That Week Just Happened

So…where am I? Did any week every scamper by as fast as this one? Holy Cow!

While Sky Dancers Draft Two is with my editor, I’ve been world building and writing the opening chapters of my next book, Champion of Entean.

I’m also still researching different marketing groups for independent authors, finding the best match for myself.

And then there’s…

my first book, This Fool’s Journey, Tarot Tales for Modern Minds http://www.amazon.com/This-Fools-Journey-Tarot-Modern/dp/1933586370/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405779997&sr=8-1&keywords=this+fool%27s+journey

It’s never been converted into an ebook. What a fun little project, I thought. Mr. Al will love to help with this one! He’s not busy…only working on his eBay store and cleaning out the garage. No, not busy at all.

After much swearing and knashings of teeth later, I have been thwarted in my ability to convert this book into an ebook. The illustrations, one for each card, have baffled the applications used to do so, and I’m just not savvy enough to figure it out. I tried. Just not savvy enough. (heavy sigh)

I could tell you how the final PDF file was set up with cut marks that had to go away (the cut marks because it was for an actual print run and not a print-on-demand.) The cut marks had to be deleted page by page.

I could tell you how the original print file was put together in Quark and Mr. Al doesn’t have Quark anymore on his computer.

I could tell you how both Mr. Al and I had to put all the pages back into order after it was converted into whatever software Mr. Al now uses for his graphic artwork.

(That was actually fun…it was like that card game where all 52 cards are face down and you have to find and match cards by picking up two cards at random and memorizing their positions. Only, we’re not talking about 52 cards. We’re talking about 252 cards. It just took a tad longer.)

Then, I could tell you about the emails that fluttered back and forth between myself and CreateSpace and Kindle, trying to get it all to work.

Oh! And I could tell you about what Word did when I converted the new and improved PDF into that program…how it messed up the beautiful fonts and put weird squiggles and whatnots in odd places so that I had to go through the manuscript yet again to straighten it all out.

And I could tell you how even the Word document refused to load properly.

Yes, I could go on and on and on.

But, I won’t.

Because, seriously, who wants to hear about all that behind-the-scenes drivel?

So, this is what I’m planning to do:
I’m going to be posting a free download of the PDF file on my website. Yep…that’s what I’m going to do. And, I’m going to make sure that that PDF file can be read on your Kindle. I know PDFs work in iBooks or on your PC. Still curious about the Kindle, but I’ll be testing that. And Nook? Poor Nook. I know nothing about you.

Now, I’ve got to figure out how to do that with my website software.

Geez.

It will happen, though! Stay tuned for that! And it will be free!!! Who doesn’t love free?

I leave you with two pictures taken from Ahjumawi Lava Springs, a park where campsites are reached by boat. It is magical. It is beautiful.
http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=464

Here’s Mr. Al filling up our water bottles. Check out that water. It was so clear, it threw off your depth perception. The deep water looked shallow.