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.  :)

A new draft is born

I've started the first draft of book 4 of Wheel of Fire.  I'm not completely satisfied with where my outline is, but I've decided it's good enough to get started on the draft.  Word count currently stands at 787 words.

I'm still trying to decide on a title.  I've got a working title, but I don't plan on using that one when I publish.  I've got a couple of ideas.  We'll see.

I'm still not completely over my sinus infection.  It's a lot better than it was, but I can tell some remnant of it lingers.  I really hope this thing disappears completely soon, because I'm tired of it.  At least I can think well enough to write.  That's the important thing.

My goal now is to finish this first draft before the end of April.  As usual, I expect to fail at my goal.  Life always finds a way to ruin my plans.  But it's something to shoot for, and having a goal is better than not having one.

That's all for now.  More updates in the days to come.

Happy Pi Day!

For those who don't know, today is March 14, or "3.14," which is an approximation of π.  Hence Pi Day.  I know... real nerdy stuff.  But it's harmless fun, so here we are.

What are we supposed to do on Pi Day?  Good question.  Some people eat pies, or bake pies, or do other things with pies.  I don't have any pies on hand, so I won't be doing any of that.  I can do some math, though.  That'll be fun, right?  Well, no, probably not.  But we'll do it anyway.

The volume of a sphere is ​⁴⁄₃ πr​³.  (Like those fancy subscripts and superscripts?  Heh.  I had to copy and paste that stuff.  I have no idea how to properly format it in Blogger.)  Now let's take the derivative of that formula.  :o  I know, I know... Calculus!  Be still my beating heart!

First you multiply the exponent by the coefficient to get your new coefficient.  Three times four-thirds gives you four.  Then you reduce the exponent by one to get your new exponent, so it goes from three to two.  Your derivative is this:

 4πr​²

 And that just happens to be the equation that describes the surface area of a sphere.  :o 

"Wait a minute, Uncle Jeff... you're telling us that the derivative of the volume of a sphere is equal to the surface area of a sphere?"

Yes, that's what I'm telling you.  Pretty neat, huh?

"Wow.  Calculus is like sorcery."

Yep.  It's like sorcery.  Congratulations.  You're a wizard now.  :D

So that's our use of π for today.  Happy Pi Day, folks!

Titles and outlines

I'm still sick, but I felt better today than I have in a while, so maybe I'm getting over this thing.  In the meantime, I've been doing some thinking about titles and working on the book 4 outline.

I've also had some new ideas about how I want the series to progress.  No major changes, but some important minor ones.

When the series is done, I'll still have lots of fertile ground for side stories if I'm inclined to write them.  Depends on how successful the series ends up being.

I'm still not sure how PublishDrive's reporting works.  It seems to be a little haphazard.  But I'm getting steady downloads of Clouds of Venus on Google Play, so I'm pleased with that whole experience.  PD's customer service rocks, and GP's readers are downloading my freebie and occasionally putting a few bucks in my pocket.

That's all for now.  I'm going to finish my drink and then suck on another cough drop.  Later, folks.