Posts Tagged ‘A Notorious Ruin’

Progress Report, Covers, and Complaints

Friday, June 3rd, 2016

Progress Report!

I’m doing a paper read-through of Surrender to Ruin, which is going about as expected. It’s a little unusual that I’m at 82K words without a final chapter and with all but chapter 1 to read and revise. That’s because, per usual, I have heavily revised chapter 1 three times and then got all the way to chapter three when I realized I needed a whole new chapter before the then current chapter 3, which I then wrote and then I started over and revised chapter 1 twice more and now I’m moving on to chapter 2… Which is more or less how it usually goes with the paper revisions.

At this rate, I’ll end up at well over 100K, but I expect to find chapters that require deletion. I’m almost ready to post a first chapter to read, so look for that!

For those who care, I am currently revising my paper version with a Kaweco Sport fine point fountain pen with “lilac summer” ink. It’s very pretty! The Kaweco Sport fountain pen is a great pen. I enjoy writing revising with it.

Covers

As my blog readers know, I have the final cover for Surrender to Ruin which I love love love. I asked my cover artist to match the look and feel of Lord Ruin, which is why I went with a custom shoot for the image. There was nothing out there that was perfect and I didn’t want to compromise. Then I realized that A Notorious Ruin, which is Book 2 in the series, was going to look very out of place. I didn’t even bother looking for stock images. If there was anything out there that would work, I’d have used it for Surrender to Ruin. And so….

I did A/B testing for the  cover. In the first round, my preferred image (Looking Straight Ahead pose) lost by a statistically significant amount — though not overwhelmingly. So then I A/B tested Sideways Pose with the green background and the purple background, and that was more or less a tie. There was an insignificant edge for purple. On social media, the green vs. purple choice had a slight edge for green.

!

I SO SO appreciate everyone who weighed in. By the way, purple was my favorite. As was the Straight Ahead pose. But I could see why the sideways pose had the edge.

Now what!? Well, I put the three covers up in order across my 27″ monitor screen and swapped between purple and green for Book 2. I asked my sister to look. My preference was for the green, and so was hers and so … the green background it is. It goes better with Books 1 and 3. When it’s final, I’ll post all three so you can see for yourselves.

Complaint Department

Is anyone else having trouble finding books to read at Amazon? I used to be able to browse and find books and authors I wanted to read or try out. And now? It’s awful. Apparently, there are only 5 books they intend to show me, and if I don’t want any of those, too bad. The books they show me aren’t even remotely close to something I think I’d enjoy.

My last 10 book purchases were all at iBooks.

How about you?

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Technology Woes . . . My Sob Story

Tuesday, October 20th, 2015

So, a couple of days ago my 2011 model iMac began misbehaving in a worrisome way. I got the soonest Genius Bar appointment possible and it was still too late. Yesterday it basically died. Yesterday was the same day my replacement phone arrived and with the dead iMac, my phone backup was unavailable. Because of our internet situation here (only recently resolved mostly) I never dared back up to iCloud. Not possible. So… I backed up the phone to my Macbook and for some reason it would only encrypt the backup but without ever asking me to give it a password. NEVER HAPPENED. And it wanted this nonexistent password in order to restore my backup to the new phone.

The workaround is a backup to iCloud. So, OK. Our internet is OK enough to risk it.  I started at 7:00PM and at 4:30 this morning it was still going. And at 5:30 it just quit. No error message. No nothing. Just “Your backup could not be completed” or else, no message at all. So I took it to work and tried a backup to a Windows machine. Same thing. Encrypted backup. NO opportunity to give a password. I tried iCloud again. Nope.

Finally, the nice lady at Apple wondered if I had enough space in iCloud. Well, I had no idea how big the phone backup is. Apple doesn’t tell you.

Long story short, the answer is no. Apple just swallows a “you don’t have enough space” error message and misses the upsell opportunity too.

