Passing 40k

Haven't made a post here in a while, so I thought I'd just recap what I've been up to since April.

I've written and released an Micro RPG (Role Playing Game).  It's a background, game rules, and scenario that prints onto a single side of A4 and folds into a little booklet.  The game is called "Shikishima Heroes" and is set in an alternate 1902.  Follow the link to read more.

It was a fun experience trying to write an entire game in what is actual fact, eight tiny tiny pages. You have to pare back your use of words and get the most meaning out of every sentence. Game rules are terribly difficult to write at the best of times, but squeezing it into just those few pages is especially interesting. Some might try flash fiction or even the odd Drabble as an exercise, but rules writing is a strong challenge!

Writing that game was so much fun, I decided to write another.  The next one is called "Acrobats vs Mobsters"  I think the title gives away what the game is about. It was actually easier to write the second one having had the experience of the first. I knew what to put in and what sort of thing to leave out.

So with those out of the way... I wrote a third called "Trench Full of Heroes". That's not out yet. It's a role playing game set during the First World War, my hope is that I've teased the setting so that players will not limit their play to the mud and blood of the trenches.

All three of the games have different rule systems, and that has been half the fun.  Letting my half sleepy alpha brain search for mechanics and fit them together.

I've also written a "scenario" for Dungeons and Dragons (1st Edition) which I'll talk about in a future post.

Finally to cap this little list, I've also been adding the odd word or two to my novel. Tonight I broke the 40k barrier during a forty minute splurge. HUZZAR!

A blast from the past

This evening I've done something that I haven't done for an age... I added some words to my novel!  This thing was started two, or more like three years ago while offline and sitting in a holiday cottage.  It's an all action WWII romp that I was inspired to start after reading "Contest" by Matthew Reilly.  Now there is an author who knows how to write action. Sure it's over-the-top, but it's simply fantastic fun that you can put down.

He inspired me, I wrote an outline and then started writing. Of course there have been a few breaks, such as forgetting about it for six months, writing short stories, the annotation projects, another few months break, the game book etc etc etc.

So on and off I've been hammering away at this thing for quite a while, but tonight I got back on the writing train and added another whopping 715 words!  Not many in the big scheme of things, yet it's brought the total up to 33315, which is not to be sniffed at.

With luck I'll stick with it and get this first draft done. Fingers crossed, eh?

Story telling game

I posted yesterday about how I had been "distracted" by the role playing game I'd started writing...well I finished the game off and pushed it up onto the biggest RPG web site on the web for sale today.

Next, I'll be converting the ODF file into an ePUB.  Once in that format I'll be able to push it onto Kindle via the "kindlegen" software, and onto the iBook Store/Nook Store via LuLu.

The ODF is only about 37 pages and the cover art is already done, had to do that for the PDF release mentioned above.

So this afternoon will be dedicated to using my favourite ePUB software, the free and excellent "Sigil".

P.S. Now ePUB'ed at LuLu

Sidetracked

I have only give about half a dozen entries in my game book written up, because in the last week I have been distracted by another writing project.

I decided to enter a "one page dungeon" competition hosted on the Role Playing Geek web site. During the creation process of a dungeon, I actually not only invented a dungeon but also the bare bones of a whole role playing game. That sounds like a lot of work, but wasn't really. The one page dungeon itself was knocked up within an evening...and so this wasn't really the distraction.

What the distraction was, is that the bare bones RPG I came up during that process deserved to be fleshed out into a real full length game. This is where I've been spending my writing time.

It's interesting to note that the one page dungeon competition is not a money making project, but that short diversion has set me off on this RPG project which will be a money maker.

Anything "Cthulhu" or "Lovecraft" is extremely popular at the moment so the RPG I'm writing is themed that way. A completely opposite direction from the original one page dungeon.

I think that this proves that taking the occasional diversion can really inspire the muse. As a bonus this project is shorter than the game book project so will be finished quickly.

A good weekend

It's been a good weekend for me.  My short story "Incursion" has sold three times on the Kindle.  I'm very happy with that, but surprised at the same time.  I put Incursion into the KDP select scheme on the Kindle store so that people could borrow it.  My hope was that people would like it and then go on to buy my other stories in the same line.  Turns out instead that three people have bought it!

