Hey there!
Sorry I haven't posted in a while, life is crazy.
I have been working on Escape and Evasion, and I have completed the first chapter. I know, it doesnt sound like much, but I am trying to get all of the facts right. There have been discrepancies between what Lynn said when he dictated his story to my Aunt and what others said when they wrote to the family years ago. I would like to just put everything down as Lynn said, but there were miscommunications when the story was dictated. Plus the boys who wrote letters back in '44 may have remembered events better than my Grandfather when he was retelling the story for the billienth time several years after the fact.
Also, parts appear to have been exaggerated. Ex: Lynn said he bailed out at 20,000ft, another guy said he was only 10,000ft. I'm not sure what height they would have flown their planes at. Your probably not worried about noise for people on the ground when you are trying to blow them up. So, I'll have to track down info on that.
Then there is the fun of "who is going to care if I use actual people's names in the book?" To be on the safe side I am not going to include last names (and occasionally I'll use made up names). Of course, the French names are going to be a complete guess. Neither my Aunt nor my Grandfather spoke any French so the names of people in the underground were written down phonetically as he understood them to be pronounced (Again, most of his story was written down many years after the war. So who knows if he even remembered them correctly). I have a feeling they are incorrect.
That is the kind of fun I'm having right now.
P.S. you cant trust the Internet for anything. I found this British site that said Col. Egenes died on march 10, but I definetly found papers indicating he had shot down enemy aircraft on the 16th of the same month and year. Pilots had to file reports after they had shot down an enemy stating how they knew the other pilot was dead. Thats how they received credit. Most of them read like this: I opened fire and took off a wing. Last I saw, that puppy was on fire and in a nose dive towards the earth with the pilot still inside. So Im thinking he didnt make it.
It's kinda hard to shoot someone down if your dead.
Anyway, I might post a bit of the first chapter later, but I have to work the bugs out.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Escape and evasion
Yes folks, this is the working title for my next project. It's a story about my grandfather Lynn, who was a WW2 fighter pilot. When he was a member of the 8th Army Air Force he was shot down over occupied France. This is the story of how he made it home safely, more or less, with all of the close calls, danger, and brave souls he met along the way.
I THINK I'm done with the outline. I have been trying to make it as detailed as possible so I wont forget anything. Most of the story was captured in Lynn's own words before he passed away. However, there were some gaps, and fuzzier parts, and he didn't usually go into detail about what happened. So I am trying to fill in the blanks with the use of research, old war letters, and the parts of the story my dad knows by heart (but for some reason they were never written down).
I only have scans of the original letters, and I have done what I could with them. My family and I did our best to translate them from Lynn's god awful left handed cursive (and the occasional poor scanning job), minus a few errors (Ex: perty to pretty). There a spots where we absolutely couldn't figure out what he had written and had to throw in an ellipses. I don't know why, but he was apparently allergic to using apostrophes, commas, question marks, etc. At least his sentence structure improved in the later years. I tried to leave all of that intact, despite the little twitch it gave me. My high school English teacher would be appalled (yes, I have taken more English classes since then, but she was finicky.)
I'm considering putting the letters up on my blog. That way anyone who feels the desire to learn more can read them. I'm a little deterred by the fact that doing so would be a lot of work, and I would be doing it for funsies. Although I am feeling burnt out right now, so I'm not as excited as I should be when it comes to starting the writing portion of the book.Plus, I find that the beginning is always the hardest part. Maybe I'll put off writing until next week and get a bit of marketing done. Then I'll think about the letters again...
Anyway, I would like to be done with Escape and Evasion in the summer. I'm really nervous about this project though. A lot more than my own pride is riding on my ability to do well. There is family honor at stake. Not to mention I have to portray tons of people that I will never meet as accurately as possible. (some of the caharacters will have to be made up, or at least fudged a little. Neither Archie [a pilot Lynn traveled with] nor Lynn talked about EVERYONE they met.]
I guess this is why these books always say "based on a true story".
Plus, I'm one of those people that finds war stories much more depressing than exciting.
I'll be doing my best!!
I THINK I'm done with the outline. I have been trying to make it as detailed as possible so I wont forget anything. Most of the story was captured in Lynn's own words before he passed away. However, there were some gaps, and fuzzier parts, and he didn't usually go into detail about what happened. So I am trying to fill in the blanks with the use of research, old war letters, and the parts of the story my dad knows by heart (but for some reason they were never written down).
