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 It’s better not to do it half an hour before bed time in case there is a glitch, but a book can always be unpublished.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

Production Goals.

Setting some goals and getting confused.

Production goals are pretty simple things.

What would I like to make and when would I like to make it?

In order for that to happen, what work, preparation or construction, administrative or research, do I need to do and when do I need to do it?

For starters, I would like to have a completed first draft of my twelfth novel by October 1, my originally stated goal. It is true I wrote 28,669 words in thirteen days beginning Sept. 1/13 and it is also true that a novel is a minimum of 60,000 words and that my deadlines are self-imposed.

I don’t know, I think I just burned out on that one for a while.

I don’t like things hanging over my head by a thread, like the semi-famous sword of Damocles. I took the last few days to do other things. So far, I’ve upgraded the marketing image for The Clone, published Repalatron Raceway and something else, I forget what! I’d have to go look.

Force Multiplication Theory.

In terms of force multiplication theory, what you want to do is to make every soldier do double duty. Your soldiers have better weapons and better training. (You are an army of one. – ed.)

I am five people, -- ed.

You get much more firepower out of them. This is important in battle, because you want to win.

In terms of a story, by publishing it in another language, for example French, you get to use the same marketing image twice, and since they cost money, that’s a consideration. You’re also producing work faster, and publishing more often, important in gaming the ‘passive discoverability’ algorithms.

These exist in two forms, machine and biological. (Biological includes other people as well as your own internal biology. You want to improve your own performance as well, right?

The basic premise here is that the more stuff you have out, the easier it is to buy a book from you!

I kid you not, especially if you’re camping out in as many genres as you can manage.

If it took two hours to write a story, a translation takes more like forty minutes. Also, they’re not so critical—you can let them simmer on the back-burner while doing other stuff. You get to keep twice as busy, and in business as in life this is a good thing most of the time. Because some days you just can’t write and we all get that from time to time. This is a good time to develop your already existing products.

So I need some production goals. In fact, I was thinking of taking a page out of Dean Wesley Smith’s book and writing a list. Seriously, I’m going so fast here I get confused sometimes. The other day I typed the wrong author’s name into the publication data on Amazon, and to compound the error that was the wrong book file, too. I did catch it in time, so it wasn’t that serious.

It might be handy to have a list, one where you can literally line things up in sequential order and then check them off in sequential order. NASA does it, and you can too. Right?

For today, I need a blog post, and voila! One magically appeared, like it was some kind of bun in the oven whose time had come.

I need a marketing image for The Stud Farm because that one’s been around so long it’s got stretch marks on its lips…I’m kidding, ladies and gentlemen.

One more face-lift, and that book’s going to have to start looking for a good razor. That’s all I’m saying, ladies and gentlemen.

I have two more translations ready to go. One needs an ISBN, and voila! Holy Schmoley, I must have remembered to order another block of ten yesterday. Need I say more? Those two files are ready to go, with images and everything, even. I can load them up when I’m comfortable doing so, like after one more read for bits and pieces of French grammar and spelling.

Are you with me, Moriarity?

The Evil Dr. Schmitt-Rottluff sends his regards, incidentally, before I forget.

So what else do I need:

A marketing image for my third short story collection. The second one’s in the bag (Engines of Creation) and in fact that one is locked and loaded, right in the launching platform, on both Amazon and SW. The two Frenchies are not uploaded yet. It takes five to six hours to assemble a collection, format it, do the admin stuff, (ISBN and image searches) and there you have it.

 I could sure use 1,000 words on my novel today.

 A new marketing image for The Case of the Curious Killers, in fact most of the old titles.

 A POD of collections #2 and #3. A POD of Core Values, which I have never gotten around to.

 I would like to focus on short stories during November.

 Sounds to me like I’m busy enough for the next six weeks. If I can get novel #12 out, on or about October 1/13, then it’s likely to be in all or most stores by Christmas week. That’s a rational goal.

 A marketing image and ISBN for the new mystery (book #12 career-wise.)

 I probably have enough material for collection #4, but that one can wait for a rainy day.

 More short stories published as stand-alone titles.

 Figure out what the hell I’m going to do for novel #13.



Writing in Public. Dean Wesley Smith.

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=10184

Okay, I just published this, too:

The Healer. Louis Shalako

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F2JZPMM

This one is more suitable for the younger readers, as is Repelatron Raceway. When I get enough of them, I’ll link them in a series, the name of which is yet to be determined.



END