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751

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 16, 2013, 09:28 PM »

Chapter 6 done. Found a sentence repeated 

Will start with Chapter 7 tomorrow.

752

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 16, 2013, 08:17 PM »

Chapter 5 done. Whew, that was a long one!

753

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 16, 2013, 07:01 PM »

I've completed my cull through Prologue, Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 3, and Ch. 4. Beginning Chapter 5.

754

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 16, 2013, 10:56 AM »

Yikes, near beginning of Ch. 3, found "skull" misspelled "skll". Fixed.

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Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 16, 2013, 10:35 AM »

Beta-readers, I have read Prologue through end of Chapter 2 and found a few very minor issues. As you read, please make note of any issues you discover or aren't sure about, and we'll compare them once we get my updated Epub converted to RTF and uploaded to the Google Docs working document.

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Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 16, 2013, 08:56 AM »

>>He grunted in remembrance. and sat back down.

Fix:

He grunted in remembrance, and sat back down.

757

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 16, 2013, 08:51 AM »

Beta-readers:

 I just found an error in Prologue:

>> “The hardware we’ve got down here is, as you might expect, even better than what I programmed on at MIT, before The Attack. Suddenly he shot Byron a grin.

Missing quotation mark after "Attack". Fixed.

758

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 16, 2013, 08:27 AM »

Beta version has been sent to proofreaders.

759

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 15, 2013, 08:18 PM »

Perry and 4wd, went through Prologue to Ch 10 and actioned every comment, bringing my Jutoh manuscript into line. Will pick back up at beginning of Chapter 11, hopefully tomorrow.

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Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 15, 2013, 06:59 PM »

Oh, okay, you did understand my meaning Yeah, I'm thinking of just putting something brief at the very beginning to summarize the book, kind of like paperback's have on the back cover.

761

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 15, 2013, 06:34 PM »

I draw a distinction between a blurb and an excerpt. I meant the above as an excerpt, but perhaps something like the following would give a better overall idea of the book:

170 years from now, aliens decimate Earth. A relative handful of humans survive, hidden in deep subterranean enclaves that offer some protection from surface radiation. Although the main attack is now seven years in the past, one alien ship remains in orbit, and the conquerors are not content merely to let humanity lick its wounds. See the depths of courage and ingenuity this crisis brings out in the heroes of post-apocalyptic Earth.

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Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 15, 2013, 06:12 PM »

Perry and 4wd, I'm gonna do a read-through on my tablet's Kindle app. I seem to spot errors easier that way. I'll coordinate my fixing of the manuscript with updating the Google Doc (you guys will have already spotted the errors anyway, most likely). Tomorrow, I'm taking my dad to another city to see a couple of specialists, but I should be able to dig into the Google Doc over the next few days.

I was thinking of the following excerpt being placed before the blurbs on the first page, to snag the browsing shopper. What do you think?

     The alien almost danced upon his tentacles, so pleasurable were the psychic emanations of terror pouring off of Eddie Hasser. Veins pulsed in its head, torso, and each massive tentacle. The alien snaked closer to Hasser, who had run out of breath, and was leaning forward, holding his gloved hands against the sharp pain in his chest. The man’s eyes bulged, and his mouth formed a helpless “O”.
     “Let’s see if we can increase your terror without killing you,” the creature crooned. It’s head deformed and then quickly reformed into a bulbous, hooded thing that, as it turned out, Eddie Hasser’s heart couldn’t tolerate. The good doctor collapsed forward, helmeted head bouncing once on the corrugated aluminum mesh floor.

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Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 15, 2013, 06:05 PM »

Not too late, we just don't seem to have any takers.

764

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 15, 2013, 06:01 PM »

Got this in my email: checked it out. Might be cool, but it looks to me like they're in it to make money off self-publishers. I'm not interested in laying out any cash.

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Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 15, 2013, 10:21 AM »

I have sent Perry an email with the completed manuscript for the novel. It weighs in at 72,164 words of actual story (excludes front-/back-matter). This is a full-length novel. Smashwords defines 50K+ as full, but most publishers like to see novels in the 70-80K words range.

I apologize to Perry and 4wd for going ahead and working on the manuscript, because I'd said I'd pause until we caught up with proofing the existing material. But when inspiration struck, I had to get it written while it was fresh in my mind. Hope my two proofreaders will forgive me.

Now, over the next few days, Perry, 4wd, and I will continue to work jointly using Google Docs as a realtime online collaboration tool, to ferret out typos, misplaced commas, missing quotation marks, etc.

I hope to have the proofed book to mouser as a .mobi file within a few days. Being realistic, it may be 10-14 days (Perry or 4wd may increase that estimate, but I think we can do it in that time frame).

I also have four previously published authors who have agreed to accept a gratis ebook copy to read and review/blurb.

Stay tuned...


Samples downloaded

From DC hosting: 207
From Scribd: 37 reads, 50 followers
From Issuu: 4 reads, 113 impressions, 1 Like

Total words (front-matter + heart of the novel + back-matter): 73,322

Blurbs page: 185 words
Title/Copyright: 21 words
Dedication: 106 words
Acknowledgments: 30 words
Smashwords License Notes: 85 words
Epigraph: 4 words
Quote: 18 words
-------------------------------------
Front Matter: 449 words

Afterword: 719
-------------------------------------
Back Matter: 719 words

Main body of book (excludes front-/back-matter):  
73,332 - 449 (front-matter) - 719 (back-matter) = 72,164 words

766

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 15, 2013, 07:34 AM »

I got this via an IFTTT email this morning. Note the date:

767

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 13, 2013, 04:31 PM »

Sent first 10 pages as a query to Jason Allen Ashlock of Movable Type to see if he finds it interesting. Cause ya just never know...

768

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 13, 2013, 02:27 PM »

Yeah, I know what you mean, mouser.

We'll let you guys pick out some "flavor text" from two or three exciting scenes. Those will come after "Blurbs" and before "Title Page".

Smashwords creator Mark Coker has done extensive research showing that books priced at $2.99 and 50% preview sell the best, even better than $0.99 price-point.

Once the novel is published, I'll make a large portion of it available to hook the reader (I have already had over 200 individuals read Prologue through Ch. 4 and most tell me that the Prologue stirs their interest but that the ending of Ch. 4 is where they really got hooked.

769

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 13, 2013, 11:46 AM »

Or, just remove every word that starts with a vowel...

770

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 13, 2013, 08:49 AM »

The PDF sample if back up, thanks to Perry fixing the cover image to be correctly formatted in PDF. Thanks, Perry!

This sample is roughly 29% of the novel. Think that's giving too much away? I don't. I'm going to offer the first 50% of the book as a free preview on Smashwords.

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Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 13, 2013, 08:45 AM »

Actually, I thought you'd fainted, 4wd.

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Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 12, 2013, 11:27 PM »

^ yeah, we're discussing your vagus nerve...

773

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 12, 2013, 11:16 PM »

What are you doing here?  Get back to work.

I'm in bed playing words with friends. I challenge any of you to a game...

774

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 12, 2013, 11:14 PM »

Perry,  I took down the pdf sample. We'll get it sorted, then reupload later

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Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel due on Amazon and B&N in August or September

« Last post by kyrathaba on July 12, 2013, 11:06 PM »

Oh I know. Did u get my g+ msg? Can u fix it using the pdf, or do you or generate a pdf from the gdoc and insert properly ratioed image? If not, I will take down the pdf for a few hours till we can resolve.