Feeding Malachi

It's here! Thank you to Jeff McDowall for an awesome cover design. :)

Eve is an inquisitive baby rat who regularly escapes from her cage. One night she meets a strange creature in a glass tank across the room - a boa constrictor named Malachi. The snake is amused by Eve's questions, and he awes her with stories of the wilds where he was caught. What will happen to their fragile friendship when Eve discovers what Malachi eats? Can they devise a solution that will save both Malachi and Eve's family of rats?

Feeding Malachi is a 6,000-word story, divided into 10 short chapters. The story is illustrated with beautiful ink drawings by the Sarah Cloutier, who is also the cover artist. The story has a few scary moments, but also a happy ending. If you and your child enjoyed the whimsical dialogue of The Little Prince or the loveable characters in Janell Cannon's Stellaluna and Verdi, you will enjoy the adventures of Eve and Malachi.

Here are the first 3 chapters, minus illustrations.

 

Chapter 1. In Which Eve Makes a Strange Discovery

 “Eve, if you go out again, I’ll shut the cage!” said Phineas to his little cousin. Phineas was a black hooded rat, and he stood bristling beneath the water bottle.

Eve looked down at him from the top of the bottle. “You’re just jealous because you’re too big to go out, and you never thought of it when you were smaller.”

This was true. No rat had considered going out of the glass tank until Eve decided to try. They all thought her rather strange.

“Be sure to bring back a good story!” called Athena, her sister.

“Yes, but mind the cat,” said Moses, her father.

“Do be careful,” said Maribel, her mother, and her aunt and cousins and brothers and sisters said the same.

Eve turned to look at them and nearly lost her balance on top of the water bottle. She was a cream hooded rat with pink eyes, still very small. “I’m always careful. I’ll bring back a lovely story, Athena.” Then she pushed the screen lid with her nose, wriggled her head through the crack, and squirmed out of the glass tank. Eve made sure the lid remained a little ajar. She didn’t worry about Phineas closing it because she knew he wanted to hear her stories as much as the others.

Eve dropped to the shelf beside her home. She waved to her brothers and sisters and cousins and aunt and mother and father, and then started into the dark, quiet house for another adventure.

The cat, she thought, is she out tonight? Eve tested the air with her nose and scanned the dark room. Not a whiff of cat!

Eve took a running start and jumped onto the big, soft chair just across from the shelf where she lived. She bounced once and then scampered up the other side. From the top of the chair, she jumped onto a bookshelf that ran along the far wall. Eve liked the bookshelf—so many hiding places that smelled of leather and paper and ink. From the top of the bookshelf, she could see almost to the end of the room. Eve had never gotten quite to the end before. Usually the cat came, and she had to run. She’d nearly been eaten twice, which was terrifying, but made wonderful stories.

Tonight, thought Eve, I will reach the far end of the room. If the cat comes, I will bite her! Of course, she would do nothing of the kind, but saying so made her feel brave. She started off: from the bookshelf to the desk, from the desk to the rolling chair, from the rolling chair to the plant stand, and from the plant stand across the floor to the sofa. All this took a great deal of time, as Eve was obliged to stop and sniff and clean the dust from her whiskers and bathe herself (for no self-respecting rat would go without a bath after getting dusty) and chew a pencil on the desk and nibble the cookie crumbs left by the boy.

By the time Eve reached the sofa, she was tired and had nearly forgotten why she’d come. But then she looked up and saw the table against the very back wall. Eve gave a little squeak of excitement and cried, “I did it! I reached the end,” and then she ran under the sofa for fear the cat had heard her.

Cautiously she put a whisker out and then her nose. Finding herself still in one piece, she emerged and looked up at the table. “I wonder what’s on top.”

Eve was not the sort of rat to stand idle when there are strange tables to explore, so she shimmied up the sofa and climbed onto the arm to have a look. Or two looks. Or three.

In fact, Eve couldn’t take her eyes off the table. “It looks just like our home,” she whispered. “I didn’t know there were two, not in all the world.”

The glass tank on the table did look like Eve’s home, and as Eve crept closer she saw something moving inside.

Chapter 2. Meet Malachi

 Something was alive inside the new glass tank. Eve did not think it was a cat. She hopped onto the table and inched closer, sniffing, but the glass kept her from catching the stranger’s scent. Finally she grew so impatient that she went right up to the tank.

Immediately there was a loud bump and Eve started back. A face with a long neck moved up and down in front of her.

“Oh,” it said and stood still, “you’re on the outside.” A pair of bright black eyes examined her curiously. Eve thought she’d never seen so odd a creature.

“Please, sir,” she began, “are you a rat or a human or (she gulped) are you a cat?”

The stranger smiled. “I’m not any of those things.”

Eve looked confused. “What other things are there?”

“Well…there are snakes. I am a snake—a boa constrictor, actually. My name is Malachi.”

Eve had never heard of any creatures besides rats and humans and cats. He certainly has a very long neck, she thought. Eve kept seeing more and more of his neck, but she couldn’t find where his body began.

“Where are your shoulders?” she asked.

“I haven’t any.”

“And your whiskers? Your belly, your tail?”

Malachi smiled. “I’m all tail.”

Eve thought this extremely odd, and she was trying to imagine what it would be like to have her head attached to her tail, when the snake spoke again. “What is your name?”

“Eve.”

“You’re a brave baby rat, Eve.”

Eve bristled. “I’m not a baby! I’m almost a month old.” (She was only two and a half weeks, actually, but she thought that was close enough.)

Malachi put his head down next to her. The distance from the tip of his nose to the back of his jaw was bigger than her entire body. “You’re not that old,” he said.

Eve was feeling sulky and tried to change the subject. “The cat isn’t out tonight. I didn’t need to be brave to come across the room. I just needed a lot of energy.” (And with that she yawned.)

“Not brave?” laughed the snake. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Yes, you’ve just told me. You’re a tail with a head, called Malachi.”

He laughed. “That’s not what I mean. I mean, don’t you know the relationship between you and me?”

Eve looked very much surprised. “I don’t think we’re related…and if we were, I don’t think I’d admit it.”

Malachi cocked his head on one side. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“Don’t know what?” Eve came to the glass again and put her nose against it. She could see a stick inside and some water in a big dish.