I wonder if I've done something wrong during the sign up, or if the story is getting lost in amongst all of the other free stuff.  A quick look on the Amazon store seems to confirm that the story is free to borrow. Strange happenings indeed!

My other good news is the "Cthulhu and How I found Livingstone" book, which has sold 9 copies at DriveThruRPG.  This is because the book is currently on the "new in the store" page. Within a week or so, it will slip off that page into obscurity and the realm of zero sales (well, maybe one sale every few months).

All in all a good weekend.

It's started!

I have just completed the first two paragraphs of the game book, the first draft. Actually it's not paragraphs, I should say "entries". In the old Fighting Fantasy game books, most of the entries were paragraphs.  In my book most entries will be more than one paragraph, and indeed featuring a lot of dialogue, which will make the "paragraph" terminology redundant. So henceforth I will try and say Entries.

Word count on the document is at 3000, but at this early stage that is mostly a junk number. The majority of that is the headings for each entry and the "go to ..." that appears at the end of most entries. After this however the word count will allow me to see how much it's growing by. Yet, now I think about it, word count hardly matters in a game book. Progress is really measured in entries that have been completed.  So in those terms, 2 down and 119 to go.  Boy oh boy that sounds like a lot.

Progress, at last.

Tonight I completed my first editing pass over my AMRAT story (giant fighty robots).  I was horrified at how awful that first draft was.  Commas instead of full stops, missing capital letters, incomplete sentences "as" instead of "is" and any number of straight forward typos.

Still, that's twenty pages knocked into a legible state that I'm not embarrassed to pass onto my editor. It felt good to get that out of the way, it's cleared the decks for the next project.

On the small pile of outlined works is a Lovecraftian short story and pulp era detective game book. The Lovecraftian story is a "kind-of" sequel to my "Incursion" story which is currently locked into a six-month exclusivity agreement with Amazon, so I'll leave that to the side for the next few months.

That means the game book is the next project. I plan on following the same process as with the last game book, in that I will aim to write two or three entries every day. The current outline has 121 entries so that means I should have the first draft done in about 40 days.

"Things"

There are many reasons that a writer may not write. One of the most amusing situations appeared in the film "Throw Momma From the Train". The writer in that case couldn't find the perfect word for his opening sentence and this hung him up. Time and again he would try a word but it was never quite right.

A writer might be prevented because his is suffering from "writers block".  Where the muse has left them, they feel uninspired and simply unable to put the pen to the paper.

Practical things have a hand in this too.  The power goes out, or your last number 2 pencil snaps. Whatever.

Then, there are cats.

That's right. Cats.

The writing I had planned for this evening is wiped from this plane of existence because of a cat.

Why?  You ask, why?

Today my wife trapped the last of the wild cats that visit our garden. She's been trying to trap it for over a month. All the others have been trapped and neutered, one by one. Yet this one, this female has been so nervous and cagey that she just wouldn't enter the cage...until today.

So this late night trapping has caused phone calls, visits, socially engaging with the family, and all in the name of getting this one wild cat neutered.  Sure I'm still itching to get back to writing, but in the end getting that cat was worth it.

 That said, the night has still been productive to some extent. I uploaded "Cthulhu and How I Found Livingstone" to the kindle store where it should appear within a couple of days.

Back to writing...almost

It's been quite a while, but finally I'm getting back to writing.  I had two big jobs that were keeping me away from pounding the keyboard properly, and now they are complete. The annotation project is completed and up for sale at one outlet (more to come later, but they can wait!), and the formatting-job also is done and up for sale.

This means I can get back to writing... no wait!  Not writing, but editing!!!  My sci fi short story (working title "AMRAT: The Bank Heist") has been sitting await a damned good edit for weeks.  Now it's going to have its chance as I turn my editing scissors on it. It's 29 pages, about 8700 words, so my first editing pass will take a couple of evenings effort. Then I'll be handing it on to my editor, who will no doubt "rip the crap" out of it.

I'm not writing... but I am working with my own creations, and that's something.Still, a couple of evenings looking at this baby, and then I have to decide on which of my two outlined stories to start working on.

One step closer to some actual writing

Last post, I was moaning about the non-writing things I have to do. Well one of the jobs at leas,t is now out of the way.

The ePUB version of Cthulhu and How I Found Livingstone is now available. After much swearing and angrified typing, the ePUB was finally completed and uploaded.

