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Thursday, September 19, 2013

Busy as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.

The girl of your nightmares.


















Dang, I’m as busy as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest lately. Tomorrow I proof, one more time, the French translation of ‘Stud Farm,’ or ‘Le Haras.’ That one will be loaded up onto Smashwords and Kindle.

The reason is simple. I want to get more products in the stores by Christmas. And I still don’t feel like working on my novel. But it also makes a lot of sense to focus on one thing at a time.

So when I publish, why not do a bunch of them, when I do short stories, write short stories until I puke, right?

Right.

But you get the idea. And when I get back to the novel, smash out two to four thousand words a day or until I burn out or go postal, which doesn’t make much sense when you own the place.

I’ve just clicked publish for one of my pen-names on Kobo, and he’ll be up to four titles on there soon enough. That’s an experiment—I just want to see what happens.

Today I put up new marketing images for ‘Snake Girl.’ For some reason that didn’t go through on Kindle Direct Publishing. I hit the button again and we’ll see what happens. That image is up on Smashwords.

My collection ‘Ghost Planet’ is all set to go. I generally write fast, edit slow, and publish with painstaking attention to detail, insofar as I can.

I always download a copy, and check for formatting, and other errors. It’s better not to do it half an hour before bed time in case there is a glitch, but a book can always be unpublished. You’re not supposed to un-publish books, as they lose their rankings, but a brand-new book has no ranking to worry about. I’d rather get it right, and I’ve been known to fiddle endlessly and upload multiple times in order to do so.

The collection ‘Engines of Creation’ is on the launch platform, waiting for the green light, which I figure will be about December 1.

At some point I will set aside a day or two and do the Print on Demand (PODs) of ‘Core Values,’ and the two collections. Those files take a couple of hours, maybe two and a half. The real time killer there is making the marketing images conform to the Createspace template as I use the free ones. They key thing is to keep all text back one half inch from the edges. Making it look nice is another ball of wax altogether, as on an ebook there is no trim size—you can go way out to the edges of the image in the search for artistic integrity or something.

Whatever.

Research.

I like to do the research. Bearing in mind I’m just window shopping, I went to Future Shop, and looked at an all-in-one touch-screen computer, a desktop one. That one was $899.00 with one Terrabyte hard drive, and I think six Gig RAM. The machine came with a mouse, keyboard, and Karmin-Hardon speakers. Apparently they have a disc drive, a slot on one side of the screen.

I don’t think my arms are long enough to use the touch-screen. I sit a ways back from the screen. I don’t want to put on reading glasses and stick my face up to within fourteen inches of the thing.

I really don’t want to sit that close.

So then I went to Staples/Office Depot. They had a nice machine, two Terrabyte drive. That one had eight Gig of RAM, and I would need that to run Adobe CS-6, which is good for making book covers, right?

That machine was $649.00 and was basically just a base unit with no other accessories, no screen, etc.

At The Source, the machine there, a base unit, was on the counter for $374.00.

That one had six Gig of RAM and as I recall one Terrabyte. (Am I spelling that wrong?)

The other thing is programming. Staples/Office Depot has a service, $149.00, to set up the machine, this involves transferring your old files to the new machine. A new version of Windows was quoted at $225.00 or thereabouts.

So I need to define what the machine is for. Any old thing will work as a word processor.

But in order to speed up the email inbox, to be able to go on Facebook without it locking up within two minutes, and to make marketing images and to begin the CS-6 learning curve; requires much more machine than I presently own.

I have speakers, and my keyboard works fine. The mouse is a piece of crap and it’s driving me batty. My 18.5” screen is a cheapie, and a bigger one with higher resolution would be a real treat. But is it strictly necessary?

I’d give my left testicle some days, for a good, swiveling, reclining office chair.

That would be pure luxury. Especially if it was all black leather padding with shiny chrome casters. I’m using one of the kitchen chairs and that’s not too good.

With the low-budget internet service, it is unclear just how much faster the inboxes would go with more RAM. I think it would help, ah; but I am anything but an expert, which as you may have heard goes kind of like this: “Ex as in has-been, and spurt as in drip under pressure…”

You get the idea.

END

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