The snake hesitated. “Nothing.”

“I do most certainly know many things!” retorted Eve. “I’ve been out of my glass tank, and not even my father will do that.”

“I’m sure he won’t.” Malachi seemed to be thinking of something else and not really listening to her.

This annoyed Eve. “The boy must not love you very much,” she said slyly. “I can’t see that he feeds you.”

“Oh, he feeds me,” said the snake quickly.

“Where’s your food, then? I don’t see any grain or apples or grapes in your tank.”

“I don’t eat very often—only once a month.”

“Oh?” Eve was much astonished. “You must eat a great deal at one time!”

“Yes…” said Malachi slowly. “I eat a great deal.”

“I’m tired,” said Eve, “and I shouldn’t be standing around in the open like this. The cat might come.”

“Oh, the cat won’t come here,” said Malachi. “She never comes on my table.”

“What makes you so sure? Aren’t you afraid of the cat?”

Malachi flicked his tongue and grinned. “Nope.”

“Why?”

He thought for a moment. “Because I’m bigger.”

This seemed to Eve like a good reason. She sighed. “Well, I’m not. I have to go home now. Good-bye, Malachi.”

He raised his head and watched until she was out of sight. “Good-bye, Eve.”

Chapter 3. “A tail with a head that sees with his nose and smells with his tongue”

 When Eve got back to her tank, she told her whole family about the strange creature called a snake with no body and no whiskers, and whose head was attached to his tail. Most of the family was skeptical, and Phineas announced that he didn’t believe a word of it. “You’re just making up stories because you really didn’t do anything interesting tonight.”

Eve squeaked at him and tried to nip his ear, but her mother intervened. “Now, Eve, try to get along with your cousins. Remember they won’t be here forever.”

“I’m not a liar,” she pouted. “I really did meet him.”

“I believe you, Eve,” said Athena, but Eve could tell that even Athena wasn’t sure.

Only her father, Moses, seemed to have no doubts about her story, but his reaction was not what she had expected. “Eve, you must never go near that creature again.”

“But, father, he’s not a cat!”

“No, but I think he is dangerous.”

“He’s in a tank,” laughed Eve. “What can he do to me?”

Her father didn’t answer for a moment. “Long ago,” he said at last, “when I lived in the pet store, I heard rumors about snakes. I think you should stay away from it.”

As soon as he mentioned the pet store all of the youngsters began to beg for a story. So Moses told them about living with many other rats and seeing many kinds of people and sometimes other kinds of animals. “If you are a good rat, someday the boy will take you away to start a family of your own,” said Moses, “just as he took me from the pet store and brought me here to be with your mother.”

“I don’t see what being good has to do with it,” grumbled Eve, still in a bad mood. “Everyone gets taken away when they get old enough whether they’re good or not.”

But the young rats were busy asking questions about the strange people and animals, and they told her to be quiet.

The next night Eve went to see Malachi again. The snake was curled up under his log, and Eve had to tap and squeak to get him to come out. She was afraid of the cat, but she reminded herself of what Malachi had said: “The cat never comes on my table.”

When Malachi finally woke up, he came to the glass and looked at Eve. “You’ve come again.”

“Yes,” said Eve. “I wanted to ask you a question.”

Malachi dangled his head over the edge of his log. “And what is your question?”

“Did you ever live in a pet store?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“My father tells all kinds of stories about the pet store. It sounds like an exciting place.”

Malachi flicked his tongue. “If you have never been anywhere else, I suppose it is an exciting place.”

Eve looked surprised. “There are other places besides here and the pet store?”

Malachi’s bright little eyes looked amused. “Eve, there are more places in the world than there are hairs on your body.”

Eve’s eyes grew round. She sat on the table while Malachi told her about a place he called the jungle. He talked about trees and grass and wind and sky and sun.

Eve interrupted. “I don’t understand grass. Is it like carpet in the house?”

Malachi thought for a moment. “No, it’s more like fur that grows on the ground.”

“And a tree—is that like a chair?”

“No, but I think chairs are made of dead trees.”

“What about the sun. Is it like the lamp on the desk?”

“Yes, only more so.”

Eve wasn’t sure she believed Malachi, but she liked to listen, and in the nights that followed she came back often. Sometimes the cat was in the room, and this prevented Eve from visiting Malachi, but she was becoming adept at crossing the room quickly, and many nights she spent beside Malachi’s tank. The snake seemed to know something about everything. He told her stories about the outside, about humans, and about other animals like birds and lizards.

Sometimes he said strange things. One day Eve asked him why he stuck his tongue out all the time.

“To smell,” said the snake.

“You smell with your tongue,” said Eve doubtfully. “Malachi, that’s silly.”

“It’s true. I see with my nose.”

“What?!”

“I see heat with these pits around my nose. I can see your body because you’re giving off heat.”

Eve started to laugh so hard that she nearly fell off the table. “A tail with a head that sees with his nose and smells with his tongue!”

Malachi frowned. “I’m very efficient!” he growled. “You wouldn’t laugh if you—”

Eve sat up, still snickering. “If I what?”

Malachi curled his head against his log. “Never mind.”

“Oh, don’t be a grouch. What were you going to say?”

But the snake only flicked his tongue. “Nothing.”

“You would be happier if you had a family,” said Eve. “Why don’t you have a family, Malachi?”

“I don’t know. Probably because snakes are expensive pets.”

“What does ‘expensive’ mean?”

“Nothing.”

“You say that a lot.”

He pretended not to hear her. “Why do you think I should have a family?”

“Because we rats always have families. When we get old enough, they take us away to have families.”

Malachi looked uneasy. “Oh?”

“Yes, that’s what happened to my parents, and when I get old enough—”

“It’s late, Eve,” he interrupted. “You should go home.”

She twitched her whiskers. “Well, alright. Goodnight, Malachi.”

