Here and there...

Every time I think about getting rid of this blog (I can't even keep up with the family one of late) I think of something I want to ramble on about. So I guess it's sort of a good thing.

I feel like everything has been crazy and chaotic ever since the school year started. Although my chaotic is probably a lot like most people's calm. I loathe being busy, being gone, having no time to just sit around and do...nothing.

Well, there's no time for nothing anymore. Not with a second grader to teach, a two year old to potty train (and teach as well) and a grad-student husband. Not with my second book (supposedly) coming out in two weeks. Not with tons of work to still do on it. Not with the days seemingly getting shorter and shorter by the minute.

We're now in week TEN of school. That's insane! We've only taken one day off so far, and that was because of the awful plague (aka stomach bug from hell) that we had a week ago. Or was it two weeks ago? See! I don't even remember. It's like Groundhog Week around here. Only we switch out our minor catastrophes  You know. Stomach bug. Hurricane. Hmm, I wonder what will happen next week?

Hopefully nothing. Hopefully I'll finish up with my book. I'd so like to have it done and out of the way before the Holidays.

OH WAIT, the Holidays are coming TOO!?

How come no one told me? I feel super unprepared. Well, I did make the kids' Amazon wishlists for the various grandparents. So that's something. And I just realized our star from last year is still broken. And somehow the little cardboard star from last year seems less quaint and more depressing right now...

Oh wait, that's the weather that's depressing me, isn't it? Yeah they canceled Halloween this year. Or trick or treating, at least until next week. Who's going to want to go trick or treating on November the 7th. Not I. We already "technically" trick or treated at the mall on Sunday, so I suppose I can get out of that one.

Bah humbug!!!

Sophia and I, doing our best crabby faces.

 Anyway, I digress, as usual. On the upside (and if you know me at all, you know there's always an upside!) my parents are coming in....30 days! (And you also know how much I love me a good countdown!) That's going to be pretty awesome.

And my book will get done and be released...eventually. Now let me go proofread!

Proof...

That God has a sense of humor, or a least a pretty firm grasp on irony.

Sophia has been refusing to go the church nursery for about six months now. So it's basically been that long since I've sat in and actually listened to the sermon. Usually she gets too loud and I have to take her to the nursery and play. Okay, so she'll go to the nursery, she just won't let me leave her. Well, yesterday she did. Elijah was down in Children's Chapel and Matthew was at home working hard on his homework and taking advantage of the relative quiet.

Now, I'll admit, sitting in the sermon by myself was super weird. I was actually having trouble with the zero distractions, so I didn't even hear most of the sermon. Oh, and I was waiting with my ears perked for Sophia's crazy wailing from the nursery at any moment. What I did enjoy were the prayers after church. It's not often as a parent you get to spend some time on your knees reflecting on what you'd like to work on yourself. So I prayed for gratefulness, patience, and grace. Often I focus too much on what I don't have, rather than how much I have been given. Patience is obviously necessary, and often in short supply. Grace, to not go absolutely insane on my kids every time they frustrate me.

With those prayers in mind I began my day today. And so far in response I've been given, a flooding, overflowing washing machine, a slow-poke student, a temper tantrum throwing two-year-old, and oh, I've just been informed the toilet is clogged too.

Irony?

And I'm sitting here listening to Jars of Clay "The Valley Song" and burst into laughter at the line, "You have calmed greater waters."

Pretty much the coolest thing ever...

I wish I had time today to do this post justice. Alas, it is a crazy Monday around here and I have about a zillion things to take care of. But I wanted to share my excitement with someone. Okay, did anyone not see the picture on Facebook on Saturday?

Well, this is what I got in the mail, much to my excitement.

 

Happy, happy, happy! I keep telling myself it doesn't really count, I'm only self-published. But still, it's wicked cool! This is my proof copy, which means I've got to proof it before Amazon will start selling it. I've found a few minor formatting errors I need to fix, but other than that, it looks great. Oh and I'm not fooling myself. I'm pretty sure only my mom will be willing to pay for a hard copy, but that's okay! Matthew says he's going to buy a copy and read it (finally) but only if I fix the Latin errors in it. Errr....

Inside cover

Back

Spine

Yes, he was reading it!

Indie woes...

There are quite a few downsides to being a self-published "indie" author. The least of these being the lack of representing, aka an agent who will make you big bucks with a big publishing house. Yes, it would be super-nice for someone to promote my book for me, arrange book signing tours and all that while I sit at home drinking coffee and typing away on my next novel.

