Book Cover Design

I haven't sailed much the past couple of days, just tied up with renewing my captain's license.

On the book front, I finally finished the editing and sent it back today.  The guy that was editing the manuscript, tried to get me to change the ending.  He though it.... well I don't want to give it away.  I'll let the readers decide if the ending is appropriate.  Just a note to other aspiring authors,  stick to your guns and don't let the editor push you around too much...it's still your book.  Today I have engaged in the beginning of the book cover design and also the interior style design.  Yes you even have to decide on font style, size and fleurons (what the heck is a fleuron?) I had no idea either.  A fleuron is the little asterisk or squiggly line that separates area of unrelated text, like if you jump from once scene to another within the same paragraph. I never realized how complicated all this is.  But it is a heck of a lot of fun, too!! And quite a challenge.

You gotta love the editor.

I'm not sure how a manuscript of 86,000 words can have 87,000 suggested changes!! Of course, I'm kidding, but you think you have a pretty well edited manuscript until you get it back from the editor. Ya gotta love the editor. I have been going through the manuscript for 4 days about 8-12 hours a day because you have to either approve or reject each and every suggested change. Wow.  I have a serious crook in my neck!! But I'm almost done...yeah!! And the it's one last read through and then we're off to book cover design. Wow...even though it's been a tough journey, it's still really exciting.  Just a word of encouragement to budding authors...maybe it's worth the effort.  I'll let you know. And to all the published authors before me...good on ya!!

UGGGH Editing the worst work in the world!

I don't have much to say about sailing today because the manuscript came back from the editor around noon yesterday and I have spent sixteen hours going through it already and I'm only half way there. There are a gazillion little suggestions and a few bigger ones but it takes forever to check and approve or reject each one.  Most of the problems are spacing problems and I think that occurred because I wrote the Nightmare Voyage on Open Office and switched it to Microsoft just before sending it to the editor.  Big mistake, as I think the switch caused spaces to be added and subtracted, because when I wrote Nightmare Voyage, I thought I paid pretty good attention to that.  I also swapped some commas and semicolons and by the way, when you use the word toward, it's toward not towards.  I have a bad habit of adding that s at the end.  Am I bad???

Thank Goodness I have a sunset sail tonight... I need a break.  I think I'll go to work. LOL

Cruising in the Gulf and Nightmare Voyage update

So, we took a little time off today and took Rum & Tonic out and played hooky and flew the asymmetrical spinnaker or gennaker whichever you prefer, today.  I got the sail with out old Catalina 30 "Serenity" that we had before and never flew it.  It was a bit big for R&T, but we were moving right along in 5-7 knots of wind.
I guess we'll have to get the sail cut down a bit as the luff is a bit too long and we were almost dragging it in the water when it was hoisted as high as possible.  Actually, we passed real close to a crab pot and almost snagged it with the spinnaker!! That would have been hysterical.

On the book front, I approved the promotional text today for Nightmare Voyage with Amazon.com/ Create Space and will include some of it in the next newsletter.  It's really amazing how much work writing a book is and that's only the beginning.  Publishing and marketing it is a real challenge,too.
Book 2 is coming along, working a bit today on Chapter 7.

Another great sail and an awesome chapter

Sorry, I missed yesterday, but had a nice daysail with Steve and Susan from Cincinatti and Bill from Boston and then could resist taking Rum  & Tonic out for the afternoon jaunt.  In the afternoon, we had a 12-15 knot seabreaze and  Rum & Tonic cruised along at 6.5 knots under full main, genny and staysail bringing a smile to her two owners faces.
And Book 2 is cruising along and I'll let all my loyal fans know to beware what you wish for.  My sister Kris complained about not being in Nightmare Voyage, so I made her a star in Book 2 Chapter 6 with a bit of a scary scenario, of course I'm not going to tell ou what!!  But she'll be looking over her shoulder for awhile. LOL

A fabulous Full Moon and the Promo Text

We had a fabulous full moon cruise last night with our friends and long time guests, Celeste and Lee from Chicago.  The wind was a bit light early on, but soon pick up to about 8 knots as we cruised south west into the sunset.  The full moon rise was dramatic behind the clouds, and soon we tacked and sailed right into the moonlight.  It was a little cool, but we all enjoyed the soothing cruise and much good conversation.