_____________________________________________________________

This book is designed to look good on your eReader. You can get it from Amazon, BN, or Smashwords. It is currently $3.50. If you want to see it, but you don't have an eReader, I recommend the Kindle app. It's free for most smartphones, and there's a desktop version as well. You can view your kindle books in any kindle app as long as you're logged in. You can easily switch between devices. For instance, I switch between my Kindle and my iPhone frequently. I'm told that Nook also has an app, which may be just as good, but I haven't used it.

eBook update and Cover Art for Feeding Malachi

So, I have this 6,000-word children's chapter-picture book called Feeding Malachi which I almost sold to Arthur Levine ye these many moons ago (2007/2008). It was the closest I ever came to selling a book to a traditional publisher. The editor manifested nothing but interest from query letter to partial to full, and then...nothing. I found out later that the editor had moved to another job. I sent several requests for updates, but the new editor did not even give me the courtesy of a form rejection. I just never heard from them again. That was one of several experiences that ended my querying days.

Now, here we are in the brave new world of self-publishing, but children's picture books are still a tough sell as a self-pub. Early-reader chapter books are always kind of an awkward pitch. After kicking around ideas for several years, I finally had Rah illustrate Malachi with adorable ink drawings that I think will look good on a Kindle. I have no idea how this will go over with buyers. Poorly, I suspect, at least at first. But I believe the hour of the children's eBook is coming.

The illustrations have been finished for months, but I've been waiting on a cover. She finally got it done. Yay! So shiny. :) Now, it just needs to be lettered.

I'll post a real teaser when I have a real buy-link, but here's the cover art for those who are interested. Click to enlarge:

Also, for those who are curious, here are my stats of Books sold:

  • Dec: 36
  • Jan: 31
  • Feb: 88
  • March: 271
  • April: 180
  • May: 352
  • June: 359
  • July: 363

Total is about 1,700 if you count books sold this month.

Not My Problem

I give you folks a lot of fiction. Here, for a change, is a true story.

In 1998/1999, between my sophomore and junior years of college, I taught English in Taiwan. It was a fascinating experience that shaped my fiction. Foreign travel gives you the sense of being in another world. You have no idea what you’re eating. You can’t read. You can’t write. Toddlers know more Mandarin than you do!

I fell in love with the food, with the night market, with the friendly people and their singing speech. One thing bothered me a lot, though—the dogs and cats. They were everywhere—pitifully thin, mangy, often with half-healed injuries from fights or car accidents. Skinny puppies would follow me hopefully home from the park. Wild kittens would skitter across the road and then watch me with their runny eyes.

If you’ve read my fiction, you know I love animals. You also know that I can write some gritty stuff. In spite of that, the things I saw on the streets of Taiwan made me sick to my stomach. Some animals sustained hideous injuries and then dragged themselves around for weeks before succumbing. In the summer, nearly all the dogs were bald. I saw animals with active distemper staggering around, spreading the disease.

And everyone pretended not to see them. What could you do? You couldn’t possibly take them all home. If you fed one dog, you soon had 5 following you. The cats were wild. If you tried to do anything for the street animals, you quickly became overwhelmed. They were a city-level problem, not a personal one.

After a few months, I adjusted. I did what everyone did. I ignored the street dogs and the feral cats. I pretended not to see them. When a miserable dog with a prolapsed uterus crossed the street in front of me, I turned away. There was nothing I could do. It was not my problem.

Until one day as I was coming back through Kaohsiung Airport after a week’s vacation. I was standing between the domestic and international terminals, about to get on a bus, when I heard a kitten crying.

She was a tiny calico, no more than 8 weeks old, huddled against a concrete barrier. Some misguided soul had left her a plate of chicken bones. The bones were as big as she was and certainly nothing she could eat. I don’t know how she got into the terminal, but she would never get out. She was clearly too exhausted to crawl. She just sat there and cried.

I should have walked away. I had no place to keep a cat. I was leaving the country in a few months. The town where I lived was several bus changes away, and the bus didn’t allow animals. She probably wasn’t even tame. She might have a disease. Taiwan is full of homeless cats. Kittens die every day. I couldn’t save all of them. She was not my problem.

Only she was. Because I made her my problem. Because I opened my eyes and saw her. Because if I walked away from one more starving animal, I couldn’t have lived with myself. Because I couldn’t help all the animals in Taiwan, but I could help her.

I thought she might bite me, but I figured she was too tiny and exhausted to bite hard. I scooped her up, put her in my backpack, and got on the bus. She didn't bite me, and she slept all the way home.

Turned out, the kitten was tame and free of disease. She was also curious, smart, and vocal. She soon earned her name—Beetsway, which means “shut up” in Chinese. My little town grocery didn’t carry cat food (cats were not common pets in rural Taiwan), so I braved the meat market to buy her chicken. When she got sick, I badgered the local veterinarian (who had no medicine for cats) until he gave her puppy pills for diarrhea. When it was time to leave, I took her to the big city, got her shots and quarantine papers, and a passport. Beetsway was amazingly well-behaved on the 20+ hour transit back to Florida.

My Taiwanese street cat had many adventures with me, including a stent in Indian at veterinary school, before settling down to live with my parents back in Florida. She’s 12 years old now and a little arthritic, but still feisty. She’s the smartest cat I’ve ever known and also the tiniest—about seven pounds soaking wet. In spite of this, she rules the house—including the 70 pound Labrador—with an iron paw. She sleeps every night cuddled up to my father and greets my mother when she comes home from work.

Beetsway was with me during some of the most tumultuous years of my life. She is a loyal companion, who welcomes me every time I come home to the house where I grew up. I have never been sorry that I made her my problem.

eBook and Life Update

Well, I passed 1000 eBooks days ago and am now at 1048. :) While the feeding frenzy on my free title has died down a bit (it's now at #494 overall in free and #13 in "Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Magic"), sales have stayed up. Previous to Amazon's promotional, I was selling about 5 books/day. Ever since, I've been selling over 12 books/day, and that's been steady, not stop-and-go.

When I talk about how many books I'm selling, it's worth mentioning that this is across 7 different titles - 2 books in the Prophet trilogy (the first is free), the entire trilogy as a single volume, Crossroads (the short story collection), and the first 3 books of Cowry Catchers. Price points range from $0.99 to $4.99, so my best-selling titles don't always make the most money.

I have just as many books sitting on my harddrive that I'm dying to release, but I won't release something that's not ready, but they're all at various points in the process. Not ready yet.

