SFF Saturday 7-28-2012

Please don't forget that many of the folks participating in Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday have books in print.  If you read their snippets and enjoy their work, go buy a book!

My offering this week comes from "Lilly's story" (I so need to think of a title) and immediately follows this previous snippet.

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“Shit!”  She screamed the expletive involuntarily.  The small screens showing the energy signatures and visible light pictures from outside the hull had depixelated once the Dremikian craft popped out of the jump conduit—and promptly filled with the intimidating mass of a very large ship.  “What the hell is that thing?”

“Human female, state your name and the purpose for your travels,” droned a decidedly non-human voice from the communications relay.

“Uh, Federal....er...Lilly Diaz. I’m the new security chief for Rhiadan Sanctuary.”

“You affirm that you are a passenger aboard this vessel of your own free will and are under no duress or encumbrance?”

      Well that’s kind of a loaded question; what are these things, the inter-galactic lawyers? She blinked as the realization came to her that she was, in fact, speaking to the only force of law in this part of the Universe.  Just great--big, scary, Kigvans in big, scary, ships.

100!

As of Saturday, July 21, "Dremiks" has sold 100 copies worldwide. (The novel launched on March 20, 2012*)  While this is certainly not "bestseller" range, I am over-joyed that 100 people like my book enough to purchase a copy.

Thank-you friends, family, and fans!

I leave you with a celebratory dance: http://www.webhamster.com/

*edited to correct silly date typo

Guild Wars 2

Where was I all weekend?  Why did I miss SFF Saturday (again)?  Well, I'm a geek girl at heart and, thus, a gamer.  I spent my weekend playing Guild Wars 2.  I'll have more about my gaming habits at a later date, but I wanted to share this beautiful screenshot:

"An Alien in a Crate"

I grew up with expressions like "Don't buy a pig in a poke".  For those not up on Southern American colloquialisms, that means "Don't purchase a pig in a sack" or, "sight unseen".

Consumers of books needn't buy a book without knowing what they will get. Amazon and Barnes & Noble have "Look Inside" or "Read Instantly" preview functions.  Many indie and self-published authors also offer samples of their work, either on their blogs or through book sites.

On both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, you can read the first two chapters of "Dremiks", for free, right on your web browser. You can also browse through samples and snippets at then end of this post.

Don't buy an alien in a crate--take a minute to learn about Dremikians and their human saviors by reading the available free samples. And don't worry, I work hard to make sure the plot twists of the book remained unspoiled!

Flight aerobatics
“The thing is, you’re emotionally stunted.”
“How’s the jaw, sir?”
Engineers vs pilots vs robots
Chapter 8 via FrontRowLit  

SFF Saturday 7-14-2012

For SFF Saturday this week I've posted a snippet from my work-in-progress, Lilly's story.  Be sure to read all the great entries from other authors at : http://scififansat.blogspot.com/2012/07/sffs-14072012.html

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Painfully pitched squeals from a sensor board jerked Lilly from her thoughts. Her Dremikian pilots began chirping and twittering to each other so rapidly that Lilly lost track of their conversation.  The first two times this had happened she’d nearly soiled her pants.  This time, she just rolled her eyes and tried to block out the obnoxious alarms.

Worst pilots ever.  Lilly had been on precisely two space flights before this trip, and neither of those had included a jump, but she felt confident in her assessment.  The two aliens were alarmists who were constantly surprised by such mundane things as the end of a pre-determined jump conduit.

Please Format Your Ebook Correctly!

One of my pet peeves when reading a book on my Kindle is finding that the chapter hyperlinks do not exist or work properly. Worse, I often find that books don’t have a working link to their Table of Contents and have blank pages where none are needed. Then there are the truly regrettable offerings that have poor paragraph spacing, odd font changes, or incorrect typographical characters.

Formatting an ebook is not hard. Yes it takes time. Yes it can be frustrating when, as an author, you realize that you have to learn yet another skill-set in order to self-publish your work. News flash: self-publishing means doing, by yourself, all the work of a publisher. Traditional publishers pay editors, copy-editors, marketing professionals, cover artists, and ebook formatters out of that huge chunk they take from your royalties. You can either pay people to do all of those tasks for you, or learn how to do them all yourself. Actually, scratch that. DON’T edit your own work, or proofread it, or do your own cover art (unless you are also a gifted artist). Ebook formatting, however, you CAN do by yourself.

I did it, and here’s how:

Go to this link (don’t worry it opens in another window) and read Guido Henkel’s excellent nine part series on how to format an ebook. Yes, I said nine parts. Take an hour of your day and read what he wrote, in its entirety. Then, read it again and take notes. This is not hard material. If you can put together adjectives, nouns, and verbs and take a reader of those words to another time or place, then you can string together an html search string.

Mr. Henkel uses a program called TextMate to edit his html document. He also mentions a program called Jedit. I tried Jedit and it made my head hurt. I have the great honor to be friends with a brilliant computer nerd. I asked her what I should use for html editing, and then cried (through text messaging) until she agreed to help me through the process. (You can find Mrs. Maples information on the “Links” page of my webpage. If all of this gets too overwhelming, send her an email. She might take pity on you, for a price.) On her recommendation, I now use an html editor called Html-Kit.

