Just a note to make things clear: in the course of the most recent update I added a number of items labeled as ‘legacy’ to the site’s menu. Two of these (namely my fanfiction and the tribute to my mom) are effectively complete, and as such are no longer being updated. The third one (that would be the Guide to POD) is still being maintained and updated on a yearly basis. In this instance the term ‘legacy’ only means that that particular section predates the creation of this blog. All of these links will open in a new tab/window.
Updates, updates, updates
As you may have noticed, we have (the beginning of) a new look.
Anyway, the truth is that I’ve been working behind the scenes to shake things up and in the next couple of days those changes will gradually be going live. One of those changes is that this blog now serves as the homepage. A series of links that will get you to the older parts of this site are available via the menu above.
Also, my new books have been officially released. As soon as they are added to the amazon database I’ll be uploading the excerpts.
I hope you’ll like them, and sorry if things are a bit chaotic for the time being!
Er… update? Okay, the books are now live and the updates are done. Phew, I’m so glad that one’s over!
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When the mind gets stubborn
Okay, I seem to have hit something of a brick wall. I am still working on book three of Citlalli, but somehow I have this idea that seems to be like a mosquito between my ears that insists that I should write it first. Seeing how it looks like it’s going to be a short story I decided not to fight it (and I have to admit that now that I’ve decided to just run with it I feel much better).
Well, on the bright side we have that, if I can finish a first draft within a reasonable amount of time, it will probably do nicely as a secondary project. That is something I’ve been struggling for a while, as I like to write one book while I review or translate another, but all of a sudden I had found myself with three projects in the ‘to write’ category, and none in the ‘to review’ one (as for the ‘to translate’ thing, I admit that I find both Soulless and Citlalli a little too daunting).
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News about Soulless and Citlalli on the Edge of the Wind
Well it looks like I am going to wind up with two versions of these two books. It may not be what I intended, but in a really twisted kind of way I think it may end up being for the best.
What happened was that while I was working on the interior layout of Citlalli and the Shards of Light I decided to go for a different font and a bit more space between the lines than the one I had used in book one (in fact I decided to go for what was basically the same layout I had used for Laira). The obsessive in me wasn’t particularly happy at the thought that I was going to wind up with two different layouts in two books that were part of the same series, so I decided to update the layout of the first book while I was at it… and then I was made aware of the fact that not only was there a fee for updating the files of a book that had been signed up for CreateSpace’s expanded distribution package, but also that if the page count changed by more than 10% I was going to need different new ISBN anyway (and seeing how that page count was going to jump from something like 372 to 436, that was definitely me). That was not a happy thought, and then the situation was compounded by the fact that I was going to have to increase the price of Citlalli on the Edge of the Wind from $17.95 to $19.95 just to keep the title commercially viable using the expanded distribution. Things were not looking good, and I was seriously considering the possibility of scraping the whole thing and just learning to live with those two different layout, but then I decided to turn CreateSpace’s update policy to my (and hopefully your) advantage. Continue reading
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Dulling the world
Yesterday I came across an article in Yahoo that really bothered me. It was called ‘Don’t Let Your Kids Study These Majors’, and as you can probably tell it tells parents to despair if their children dare to dream of becoming something as despicable as an architect, an artist, a philosopher, an archaeologist, an anthropologist or a film-maker… scratch that, it tells parents to despair if their children dare to dream, period.
So what wonderful alternative majors does this article have in mind as being a far more sensible choice for these misinformed youths who dream of pursuing knowledge for the sake of knowledge, or who love beauty. Well, there is accounting, elementary education, finance, business and healthcare administration.
Now, these are all fine majors if you are passionate about those fields, but while it is true that you have to choose a major with an eye on you professional future, there is more to life that dollars and cents, and pushing kids into fields they hate because it is more ‘sensible’ seems like a terrible idea to me.
Let’s face it, a budding philosopher who despises math would probably make a terrible accountant anyway. Continue reading
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Pointless point sizes
This is a post that is meant mostly for authors looking to self-publish their first book using a DIY service such as Create Space, and it has to do with that pointless bit of insanity that is commonly known to as point sizes.
Let me show you what I mean:
Now what do these twelve samples have in common? Continue reading
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As if I didn’t have enough to do already
ARGH! Okay, so here I am, barely keeping up with my active projects as it is, when my brain has the bright idea of coming up with… another idea. In other words, to the release of four new titles and the two books that were currently being written (plus this blog and maybe a side order of, you know, LIFE) I have now added a novella. I’m not sure when/if it will ever be published, but it was one of those concepts wouldn’t leave me alone until I wrote it down, and the truth is that I am having a lot of fun with it, so I’m not really complaining about that. It’s not that I don’t love what I’m doing, it’s just that there’s a fixed number of hours per day, and there’s a limit as to how far I can cut back in such trifles as sleep.
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The books are coming!
They are almost here! I know I’ve been talking about this since what feels like forever, but if everything goes according to plan Citlalli and the Shards of Light, Scales at a Glance, and the Spanish language versions of both Scales at a Glance and Laira will be released on May 23.
Oh, and did I mention that I’m already hard at work in two or three projects that will hopefully be released next year? (and here I had thought that once this batch was done I’d be able to sleep for a month!)
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Looking for… a way to make walls look a little less dull
Okay, this is going to sound like a crazy request, but here it goes: I live in a house, it’s a nice and perfectly respectable house as far as houses go, and like all self respecting houses it has walls… way too many walls. The problem is that, even though as a writer I spend way too much time indoors, I am not too fond of walls to begin with, so can anyone think of a cheap (think flat out broke), easy (and preferably upcycling/recycling/whatever) DIY project that could possibly get a wall to look a little less like a wall?