In real life, I'm about to start an adventure. I've signed with an agency to do locums work. "Locum tenens" is Latin commonly used in medical job listings. It literally means "place holder." It's travel work. It pays well because most people don't want to live out of a suitcase. Hospitals hire locums people for 2 common reasons: either because they can't get enough permanent people (making it a relatively long-term assignment that could last for months) or because a permanent person needs some time off due to vacation, maternity leave, or illness (making it a relatively short-term assignment that will probably last for a few weeks to a month).

I've said for years that I wanted to work part-time and write. However, school loans make it difficult to do this. They necessitate a fulltime anesthesia salary. If I can get out from under those loans, I'll have time to write more books while enjoying a more laid back existence. Additionally, if I find that I like travel work, it offers the opportunity to work for a few months and then take a month off year-round. That's attractive. Also, I like adventures. :)

If you want to know where I'm at, just watch here and Twitter and FB. I'll try to arrange a meet-up if you want to see me or get a book signed. I won't announce my location until I'm there, however. These jobs can fall-through or change very quickly.

Almost 1,000 eBooks sold

I went to Balticon this week-end, which was a blast. I met so many people from podcasting, many of whom I've known for years online, but never met in person. If you want to see pictures, friend me on Facebook.

Just before I left for Balticon (literally the day before), Amazon did an interesting thing. They sent me an email telling me they're doing a promotional on the first Prophet book by giving it away for free. Let me explain:

You cannot give stuff away for free on Amazon unless you're a publisher. The lowest an author can go is 99 cents. Giving away the first book in a series is an excellent strategy for spurring sales of all titles and boosting visibiltiy, but you're not allowed to do it. Unless... Unless Amazon does it for you. Occationally, they will decide to price-match a free title. Prophet Book 1 is free on BN, where Smashwords is allowed to count as a publisher, providing it with free status. It's been free over there all year. Amazon does not automatically match that price, but early Thur morning, magic happened.

Over the course of the next 24 hours, I gave away about 3000 copies of the book. The lowest sales ranking I saw for my free book was #38 (there are separate "sales" ranking catagories for free stuff). That's total, across all free titles on Amazon! My brother saw it at #31, but I was at Balitcon by then and having a hard time checking. For most of the next 2 days, it was ranked #1 free in the Epic Fantasy catagory. #1 paid was Game of Thrones. :D This delighted me.

 

Sales climed across all my paid books, but especially the complete trilogy of Prophet (for obvious reasons). The lowest sales ranking I saw for the trilogy was in the 2800's (which is the lowest I've ever seen any of my paid books on Amazon).

I was kind of surprised that I saw an uptick in paid titles so quickly. I had expected to see results build over the next few weeks and months as people had time to read the book they'd put on their devices. I may still see that, but some of the downloaders are either fast readers or they read enough of the story to know they wanted the whole thing. At $2.99, the whole trilogy didn't exactly break the bank.

Here's a summary of my sales since I started:

  • Books sold in Dec: 36 (mostly via a promotion on my website)
  • Books sold in Jan: 31
  • Books sold in Feb: 88
  • Books sold in March: 271 (my podcast gave an artificial boost that month)
  • Books sold in April: 180
  • Books sold in May: 352 (including 11 paper books)
  • Books given away in May via Amazon: 5469
  • Total Books sold: 958

I'm soooo close to that 1K mark. :) I'd love to see Cowry Catchers do the same thing as Prophet, but unfortunately, Smashwords can't handle the illustrated books. I use it's meatgrinder to format them, but it won't distribute them, because it thinks there's something wrong with them. That means no free copy on BN, so no free copy for Amazon to price-match. This is more of a handicap than I had previously considered it. I may email SW and try to get it straightened out. I've never directly contacted them over the illustration issue.

At the beginning of the year, I purchased advertising slots for Cowry Catchers with Kindle Nation. Those are kind of expensive, and the waiting line is long, but it's supposed to be the most effective paid advertising out there. Those slots will occur on July 4th, August 12, and Jan 9-13. We'll see if they produce the kind of response that Amazon's freebie produced.

How to format an illustrated (or unillustrated) eBook using Smashwords

From time to time, I see/hear people talking about how difficult and scary it is to create eBooks using Smashwords. Sometimes authors pay someone else to create the eBook, only to discover that they want access to Smashwords, so they have to retrofit their book. This is frustrating.
 
It doesn’t help that all your print-based instincts are against you when creating an eBook. Many things that look sharp and professional in a print book look crumby in an eBook – either because of the nature of the medium, or because eReaders can’t handle fancy formatting. Multiple fonts, multiple font sizes, extra spaces, double indents, the concept of a page with page numbers, headers, and footers – this stuff will trip you up.
 
My books are illustrated fiction, so I have an additional level of complication when creating the eBooks. I found precious little information about creating illustrated eBooks with Smashwords, so it was a bit of a challenge. However, I navigated these waters, and I’m grateful to everyone who shared information with me.
 
Occasionally, people ask me how I format my books, and the answer is too complicated to give individually, so I thought I’d write a step-by-step. This is what I do. It costs nothing but time. I hope it’s helpful. You can also use these instructions to format text-only books, which are a cakewalk by comparison.
 
Disclaimer: I am not a techy. I learn by trial, error, and asking a lot of questions. I cannot troubleshoot all your eBooks, although I’ll help if I can. I’m just telling you what works for me. I’m always perfecting the process. If you have information to add, feel free to chime in.
 
1.     Read Smashwords Style Guild. It won’t tell you everything, but it’s concise and will help you understand your errors when you make them.
 
2.     Create your copyright page. I’m not going to walk you through this. It’s all straightforward in the SW guide.
 
3.     Create a copy of your document, so that if you really screw it up, you can go back to the original
 
4.     Open your copied document in Word. You want the fastest computer you own and the most recent version of Word if possible. Older versions of Word on slow processors can make integration of artwork impossible. The computer will just keep crashing.
 
5.     Get rid of all page numbers, headers, and footers.
 
6.     Go to Styles > Manage Styles and set up your “Normal” style as something basic. I use Times New Roman, 12 pt font.
 
7.     Highlight your entire document (and keep it highlighted for steps 7-12). Go to the styles menu and put it on “Normal.”
 
