publishing – kayLorraine

Waking up to something better… picking up where I left off

morning fog over a pond I love when this happens. I woke up this morning with the solution to the sticky problem I’ve been having with a manuscript I’d all but given up on.

I started a novel back in 2015. This was for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) during that November. And I was making good progress with what I felt was a really interesting storyline. It’s basically the tale of a woman who meet one of her college friends after 30 years of almost no contact, and notices some striking difference in the way she behaves and interacts with everybody around her. It’s about how we connect (ha – no surprises there) and how we perceive others (and ourselves), when we learn new things about them.

Of course, I had to throw in some technology too… so the main character is one of the founders of a startup that’s struggling to finalize it working proof of concept for investors. There’s tension there, too — generational tension, programming languages conflict, even a bit of Emacs vs. Vi contention. How could I resist? 😉

Anyway, I was making really good progress with manuscript some four years ago, and I was sure I was going to be able to get it done by the end of November.

But, of course, life had other ideas, and I ended up getting stalled during the last third of the book. Actually, it wasn’t just life that stalled me, it was the technology piece that I was writing about. At the time, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on the company’s fictional approach. I thought I understood the underlying issues the company was aiming to solve. But the more I got into it, the more I realized I didn’t know. And the less confident I felt writing about that whole piece of it.

It wasn’t something I could fake, without undermining the whole premise of the book.

It’s tricky, right? If you’re going to write about something, you’d better know more than a thing or two about it. You can’t write a novel about dogs if you really aren’t familiar with canine characteristics, behaviors, and all the things that make dogs… dogs. Likewise, you can’t really write about technology if you don’t understand it, especially if you’re writing about a company that’s developing an innovative product that’s going to solve a sticky problem for an entire industry.

That derailed me pretty well, so I tucked the manuscript and my notes into a couple of manila folders and put them on a book shelf where I wouldn’t lose sight of them, but they wouldn’t get in my way. Every now and then, I’d look over at the shelf with a sense of longing… and then get back to what I was doing.

But this morning when I woke up, I found a way through. I realized I could write much better about a completely different type of technology that’s much more familiar to me, and which I really do know inside and out. I understand the ins and outs, the persistent issues, as well as the opportunities a better solution would provide. Heck, I even built a similar solution over 10 years ago, when I was noodling around with some ideas I had.

So now I can take a step back, rewrite the technical pieces, and really flesh out that part of the story in a much more satisfying manner.

The main thing is that I do justice to the story, as well as readers. The last thing I want to do is insult anybody‘s intelligence, and I also don’t want to overreach if I don’t know what I’m talking about it. Some people can fake it, but I’m a terrible liar, and anyway, I’d just as soon write about something I’m intimately familiar with.

So, now I can go back to work on my novel. I’m probably a lot closer to finishing it than I think I am.

We shall see.

Now on Amazon Kindle – Beloved Distance

Beloved Distance is now available on Amazon – in Kindle format.

Beloved Distance is picking up speed (after only 2 days)

Daily usage statistics for Beloved Distance in January 2018 showing huge jump in visits and traffic — Stats are picking up for Beloved Distance 🙂

Well, this is fun! I just checked my humble stats (not my full-featured analytics package) for a quick overview of how things are going over with Beloved Distance, and yes, people are taking me up on the offer of the free eBook for the rest of this month. So far, 64 people have downloaded the free ePub version, and that’s just in the last 2 days that it’s been available. At a rate of 32/day, that would come to 11,680 copies in circulation in a year’s time — not a bad run for a book by a (relatively) unknown author daring to venture into territory usually reserved for people with a lot more letters after their names, than I.

The thing is, I really believe this book speaks to so many of the issues we’re facing today — isolation, separation, alienation… and how to make sense of it all. And it deep-dives into what makes us how we are. That deep dive brings up some pretty reassuring facts: namely, that we may be full of separation, but by our very natures, we are built to connect. There’s no way around it. That’s just what we do. It’s who we are. It’s what we are. Full stop.

No matter who the messenger is, the message is critical, in these times of fragmentation and dissolution: We are built to connect. Our bodies do it billions and trillions of times, every waking day of our lives. We wouldn’t be alive, if they didn’t.

And that, to me, is a message of hope… From deep within our cells to the outermost aspects of our lives.

Want to read Beloved Distance?

Order Your Print Copy Now

Or Download a Free copy of the Beloved Distance eBook (gratis till 31. January 2018)

Of All the Nerve… writing about the “neuro” things we all experience, but few completely understand

Of all the nerve, I — a non-scientist, a non-neurologist, a non-medical person — am writing a book about the nervous system. To make matters worse (in case you’re not sure, I am being facetious), I’m taking the liberty of philosophizing about it — as a non-academic, an unofficial philosopher.