Then I got the extra storage and that took two hours for the phone to believe I had it, and THEN the backup succeeded.

THEN the restore was stuck on “1 hour remaining” for three hours.

I went to my other office where they have super duper internet and started over with the restore and it took 20 minutes. TWENTY MINUTES!!!!!

JFC.

This was nothing but a series of error conditions that Apple should be trapping. I have suspicions about the backup though. And since I will be back on the phone with them tomorrow to explain my resolution and complain a bit, I’ll relay the possibility that iPhone encrypted backup process  doesn’t work when the drive is already encrypted.

::Sigh::

Anyway, My Demon Warlord is going well. I’m doing the final paper read-through so the dead iMac could be worse.

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About A Notorious Ruin

Sunday, September 7th, 2014

Today, I uploaded the final, final files for A Notorious Ruin at all the sites where I could do a pre-order. The print file is off to the person who does my interior formatting. So, this book is done. You can start buying it Sept 23, 2014.

Now, of course, I keep hearing all these terrible stories about vendors delivering the wrong file … So. If you pre-ordered, and the change log at the very end does not say 2014.09.07: Version 1, then you didn’t get the correct file and you should let me know so I can either send you the correct file or see if the vendor can fix the issue.

I want to say thank you to everyone who has waited patiently, impatiently, and even not-waiting-anymore. All of you reminded me how much people wanted to read the sequels to Lord Ruin. This book is over a year late, and boy. I think it would have been late even if it had been traditionally published, because I spent most of 2013 so sleep deprived I could barely think straight. A worse outcome than late, though, would have been a book that was on time but not as good as it should have been — because when you’re sleep deprived, you think you’re coping OK when you’re not.

This book kicked my ass, but I think that was in part because I was sleep deprived from late 2012 through just about all of 2013. I’m the only source of income for my family. I could not afford to just quit the day job, even though I considered it and kept hoping I’d get fired. I knew if I took a job with a commute– and I was interviewing– I would have lost most of my writing time, and I would have had to give up one of my promises to myself about being home when my son was home.

I literally do not know how I would have made sure he got to and from school with his zero-hour classes if I took a different job and had to commute into the City. But things did get better enough at the job that at last I wasn’t getting up in the middle of the night most nights, ofte several times, dealing with emergencies.

I wasn’t back up to snuff sleep-wise until about March or April this year, and looking back, I can see that’s about when A Notorious Ruin finally had a spark or two. I had a couple of other writing commitments, too, so twice I had to put A Notorious Ruin mostly on hold for about 4 weeks while I wrote a novella. I wrote the other novella while ANR was in beta.

When I sent the book out to beta, I figured, well, it’s done if by done you mean, there are 80K words that seem to have a progression of sorts. When it came back, I was shocked to realize the book was in far better shape than I thought. (which isn’t saying much) I revised in my usual fugue state and filled in the couple of chapters that said “X will happen in this chapter. Probably” and also wrote the ending. Off to my editor it went.

I revised again when it came back from my editor, added about 15K in polishing up complexifying words, and by then, I said, quite literally, “Holy shit, this book is good.”

And it is. It’s really, really good.

I hope you love it as much as I do.

 

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The News Post of New Stuff you Didn’t Know Probably

Monday, September 1st, 2014

All righty.

Things I have been doing:

1. Uploaded A Notorious Ruin for pre-orders at Amazon, iBooks, Google Play, and Kobo. The publication date is September 23, 2014. I’ll post the pre-order links as they come live.

The files are final enough that I would not be totally horrified if they delivered now. They’re missing a couple graphical elements that would spiffy up the file, that’s pretty much it.

Side note: Aside from other proofeading, I ran A Notorious Ruin through an on-line grammar checker that highlighted some typos and points that needed clarification, and the WordPerfect grammar checker that highlighted OTHER typos and points that needed clarification.

Side Side note: Grammar checkers are pretty much useless for actually checking grammar. But they are very good at finding typos or other slips.