Yes, I know, I should just paint them every five years or so and forget about it, but I figured I might just as well ask if someone had a better idea. Bonus points for mold resistance (as I have mentioned more than once, I live pretty close to a river, the house gets flooded on a regular basis, and humidity usually ranges between 70 and 100%… though sometimes it feels like it’s even higher than that) and for an idea that can accommodate some artwork.
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CreateSpace, an update
Almost a year ago, as I was getting ready to release Soulless, Laira, and Citlalli on the Edge of the Wind, I wrote a post in which I tried to explain my decision to switch from Vitrual Bookworm to CreateSpace. I admit that at the time I was somewhat worried about how that one was going to turn out. Now, as I prepare to release the next batch of titles, I am happy to say that for the most part my experience with CreateSpace has been a positive one.
Yes, I still feel that if you don’t know what you are getting into, have never had anything to do with the publishing business before, and you want to have the comfort of knowing that there is someone in charge you can talk to, who will listen to your concerns, know your name, take care of the details, and who will actually be in a position to help you out if you run into trouble, you may well be better off with a well-established, small to mid sized publisher that charges a reasonable fee, even if the they can’t match what CreateSpace has to offer in terms of royalties. Of course, the key words in that statement are ‘well-established’ and ‘reasonable fee’ because this is one field in which there are way too many scam artists. In fact I would go so far as to say that this is one instance in which the belief that ‘you get what you pay for’ will probably come back to bite you. Remember that if your setup fee is more than five hundred times your royalties per copy sold via external channels chances are seriously against you ever breaking even.
Anyway, and getting back to the subject of CreateSpace, I have to say that, in addition to the fact that you don’t get as much support as you would with a (good) smaller outfit, I also remain convinced that the issues with CreateSpace‘s TOS (namely the fact that they reserve the right to make any changes they see fit) are a problem. In spite of that, at least for experienced authors who can supply their own cover and their own interior layout (and who are not above playing a round or two of contractual Russian roulette), they offer what is by far the best deal out there. They provide a very efficient service, and a finished product that has a reasonable quality (thought there may be some minor issues with curling covers under certain condition, and with the printing of interior images). I can also say that, for the most part, the system works as advertised.
BTW, while I mentioned above that a personalized customer support is one of the big advantages of a more traditional publisher, that doesn’t mean that you have no recourse when dealing with CreateSpace. Their customer support is pretty reliable (for the most part), and they will (usually) do their best to help you if you run into trouble, so you are not entirely on your own. It’s just that you don’t have a specific contact you can address your concerns to, and that precisely because they have a such a large staff, you never know what you are going to get.
And finally, in the comparison I gave CreateSpace three stars out of four, but that was based on how they compared to other the other publishers, and it did include their layout and cover design packages, which may have distorted things a bit. If I were to evaluate CreateSpace based only the company’s own merits, without the design extras, and using a one to five scale, I would probably give it four stars for experienced authors, and three for newbies who are at least somewhat familiar with the basics of the publishing business.
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Getting tired of apologizing (a sort of update)
No, this blog isn’t dead, it just looks that way.
The truth is that I am currently busy working behind the scenes (the new books should be available in about a month, though I don’t have a specific date), plus I am also working on an update to the POD comparison, and on a few other things. Seeing how I still haven’t figured out how to fit twenty-eight hours in a twenty-four hour day something had to give, and unfortunately that something turned out to be the regular blog updates, as demonstrated by the fact that it had been two weeks since I had posted anything.
I’m still reading, I’m still dismayed whenever I read the news… and I am also busy writing. Hopefully in June things will finally be back to normal.
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Hammock hack: tangle-free arms
Mayan hammocks are among the most beautiful and comfortable ones out there, but if you take them down on a daily basis chances are that sooner rather than later you will find yourself dealing with a tangled arm. With over a hundred threads per side trying to straighten things out isn’t always easy (especially if you don’t tackle the problem right away and allow things to get completely out of hand). A better choice is to keep your arms from getting tangled in the first place.
An easy way to prevent this from happening is to take a pair of long shoelaces, secure the middle of one of these to one the rings, criss-cross them as you wrap it tightly down the arm, and then tie the ends together. Repeat the process with the second shoelace on the other end of your hammock. That’s it. Now all you have to do is push that shoelace up when your hammock goes up, and pull it down when you take it down. This is not the prettiest of solutions, but it works and requires no particular skill.
If you are worried about the aesthetic aspect of things, and you (or someone you know) can crochet, then making a fancier version of this thing is pretty straight forward (believe me, crocheting is not my thing, and I couldn’t write a description of how I did it even if I tried, but it took me less than an hour make one of these arm-guards).
The shoelace version (okay, so I used a bit of sting), the crochet version pulled down and the crochet version pushed up side by side
Close-up of the crochet arm-guard before installing.
For quick access to my tips and tricks to make your hammock life easier click here.
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The covers are here!
As you can probably tell, I’m finally done with the covers!
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Life is slowly going back to normal!
At last, my life seems to be returning to some semblance of normalcy. No, I’m not quite done with all those projects yet, but almost… now I just have to get back in the rhythm of things!
I’ll try to post something about what I’m reading in the next couple of days, but right now I just want to SLEEEEEEPP! (not likely to happen though, not seeing how it’s the middle of the morning and the big lightbulb in the sky doesn’t exactly have an on and off switch).
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Still trying to keep my head above water
Yes, I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but sorry about the lack of updates. I’m still trying to get too many things done at once, but the good news is that I’m more than half way done with the final reviews of last year’s projects (now I’m just fretting about writers block when it comes to this year’s).