I take a Smith-Corona Skyriter., which was designed to be portable enough to take with you on an airplane or use on your lap.

My main NaNoWriMo machine is a battleship-grey 1952 Royal KMG typewriter I call "the Beast." It's more work than using a computer keyboard, but I find it very satisfying, and once I find my typing rhythm, the words really flow. Since there's no delete key, every typo becomes a wordcount boost. This is a secret Brigade bonus.




4. Tell us a bit about where you, specifically, are writing from this year.

I'm in Pleasant Hill, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, just over the hills from the OLL. Go team East Bay!

The Beast and I set up in the family room, wedged behind the sofa and facing the coat closet. It's the most boring part of the house, and as far from the bedrooms as possible so I can get my writing in before the kids wake up and start demanding breakfast and rides to school and other selfishness.

5. Tell us about the novel you're writing this year, if you're writing one at all, in six words.

"Plucky orphans, nefarious villains, airship racing."

6. Introduce us to the NaNo Rhino!

He appeared one day when I said "NaNoWriMo" into speech-to-text software and the computer heard "Nano Rhino." He keeps hanging around, living in the typewriter, making plot suggestions and demanding strong coffee in tiny cups, gourmet chocolates, and frequent belly rubs.

Shockingly, many other Brigadiers have discovered Rhinos living in their typewriters, and pictures of them often show up in the forum. The Rhino is a combination good luck charm and grumpy muse. Nano Rhinos grow wings when their Wrimo caretaker reaches 50,000 words. They molt and come swaggering back every November wingless and demanding snacks.

7. What is the best piece of writing advice you've ever received?

It wasn't directed at me personally, but Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird is one of the best books on writing that I've read. The essays on getting started and on first drafts are on my pre-NaNo reading list each year.

In general, I like reading advice from writers who sound a little neurotic and not entirely in control. This is the kind of help I can relate to.

8. What is one piece of advice you would give to a nervous novelist who may or may not be reading this post?

If you're not reading this post, go back and read this post! It's full of excellent words arranged in an entertaining manner.

If you are reading this post, my advice is: don't delete during November.

If you are unfortunately forced to use a computer for NaNoWriMo, remove the Delete key or glue a tack to it or do whatever it takes to not remove anything from your draft. Turn off the spell check and the grammar check and the Internet. Keep every sentence, especially the ones that you are sure are boring and useless and pointless.

I am often surprised to discover that the horrible, awful, terrible pages I wrote in November got much better when I was brave enough to read them again in December. You're too close to make good decisions in November: keep it all and revise later.

9. What is your weirdest writing experience?

I am usually a big planner, with outlines and index cards and plot figured out in advance. The weirdest moment for me -- and this happens every year -- is when my characters ignore all that hard work and do whatever they want to do, and change the story around. To a hardcore planner, this was very upsetting the first time it happened. What about the plan?! The outline?! Guys! Come back!

Now I've learned that this is normal, in a kind of hearing-voices-in-your-head way. It's a great feeling when the characters run things and I just copy it down. It's still weird, though, having them take over my brain.

Makes me laugh

Of course there's no actual physical piece of paper bearing Jeff Bezos' autograph, the royalty having been deposited electronically into that dedicated account. I feel like I should frame the bank statement or something. Just in case I get big-headed about this tiny achievement, my wife has offered to send me regular updates on the products that come before the book in question on a general Amazon search. Today's choicest hits:

• Pink case for a smartphone
• High-end audio cables
• Men's hair color
• Headlight kit for a Nissan

That's funny in a whole other way.

The Rhino Isn't Fooling

Just a quick post to advise everyone that I've uploaded the latest, way-fewer-errors version of One Last Quest to the various e-book retailers out there.

If you're a tightwad watching your budget, there are two lower-cost options for you:

1. Amazon, being Amazon, has gleefully undercut my retail price by 50%. Take that, indie author!
2. I've made a new coupon code YF46K which applies only to Smashwords downloads and brings the price of Quest right on down to a frosty-cool 99 cents. If you previously downloaded a copy, you should be able to get the updated version for free by logging back in and downloading the latest-greatest.

