Wednesday, June 17, 2009

G's Adventures? Now! (2)

Part 1.

When we last left our intrepid hero, he was getting ready to ship his manuscript out. After writing a nifty dedication and acknowledgement page (again), he got down to work filling in the Submission Information Form, which is supposedly designed to help streamline the process of self-publishing.

So our intrepid hero sat his big fat ass down in front of the household computer and gots to commencing in filling out the form.

After filling in the following items in nothing flat: Book ID#, Author ID#, the pen name (Georgie B), the new title (Betrayed!), the size of the book, the classification (Fiction/General, Fiction/Erotica, and Fiction/Romance/General), he got immediately stuck on the next two items: About the Author and About the Book.

The "About the Author" for his first book, our hero found to be quite dry, dull and not to his liking. So he decided to pep it up for the next book. He managed, in exactly 205 words, his experiences writing in the chat rooms, writing two different blogs and explaining the content of the two blogs and what he currently does for a living

Serious note: if you're not sure if you can write flash and sub-flash fiction, please give the chat rooms a try. Because of the 750 word/4,000 character limit, it is an excellent training ground as it forces you to learn how to write a story with a beginning, a middle and an end within that word limit.

That took him about a half hour to create. The next item that our hero had to come up with (and for those of you who have done the query route in order to land an agent or publisher will completely sympathize with me on this) a short blurb describing what the book is about, in under 300 words.

Now one of the things that our hero cannot do well under normal circumstances (in all seriousness), let alone with a deadline, is write a brief synopsis on what the book/story is about. But, if he wanted to do things right and wanted to get a move on with things, he had to write that blurb.

So our hero wrote that blurb. In its entirety, here is that blurb.

Theirs was a doomed relationship that even a marriage couldn't fix. Ray was the antithesis of a hairdresser, Handsome, muscular, and a natural flirt, he was the solution to every woman's fantasies. Gwendolyn was a passionate young woman with a temper that ran as dark as her complexion. Desirable to both sexes, she was determined to find love, no matter what the consequences. Who would be first to betray their marital vows? Ray, who although enlightened about the world around him, still had those old fashioned values that made him a hot commodity. Gwendolyn, vivacious and passionate, had the looks and the body that could destroy anyone that got in her way of her ultimate goal. To be unconditionally loved. Can that particular end really justify the means?

Once he go that done, the next step was picking out a cover image. He thought, "well, how hard can this be?" Pretty much, it was damn well hard, and in the end, a waste of time.

Hard, as in it took our intrepid hero five hours spread out over two days to find the right pic (which was a man and a woman in an arduous embrace, with the woman looking at her cell phone at the same time). Infuriating, as in after submitting the form and manuscript, our hero was told "oh no, that wasn't part of our subscription plan to the website in question.' (serious note: I was pretty much pissed off about this and I let my contact person know in no uncertain terms what I thought about it. Not sure how bad this will ultimately poison the process, though)

So our hero got all of his stuff done and e-mailed it out. He did get a response, which you just read in the preceding paragraph, and responded to that the same day.

Our hero now is playing.....the.....slow.....waiting.....game.....as he sits and impatiently waits for the next phase of the process to commence: Setting up a call with the design team to plot out how the interior (palatino linotype) will look and how the cover will look (got a few ideas about that as well. no pic, but color and text).

Tune in next time, when you'll hear our intrepid hero say, "What do you mean I can't do that on television?"

10 comments:

  1. I found the chat useful for just that. I was amazed sometimes about how good some stories could be when folks were playing off of each other, spinning anecdotes and scenes. I wrote a lot and still have some of that stuff. I've also used characters that I invented for the chat in stories.

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  2. Well, Goergie B, good on you for taking steps to get you where you want to go. GOOD ON YA, MATE!!! You are not only dreaming, but doing, and that in itself is where success lies, in my opinion!

    And yes, an "About me" thing can be hard to write. The hardest thing for me,actually.

    And did you know that people's "fat asses" are actually only about 68% as big in reality as their owners assume them to be. Studies have been done, Georgie! All this perceived body image distortion is true. So embrace and rejoice in your buttocks!

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  3. The blurb came out great. Just enough to intrigue the reader. Love the fun twist you put to these "adventures". Hope this "slow wait" doesn't drag for you!

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  4. Charles: Same here.

    I actually hit the chat rooms to begin with because I was going through a major mental block for writing, and being the persuasive person that I am, it really was a great training ground for writing flash.

    Jannie: 'The About Me' was about as hard as to write the synopsis for the book. I didn't want to come off as being overly obnoxious about myself nor did I want to skimp.

    What I will do in the future (since I got laptop back) is post the entire thing and let everyone judge for themselves.

    Septembermom: Glad to see you up and around.

    Thanks. I actually vapor-locked for about ten minutes, trying to figure out what it was I wanted to write.

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  5. I like the notion of that cover image. Sorry to hear how frustrating this all is.

    But I do love that font you are using - Palatino. My very favorite.

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  6. Well, after giving it much thought, I decided to try a color scheme instead. Something along the lines of blue for the cover and the title in a shade of red I think.

    I used to do a lot of my writing at work using Bookman Old Style, but as my computer got upgraded, I found myself not having that font readily available. This one wound up being my second choice, and is now my personal fave no matter if I'm writng in Word or Excel.

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  7. I love designing although I know nothing about it, so I can imagine how frustating to have your picture tossed. But isn't it fun/frightening to choose and hope its right?

    It's exciting to hear about this.

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  8. Yes it is. I spent a great deal of time trying to find a pic that matched up with the theme of the story (cheating in a marriage), so it was frustrating to have it torpedoed.

    On the other hand, unlike the cover with my firt book (which you can see in the upper left corner of the blog) which had a major disconnect with the story, this one would of fitted perfectly.

    Now the problem is trying to come up with a good color scheme to match up with the story instead.

    I got the weekend to think about how I want to do it, because until I can come up with something, I won't be able to move onto the next step.

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  9. Ah HA! it's missing! the comment I put here last week dissappeared mysteriously- with a blogger outage, but I wasn't sure...

    it was:
    G
    Once you're all done it's nice to have a bunch of nail-biting tension n heart-racing last second work to squeeze in under the deadline, while relying on modern technology to shut you down n delete what was already done.

    (yay notepad!)

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  10. I've had that happened one or twice. It can be a bit frustrating.

    But yeah, it can be extremely frustrating to get everything done and have it go POOF!

    I don't know what's worse, having everything go POOF! and startig it from scratch, or having some of it go POOF! and being able to retrieve a version that was two days old and redoing it from there.

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Go on, give me your best shot. I can take it. If I couldn't, I wouldn't have created this wonderful little blog that you decided to grace with your presence today.

About that comment moderation thingy: While yes, it does say up above I can take it, I only use it to prevent the occasional miscreant from leaving thoughtless and/or clueless comments.

So remember, all of your comments are greatly appreciated and all answers will be given that personal touch that you come to expect and enjoy.

G. B. Miller

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All the content that you see here, except for the posting of links that refer to other off-blog stories, is (c) 2008-17 by G.B. Miller. Nothing in whole or in part may be used without the express written permission of myself. If you wish to use any part of what you see here, please contact me at georgebjr2006@gmail.com