8.     Don’t panic.
 
9.     Go to Find-and-Replace and replace all the “Tab Characters” (under “Special Character”) with of nothing. Literally do not type anything in the replacement box. Smashwords doesn’t do tabs.
 
10.  Go to Paragraph and under the “Indents and Spacing” tab, look at “Special” and select “First line” by “0.3” (or you can put 0.5 if you like). This will give you paragraph indents that eReaders can handle.
 
11.  Under the same menu, go to “Spacing” and select “Double.” Make sure “Before” and “After” say 0. Also, check the box that says “Do not insert a space between paragraphs of the same style.”
 
12.  Open Find-and-Replace again and replace "Manual Line Breaks" (under "Special Character") with "Paragraph Character" (also "Special Character"). You probably won't have many of these, but you might have one or two. Left to themselves, manual line breaks will cause paragraphs to break up into wierd peices. At this point, you should have a double-spaced document with uniform font, indented paragraphs (but no tabs). You have hopefully stripped out any hidden formatting that was waiting to pop out and make the eBook ugly.
 
13.  If italics are important in your books (they are in mine), make sure they didn’t get lost. I have never had italics disappear during this process, though other types of fonts will go. I always double (and triple) check. Other methods of format-stripping have removed my italics in the past. It’s a mess.
 
14.  Re-center anything that needs it (mostly your chapter titles).
 
15.  Now you’re ready for your artwork. (Except cover art. That’s metadata. SW will handle it separately.) If you do not have interior artwork, go to step 23.
 
16.  Go to Insert > Picture and start placing the illustrations in the doc. Alternatively, you may be able to drag and drop them.
 
17.  Everything in your eBook has to be in-line. No text flowing around images. I used to create hard page breaks around images, but I’ve found that sometimes creates unwanted blank pages. Now, I just leave everything in line with no extra spaces in between. Most of my images fill a page, but sometimes words appear on the same page before or after. This is less distracting than a blank page, IMO. The only exceptions are images in a series, such as the character portraits at the beginning of my books. Those are separated by a hard page break, so that each image will appear on a separate page.
 
18.  Make the artwork the size you want on the page by grabbing the corner.
 
19.  But…what about resolution?!
 
20.  I used to religiously import only the highest resolution versions, but I’ve found that’s a waste of time. You’re going to compress those babies as much as possible, or they won’t get through the Meatgrinder. So don’t worry about it too much. If the images still look good to you on the screen, they’ll probably look good in Kindle. If they’re looking grainy, you might want to make them smaller.
 
21.  Once you’ve got all the images where you want them in the document, go to Format Images > Compress Pictures (menu might be in a slightly different place in different versions of Word; Google it.)
22.  Click the boxes that say “Apply to All Images” and “Delete Cropped Areas.” Click the 96 ppi compression setting – the smallest one. Do the deed.
 
23.  Now turn on the “Show Formatting” button under Paragraph. Do a search-and-destroy for extra paragraph markers. eBooks do not tolerate extra spaces. Extra spaces create blank pages in eBooks. The document may look scrunched to you, but you need to get rid of every paragraph marker (i.e. extra space) that you can afford. SW says you can have up to 4 in a row, but in my experience, they give an error message for more than 2 in a row.
 
24.  While you’re doing this, make sure that each chapter begins with a hard page break. Make sure that arrant paragraph markers aren’t hanging around those transition points.
 
25.  Take a deep breath and cross your fingers.
 
26.  Save that puppy (as you have been doing all along). It has to be doc, not docx.
 
27.  Check the file size. It has to be under 5 MB to go through the Meatgrinder.
 
28.  If it isn’t, don’t cry.
 
29.  Go back into the doc. You’ve already compressed the illustrations as much as possible. Rather than reducing the resolution, make each one a little bit smaller. Just the drag the corners of the images. Reduce them all by an inch or so and then re-compress (“Apply to All Images” and “Delete Cropped Areas”). Over a lot of illustrations, you’d be surprised at how much of an effect this can have on file size. Also, I haven’t found that it makes a noticeable difference on the Kindle screen.
 
30.  Check the file size again. Keep doing this until you’ve got a file under 5 MB. If you’re having a lot of trouble, you might have to give up an image.
 
31.  Now look at the whole document one more time, carefully, page by page.
 
32.  Once this precious document is complete, put it through the Smashwords’ converter (AKA “Meatgrinder”). On my first book, I had to do this about 20 times before I was satisfied with the results, which I checked on my own Kindle and a fine desktop eReader called Calibre, available for free - http://calibre-ebook.com/. I also found Smashwords’ HTML output useful as a style-check.
 
33.  SW Meatgrinder has gotten very slow. If you’re in line behind 2000+ people, you’ll have a wait time of about a day before you get your converted files. If you want your book produced in a timely manner, you won’t have 20 tries. Instead, you have people like me to help you get it right on the first or second or third time. :)
 
34.  When you are completely satisfied and have paged through the whole book in both MOBI and EPUB format on Calibre and a Kindle (if possible), upload the MOBI file to Amazon and the EPUB file to BN.
 
35.  See if you can get SW to distribute your illustrated book. This is sketchy. Their robot thinks my illustrations are spaces and gives an error message. It won’t distribute the books, although I can get the lovely output files and distribute them myself. Also, people can buy the books off SW site. I personally don’t see the advantage in having SW distribute them, so that doesn’t matter to me. I do let SW distribute some of my text-only books, including some freebies on BN.
 
That’s it. I hope it was helpful.
Edit: Several months after I typed this, SW must have updated their servers, because the Meatgrinder suddenly got a lot faster. Also, around Oct, I found them much more tolerant of illustrations in books. All of my illustrated books have now passed their quality check.

99 cent eBooks

I just made a comment on JC Hutchins blog (Why You Won’t Find My eBooks In the Bargain Basement), which was also a response to the indie-bashing (disguised as concern for authors) in the recent Huffington Post article (Why 99-Cent e-Books Are a Bad Deal -- For Authors).

I'm going to re-post my comment here, where I can provide more links. It's a hot topic, and I find my fellow podcasters are sometimes out of touch with the indie community that publishes in text. We need to talk more. Audio books and eBooks are two sides of the same coin.