And also for you, my lovely fellow Luddites, I am pleased to announce that a print edition is available from CreateSpace. If you enjoy words and seeing them together on a page, then you will certainly enjoy this book. Look! It has a bar code and everything. That means it's real. It is also a convenient size for stowing in a backpack, bag, or for leveling out that wobbly coffeeshop table. You know the one. It's that table in the corner that nobody sits at because, you know, teh wobblez.

If you've bought or downloaded a copy, I thank you all the way down to your toes. Once you've read it, perhaps you could take a moment to leave a review at the retailer's site? Then I'd thank the rest of you even more.

OMFG LAST DAY

Today's the last day of the "read an e-book week" promotion at Smashwords. If you hanker for a broad variety of, ahem, adult-themed literature, or something a little lighter and far less porny, this is your day to get it. Remember: even if you can't read it now, you'll automatically be able to download any updates -- like, say, the one I'm working on now that eliminates all the spurious punctuation gaffes.

Use code RE100 to download One Last Quest for free right now.

Lordy Lordy

Clearly, free is everyone's favorite four letter word. Smashwords sends me an email every time someone buys a copy of One Last Quest, and I've been watching with great glee as a new message pops into the mailbox about every hour over the last few days, ever since that freebie coupon code took effect. Right now, the magic "copies sold" number is 40 -- three copies actually sold-for-money sold, and another thirty seven downloaded since the coupon took effect.

Does this mean my readership is a bunch of cheap bastards? YES. And I love you all for it.

So to celebrate the midpoint of the week of freeness, here's the promised "lessons learned" post.

Picking a Distributor

Smashwords

I was already familiar with Smashwords, and I liked how their aptly-named "meatgrinder" software churns out multiple electronic files from a single, carefully-formatted upload. Their royalties are generous, even on a cheap book like mine, and frankly, I kind of like the "everybody in all together" attitude of the site. Yes, there's a lot of pr0n-ish vampire novels about, and it's easy to get swallowed up in the noise. Direct-linking to the book is way more effective than trying to chance across it on their site.

Pros:

Free, all the way through. Multiple file formats and distribution channels, including one just-announced channel that can feed into libraries. Once a customer buys a book, they have access to all revisions of that book, so you don't need to feel guilty about fixing up typos (ahem.) ISBN assignment is free and easily done, and you use the same electronic ISBN in all the other places you might want to upload your book.

Cons:

Approval for the distribution process to other retailers like Apple and Sony is slow -- I've been waiting two weeks, which seems to be the minimum, and I'm about to update the file with a new corrected copy. Does this restart the approval process? I don't know. Very little hand-holding in the process: this is a DIY operation, and formatting your manuscript according to their rules is fiddly.

Bonus Pro:

The Smashwords style guide is so particular that the resulting document can serve as the foundation for other distributors with just a few changes to the styles.

Amazon

The 800-pound gorilla in the room: ignore it at your own risk. Amazon's attitude towards traditional book publishing houses seems to always be making news, and I can certainly see how a huge operation with no brick-and-mortar presence wants to shift the world to electronic downloads: it makes great business sense.

It's rather hard to track down, but Amazon has the Kindle Direct Publishing system, which is very Smashwords-esque. You upload a formatted Word document and a cover image, there's a vetting process, you set the price and rights, and after a waiting period, your book shows up as a Kindle download, and is available through Amazon's various international incarnations as well (they handle the currency conversion.)

Amazon is making a big push for their "KDP Select" program, which sounds too good to be true, and thus probably is. The most glaring issue I have with this program is that you sign over exclusive distribution rights to Amazon for your work for 90 days. No selling it anywhere else, at all. This felt like a Bad Deal to me, so I opted out (though it's presented to you each time you log in to check reports.) Mr. Speegle opted to go this route with Pen & Platen and I'm sure that his recent rise to the top of the Anthology chart was helped by the Amazonian marketing muscle that accompanies this program.

Anyhow, the Amazon upload format is practically the same as Smashwords: add page breaks before your chapters, replace "Smashwords edition" with "Amazon edition" and you're about done. Prepping a file for upload is easy.

Amazon has two royalty levels, 35% and 70%. What right-thinking individual wouldn't choose 70%? Me, of course. It's a very confusing page -- possibly by design -- and my natural skepticism tells me that Amazon isn't giving you 70% of the book price without you giving up something else in turn. It seems to hinge around "delivery costs," which baffles me for an ebook in this era of unlimited-bandwidth cell phone plans. Short version: seems scary, and I don't like the scary.