I pushed it up to LuLu, they also submit the eBooks to Nook and iBookstore so over time it will make its way onto their digital shelves too. Tomorrow I hope up upload to a couple more places, including the Kindle store.

I am constantly amazed just how much non-writing work there is in writing! The formatting for the various stores is hours and hours of dull boring work.

Sigh

I'm starting to think that I'll never write again! Other projects seem to be piling up and getting in the way.

One of the tasks on my plate at present is getting the Gamebook "Barsoom! Rise to Power" through the submission process for the Nook store and the iBookstore.  These two places are really picky about how you build your ePUB file. Despite the book looking good and passing all of the validation checks there are always a number of things they want fiddling with.

At the moment I'm having to hand-edit the NCX file in the ePUB to add sections in that aren't really sections, they dont having headings indicating they are sections. Yet their people have examined it and arbitrarily decided they should be sections... so sections they shall be. It's not worth the fight.

The really mind bending part of the process, is that its takes anywhere from 3-7 days to get the rejection, and when they reject a book they stop checking after the first problem. So even if they book has 5 problems they only tell you about one. And each one has to go round the cycle. Ho-hum.

The other task currently getting in the way, is the job of formatting another ePUB. This time it's the recently finished "Cthulhu and How I Found Livingstone" book.  Although it's now ready in paperback, I'll get more sales as an ePUB, so now I'm slogging through converting it.

I have a short story and another book all plotted, but I just don't seem able to get to em!

Cthulhu and How I Found Livingstone

My "annotation" project is complete.  What was it you ask? You've probably been asking every time I mentioned it.  I didn't want to speak plainly about until it was done, in case someone else stole the idea and got theirs out first. Now it is complete and the first version released for public consumption...oh... what is it?

It's called "Cthulhu and How I found Livingstone". What I've done here, is take the public domain text of Henry  Stanley's book "How I found Livingstone", and have annotated it for readers who role-play.

The original book tells how Stanley carried out an expedition to relieve an explorer called Livingstone, and you must have heard the famous words "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", well this text is that story told in the words of the man who did it.

The expedition was a genuine darkest-Africa adventure, and I've added a series of graphics and over seventy footnotes to the book. Each footnote looks at the people, the locations or the events and explains how the role-player could take that incident and turn it into an exciting plot element for a horror role playing session as part of an entire gaming campaign.

If the term "role play" or the phrase "campaign" mean nothing to you then this book is not for you!  Anyone who runs a game of "Call of Cthulhu" or a similar role playing game might well find it interesting.

The job of annotating was a long one. The book was four hundred odd pages which I had to carefully read and then consider, determining if any incident/person/place was worthy of a footnote, and indeed what that footnote would say.

This is actually the second book I've done this to.  The first was called "Cthulhu and the River of Doubt", which followed Teddy Roosevelt along an uncharted river in Brazil. That too was a long project. In both cases it's not the writing that takes so long, its the reading, re-reading and time spent pondering. Unlike straight fiction writing, where I follow an outline, I had no outline to follow, and had to spend more time thinking than actually writing. The exact reverse of my usual writing process!

I've added details to the Books page and it's available to buy as a P.O.D. paperback. ePUB, Kindle, Nook etc will follow over the coming weeks.

The Resurrection

It's back! The Gamebook that I and my collaborator had released only to quickly withdraw from sale, is back on sale.  At present, only in ePUB from LuLu, but the other formats and locations will come online over the next week or so.

What was the problem, you ask? We decided to write a book set in the "Barsoom" universe, it seemed like a good idea what with the upcoming release of  the "John Carter" movie. We thought ourselves safe to write in that universe as the John Carter books are in the public domain. Alas and alarms! Be warned!

We opted to star in our book, and indeed name the book after, a secondary character in the first book (Princess of Mars) by the name of "Tars Tarkas".  Having written the book and even started to sell it, did we realise that the words "Tars Tarkas" had been trademarked!

What did this mean to us as authors. Well to start with, we are both hobbiest writers, so getting into anything "legal" was not in our remit, we wanted no part of any court case, so we immediately withdrew the book from sale.  Although the book (Princess of Mars) is in the public domain, once a phrase or name is trademarked it can be legally protected forever if the trademark owner wishes. So we would have had no standing in court anyway.

