Corrected a few things

I've fixed a few things about the Wheel of Fire books.  A few typos, but also removing the series name from the titles.  I still have to do this for a couple books on Kobo, but I'll do that Tuesday after the current promotion is over.

I have no idea when the instructions prohibiting parenthetical stuff in titles were put in place.  It's either a recent thing and no one told me, or it's an old thing that I simply missed somehow.  Either way, I'm making the fixes so that the metadata's compliant everywhere.

I've also signed up at StoryOrigin.  I've joined a group and will be promoting Clouds of Venus as part of that group later in April.  We'll see how it goes.

Twenty years ago today

Morpheus gave us all the red pill and showed us the real world.

A movie like The Matrix might never happen again

Watching today, Neo seems like the poster boy for a disaffected Generation X, a non-conformist who escapes his dull life as a cubicle drone to become a god.

I can agree with that.

I never saw The Matrix in the theaters.  I saw the trailers on tv, but it didn't seem that interesting.  The trailers showcased the special effects, but that was it; nothing about the story.  I expected the movie to be shallow on plot and relying on explosions and martial arts to carry the day.  I figured it would be short-lived at the box office before quickly fading from memory.

Man, was I wrong. 

I eventually saw the movie later when it came to cable.  It's now one of my favorite movies of all time.

And in hindsight, the movie definitely seems to have represented a turning point in American cinema.  Perhaps even a peak of sorts.  Which, of course, was also a theme in the movie: according to Morpheus, 1999 represented the "peak" of our civilization, which is why the machines used that era as the basis for the Matrix.

As Cypher might say... what a mind-job.

Pollen season has begun

I'm not usually bothered by pollen.  This time, though, there's a "thick" feeling in my head and neck, and I suspect it's my lymphatic system trying to deal with the pollen.

I really don't want to get sick for the second time in a month.  Let's hope this stuff blows over quickly.

On the plus side, the weather has warmed, and once the pollen dies down, it'll be comfortable to sit outside and enjoy the great outdoors.

Thanks once more to Kobo's customer service for being so helpful and accommodating.  I've made a few sales of each book in this weekend's promotion.  If any of those readers are reading this, I hope you enjoy the Wheel of Fire.  And there's more of it to come, so stay tuned.

I found an article recently that I thought was fascinating.  It's about a community of Russian Old Believers living in Alaska.  Check it out:

https://weirdrussia.com/2016/02/04/alaskas-old-believers/

I've also been reading up on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.  It's a big snowball, basically.  It looks like Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back.

It's also geologically active and experiences "cryovolcanoes."  Pretty cool, huh?

That's all for now.  Later, folks.

I screwed up

I wanted to correct a couple of typos in Hostile Planet before the book's Kobo promotion began.  The promotion begins on the 27th, so it's just a few hours away.

I uploaded the corrected file thinking everything would be fine.  Well, it's not, and now the book's product page is gone.  The problem--I think--was that I had the series title and number in the title field.  This is apparently a new change, because I did this before without any problems.  In fact, I didn't change any metadata at all when publishing the corrected file.

I've just published again, this time with--hopefully--correct metadata.  If I'm lucky, the book will go live before midnight and Kobo's promotion won't be screwed up.  If I'm not lucky, then Kobo will probably be upset with me.

I've already sent a help request to Kobo, so maybe a human will look at it in time to fix everything.  We'll see.

But I feel like the world's biggest idiot right now.  I should have known better than to make changes so close to a promotion.  I should have let those typos ride it out until after the promotion was over.

There are times when I really hate this business.  There are too many things that can go wrong, and it's too easy to make a catastrophic mistake.

If anyone from Kobo is reading, I'm sorry, and I hope you'll all forgive me for my stupidity.


UPDATE: The book is live again.  Kobo's customer service, as always, is awesome.  All is well.  :D

Miscellaneous thoughts

I just had my driver's license renewed last week.  It arrived in the mail today.  It's kind of unbelievable.  It took less than a week for the government to manufacture my license and mail it to me.  I was expecting it to take a month at least.

Meanwhile, PublishDrive told me they want my tax and payment info.  I've apparently reached some sort of threshold for that.  I entered it, but I'm not sure I did it right.  I'll look at at again later tonight.

I've got over 10k words written in book 4 of Wheel of Fire.  I took a couple days off from it to jot down some ideas I had for a short story.  I returned to the book last night, though.  I let myself get a little carried away, too, with a monologue by a new character.  I mean "carried away" in a positive way.  I could sense myself getting a little emotional while writing it, and that's a good sign.  I'm keeping the monologue.  In fact, I'll probably expand on it during revision.

Members of Bookbub continue to recommend Clouds of Venus, and that warms my heart.  Thanks, folks.  :)

I've been thinking a little about the horror genre lately.  I don't have any plans to write horror stories, but I still find the genre fascinating.  The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that horror stories are, first and foremost, morality tales.  There needs to be a main character that survives the killings and whatnot, and that MC needs to learn some moral lesson or other.  Traditionally, those moral lessons are imparted by the other victims.  The bullying jock, for example, ends up dead because bullying is bad.  The slutty girl ends up dead because promiscuity is bad.  And so forth and so on.  There are all sorts of different morals the writer can present, and they don't have to have anything to do with traditional morality.  I think some sort of moral needs to be present, though.  The MC has to learn something from the deaths of his/her friends.  In modern times, we've seen horror movies where everyone dies, and what's the point in that?  No one survives to learn anything and become a better person.  The story becomes pointless.  It's just death and torture for the sake of death and torture.  So if ever venture into horror, I intend to go the traditional "morality tale" route, because a story should actually be a story rather than just a vignette.

That's all for now.  Take care, folks.  :)

Slow couple of days

I haven't written much in terms of "word count" lately.  It's because I've been stuck on something.  One of my characters is in a room with some important people, but I didn't specifically name those people in my outline.  So I've had to sort out who I want in that room and, just as important, what their motivations are vis-a-vis the conversation they're going to have.

I'm nearly there, I think.  But I hate these little delays.

Am I well? (Maybe)

After two weeks, I might finally be over my sinus infection.  Man, I hate being sick.  I hate even being a little bit sick.  I'm a naturally low-energy person as it is, and any setback just renders me practically catatonic.

I've got about 6500 words written in the new draft.  I've nearly worked all the way through the first page of my 12-page outline.

Free downloads of Clouds of Venus have declined considerably over the past few weeks, but the rate is still above pre-Bookbub levels.  As I've said before, I'm thoroughly pleased with how that went.

I think I've decided on a title for book 4, which means the cover is finalized.  I've still got some work to do on the cover for book 5.

That's all for now.  Take care, everyone.  :)