Pros:

Very organized. Upload is a snap after Smashwords. Who hasn't heard of Amazon? "Kindle" is becoming synonymous with "e-reader" (even though the Nook is better!)

Cons:

KDP Select narrows your distribution options, and may involve signing over firstborn or selling soul.

Barnes & Noble

If the KDP program was hard to find, B&N's PubIt! program was nigh impossible. It's referenced in numerous places in their discussion boards, but I had a hard time tracking it down short of a web search to find the signup page. I have a Nook reader from B&N and certainly feel brand loyalty in distributing through them. Also, I'd still be waiting on Smashwords to distribute to B&N, so uploading my own file made the most sense to me.

Sales here are on par with Amazon, honestly. I'm going to experiment with the coupon systems on each and see what happens. There are a number of price-harvesting services that scan the major sellers and look for price drops/coupons: I wouldn't be sad to be picked up by those.

Pros:

Equally organized. Upload is also trivial after Smashwords. Maybe the only domestic competition left for Amazon.

Cons:

Is not Amazon.

A Word About DRM

That's "digital rights management" to you, or "the reason you can't share an ebook with a buddy, or read that file you already bought for your Kindle/Nook/Kobo on your computer." In other words: the way your file is encrypted to ensure that it is read only by the paying customer. All distributors will ask you what approach to DRM you want to take, and once you've chosen it for a book, there's no going back short of scrapping the old one and uploading a new one.

To soapbox for a moment, I think DRM is a very, very, very bad idea. It's as secure as any encryption scheme meant to protect paying customers from their own base instincts, which is to say, not at all. DRM makes no distinction between sharing a copy with yourself on another reader and sharing a thousand copies with your friends. I think DRM primarily serves the companies that make the reading devices and the encryption software. Why assume your customers are thieves?

I just started reading Twain's Roughing It on el Nook the other day, and am enjoying it immensely. I can do this because 1) the title is in the public domain, and is thus available from Project Gutenberg and 2) it's available in a variety of DRM-free formats, including one that my Nook reads (the common .epub format.) If my descendents 100 years from now are reading -- and they damn well better be -- I'd like them to be able to look up great-great-great-great grandpa's silly little adventure book and not suffer the same puzzlement that my kids do when I show them an 8-track tape at the thrift store. "Dead format kids, sorry. Your introduction to Herb Alpert will have to wait for another day."

As an writer -- and I think I can call myself that now -- I'm sure that I'm robbing myself of... something. Money? Eh, I'm not going to get rich on a $1.49 piece of amateur fiction. Credibility? Any hope I had of that was gone a long time ago. Honestly, I don't see how anyone's needs are met by DRM here. I want a broad audience, and I want them to read, dammit. If one of them happens to pass my book along to 150 friends, that would be 150 more potential readers.

DRM BAAAAD. READERS GOOOOD.

OK, off the soapbox.

Getting In Print

Thanks to their affiliation with NaNoWriMo, I'm pretty solidly in the CreateSpace camp for making a print-on-demand copy of my book. They usually offer a coupon or special code to NaNo winners which, being cheap, I'm happy to exploit. (Last year was a free proof copy. This year is five free "real" copies.) CreateSpace is also an Amazon company, so you get to leverage that connection or feel icky about it, depending again on your opinion of Amazon. If you're overcome by the ickies, I'd check out Lulu, which seems to be the other big player in this arena within the United States. Both seem to be free, until you start ordering things (proof copies, a copy for mom) or want to take advantage of their professional services (cover design, editing, interior layout, etc..)

One Last Quest is very much a labor of love as well as a grand DIY learning experience: it's a "firsts" book for me. First book worth reading (IMHO.) First book transcribed and edited. First book I let other people read. First book sold. Might as well get another "first" under my belt, right? Besides, there is nothing, nothing so electrifying as holding a physical copy of a book with your name on the outside and your words on the inside. (OK, maybe holding your newborn children wins out there. But they don't come with your own ISBN number, either.)

