Book Progress

I finished the proofread of the book. I am so, so glad that I ordered a physical proof copy this year. There were a number of typos, and I'm not 100% sure that I would have found all of them reviewing a pdf. Ambrose did his read through before I did. He missed a couple of errors so egregious that I had to point them out to tease him, but he caught a lot too. 

Next step is getting the updates into the document. Then I've got some picture captions to update (some for clarity, some for typos). Once those are ready, I'll update the pictures in the document, and then I'll have to adjust the text. You see, I've got some updates that add or cut significant chunks, and that will disturb the precise placement required of each photo plate. I will need to drag them around within the text to make sure I don't have any extra white space in the final product. 

Once that process is complete, I'll get to find out if I also need to edit the cover. The cover has precise measurement requirements based on the number of pages, so if my page count changes significantly, I would have to edit the cover to accommodate the new dimensions. It's a bit of a pain. 

I hope to have this book published by the end of the month, at least in the large print. In the past, I've rushed things and created the large print, standard print, and kindle editions in parallel. This year, I decided to work only on the large print until all the editing was complete,. I've always thought of that after being committed to managing the three copies individually, and I'm glad I remembered to try it this year. The process should be fairly quick to generate the standard print and kindle editions from the Word documents, and not too painful to generate the covers for those. But it might take me a little longer nonetheless. 

And I know the Smashwords edition will take a bit longer than that, because I always need to remind myself of exactly what the process is that I need to use for these books. Smashwords has an excellent automatic conversion system, but it doesn't work on source documents over a certain size, and my Hike with Me books, with their large quantity of pictures, are generally well over the size limit. I have to upload my own conversion for these. It works well enough for Barnes and Noble's website. 

And once this book is complete, I'm going to work on some updates to my trail guides. I've got a few to make, and I might have more next year. I need to set up a routine for myself to make those updates on a yearly basis - at least, on years when I visit those trails. 

My Favorite Earworm

One Friday morning, I woke up to go to CrossFit at 4:30 in the morning. Well, technically, the alarm goes off at 4:27. It's set for 4:32, but I decided to keep that particular clock 5 minutes fast. I think it kind of bugs my husband, but it helps keep me on target with waking up and going to bed. 

As is my custom, I proceeded first to the bathroom, and then, after concluding my business there and getting dressed, I sat on the couch to drink a yogurt drink so I have some fuel with which to work out. At that point, my husband was sitting next to me, and he shared an interesting tidbit with me. 

See, he had a song stuck in his head. Not all that unusual an occurrence. I had a string of days recently where AJR's "Bang" was playing relentlessly on repeat in my head. But the weird thing, the reason he was telling me this at 4:37 in the a.m., was that the song stuck in his head was just me singing it. Not the "original" of the song, but my version. 

I thought that was cool, and I asked him if he knew which song. He gave me a reasonable rendition, with some lyrics confusion, that got me thinking which song it might be, but I wasn't focused on it. I had to drive my butt over to CrossFit. 

And it was only when I got to the car that I realized that the song he was referring to was being sung by me in his head because it's never been sung by anyone else. 

It was my song stuck in his head. 

MY SONG! 

Became an earworm! 

I'm delighted as all get out. Maybe I ought to record it, even if it's acapella because I don't yet have the guitar skills to accompany myself. Or just keep working on those guitar skills, I suppose. I wrote that particular song a long time ago, in college. Pretty much since my mom died, I've found my mind running to those songs I wrote, probably because I wrote them after experiencing a loss. I think they're pretty good songs. 

And at least one of them is catchy. 

I had to do some research into my archives to find where I'd saved the entirety of the lyrics (the earworm only had one verse and chorus). I couldn't find written up lyrics for the life of me, but I did find recordings I made and I was able to get the lyrics from those. I reached out to my dad, who has been playing guitar since he was a teen, to help me out on working out some guitar chords for the song. 

Maybe, dear reader, one day, you too will be able to listen to my favorite earworm, and get it stuck in your head. 