My response to JC:

Hi, JC. I haven't commented on your blog before, but I do read it. I'm glad to hear you're moving into eBooks. I really think that what's happening with Kindle and ebooks right now (i.e. indie authors making a living) would have happened with iPods and audio books if anyone had made it easy to sell audio books in iTunes. Alas, nobody did.

As for your current post - Why are you selling eBooks? Is it to make money? Or to validate your ego? If it's the latter, then price them however you want. For me personally, $10 is just as much an insult as 99 cents. My books are priceless...to me. ;)

But if you're selling books to make money, then you want to price them to maximize profit. This is not an intellectual exercise. This is small business, and other people have already done a lot of research for you. Indie authors have meticulously collected and published this data over the last few years.

And you're sneering at them.

You appear to be siding with the Huffington Post - a publication famed for paying many of its contributors exactly zero. Stop sneering. Read the hard-earned data from those in the trenches.

I'm sure you're sick of hearing about Joe Konrath, but if you haven't actually looked at his data, you should. Specifically, read about his experiment with The List. Then read the interviews he's done with people like Victorine Lieske, John Locke, Michael Sullivan [Edit - look at the interview with Robin Sullivan, Michael's wife and publisher], and Barry Eisler. The whole series of interviews he did at the beginning of the year was eye-opening.

Everyone suddenly has an opinion about Amanda Hocking, but people reading her blog knew she'd made a million dollars before St. Martins made her famous. Have you actually looked at what she did and how she did it? Look at what David Dalglish is doing. Look at Robin Sullvian's blog and her meticulous statistics. Hang out in the Writer's Cafe on Kindle Boards for a while and just listen.

No, 99 cents is not the right price for all eBooks. Nobody is saying it is. These authors are not clinging to their prices like shellfish to a rock in stormy seas. These authors are experimenting.

Sometimes 99 cents is a good experiment. It is one weapon in the indie author's arsenal, and it's a powerful weapon. That is why New York is whining.

All eBooks do seem to have a pricing sweet spot where you maximize sales and profits. Authors find that sweet spot by experiment, not by marching into the Kindle, saying, "By God, I will sell my books at this price though the heavens fall!"

500 eBooks and Beyond

Today, I cleared 500 eBooks sold since I started selling them in late Dec, 2010. I feel a special gratitude to people like Tim Pratt, Joe Konrath, and Robin Sullivan, who post their actual detailed sales numbers online. Their examples have been helpful to me as I try to sell books and understand trends.
 
I will try to emulate these people. Unless there’s some particular reason that I can’t tell you how I’m doing with my sales, I’ll post updates with numbers.
 
  • Books sold in Dec: 36 (mostly via a promotion on my website)
  • Books sold in Jan: 31
  • Books sold in Feb: 88
  • Books sold in March: 271 (my podcast gave an artificial boost that month)
  • Books sold as of April 17: 91
 
Total: 517
 
In verifying these numbers, I realize that I had underestimated my previous sales and was actually over 500 a couple of days ago. :)
 
These numbers represent sales across 8 titles: Prophet Books 1-3, Prophet complete trilogy as a single volume, Cowry Catchers 1-3, and Crossroads (the Panamindorah short story collection). I have been gradually posting these titles since Dec. They have not all been available that entire time.
 
I sold the books via Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. In Dec and early Jan, I was also offering the books from my website via Paypal, but I decided that was too much extra work and possibly bad for business. Paypal paid better, but drew sales away from places where sales rank helps to get the books noticed (Amazon and BN). I sell about the same number of books on Amazon as BN, with a much smaller number of sales coming from Smashwords.
 
In addition, I’ve sold 122 units of the fullcast audio version of “Professionals,” a Cowry Catchers-related short story sold off my website via Paypal over the last year.
 
Finally, I sold about 40 units of “Night in the Crystal City,” a Prophet-related audio short story that is no longer available.
 
That is the sum total of my adventures so far in sales.
 
Some observations:
 
My biggest single moneymaker is still “Professionals” – a 3,000 word fullcast audio short story that has grossed about $594, netted me about $375, and provided the voice actors involved with about $135 royalties between them. In addition the artist earned a flat $45 for her illustration. “Professionals” had less overhead to overcome than any of the eBooks (no editing costs, no full cover art, no illustrations beyond the one). Also, it’s been around for almost a year, while the eBooks have only been around for a quarter. Still, that’s food for thought. At this point, my shortest thing has made the most money.
 
With the exception of Feb, when I asked for a push from the podcasting audience for the first book of Cowry Catchers, my best-selling eBook has been the single volume complete trilogy of The Prophet of Panamindorah. Prophet and Cowry Catchers 1 are generally neck and neck, but Prophet stays ahead by a few units. This is hilarious to me, because I considered Prophet a throw-away book – something I’d give away for free to get people to buy Cowry Catchers. It’s solid writing and a fun story, but Cowry Catchers is head-and-shoulders above it by comparison. So why does Prophet sell more units? I suspect it’s a combination of the popularity of YA and the fact that Prophet is complete. People like completed things.
 
Here’s something that really makes me wonder if I’m doing stuff wrong: Prophet is unedited. I and my friends combed through it to make it as perfect as possible, but I did not purchase $500/book professional editing services for it, as I did for each book of Cowry Catchers. Yet no one complains. Not a single reviewer has said anything like, “Wow, this is great, except it’s riddled with errors” or “You can really tell that this is self-published. Needs an editor!” Not one... This makes me wonder if I should be having Cowry Catchers edited. Am I throwing away my $500-$650/book? If my readers don’t care or can’t tell the difference, should I be putting those books in such a steep financial hole? They have a lot to fight up against before they will ever start making money. The illustrations I don’t question. They’re a huge financial hole, but I would buy them anyway because I love them. They are for me as much as for the readers. The editing, though, is strictly for my readers, and if they can’t tell the difference, I think I might be throwing my money away. My editor only catches a handful of cringe-inducing errors per book. I am glad to have them caught. Still... Prophet surely contains some of the same errors, and no one seems to care.
 
On the flip side, I have no doubt that Cowry Catchers will eventually dig itself out of its financial hole...pay off its student loans...as it were. :) And I know that it looks as good as possible.
 



Your Anesthesia Questions - Continued

Question: Do anesthesiologists carry malpractice insurance?
 