I only have scans of the original letters, and I have done what I could with them. My family and I did our best to translate them from Lynn's god awful left handed cursive (and the occasional poor scanning job), minus a few errors (Ex: perty to pretty). There a spots where we absolutely couldn't figure out what he had written and had to throw in an ellipses. I don't know why, but he was apparently allergic to using apostrophes, commas, question marks, etc. At least his sentence structure improved in the later years. I tried to leave all of that intact, despite the little twitch it gave me. My high school English teacher would be appalled (yes, I have taken more English classes since then, but she was finicky.)
I'm considering putting the letters up on my blog. That way anyone who feels the desire to learn more can read them. I'm a little deterred by the fact that doing so would be a lot of work, and I would be doing it for funsies. Although I am feeling burnt out right now, so I'm not as excited as I should be when it comes to starting the writing portion of the book.Plus, I find that the beginning is always the hardest part. Maybe I'll put off writing until next week and get a bit of marketing done. Then I'll think about the letters again...
Anyway, I would like to be done with Escape and Evasion in the summer. I'm really nervous about this project though. A lot more than my own pride is riding on my ability to do well. There is family honor at stake. Not to mention I have to portray tons of people that I will never meet as accurately as possible. (some of the caharacters will have to be made up, or at least fudged a little. Neither Archie [a pilot Lynn traveled with] nor Lynn talked about EVERYONE they met.]
I guess this is why these books always say "based on a true story".
Plus, I'm one of those people that finds war stories much more depressing than exciting.
I'll be doing my best!!
Amazon is on the case!
Got an e-mail early this morning from amazon. They think they have fixed it and the site should be updated in the next 24hrs. Woot! I'll be keeping watch!
Maybe my new years resolution should have been to be more patient...
Maybe my new years resolution should have been to be more patient...
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Its a love hate relationship
Dear Amazon,
Most days I don't know how I ever got by without you. You have a larger selection of books/movies/games than any store can possibly have, and you send them to my doorstep. However, there are also times, like now, where you make me want to scream out loud.
Regards,
K.
I sent them an inquiry on Sunday. I asked them if they knew what was going on with my book's details page. I would prefer that my book didn't look like my cat sat on the enter key. I don't know if the problem is on my end or theirs but I dont know how to fix it. At least it looks fine everywhere else.
On Monday I got an e-mail from them stating we received your e-mail, and our response time is taking longer than our usual 24 hrs. That's not a direct quote, but it's close enough. Then they thanked me for my patience.
It's Wednesday now. I haven't gotten another e-mail, and the site is still messed up. Where is my customer service Amazon? I was almost hoping that it was a problem that they couldn't figure out either. At least then it probably wouldn't be my fault. The other option is that I'm really low on their totem pole. I'm pretty sure its that one.
I guess indies would be small blips on their radar. I wonder if anyone else is having this problem? All I can do is keep working on other projects and hope they get back to me soon. I may not be an obsessive compulsive perfectionist, but this is really ticking me off. I didnt spend all that time trying to weed out every last error so my book could look like that.
Ok. Im going to take a calming breath and stop ranting on my blog about this. I WILL focus on other work.
I'll post an update when the issue is resolved.
Most days I don't know how I ever got by without you. You have a larger selection of books/movies/games than any store can possibly have, and you send them to my doorstep. However, there are also times, like now, where you make me want to scream out loud.
Regards,
K.
I sent them an inquiry on Sunday. I asked them if they knew what was going on with my book's details page. I would prefer that my book didn't look like my cat sat on the enter key. I don't know if the problem is on my end or theirs but I dont know how to fix it. At least it looks fine everywhere else.
On Monday I got an e-mail from them stating we received your e-mail, and our response time is taking longer than our usual 24 hrs. That's not a direct quote, but it's close enough. Then they thanked me for my patience.
It's Wednesday now. I haven't gotten another e-mail, and the site is still messed up. Where is my customer service Amazon? I was almost hoping that it was a problem that they couldn't figure out either. At least then it probably wouldn't be my fault. The other option is that I'm really low on their totem pole. I'm pretty sure its that one.
I guess indies would be small blips on their radar. I wonder if anyone else is having this problem? All I can do is keep working on other projects and hope they get back to me soon. I may not be an obsessive compulsive perfectionist, but this is really ticking me off. I didnt spend all that time trying to weed out every last error so my book could look like that.
Ok. Im going to take a calming breath and stop ranting on my blog about this. I WILL focus on other work.
I'll post an update when the issue is resolved.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Confused
Well, Bitten is republished on amazon. I went back to the book's page and once again weird spacing appeared in the "look inside" sample they provide. I was about to pull my hair out when I decided to download a sample of the book to my kindle. The weird spacing was gone...