Alas, when you're self-published you're it. Every little last detail falls on me. Which, in a way, is a good thing. I like it that I got the final say in what my cover looked like and how much I want to sell my book for. Or when I want to give it away for free. It's nice.

Now, like I said, the downside is that everything is my job. I thought it was bad when I had to sit down and format my book for its Kindle version. I downloaded a free Kindle book, ironically on how to build your book for Kindle, and had a crash course in formatting a Word doc. It's not that I'm completely computer illiterate, I did take a computer course in college (some ten year ago!), it's just that I don't know how to work all the finer points of it. So I was super proud with what I ended up with, the Kindle version of my book is perfect. Complete with a clickable table of contents (something you don't always see in self-published books.)

Besides Amazon KDP, which is the self-publishing e-book platform I'm using, Amazon also owns another site called CreateSpace. What KDP did for e-books, CreateSpace is doing for paperbacks. Basically it's a way to get my book printed and distributed in hard copy. I haven't done it before because I figured no one is going to pay six bucks plus shipping for a nobody. But at the end of the day I decided I would like to have a copy, and I may as well give it a shot.

Enter...formatting hell. Compared to formatting a book for Kindle, formatting for paperback is a complete nightmare. I think I started working on it Tuesday morning-ish, in between school lessons, when Elijah was doing busy work. Fast forward to now, I think I've spent at least twelve hours at the computer working on this bloody thing. Oh, and it's still not done! But almost.

The problem is, you've got to take your regular sized document (8x11?) and scale it down to whatever size you want your paperback to be. I chose 6x9. Sounds simple? No. You've got to adjust your margins PERFECTLY. This is what took me so long. First, CreateSpace is super unclear on what margins work best, I ended up trolling forums to find the settings I ended up with. And then once you upload your doc, you can review it, and it never shows up in the viewer the way it does in Word. If you get it wrong, and I did, about fifty times, it looks like this.

And we haven't even talked about all the other settings, besides margins. Like headers, footers and the lot. Getting your headers to alternate between the book title and your name. Getting the page numbers to start on the first page of your book, not the title page. Seriously a nightmare. And yeah, maybe I am pretty Word incompetent. So basically I started with CS's template already formatted, and of course the margins were wrong, wrong, wrong, even with their pre-formatted template (maddening!). Then I have to painstakingly cut and paste my full novel into the template, chapter by chapter to make sure it doesn't screw up all my section breaks and junk like that. What happened to me yesterday was that I had re-formatted my entire document so many times, it was so screwed up there was no going back. So I had to start from scratch! And yeah, at that point I'd been working on it for at least ten hours or (not straight, of course.)

So I started over with a clean template, more insane problems ensued. I mean crazy crap like a whole paragraph sitting in the middle of the page for no rhyme or reason, stuff even Matthew couldn't figure out and he's a genius at Word. I ended up re-doing the entire half several times. But guess what? This is what I ended up with.

 

As you can see, that is a perfectly formatted book. I still have some minor things to work with on it, like entering in my table of contents, but that will be a walk in the park compared to what I already when through. And yeah, it was a total crash course, but at least when it comes time to do my print copy of Finding Sanctuary I'll know what I'm doing.

The best part? In a few weeks or so, after my book has gone through a reveille with a CreateSpace reviewer, I should have a printed copy of my book in my hands for the first time!

Confession...

I have no idea what's going on with Sophia right now,  but her crabbiness has been of the charts lately. Right now I'm blaming all four of her two-year molars which are busting out. Combine that with all the "special attention" Elijah has been getting aka school, she has been ridiculous. Like, we can't seem to get a single thing done between her whining.

Cue solution: I have a strict no tv until after school policy. Alas, today I got desperate, Sophia's watching Sesame Street and Elijah's doing his math without distraction.

Win-win situation.

Sunday night...

Does it get any better than this?

No means no!

It's not a newsflash that my attempts in becoming conventionally  published were...well...abysmal. I think I sent less than a hundred queries, and didn't receive a single nibble, bite or whatever you might call an encouraging response.

On June first I self-published and never looked back, honestly. So I have to laugh when I get a rejection email, some EIGHT MONTHS after I sent it telling me (can you guess?) "it's not the right fit for him/her".

Shocker let me tell you.

And it's not like I'm having the last laugh or anything...really. But I have managed to get 1,383 copies downloaded so far!

And I really REALLY don't miss those awful rejection emails.