Print is a different beast, but again I started with my Smashwords digital file, and tweaked a copy for Createspace. Intra-document links went away, obviously, and I added some art to the interior that I omitted from the digital editions. Measurements are critical here, and it took a while to get my word processing program to format the PDF exactly right; wide margins on the inside, and narrow ones elsewhere; page numbers in the outside corners; and getting the front- and back-matter (title page, copyright, about the author) to look correct.

Still: oh, that electrifying proof copy. And oh! The typos. Lesson for next time: don't be so cheap, and get a pre-proof version run off at the copy center. I'm finding far more mistakes on the printed page than I am on-screen.

Preparing for print is a lot more fiddly than ebook preparation. Upload the file, and then wait 24-48 hours for approval (and reports of issues.) Upload or design a cover, and then wait another 24-48 hours for approval. Order a proof (recommended), wait for delivery. If there are fixes, start over. It's a game for the patient, and I'm not a patient person.

One last tidbit: hyphenation and justification. You'd think that a typewriter person would have been aware of this, but no. This is something I honestly don't pay attention to in books that I own, but the right edge of my proof copy seems very ragged to me. I need to review some of my commercial print books at home and see if they are set in a justified width, and have hyphenation. I suspect that they do.

Pros:

If you come in prepared, it's easy, but it's still like air travel: lots of hurry-up-and-wait. The "cover calculator" tool gives you a handy template that shows exactly where to place your art -- and where not to -- based on the page count and size of your book. I tried to do this by hand: never again.

Cons:

What-you-see isn't necessarily what-you-get. I cycled through about four cover designs, with layers and textures and so on, and after approval, discovered that the layers didn't, and the textures weren't, and so forth. Simple, flattened designs like the one Rob Bowker made for Pen & Platen are going to give you the fewest surprises. The default covers look default, like PowerPoint slides. Lulu's defaults appear no different.

Pay extra attention to options in your PDF-generating software that talk about "true registration." I spent a couple of days wondering how my text could bleed into margins that I'd clearly set up. This is buried in the paragraph style section in LibreOffice, and it magically fixed the problem.

Shameless Promotion

Ah, I bet you think this section is going to be chock-a-block full of self-deprecating wisdom, don't you?

Bad news.

Honestly, this is the part I'm struggling with the most. Within minutes of getting the "all clear" email from Smashwords, my first inclination was "I need to tell everyone about this" followed immediately by "I wonder if it would be a bad thing to send this everyone on my contact list?" It's a dark day when you suddenly find yourself sympathizing with pill spammers and secret-shopper fraud mailers.

The great thing about self-publishing is that anyone can do it. The bad thing about self-publishing is it appears that everyone is doing it, and except for a few wild outliers (who we hate in public and envy in private) there's not a lot of immediate gratification for the indie author. Forty sales! Well, forty downloads, in the guise of a sale. So what do you do?

I'm blogging about it here, obviously, and I set up a new "books" page here on the blog just to point to the available work, and to start teasing about the next one in the pipeline. I've been known to drop non-subtle hints on the various social media outlets (free book! free book!), and would encourage any readers to pop in to the site where they got the book and leave a review.

In the meantime I keep reloading my "dashboard" page and checking email for that magic message...

*doink*

41 copies! I could get used to this feeling.

IZ IN YR BLOG POSTIN TEH KOOPONZ

PSST BUDDY

YOU WIT TEH EARZ

OH HAI!

DID U NO ITZ READ EBOOK WEEK?

ME NEEDER! LOL

DID U NO U CAN HAS A FREE EBOOK?

DID U?

U CANZ!

THIS BOOK LULZY, I LOL UNTIL I POOPZ

NOW YOU GETZ IT FREE DIS WEEK WIT TEH KOOPONZ RE100

YES! U CAN HAZ FREE LULZ EBOOK WIT RE100

MABE U RITES THAT DOWN NOW, K?

RE100

ONLY GUD UNTIL MARCH 10

WHAZZAT?

U MADE OF BRASS?

U NO CAN MOVEZ ARMZ?

U NO CAN READ?

THEN Y WAYSTIN TIME TALKZ WITH U?

LETZ KEEP DIS A SEKRIT, K BRO?