For some reason, there is only a problem on the book's details page. You know, the place where people go to decide if they want to buy a book. For some reason I doubt readers will want to buy a book that appears to have strange spacing in it. So, I took a deep breath, and sent an e-mail to amazon asking them how to fix the problem. My fingers are crossed. Here's hoping they get back to me quickly about the source of the problem. Then we can work together to fix it.
For some reason, there is only a problem on the book's details page. You know, the place where people go to decide if they want to buy a book. For some reason I doubt readers will want to buy a book that appears to have strange spacing in it. So, I took a deep breath, and sent an e-mail to amazon asking them how to fix the problem. My fingers are crossed. Here's hoping they get back to me quickly about the source of the problem. Then we can work together to fix it.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
A little hitch
So I went out to amazon today to see if anyone has left me a review on Bitten. When I was there I noticed that the search couldn't find the book with "in the kindle store" as part of the search. I thought that was odd, so I ran a broader search under all departments and found it. And yes, it is definitely an ebook listed with the KDP. I'm not really sure why that's happening or how to fix it. Hopefully some changes I'm about to mention will set everything straight.
I decided to click on the "look inside" button while I was at the books page. That's when I noticed something even more annoying. There was tons of awkward spacing that hadn't been there before. Or at least it hadn't shown when I previewed the work during the publishing process.
That kind of unprofessional look is embarrassing for me, and readers shouldn't have to put up with it. I can only hope it didn't show up that way on people's kindles.
So I went back through the annoying procedures that amazon uses for self publishers. They had changed it since I published Entrhalled, and I can only say that they made the whole process more aggravating. I believe they were trying to make self publishing easier by making the writers do less of the conversion. However, their site had not been updated with proper directions as to how they wanted me to send my work to them (in fact, alot of the site pointed back to other pages that no longer existed because they were a part of the old system). Instead a huge emphasis was put on paying other companies that work for them to do all of the conversion for you.
Maybe I'm cheap, maybe I'm stubborn, but I refused to do that. Clearly something went wrong.
So, now I have gone back through all of that and found that yes, they do want the work in html formatting instead of .doc (like was implied before). So I have republished Bitten. Once again, it looked fine when I previewed the conversion. I can only hope it will stay looking nice. At least their webiste makes sense again. I wonder if I just hit them at an awkward phase while they were changing out their systems...
To make a long story short, Bitten has been modified and will be back on Amazon in about a day. And if this didn't work then I will fire off angry e-mails to amazon...seeing as how I would like to continue selling with them I guess I will have to be polite about it.
My appologies. I can only say that when I did the conversion myself for Enthralled using Mobipocket I never had any problems like this. It was a more complex yet easier life then. When anyone with a basic understanding of technology could self publish. For a while there I would have sworn that they were purposely making my life more difficult so that I would be forced to work with one of their subsidiaries. Only time will tell if I was right.
I decided to click on the "look inside" button while I was at the books page. That's when I noticed something even more annoying. There was tons of awkward spacing that hadn't been there before. Or at least it hadn't shown when I previewed the work during the publishing process.
That kind of unprofessional look is embarrassing for me, and readers shouldn't have to put up with it. I can only hope it didn't show up that way on people's kindles.
So I went back through the annoying procedures that amazon uses for self publishers. They had changed it since I published Entrhalled, and I can only say that they made the whole process more aggravating. I believe they were trying to make self publishing easier by making the writers do less of the conversion. However, their site had not been updated with proper directions as to how they wanted me to send my work to them (in fact, alot of the site pointed back to other pages that no longer existed because they were a part of the old system). Instead a huge emphasis was put on paying other companies that work for them to do all of the conversion for you.
Maybe I'm cheap, maybe I'm stubborn, but I refused to do that. Clearly something went wrong.
So, now I have gone back through all of that and found that yes, they do want the work in html formatting instead of .doc (like was implied before). So I have republished Bitten. Once again, it looked fine when I previewed the conversion. I can only hope it will stay looking nice. At least their webiste makes sense again. I wonder if I just hit them at an awkward phase while they were changing out their systems...
To make a long story short, Bitten has been modified and will be back on Amazon in about a day. And if this didn't work then I will fire off angry e-mails to amazon...seeing as how I would like to continue selling with them I guess I will have to be polite about it.
My appologies. I can only say that when I did the conversion myself for Enthralled using Mobipocket I never had any problems like this. It was a more complex yet easier life then. When anyone with a basic understanding of technology could self publish. For a while there I would have sworn that they were purposely making my life more difficult so that I would be forced to work with one of their subsidiaries. Only time will tell if I was right.
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