Back we went to the drawing board. We decided to stay "true" to the Barsoom universe, but avoid the trademarked names. Unfortunately for us changing our protagonists name meant that the relationships between the characters established in "Princess of Mars" no longer applied. So we couldn't get away with just a cut and paste name change in our text.

We changed our protagonist be a tertiary character from the original book then set about the editing the story line to match the position of the new character. Fortunately this only required a minimal number of edits, a few changes at the beginning and and at the end of the book, with simple name changes being sufficient throughout the rest of the text.

So here we are a month or so later just starting to put the book back on sale. Detail of outlets will be added to my Book page as they come online.

15th July 2012 :A footnote to the above : We have decided to not sell the book in ePUB format. Although we initially created a fully working ePUB we found that on some devices the navigation from entry to entry failed.  It worked fine on Sony readers but would fail on some of the others. For instance, when navigating backwards on the Nook, from page 200 to 105, the page would  be aligned with the bottom of the page rather than the top. At times this meant you could not see the text. We found this issue insurmountable and have decided that the ePUB format is not ready for bi-directional navigation.

Entering the KDP Select scheme

Having finished the edit of my tongue in cheek Lovecraftion short story called "Incursion" I decided to try an experiment.  I've enrolled a Kindle version of the eBook in Amazon's KDP Select scheme. This scheme gives your book away for free, or rather, lends it for free.

So now "Incursion" can be downloaded for free, for the next three months. What do I get out of it? As the story is the latest in my "Lovecraftian Shorts" series I'm hoping that by getting one for free, readers might be inclined to purchase the other stories in the series.

On a side note the I created the scene you see on the cover, using a free piece of software called POV-Ray which is a ray-tracer.  It allows you to build CGI images using a scripting language. A very cool tool with a great manual!

Giving "Incursion" the once over

I decided to take another break from the big annotation project and instead get go through the edits I had back from the editor well over a week ago for my story "Incursion".  There was a lot of red text in the story.  I didn't agree with all of the red lines.  Some lines that were scored through with red, I left in as I think them essential to get over the attitudes of the characters.  There were other things too that I left in or slightly reworded.

I always look at the editors returns as informed opinion rather that a rule of law. I read the suggested change, and consider what it means and why the editor put it in there. Only after that do I apply the change.

In the end I implemented lots and lots of the changes, massaged a couple, and did re-write the ending which was ,as the editor suggested, a bit weak.

Dealing with edits like this always takes it out of me.  The story is only 19 pages of  double spaced text, but it still took me the whole evening to work through them.

I do have a better story now, and send out my unending thanks to Mrs The Editor.

Re-editing complete

After the whole trademark issue with the Gamebook , mentioned in a previous post, we had some serious thinking and work to do.  First off, we had to check that none of the other names we were using were trademarked in the same way. Then as the main character had changed, some of the secondary characters names had to change too as they wouldn't made sense to anyone familiar with Barsoom. We also found that the objective of the book, the "mission", had to change!

None of these were/are major changes, and I've just completed my required edits.  I also took the opportunity to fix a couple of minor issues that I had spotted in the P.O.D. version that had slipped through all of the proofing.

I've handed the work back to my collaborator so that he can do his changes.  He's actually got the most work to do for this revision.  Not only the text edits, but he is also "cover man", and he is going to have to remake the cover using the new title and cover blurb. He's very good at that sort of thing, but I appreciate it is a lot of work.

Plotting a Gamebook

I'm now three quarters of the way through working on the big annotation project, about another one hundred and fifty pages to go.  I needed a break so I've spent a couple of hours working on the outline for my next gamebook.

This book is going to be different from the last sci-fi/fantasy thing, and is instead a detective story. Here's the plot being laid out one pencil scribble at a time...

It's only about half done in this picture and of course it's the first draft so there may well be much rubbing-out in the near future.

I'm finding that plotting this genre is significantly more difficult than the fantasy genre. In a fantasy book you can just add a new monster or use magic to provide an exit from any situation, but in a real-world book I don't have magic to fall back on. So instead I have to come up with a more realistic way out.  The plotting continues...

Getting frustrated

Grrr.  I feel like I'm writing noting at present. What little time I can dedicate to writing I'm using on the "annotation" project.  It doesn't let me set lose the muse, I have to be quite restrained.  It's also a long process that I'm starting to dread.

I look at the file on the computer and let out a wheeze.