On Lambs and Lions

Well of course I'm going to link to the book. E-book editions are currently:

• On Smashwords
• On Amazon
• On Barnes & Noble 

Smashwords will also distribute to Apple, Kobo and Sony, but I'm in the hurry-up-and-wait stage for that. Ditto for the printed proof copy of the book, which will make its way to me in about a week and a half. I'll do a massive recap post when I can breathe again.

Typed -- courageously -- on the Brother/Montgomery Wards Signature 513:

Cover Me

Here's some exciting(?) in-progress shots of the cover art for One Last Quest showing my process, such as it is.

Step 1: Sketching



These erasers are pretty small, around 2 1/2 inches on the long side, and about 3/4 of an inch across the short edge. I say "around" and "about" since these came from the dollar store, and are not exactly manufactured to precision specs. The small size is an asset, though, since it forced me to think about what I could accomplish in a small space with my limited art abilities.

I trace out a bunch of rectangles on paper from the erasers, and then spent some time fiddling around with the letters shapes. Since this is a cover for an e-book, I wanted to make sure whatever I made was bold and would show up well when reduced to a thumbnail size. You can see my doodles on the blue paper behind these erasers. I was still trying to figure out what to do with the word "LAST" here, since I didn't like the big gap between the "L" and the "A" but there's not a lot of room to tinker around.

Step 2: Transfer



To transfer the image, I placed the blank eraser next to the drawing and then copied a mirror image over. This process was fraught with peril, since my brain kept helpfully "fixing" things as a drew: note the remnants of the "N" in the word "ONE" and the fact that "LAST" was actually erased because I'd done the "L" and "S" the wrong-way around. Voluntary dyslexia is difficult, people.

Only later in the day did I realize that you could press a blank eraser against a heavy pencil drawing and enough of the graphite would transfer over to give me a reference point to recreate the drawings. Duh. (LESSON #1)

Step 3: Outline Cut



With outline in place, cut away! I used a Speedball Lino Set #1 that I found in a local art store (not Blick, sadly) but these erasers are so soft that you could use anything sharp enough and controllable. If you happen to have a Speedball drawing pen holder, these blades fit inside that, too, which is handy.

Except for the knife blade, all the lino tools have a U-shaped edge, in various depths and widths. This is supposedly the best way to cut stamps, versus cutting directly perpendicular to the surface, as it gives the stamp surface more strength. I stuck almost exclusively to the smallest size since these erasers are so small. And I found it easier to turn the eraser under the tool to make corners, instead of trying to hold the eraser steady and drive the cutter around. This may be horrible technique, but it worked for me. (LESSON #2)

Step 4: First Impression



With all the outline carved out, all the handy pencil marks are theoretically gone from the surface of the eraser, and there's not enough contrast to see what's going on, at least for my middle-aged eyes. Time to break out the ink pad! Just a quick stamp to make sure everything looks OK, proportions are good, I didn't flip the "N" backwards again, etc..

Step 5: Fiddly Carving



First impression passes muster, so using the same tool ("Liner #1") I carved out the narrow spaces inside and between the letters. The leftover ink is a huge help here, since you can see what's left to do. I deliberately wanted to keep the rough-carved look for the art, so I left a lot of the excess in place. I planned to scan these and remove any problems digitally, so better to have too much "extra" stuff than not enough.

Step 6: Final Carve



With the fiddly stuff done, I swapped blades and cut away all the rest of the excess. Now repeat steps 2-6 for the other two words, and then sketch up designs for the "icons" on the cover.

I did have trouble pinning down how I wanted the word "LAST" to look. The nice thing about using super-cheap media like dollar-store supplies is there's no real pain in tossing a bad design. Now I have an eraser I can give to my kids for schoolwork once I cut off the inky part.



You can see the rejected outline impression here on the orange piece of paper, and then the stamp that became the final design, with the "A" nested snug.