Anesthesiologists (MDAs – medical doctors of anesthesia) are doctors who specialize in anesthesia. CRNAs are nurses who specialize in anesthesia. This is confusing to patients, and I should do a whole post on it. Here’s the mini version: I’m a nurse with a masters degree, not a doctor with a specialty. I work in a hospital that has a “team model.” My attending anesthesiologist does the pre-op assessment (usually while I’m in the previous case), and he’s present for the induction (where we put the patient to sleep and secure the airway) in case I need an extra set of hands or a second opinion. On a normal day, he just stands there and looks pretty. Then he’s gone for the rest of the case. He only comes back if I call him because I want advice or because I need to go to the bathroom (and sometimes not even then!). The MDA’s also do their own cases some days; they don’t always supervise. In addition, many hospitals have only CRNAs or only MDAs. There are many different practice models.
 
Nurse anesthetists have been around in some form since the American Civil War. My granddaddy was a nurse anesthetist. A number of studies have been conducted on quality of care. They all indicate that you get equal quality care whether you’re anesthetized by a CRNA or an MDA. We get the same training in anesthesia. However, medical doctors are qualified to do things like mange home mediations for pain, high blood pressure, and other co-morbidities. CRNAs don’t do that. We are perioperative specialists.
 
Sorry for the tangent. You asked whether MDAs carry malpractice. I’m sure they do, but I don’t know how it’s set up, because I am not an MDA. I am insured through the anesthesia group that employs me. If I took a 1099 job, I’d have to buy my own malpractice insurance. One way or the other, you’ve gotta have it. Anesthesia is a high law-suite area. It comes with the territory.
 
Question: Have you ever used your knowledge of anesthesia in writing fiction? (I suspect so, looking at poisons in Panamindorah)
 
Sure. Most often, I use basic medical knowledge to make injuries or medical events realistic. I could do a whole blog on silly medical scenes in fiction. :) My only story that directly related to anesthesia was “Blood of the Dawn,” and I’ve hidden that story because it’s got such huge spoilers for Walk Upon High. Sometimes, my medical background probably gets in the way. My characters are too right too often. They should probably believe more nonsense about health and injury.
 
Question: Know this sounds odd, but any truth to redheads being more resistant to certain anesthetics?
 
Not a silly question at all. There have been multiple studies on this. As far as I know, it’s inconclusive. Some anesthetists believe that redheads need more drug, and some do not. I have no strong opinion about it.
 
Question: Why do they give you that horrendous anti-nausea shooter before anesthesia when it just makes you sick to your stomach?
 
I had to quiz the questioner about this, since our antiemetics are generally given after the patient is asleep through the IV. I guessed that her surgery was a c-section, and I was right. C-sections are considered a full stomach, they are more likely to vomit, even if you do everything right. Consequently, they routinely get bicitra before the case. It’s 30 ml of nasty-tasting liquid that decreases the acidity of your stomach contents. It does not prevent nausea. However, if the patient does vomit and aspirate, they are less likely to get pneumonia, because there will be less damage to their lungs because the vomit is less acidic. Make sense?
 
Question: Do people really say weird stuff/ reveal secrets as they go under?
 
Not usually. They usually behave as they normally would; they just don’t remember it later. Often, they say the same things over and over because they forget what they just said. On the other hand, propofol is a mild aphrodisiac, and some people get aggressively flirtatious during a sedation. When that happens, you just deepen them, and they start snoring.
 
Question: I don't know anything about anesthesia except that the anesthesiologist on Greys Anatomy did crossword puzzles. Do you do puzzles?
 
During long cases, you sometimes have a period where you’re just monitoring the patient, charting, and nothing else is happening. During that time, many of us read something. Studies indicate that  you’re actually more alert for problems when you’re switching your attention between a book and the monitor, as opposed to just staring for hours at the monitor. Light reading keeps you awake. I typically read either my Kindle or articles from Google FeedReader on my Phone. iPhones have become the overwhelming source of reading during anesthesia cases in the hospital where I work. People hardly ever carry magazines or newspapers anymore.
 
Question: How do perfusionists fit into the whole surgery/anesthesia thing?
 
Perfusionists run the heart/lung bypass machine. This is used for coronary artery surgery, heart transplant, and lung transplant. In very specific situations, you can also crash on bypass to save someone’s life in an emergency/trauma situation. The bypass machine is a delicate instrument with rules all it’s own. A perfusionist is trained to run that machine. CRNAs and MDAs don’t do that. During a cardiac case, the dangerous time (for us) is going on bypass and coming off bypass. When the patient is actually on bypass, there isn’t a lot for us to do.
 
Question: Why did I see the spirit of Odin when I went under anesthetics for my operation? Or was it Loki?
 
That was actually the spirit of Silveo. He is annoyed that you didn’t recognize him.
 
Question: I am curious about training for anesthetists. In vet med, we get a DVM then do a residency to be an anesthesia specialist. But as general practitioners we anesthetize patients and our techs are often doing a lot of monitoring.
 
To become a CRNA, you need a 4 year nursing degree with a few extra sciences/maths. Then you need to work for 1-5 years in the ICU. Then you need to get into an anesthesia program. These programs are competitive, and you need high grades. They take only the cream of the ICU nurses. Once you get into a program, you will spend 2.5-3 years getting a masters in anesthesia. This may involve living all over the country at different clinical sites. You say good bye to your family before you start. That’s what everyone needs to become a CRNA.
 
In addition, I personally have a pre-medical background. My first degree was biology. I was pre-vet. I ended up with a biology degree, a chemistry minor, a minor’s worth of other classes (physics, calculus, statistics), and I was 9 hours short of a English degree. I got into Purdue veterinary school and spent a semester there. I left (for reasons beyond the scope of this question), cast about for a while, got half a literature masters, did some teaching. Then I went into nursing. So, I have more than the minimal requirements. For the difference between MDAs (anesthesiologists) and CRNAs (nurse anesthetists), see my answer to the first question in this post.
 



