For those of you following along, you may have an interest in my latest adventures. I’ve been asked for updates from multiple people. Those causes have led to this effect: Below is the scoop on my current projects.

Transhuman #2

The working title is “Monsters in the Dark”. Today marks the Completion Of The First Draft of the book. The next step is a revision, followed by another revision, and another revision… you get the idea. But First Draft Completion is important enough to me that I capitalized it twice! It’s a big step and I’m happy to have completed it. 

I’ve also contacted Darko Tomic, the artist who did the cover art for book #1 – “Waking the Dreamer”. I’m happy to say he’s on board to create the art for this book, too. It’ll allow me to keep visual continuity for the series, and, of course, he’s an awesome artist, so I’m eager to see what he does next.

Dev Manny, Information Technology Private Investigator

I released Dev’s second book – “Wetware” – a few months ago. Dev’s third book – “Hacking the Naked Princess” – is currently being serialized in 2600 Magazine.

League of Scientists #1: “Ghost in the Water”

Coming soonish. See this post for detail.

Abby and Zander #1: “Sharks and Bunnies”

I mentioned it briefly before, but am bringing it up again because we are formally going to get this book through to publication. “We” means it’s a family effort: This is a children’s picture book that I’m developing with artist Celia Kaiser (my sister), and writer and conceptual designer Ally Kaiser (my daughter).

Go get 2600 Volume 29, #4 (the Winter 2012-2013 issue), and read the continuation of Dev’s newest case, “Hacking the Naked Princess”.

This adventure was started in 2600 Volume 29, #2 (the Summer 2012 issue). Future chapters will be serialized in 2600, probably every other issue.

2600 Magazine is available in many bookstores, including Barnes & Noble. Individual issues can be purchased at the above links.

I’d like to introduce you to the latest adventure of Dev Manny, Information Technology Private Investigator. The book is “Dev Manny #2: Wetware“, and is available at an Amazon near you. Get it:

Paper book
Amazon Kindle ebook

I’d like to update everyone on the entire Internet about two different projects, both of which are critical to our society, culture and way of life:

League of Scientists

League of Scientists book #1, “Ghost in the Water”, won’t be available in stores until 2013. From the publisher, I have this statement:

Our goal is to get the book to press in April or May,
with a pub date of September [2013].

So, no League for a while. However, it’s still promising to see the League now being directly advertised by the publisher: “Ghost in the Water” is available as an advertisement in the back of the publisher’s most recent book. They’ve also built a League of Scientists page on their website. Finally, it looks like we have a book cover for “Ghost in the Water”:

Dev Manny

Dev Manny book #2 is on track for release before the end of 2012. The title is confirmed as “Wetware”. We even have a book cover:

So, here’s the deal: Dev Manny 1 (“Superliminal”) is published. It’s out there in the wild. Dev Manny 2 (“Hacking the Naked Princess”) is being published in a serial format in 2600 Magazine. While that’s in progress, I’ve also started Dev Manny 3 (the working title is “Wetware”). But since the 2600 publication is quarterly, I probably won’t have finished Dev Manny 2 for another year at least, so Dev Manny 3 will come out first, even though it’s #3, not #2. I may end up switching the “3” with the “2” upon publication of “3”. Not sure yet.

Got it?

That’s what will happen later. Here’s what’s happening now: Dev Manny 3, “Wetware”, is on the floor.

My term for saying a book is “on the floor” isn’t some weird industry term, or something metaphorical. I’m being literal. As literal as printing out a bunch of pages and putting them on my floor.

Spooky-eyed Shih Tzu in frame because I'm posting this on Halloween.

In addition to confusing my dog, I do this to get an overview on the chapter flow. As I write, I realize that this part doesn’t belong here, it makes more sense to have it over there. This seemingly-simple rearranging is beyond my mental capacity to visualize (so far there are thirty-four chapters in the book). Putting them on the ground allows me to perform an old-school cut-and-paste. So I do. And I did.