Step 7: Layout and Scan, and Tweak, Tweak, Tweak



There were eight total stamps in the cover: the three words, the tower, bat, and dragon, the "X" and the source for the dotted-line path (seen just under the bat stamp above.) I did a few impressions of each stamp on a piece of plain white paper and scanned them, thinking that if I got a bad one, I could just magically copy over a good letter from another impression and drop it into place. Ha Ha! I was so naive. Here's a little tidbit I didn't think about: eraser stamps are very flexible, and they distort slightly when you press them into the page. In other words, the clean bat wings I got from impression #1 would not fit nicely over the smooth bat-body from impression #2, no matter how much I insisted that they should. Live and learn. (LESSON #3)

I brought the whole scan into Gimp and spent most of the day scooting them around a virtual page. I scaled up the words and digitally removed some of the extra print-marks and cutting goofs. The dotted-line path was made from digitally cutting up a quickie grid stamp that I made, and then laying each rectangle down individually. That felt like it took forever. I fudged the colors a bit, and with Richard Polt's permission, used his Royal Quiet Deluxe font for my name.

And the final result:



I'm so pleased with the way that this turned out that I'm considering adding to the collection and doing simple interior stamp illustrations at each chapter head. But then, I've been known to pledge projects here before...

In the meantime, if you are the keeper of an electronic reading device and about a latte's worth of spare change, you, too can marvel at how spiffy this cover art looks on the screen. Oh, and there's some funny words that accompany it, too, if you're into, you know, reading.

You can get a copy of One Last Quest from Smashwords in just about every digital format, or from Barnes & Noble or Amazon if you happen to have one of their readers. All editions are DRM-free, because I'm a tree-huggin' hippie at heart.

An Author is Me

"Kyras-Camera-High-Dive 061" by flickr user JoshSchulz


I spent the holiday weekend making a mess on our dining room table, and after much tweaking and pixel-pushing and fishing around for compliments, I pulled the trigger: One Last Quest is purchasable, at least electronically. That's one small step for (a) man, one more leap for the Typosphere. (Just following in Mr. Speegle's footsteps, here.) Now I sit back and recoil in horror at all the typos that slid by undetected.


Click me for a more humorous tomorrow

Can't sit for long, though. I'm already reading through the formatting guide to upload directly to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Formatting for Smashwords is very particular, and I hope that I can use the same file -- or a slightly tweaked version -- to handle the other two sites. And then I need to figure out if I'm going to resurrect the print version that I proofed oh-so-long ago.

The only scary part is the jump...

Scribomechanical

Typed on a Sperry-Rand Remington Premier

For Those About to Read...

All right, all right. Deek of Type Clack has been shamelessly flogging my 2009 NaNo draft, without any sort of encouragement from me (private to Deek: your check is in the mail.) I did finally -- finally! -- finish reading through and cleaning up my initial transcription, and posted it online as a Google doc. It's tucked away here, on a page that might become home to similar such things, if I'm so inclined. Deek has been generous with the praise, as has Duffy, who saw an earlier, less cleaned-up draft. I'm still waiting on that other shoe.

There are still a number of problems, mostly of the odd or duplicate word: most of this work was undoing the erratic "fixes" imposed by the automatic spell checker. I have not re-read it all the way through again, but I'll update it in place when I get a chance.

I'm happily accepting any and all comments, suggestions, improvements, and (of course) faint praise. If you need me, I'll be over here in the corner, curled up all fetal and humming to myself.

EDIT: I'm also learning how to use Google documents, so if I suddenly break the link, be patient. I may be putting an update in place. Or erasing all my hard work. You know, either way.

Your Arsenal

For Twitterites, there's a #DailyArsenal hashtag and a corresponding flickr group, highlighting what's in your writing/creating space for the day. Although it's not limited to NaNoWriMo, you can still use it as a way to do a little shameless self-promotion. I arranged my afternoon-writing setup and took a quick photo before heading down to the building lobby to type.

At the risk of sounding like a hokey credit card commercial, what's in your arsenal?

The Big Sell-Out

Inspired by a comment in my Shift Freedom photo, I spent a few minutes this morning fiddling with the "Posterize" tool on Gimp, and have entered the realm of typospheric merch.

Behold! Clickthing Swag-o-Matic 6000!

I'm realizing, though, that this offers up opportunities for those who might want to embellish themselves with their favorite scribomechanical devices, without the stigma and righteousness that will rightfully rain down upon you if you were to, say, support a keychopper on Etsy.

This is kind of a joke, unless anyone actually buys one, and then I'm all in. What would you like to see on a shirt/mug/sticker/magnet?