On the book front, I managed to bang out Chapter 5 of Book two and there are a few surprises it it.
We also received the revised promotional material back from Create Space and it looks pretty good.
Now we'll just let it sit a couple of days and re-read it a few more times before finalizing it.

Today, we have an afternoon sail, and the weather looks perfect with sunny skies and a light northeast breeze.  If everyday could only be this great!!

Full Moon Cruise Tonight

Wow, due to the big demand, we are running two nights of full moon cruises this month, one sail tonight with some fun past guests and two boats tomorrow night.  The weather looks great so it should be some nice sailing. 

On the book side of things, I am very excited about book two.  I went off on a bit of a tangent that's going to creat a lot of excitement, even Toby liked it!!  But, unfortunately, I cannot give it away!!
Got the Promotional material back to the editor today, so we'll see what new ideas they have.

Not much esle exciting today, so I'll go back to wrtitng Book 2 for a bit.

A Sentence a day

I'm in Miami, having flown back late last evening, and getting ready for the drive back to Naples.
Thinking about some of the challenges I encountered when writing Nightmare Voyage, hopefully as the second book progresses, I can avoid some of those pitfalls.  When I started writing Nightmare Voyage, I just sat in front of the computer and started writing, how hard can it be to write a book. LOL  I had the idea and the characters, sans names, in my head for years, so just sit down and tell the story, right?  So you sit down at the computer, bring up a blank page and the words flow.  I really didn't have any trouble with ideas, I can sit and write for hours and hours.  But the problems is, with all of theses exciting scenes happening, how can you make this a coherent book (I'm still not sure I did. I'll leave that up to the readers to decide).  I like to think of this as stream of consciousness writing.  The ideas just pour out of you and then you need to organize them into chapters and a story focused around one plot line.  Not so easy.  During my many re-writes of the book, several chapters were deleted and new ones added.  This was particularly challenging as the outline for book 2 was already written.  So, whenever you delete and add a chapter, you need to make sure all the facts agree across the whole book and trilogy. For example, I had a chapter about cattle and horses and rodeos, actually two chapters, that were a lot of fun, but they didn't really relate strongly to the main plot, so I cut them, but inside one of those chapters was a section about training Blackjack, a thoroughbred race horse for a big race.  The time line got a bit messed up, so in a later chapter, when Blackjack was racing, I referred back to the other chapter that was no longer there, oops.  So, you have to go back and re-write in that section and make it fit. For book 2, after doing much research about writing books, I set up an outline well before beginning the book.  This is a very important organizational tool that I highly recommend.  Not to say, I still don't go off on tangents, but it helps to keep me more on  track.  Now, I know what everyone is saying that is reading this, "I thought the book was about sailing?" It is, but there are alot of other areas of life that I explore. You'll just have to read it to understand.
But one piece of advice I would have for other folks trying to write their first book, write something every day.  Even if it's just a sentence or two, it keeps your mind working on the plots and characters.  Even if it's just... a sentence a day.

Leaving St. Croix today

It's been an interesting vacation/ work trip to St. Croix.  It's a beautiful Island but doesn't have a whole lot to do and cab rides are really expensive.   Oh well, we are heading back to Miami today and back to the grind, if you call sailing everyday a grind.  Of course, it isn't but much of the associated work is, cleaning waxing and paperwork.

Bookwise, I spent quite a bit of time yesterday working on the promotional material for Nightmare Voyage.
The really tough part is writing the one sentence, less that 200 characters (Including spaces) that describes the whole book some 85000 words long.  I'll struggle some more with it today.  I also doing a bit of work on the sequel, which I call Book 2 because I haven't come up with a title yet.  The first book title was tough enough, we'll see how book two develops.

I am looking forward to March and some great sailing and seeing everyone!!