This is a milestone for the book. It doesn’t mean it’s done – this is still the first draft, and I have a lot of work to get it publishable. It’s an indicator that I’ve made significant progress and am almost ready to refine, and refine some more…

…and then I’ll publish.

Pixar – the group who brought us Toy Story, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, UP, Monsters, Inc, and many more – is built around a philosophy of excellent storytelling. 

Emma Coats is a story artist at Pixar, and she has compiled what she’s learned about storytelling, both from her personal experience and learning from those around her. It’s great stuff. If you want something to post on your wall, PB&J Publishing has converted the below rules into a cool infographic.

Pixar Story Rules

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

The article title question is a pretty easy one to answer: Adobe InDesign is an industry standard for book publishing, and would be an excellent book creation tool for a self-publisher, specifically those needing graphics manipulation or other advanced book layout and design tools.

…and there’s no way I can afford it. So, sorry InDesign, no offense but you’re too rich for my blood. My wallet can’t afford you. 

I had been using Microsoft Word. It’s a fine word processor and document creation engine – I use it for my “regular” book publishing needs. But I’m working on a new project. A children’s book. With a title of “Sharks and Bunnies“, you can bet it’s got a lot of interesting art on each page.

For now, I’m using Microsoft Publisher. It’s not InDesign, but it’s a heckuva lot cheaper and far better than MS Word. So far, it’s perfect for my needs.

For building my children’s book, I’m doing this for every page:

1) Work with an artist to create art. She’s painting 18″x18″ pieces.

2) Scan in and post-process the art with Photoshop. This is also where I overlay the book text over their place in the art. Other tools like GIMP (free) or the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite (cheaper than Photoshop, but I don’t use Corel for this reason) would also work fine.

3) Export from Photoshop as a 9″x9″ TIFF.

…then I do this in Microsoft Publisher:

4) Create a new document (page/paper size is 9″x9″, with an extra .5″ gutter for the spine. The published book will be an industry standard 8.5″x8.5″.)

5) Import all page TIFFs into each page in Publisher, and place each piece of art where it goes – the guidelines and rulers and “snap-to” functionality allows me to place the graphic easily on the page and plan for bleed and other layout considerations.

7) Export the entire project as a PDF. (Publisher has detailed resolution controls so the art won’t be degraded by PDF image compression.) 

…steps 4-7 are what I was originally trying to do in Microsoft Word, and it failed miserably. It’s not designed for such sizes or frequent graphical manipulation. The process was extremely buggy.

And I also found out another Microsoft Word “feature” the hard way: Word’s file size caps off at 512MB. Any bigger, and Word will refuse to open the file. So after I made modifications to my Word file, I could no longer open it! Nasty. Microsoft Publisher, on the other hand, doesn’t crash, graphic manipulation and project sizing is smooth and intuitive, and the performance is great, even with a large file (the current file size for my publisher file is 643MB. It takes several seconds to initially open and save, but the actual work inside the file is delay-free).

To answer the original question: What’s the best software for doing layout and design for self-publishing a children’s book? There are many options that will work well for many people. My choice right now is Microsoft Publisher.

I’ve been featured as a guest writer on the “Writing and Publishing Resource” website. Check it out: 

Recommendations for writers: How seemingly bad advice can improve your writing process

A goal in writing the article was to describe mental stumbling blocks that I’ve encountered in writing and publishing, along with advice on overcoming those problems. 

Thanks to Sabine Reed for making this guest appearance happen.

For YA and middle-grade fans of science fiction and mystery, I’ve now fully finished production of “Waking the Dreamer”, the first book in my “Transhuman” series.

After paper book printing and ebook design, this culminated with the development and rollout of the audiobook edition.

For the audiobook, I again used the ACX service (which I documented before in this post), and I again am very happy with the results. ACX handles availability and sales in Amazon, Audible.com, and the iTunes Store, and gave me access to an excellent reader, actor and publisher, Maxwell Glick.