Your Anesthesia Questions

I’m a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA). Read my bio for a quick run-down of my day job. One of my goals with this blog is to de-mystify anesthesia. For most people, it’s a mysterious process. The average person has surgery a handful of times in his or her life. I find that most people don’t truly understand what happened to them during their surgery. This is not because doctors and nurses try to be obtuse. It’s because these things are complicated. In addition, unless you already have some idea of what you’re looking for, it’s hard to find thorough, accurate information about anesthesia for free online. You need the education and experience of the profession to sift what you see. Most good anesthesia articles are written in the language of the profession. They’re difficult to understand if you don’t already know what they’re talking about.
 
So earlier this week I asked my twitter and facebook followers for questions about anesthesia. Here are the questions and my answers.
 
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. Nothing I say constitutes medical advice.
 
Question: What are the the various kinds/types of anesthesia?
  • General Anesthesia - usually involves gas and an airway - either an endotracheal tube (ETT) or a laryngeal mask airway (LMA) 
  • MAC – monitored anesthesia care, AKA sedation – typically only involves drugs given through the IV, no gas
  • Local anesthesia /blocks – numbing medicine injected near or on a nerve. This does not affect the brain or make you sleepy, but it does make you numb. Epidurals and spinals (central neuraxial blocks) fall into this category, as do femoral nerve blocks, sciatic blocks, interscalene blocks, etc. for joint surgery. The optic nerve is sometimes blocked for eye surgery. You can do hand or finger blocks. Sometimes the surgeon does this, and sometimes the anesthesia provider does it. Dentists use local anesthetic without an anesthesia provider present.
  • TIVA – total intravenous anesthesia – a rarely used hybrid of general and MAC, in which you introduce an airway, but do not use gas, keeping the patient asleep with IV medications instead. There are only a few situations where you would want to do this, usually because you need a controlled airway, but the patient has a severe reaction to gas.
 
Question: What chemicals do you use? Do you know how those chemicals are manufactured?
 
I personally prefer a nice cup of coffee to anything in my anesthesia cart. :D Just play’in. By “chemicals,” I’ll assume you mean medications that we give the patients. This question is really too broad, but I’ll try to answer. The goals of general anesthesia are:
 
anesthesia (sleep)
amnesia (no memories)
akinesia (no movement)
analgesia (no pain)
 
To this end, we give halogenated anesthetic gases (sevoflurane, desflurane, isoflurane) and IV propofol or etomidate for sleep, versed and ketamine for amnesia, paralytics (succinylcholine, rocuronium, vecuronium, cisatracurium ) for akinesia, and opioids (fentanyl, morphine, remifentanyl, sufenta) and other medications (toradol, tylenol) for pain. We also give antiemetics (zofran, decadron), since anesthetic gases cause nausea. We give medications to control blood pressure, as anesthesia can make BP dangerously low, and surgical stimulus can make it dangerously high. We give agents to reverse our paralytics and other drugs to counteract the negative side-effects of that reversal. And there are plenty of options I haven’t listed. Providing a good anesthetic is like cooking. No two cooks are alike. It’s a cocktail with two customers – the patient and surgeon. The patient has to be comfortable and alive, and the surgeon has to be able to do his or her job. We facilitate this with a formidable arsenal of “chemicals.”
 
How these chemicals are manufactured is a question outside the scope of my practice (and, frankly, outside the scope of practice of everyone I work with). You’d need to ask an organic chemist. I could probably follow their explanation, but that’s about it.
 
Question: How is being anaesthetized different than being asleep?
 
The short is that when you’re asleep and someone cuts your belly open, you wake up. ;) There are 4 Stages of Anesthesia. Adults typically sink down through stages 1 and 2 so fast that you don’t notice. Children, on the other hand, have a noticeable excitement phase (Stage 2). Surgical anesthesia is Stage 3. The 4th stage is essentially brain death or something close to it. You always keep the patient hovering above the abyss.
 
Question: Do people really hear what med staff says while under?
 
During stage 3 anesthesia: no. During stages 1 and 2: sometimes. True surgical awareness is very rare and usually happens when the patient’s blood pressure is so low that the anesthetist had to decrease their level of anesthesia in order to save the patient’s life. This happens most frequently in a trauma situation, such as a car accident victim, where the patient is bleeding out. Emergency c-section is also a high risk for awareness. This happens because medical staff are trying to save the life of the baby and mother. Sometimes very fragile patients simply cannot tolerate enough anesthesia to keep them unaware. However, this is extremely unusual. We have excellent amnesic drugs these days, such as versed, which can erase memories retroactively if given within a few moments of the event.
 
On the other hand, “general anesthesia” should not confused with a “MAC” (monitored anesthesia care) AKA “sedation.” If you’ve ever had a colonoscopy or endoscopy, it was probably done with a MAC. People can remember things from a sedation; no guarantee can be provided that they will not. In fact, some level of awareness is often desired, as the patient may need to follow instructions. However, I can tell you that, in practice, people hardly ever remember anything from a MAC, either.
 
Question: What is more dangerous, being under anesthesia, or having the actual surgery?
 

That depends on how sick the patient is and what kind of surgery he or she is having. Also most surgery is impossible without anesthesia. Aside from the fact that the patient would be a moving target (writhing in pain), abdominal muscles would make abdominal surgery difficult or impossible without paralysis, which is part of the anesthesia. In addition, it would be difficult for the surgeon to hear his iPod over the screaming, and surgeons get really cranky without their music. ;)

Seriously, anesthesia is a component of the “actual surgery.” You can’t tweeze them apart. However, if you’re asking who has more opportunities to kill you (the surgeon or the anesthetist), that’s easy. The anesthetist.
 
I think that's enough for one evening. If I haven't mispelled any of these drugs, it'll be a small miracle. I'll answer some more questions tomorrow.

First Post on the new Blog

I'll assume that if you found my blog, you already know me (at least a little bit), and you're cruising around my new website. I've been needing to make one for a long time. My fauness.com site was woefully outdated. I've been blogging for years on Livejournal, but have become inactive over there since the advent of Twitter and Facebook. I've been wanting somewhere to make longer posts that's search-able and RSS-friendly, where people also have links to all my projects.

So, Welcome!

I plan to update at least once a week. If you really want to see my daily activity, follow me on twitter or friend me on facebook. I'll use this blog for analysis about my various writing projects, along with the occational essay on anesthesia.

I encourage you to click on the RSS link and add me to your feedreader if you do that sort of thing.