Side Side Side note: Next, I will do a visual proof on the iPad (see below) AND have it read back to me.

2. I have started uploading the new covers for Scandal and Indiscreet. That goes along with some updated links and formatting (always tweaking!) They’re live most places, actually.

3. I approved the new cover for Stolen Love and have the final files.

4. Took a look at the new cover for The Spare and asked for a slight tweak.

5. Went back and forth on the main images to use for Passion’s Song and Moonlight. Found a couple more to consider.

6. Contacted my go-to guy for typopgraphy and logos etc about doing some work on a logo and graphical elements to use inside books. Yes, that latter one would be easy. If you aren’t me. But I am me. So.

7. Loaded the proof iBooks file for A Notorious Ruin to the iPad. I find this a very very useful proofreading tool. I’ll also find any formatting glitches, of course.

So, been busy. How about you?

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A Notorious Ruin – Update!

Sunday, August 31st, 2014

I’ve been quiet here lately, but that’s because I’ve been revising and polishing and finalizing A Notorious Ruin. Well, tomorrow I run it through one last pre-final proofreading check. Then I’ll prepare the first digital file and read through that and, guaranteed, I will find more errors. Realistically, that will be a several day process. I’ll load it into a reader and have it read back to me and that will also find more errors.

But, and here is the important part, I expect to start uploading for pre-orders in the next week.

If anyone wants a review copy, let me know.

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Coming Soon

Sunday, August 10th, 2014

I occurred to me there’s a lot going on that I haven’t mentioned. Here’s an update.

  1. I am doing the final revisions for A Notorious Ruin, Book 2 in the Sinclair Sisters Series.
    Target release date: September 2014
  2. My story in the historical romance anthology Christmas In The Duke’s Arms is off to the copy editor. The title of my story is In The Duke’s Arms and I love it lots. The other authors are Grace Burrowes, Shana Galen, and Miranda Neville.
    Target release date: October 2014
  3. I have a surprise project to announce very shortly.
    Target release date: Soon. Super Soon
  4. I should have a solo version of Dead Drop, My Immortals Series Novella No. 2 ready soon.
    Target release date: November 2014
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Cover!! A Notorious Ruin Revealed!!

Monday, August 4th, 2014
Cover of A Notorious Ruin. Purple dress. Blue Background. Hot dude with open shirt.

A Notorious Ruin

I’ll probably shortly write up a post about the process I used to arrive at this cover. I did several rounds of A/B testing… So this cover represents my belief that how a cover looks in thumbnail is crucial and the sometimes surprising, to me, results of A/B testing using pickfu.

I’m diving into final revisions now, so, assuming it’s not way worse than I think, I should have the book on sale in 4-6 weeks.

September.

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The Fork Is Out

Saturday, May 31st, 2014
Fork against a blue sky with white clouds

The Fork

I’m officially calling it. The fork is out. A Notorious Ruin is revised. All the little bits that were sitting there doing … not much are gone or playing their proper role.

I’m sending this to my main editor now.

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Progress Report

Monday, March 31st, 2014

I’ve been radio silent about the writing, but it isn’t because I haven’t been writing. I’ve been doing a lot of writing with the internet turned off which makes it harder to hop online to talk about the writing. I’ve also been going so long without quite enough sleep that I’ve had to enforce a stop writing time. No more making up deficits by cutting into the sleep. For a series of reasons, I have gone too long — months — with no opportunity to catch up and normalize.

Currently, I’m doing a read through of A Notorious Ruin, which is the title I’ve settled on for the first of the sequels to Lord Ruin. It’s Lucy and Thrale’s story, and at last, I am not weeping with despair over the fractured bits of story, sleep and time deprived (as much) because of the the day job, or otherwise (as) discombobulated with what life has been throwing my way.

After this read through, A Notorious Ruin goes out for beta and edits.

I like the story. In fact, I’m loving it.

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