Now that you’ve read through Henkel’s nine part saga, flipped out, calmed down, downloaded a text editor, griped about all the damn trouble you’re going through, and calmed the frack down—again--, follow Henkel’s instructions starting in Part VI.

Yes this process will take time. I had expert help and it still took me the better part of two days to correctly format a .mobi and .epub version of my book. Please, though, don’t wimp out, give up, and just throw up a word document onto Kindle Direct Publishing. You are doing yourself and your potential readers a huge disservice.

If you get stuck, send me a note through my “Request Information” form, on Twitter, or on Facebook. Friends don’t let friends publish broken ebooks.

Science-Fiction/Fantasy Saturday 7-7-2012

Welcome back to another 10 sentence snippet for SFF Saturday.  I hope long-time readers will find this blog version easier to read and comment upon.  If you've already read "Dremiks", this week's offering will be very familiar*; so, please feel free to read lots of new material from the other great authors at : http://scififansat.blogspot.com/2012/07/sffs-07072012.html
If you haven't read "Dremiks", what are you waiting for?

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Maggie crouched underneath the panel system of the pilots’ flight simulator, her curses varying in volume from whispers to loud tirades. She was aware of, and further infuriated by, Swede’s lack of concern over her ire. To both the women present, Swede’s only visible emotion was amusement. Maggie crab-walked from underneath the panel. She had to twist at her waist to raise her shoulders past the seat edge and then twist again to stand fully upright.

“From a medical stand-point, Maggie, the human body really isn’t designed to contort that way.”

The commander rolled her shoulders to work out a kink, then shot a withering look at her roommate as she collapsed into the mock-up pilot’s chair. “Well, the engineers who designed this piece of crap didn’t have human physical limitations in mind—as usual.”

Swede placed a screwdriver in her out-stretched hand. “In all fairness, ma’am, the same engineers who designed this also designed a robot to fix it.”


* Snippet varies from the published version of "Dremiks" in order to meet the 10 sentence limitation of SFF Saturday.

Coming this Christmas: Lilly's story

She never wanted to be out here, in the void and blackness, one of the few, the "alien". She hates her job and every aspect of her life. All she wants is her good name back...

Lilly Diaz is a former Federal Intelligence Officer and recent inmate of the Europa Prison Dome. She's been sent to far reaches of the universe in a last ditch effort to ferret-out human sedition and, if she's lucky, prove her innocence.

You can read a few snippets from the first draft of Lilly's story (a currently untitled, novella-length, sequel to "Dremiks") here and here.

Blog Changes

I started using Blogger/Blogspot way back in 2005, so I'm very comfortable with the interface and services offered.  When I started my "author blog" last October, Blogger was a logical choice.  In March of this year, though, I decided I wanted a more robust website with my own domain.  I started working with the hosting services provided by Intuit.com.

I have been 80% satisfied with how my site is working.  Feel free to check it out at www.cassandradavis-author.com (You can also click on the "Home" link at the top of this page)

The part of the site I was never happy with, however, was the imbedded blog feature.  The Intuit Sitebuilder service lets you add a blog to your site.  Honestly, though, this is barely more than an automated script for a text box.  Their blog service does not offer an archiving or post labeling system, has the most obnoxious "Captcha" word verification for comments I've ever seen, and it is incredibly hard to add pictures to your posts.  Adding the ability for readers to add my blog to an RSS feed required almost an hour of tinkering and editing.  Furthermore, there's no built-in html editor for the site.  If you want to tweak your page's html code, you have to recreate the code in your own editor and reload the files.

As an author, my blog is my gateway to my fans and my fans are my customers.  I cannot have customers frustrated by their inability to comment on a post, easily read an entry (I often had an issue with competing scroll bars for long blog posts), or find posts on a similar topic. The "Archives" section you see on the old blog?  I had to create those links myself, and update them whenever I had the chance.  That's time out of my day I could have spent writing a new novel.

After months of trying to find a work-around for these myriad problems, I finally gave up.  This blogger.com site will once again be my blog.  Visitors to my website who click on the navigation bar link "Blog" will be directed here.  If you wish to go back to my site, simply use any of the page buttons above (Home, Reviews, Blog, Links, Old Blog). And, I really hope you do go back to the site, because I work hard to provide informational links, new reviews of "Dremiks", and updates on my writing.

All of my old content will remain live and accessible.  I left the old blog "up" because there are several link-backs to those posts on marketing materials and other authors' sites.  All new content, however, will be posted here.  There is a link to the old blog above (Old Blog) and also on my site's "Links" page.

Yes I'm taking a risk that I might lost a few customers through the confusion of a different domain name for my blog, and the movement to a new (old) site.  However, I felt this was a risk I had to take to preserve my sanity and grow my fan base.  I'll let you, my readers, decide which of those two is more important.