Almost Ready to Publish

I think they must have felt bad over at KDP for the fact that I was having trouble requesting the proof copy, because it came in way faster than I was expecting. And, the wisdom of ordering a proof has already been proven by my husband several times over as he has been reading it. I haven't read it through yet. 

I don't particularly enjoy reading over my own work. I think it's because while I do feel that I am a competent writer, I also know that my writing is not what any editors to whom I have tried to sell wanted. I look for the flaws. I try to find what makes my story not good enough. 

But that's more for fiction. I'm a little kinder to myself with the Hike with Me books. After all, they are literally my lived stories. No one can dispute with me what I experienced. Well, they can dispute all they like, but I will stand firm. I'm not as apt to defend my fiction that way. Why not? It's not like I can do fiction wrong. It's all a matter of taste. 

I'll read my book out loud to catch typos, and then it will be ready to publish. Time for the family gifts, a bit late for Christmas this year, but just in time for my father-in-law's birthday. None for my Mom this time. I wonder what will happen to her copies. 

And I've got a whole bunch of plans for my publishing this year, but who knows if I will get anything done? I want to do so much. I want to get myself an author page set up on my website. I want to get business cards for the Hike with Me books. I need to update the about the author sections in all the Hike with Me books, and add a list of works, because when I hit publish on number 10, it will be my 20th published work. How did that even happen? (Technically, there are 19 under my name, and one under a pseudonym, and oh maybe some short stories posted on certain, ahem, story repositories that shall remain nameless.)

I also want to get my books onto a site for alumni of my college - self submission so the only thing stopping me is me. I ought to update my trail guide books, since the whole reason for doing them the way I did was so that I could update them regularly, and I have updates for both. 

Book - Blocked at the Source!

Last weekend, my husband and I spent some time in a laundromat. We were there to wash some down filled items that we can't wash in our machine at home. While we waited, I worked on a new idea that Ambrose had helped me come up with for my book. In past books, I've used chapter headings, usually including the day (e.g. Day 1) and sometimes a description of the day. After I showed Ambrose an elevation profile of my first day's hike, he told me I should put that in the book. And thus was born a new way of labeling chapters: 

So now, each day begins with a little illustration of the trail and elevation profile. All of it is hand drawn, based on observations from Gaia GPS, which I'm starting to like a lot. 

At the laundromat, I roughed out the concept and drew the lines, using the Surface's pen. And after I got home, I didn't do much with it, beyond emailing the files to myself so I could use them on the main computer (which is where I do all my publishing). 

On Sunday, I didn't feel like running, and I figured if I wasn't going to run, I really ought to work on my book. At that point, unusually for me, I hadn't even picked out the cover photos. I was glad that I hadn't finished placing all the photo plates in the document, because adding the header images moved everything that I had placed around. 

So, first, I adjusted the headers that I made at the laundromat to a format that would fit my books (which is what you see above). Then I did placement work, rewrote my about the author page, added an additional works page and made the cover. 

All that was left was to upload the file to Amazon KDP and then request a proof copy. 

See, I have been planning all year to get a printed proof for this book before publishing it. After last year, when I published a version that included numerous typos, I was determined to do a real read through - on paper - before publishing. 

Naturally, this desire is what is currently thwarting me. 

KDP has a new process for ordering proof copies. You click a button, and it tells you to wait no longer than 4 hours to receive an email that lets you know the proof is in your cart and ready to order. At least, that's what they say will happen. 

In reality, I clicked that button 4 separate times over the course of two days (starting Sunday evening) and have yet to receive a single email from KDP. Since their help/FAQ provides no information on what to do if this happens, and is even a bit rude, in my opinion (see below), I had to reach out to their customer service. I still haven't been able to order a proof. 

And so, I must wait upon the graces of customer service, and hope and pray that they do not redirect my request in an eternal loop like they did for the last thing I needed help with. My book is all but ready to go I'm so frustrated!

*Note - I wrote this Tuesday night, before Amazon KDP finally got back to me. The proof copy has been ordered, but the bad customer service experience lives on forever.