It's not that the job is boring, or that the text I'm working with is uninspired. It's just such a long job.  Of course I know, the longest job is the one never started, so that's why I keep working through this thing.  But... sheesh, it's so long!

When I finish the first pass/draft I may have to have a "Creme Egg & Pepsi Max celebration" TM . Now that's something to look forward to, maybe I should keep my eyes on that!

Disaster!?

As mentioned in a previous post a KA Cartlidge and myself recently released a gamebook featuring "Tars Tarkas" a secondary character from a book that's in the public domain.  To our disgust and horror we only just discovered the name "Tars Tarkas" has been trademarked!

Although the original book is in the public domain, a company has trademarked the names of pretty much all of the characters. As a couple of hobbiest authors we are not in any position to mount a legal battle over anything, so for the moment have withdrawn the products from sale until we decide what to do.

It's a blow, but not an insurmountable one. It has highlighted the danger and trouble you can run into using someone else's world, even if it's in the public domain.  Whatever we decide to do with this project, I have learnt that I should do a trademark search before starting writing in someone else world.

I'm going to file this one under "Doh!" ... or maybe not, because that word has been trademarked too!

New outlet

I found a new outlet for some of my works today. It's called Drive Thru Fiction which hosts a lot of "genre" fiction, anything from short stories to full novels.  I've had a product or two on DriveThruRPG for a while but for some reason never noticed that they has this sister site.

Never one to miss an opportunity I've already uploaded one short story into their shop and others will follow soon.  

A sea of Red!

My Lovecraft inspired short story "Incursion" has returned from the editor. Yikes!  It's a sea of red ink. Things crossed out, sentences circled, suggestions edged in round the side and requests for clarification. Oh, and the ending was a bit too quick.

I find it astounding that I write, then I edit, then I double check before anyone else sees it. Then when it comes back looking like its under a red film of ink I am always surprised.  I ask myself, what can I have missed this time!?! Looking through the notes made on the hardcopy it becomes all too obvious what I missed.

I think there must be a better way for me to edit. I did consider submitting it to the "Bookoven" project, but that is only a typo and grammar thing, and it only examines one sentence at a time. My first drafts need "bigger picture" editing than that.

I'll let this edit sit for a while yet, as I'm working on an "annotation" project at the moment and only 120 pages into a total 456. Once I get the draft on that complete, then I'll come back and implement the red text OF DOOM!

Back to work

With all the activity relating to my latest book release, I've been able to spend very little time on other writing projects.

I have two short stories on the go at the moment. One is with my editor, the other in a draw waiting for me to come back to it. That I'll give another week or so, then go back for my first editing pass. Once that's done that too will go on to the editor.

Tonight I'm starting on the outline of another gamebook. That is, a novel split into very small segments each ending with a choice for the reader to make that directs them to the next segment to read.  The Tars book was a collaborative venture, this one will not be. I'm trying a new genre with this little project, "hard-boiled".

I've not written anything in the hard-boiled genre before, so I'm looking forward to the change.  It's a detective story too, so planting clues for the reader to find is going to be a fun part of the challenge.

I've started by plotting the path-to-success.  The is the main and most direct route to the "good" ending. Once that is all laid out I'll start pencilling in the main alternate branches that wont have such good endings or that might even have "bad" endings where the good guys might die!

Gamebook released in ePUB format

My latest collaborative book project has started to become available via electronic outlets. "What is it?" you ask!

Well, here it is. Tars Tarkas of Mars. This book is based in the "John Carter of Mars" universe and is a prequel of sorts to the first John Carter book, "Princess of Mars".


In this gamebook adventure we follow Tars as he carries out a solo mission to recover a lost treasure.


It's not an ordinary novel, but rather a game in a book. You read the first entry and are given some choices about what you want the protagonist to do, and depending on the choices you make you will read different segments, thereby controlling how the story is told and the eventual outcome.


Your choices in this game can lead to the successful completion of the mission or even to the death of Tars!  Check out the Kindle link below and take a look at the sample, if you've never seen this sort of thing before you're in for a surprise.




The book is available as a DRM free ePUB from LuLu.com and on the Kindle.  Soon to appear in print as a print-on-demand book, and in the iBook and Nook stores.

WITHDRAWN FROM SALE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE ( just found out that "Tars Tarkas" is trademarked, what a bummer!)
.