Book 2 and St Croix plus promotional material

I'm sitting at the waters edge, working on the second book, the sequel to Nightmare Voyage.  I have some work to do on the Promotional Material today and soon everyone will be privy to this info, I'm trying to wait until the first edit from the editor is complete. I originally though that the first major revision I did last December on Nightmare Voyage was the most difficult part of writing a novel.  Then , I thought the numerous re-reads for spelling and punctuation that I did after that were the toughest, but it seems to me all the sales and marketing collaboration are equally challenging and time consuming.  I hope it's all worth it and everyone loves my first novel. The second novel and sequel should be available by Christmas and promises even more action and adventure. Well, it's back to work for now (some vacation, huh?).

Writing in the Keys

You know the really strange thing I have discovered about writing, is you never know how or when an inspiration may hit you.  We were driving to the Keys yesterday and thank goodness Toby was driving because as we were cruising through Homestead, I was mulling the beginning of the second book around in my head.  It's an interesting beginning but lacked a real "Get ya" scene.  Then inspiration rained down on me, so I pulled out the laptop and my fingers began "flying" over the keyboard as the words flowed.  If I could type halfdecently, I could crank out a book every couple of months...HA HA LOL.  The typos slow me down a bit, but it's really weird, when I have an inspiration, the words just gush out and I'm not really thinking about what I write.  When those moments hit, I can write for two or three hours and it seems like five minutes.  Anyway, enough of that.  Key West is nice and warm and I might spend a few minutes working on book two before meeting my sis and Mark and having some SUPERBOWL FUN.  Oh yeah, here I am working on the book... I thought this was vacation.

More book stuff

So, today I sent back the revised Press Release back to Amazon.com.  and worked a bit on book two between running around like a maniac trying to get ready for vacation.  Not a bussman's holiday this time as we are visiting my sister in Key West for Superbwol...Go Steelers, and then flying to St. Croix for Toby's Birthday.  Not a bussman's holiday because we are not sailing, though we may get on a party boat and go snorkeling.  If I can get away from the novel long enough.  I must say that all the research that I did about publishing and what not has been a great mental challenge.  Hopefully, it will make book two easier.

 

Book Stuff Today

Hi All,

So, today I did a little varnish on Rum & Tonic and  a bit of cleaning aboard Island Dreams. Then the publisher sent me the first draft of the press release for my book "Nightmare Voyage".  I have to admit it's pretty cool.  So far I have to say I have been please with the efforts of Amazon.com's book publishing service... create space.  So, I read throught he press release once, but decided I needed to proof read it again before I OK it.  Can't wait for the release of the book but that probably won't be until May.  I'm still working on book 2 but trying not to spend too much time on it as I have many other irons in the fire at this time. 

Sunset sail tonight

So, what do you do when you have computer brain freeze.... GO SAILING!!  I had some neat guests from Bethesda, Md, including thier dad who was a really big time racer, including the Newport to Bermuda race and the Fasnet Race.  Wow, what a fun guy to talk to and his family and friends were really neat too.  It's great to get out of the book world for a bit and just enjoy a nice 10 knots sail in the Gulf with interesting folks.  I am truly blessed!!

Dealing with the publisher

Wow,

  Who would have thought that publishing a book would be so complicated.  I had a 30 minute conversation today with my createspace/amazon.com liason and we covered everything from editing styles to promotional materials to press releases.  It seem as though some 1000+ press releases will be ssent out to national and local media outlets, sailing mags, search engines etc.  Who knew? 

So, I'm sitting here in Naples, Florida and it looks to be a pretty day.  I spent my early morning working on my new, soon to be published, book, Nightmare Voyage: From Collision to Redemption.  Wow, I can't get over how much work is involved.  The writing of the basic story was easy, the first few edits weren't too bad, but the major overhaul that I did was really tough, but really strengthened the story.  Then figuring out how to publish it was really hard and now every day I have to add bits, like the Title Page, Copyright Page, The dedication,  you have no idea how much work goes into the book design.  Tonight, I have a sunset sail and the wind is suppose to be SSE at 15 knots.  I can't wait to get on the water, and away from all the book work!!