Hard copy from the POD for proofing

Today I received a hard copy of the gamebook from the P.O.D. company. It sure does look good, but of course I'm biased!  The cover put together by my collaborator has really popped into life when printed on shiny card. He's done an outstanding job of work.

I'm glad I paid for this copy as it's highlighted a couple of issues that need to addressed and a revision made.  Just like all stories need to be revised and edited before release, print editions all need to be printed and checked before going public.

In this case the bar code on the rear has crossed over some of the blurb text; it's come out significantly larger than I expected. Secondly despite all of the read throughs and double and triple checking, there is a sub heading that is not highlighted as it should be. Drat! and double drat!  You must always check the release before you blurt out and tell the world.  If I hadn't checked I could have been pushing a sub-standard text on an unsuspecting public.  However the joy of POD is that I can just make a minor revision online and it will be good to go!

Editing a short story

With no other new story idea burning in my soul, I took the opportunity today to go through my first edit on a story I call "Incursion".  I finished the first draft of this a week or two ago. On this first edit I was just doing the basics.

• Checking for spooling mistaks. 
• Making sure each sentence actually makes sense.
• Trying to remove repeated words that I repeat.
• Adding the odd detail to scenes to increase flavour.
• Correcting awkwardly worded bad sentences

The story is a tongue in cheek Lovecraftian tale, that I'll be branding as a "Lovecraftian short". the third of my stories in that mould. there may be a collection of these at some date in the future.

And a quote from the story...

"Her name is Georgina." He explained.

"Is that a crystal ball?"

"Oh yes. She's very good with it."

I stared at the professor. "What is this place?"

"We are the governments special research and defence division."

"Special..." I was lost for words. "What sort of government work is Georgina doing with a crystal ball?"

Finished a first draft

I've just finished the first draft of another short story. It's the first in what I hope will pan out to be a series of short stories featuring in the genre of "giant fighty robots".  Here's the stories opening...

Sergeant Karen Nowak lent her chair back from the briefing table, reaching for a cup of coffee as she did so. “No way, Rosco if they start taxing people for windows they’ll be revolution.”

“I know that, you know that, but these” Corporal Orosco pointed to the news article displayed on his tablet. “are career politicians. They’re about as far from real people, from reality as you can get. Not one of them has ever had a real job!”

It's first a draft, so none of your nit picking!  I probably wont edit it for at least a week. This draft is 8824 words and under the provisional title of "AMRAT: the Bank Heist".

Nearing the end

My currently most advanced writing project is a collaboration.  It's the first collaborative writing project I've ever worked on and has been a blast.  It's also the first "game book" or "gamebook" that I've ever written.

Now there is a chance that you kind reader do not know what a gamebook is!

Simply put, it is not a traditional novel but rather a game in the form of a novel. The story is split into  numbered entries, usually a paragraph or two long each. You start reading at the beginning and after a page or two are presented with a story based choice. As an example, you might be informed that if you want the protagonist to take the left hand fork you should turn to entry109 or if you want the protagonist to to take the right, turn to entry 205. Almost every entry ends with a similar choice, thereby giving the reader the chance to guide the narrative.

There have been a number of game books over the years and some very famous brands, the two best known being "Choose your own adventure" and "Fighting Fantasy". Our book follows in the footsteps of the latter in that it is a fantasy adventure style game that actually calls upon the reader to roll a die now and then in certain situations.

The collaborative nature of writing the book has been fun.  We started by devising an overall plot then split the actual task of writing so that we had 2 sections each to write.

I found this style of writing rather different from usual.  For a start, each entry had been plotted out before the actual writing began, it was like have an outline detailed right down to the individual page level. It made the physical writing extremely easy.  Each night as I sat down to compose an entry or two, I didn't have to consider plot, it was already detailed. All I had to do was effectively fill in the blanks.

I had in the region of two hundred entries to write, most of those I wrote at the rate of two or three per evening and then up to as many as ten on Saturdays and Sundays.  It gave me a very simple writing experience.  No planning or plotting each time I sat down to write, no need to reread the last chapter as the story was kept fresh in my mind as I was writing every day. Just writing a couple of entries meant I would only spend at most half an hour at the keyboard before getting on with something else.

I'm currently preparing a P.O.D. version of the finished book to go on sale at LuLu, with luck that might be finished this weekend.  After that my esteemed partner-in-this-crime will be preparing other digital formats which we'll put online as they are completed.