It’s tricky, to say the least. The field of neurology keeps changing. Our understandings of neurobiology are evolving at a rapid rate, as every month it seems someone discovers something new, or puts 2-and-2 together in ways that add up to more than 4. Or, for that matter, they realize there’s another hidden “2” in the equation that nobody noticed before, and they either add it in, or square the values that they’ve discovered before.

It’s tricky, even for people who are highly trained scientists, on the cusp of cutting-edge research. It’s tough to stay current — even (especially?) if you’re actively involved in research, yourself.

But I’m doing it, anyway. Because, when we look closely at the world around us, and we have even the most basic access to what we Do Know About Our Nervous Systems, it’s possible to use that knowledge as a springboard to better understand the world around us. In fact, it’s almost irresistably compelling.

Very few of us understand what exactly is going on inside the sun that produces all that light and heat and those amazing sunsets. But we do know how to reference that light and heat and color in our lives to add meaning and “texture” to our experience. We don’t understand the exact chemical compositions of water and air, but we constantly use them as metaphors, often without realizing it.

I think we can/should do the same with our nervous systems. Over the past 20 years, we’ve gained the ability to look more closely and understand more completely, just how it all works — as far as we can currently tell. That knowledge is continually shifting and changing, of course, and it could be that some (much?) of what I’m writing about will change in the next 20 years. But that shouldn’t stop me — or you — from considering how it all fits together, and how our understanding of it can enrich our lives.

Once upon a time, very distinguished scientists believed that the nervous system was a continuous network of uninterrupted connections — like the vascular system with its networks of veins and arteries. It seemed like just common sense, that the nervous system would also be uninterrupted, just like our veins, allowing the signals passing along our “wires” to get where they’re going in one piece.

People believed this so strongly, that Camillo Golgi, the scientist who figured out how to stain nerves so you could see them as individual pieces, rather than just another dark clump of organic stuff, devoted his entire 1906 Nobel Prize speech to explaining how it was impossible that the nervous system was made up of separate neurons.

His co-winner, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, was a proponent of the “neuron doctrine”, which held that nerves were separate cells that were connected by something, though people hadn’t figured that out, just yet. Turns out Ramon y Cajal was right — but it took decades before we had equipment that could give us a decent view of that.

Did this stop them, though? Did their obviously imperfect, partial knowledge of How Things Work stop them from moving forward in their work? Oh, no. And even when they stood the chance of being proven wrong, they just moved ahead, anyway. Even staked their reputations on it.

Looking back at the past hundreds of years of scientific discovery, as well as changes in how we view ourselves as individual humans in community with each other, I’m struck by just how dynamic our knowledge of science and self is. We are continuously changing how we think about life, how we relate to it, how we regard ourselves, and how we relate to each other. Nothing stays the same for long, but we seem to get in the habit of thinking that How Things Are Now is How Things Have Always Been. It’s not true, of course, but we tend to believe it. Especially now, when we’ve got our online echo chambers to reinforce our biases and support even our least defensible opinions.

But things change. Times change. Knowledge aggregates and opinions proliferate… and at regular (and irregular) intervals, there’s some knew “wrench” being tossed in the workings of our minds. And so we adapt. Science adapts. Society adapts. We shift and change along with our surroundings, no matter how firmly we may believe that we’re anchored in universal truths. Maybe Truth doesn’t change, but our understanding of it does.

And so it’s important — for all of us — to step out and take some chances in considering the facts of the world around (and inside) us… building an understanding of those facts that works for us and makes our lives more meaningful. Even if the science might shift in a matter of years, even if we don’t have all the answers or all the insight that more accelerated experts do, I think we have every right to avail ourselves of What We Know At This Point In Time, and use that to better appreciate and understand our world.

Even if we aren’t PhD-grade neuroscientists.

Especially if we aren’t PhD-grade neuroscientists.

It’s our world, they’re our bodies. The science has been funded by our tax dollars. And I say we have the right to understand what’s going on in there, so that we can do better at what we do out here.

Book formatting fun

My brain has been full of neurology and neurobiology and neuropsychology for quite a while, now. And it’s nice to take a break and focus on something as straightforward and objective as making sure that all the 10.5pt Caslon540BT fonts got changed to 12pt Constantia. I’m sure it doesn’t sound thrilling to everyone out there, but to me, it is. Read on, if you’re of like mind — or at least intrigued about why something so “dull and dry” would invigorate me.

I took a break from reviewing and editing this morning to figure out some formatting issues. The font I had chosen originally for its nice look turned out to be too fine and faint in print. The printing didn’t translate well, and the headings actually got changed to smaller fonts than in my original, so that’s no good.

I’m sure it doesn’t sound thrilling to everyone out there, but to me, it is.

There’s something very fulfilling about coming up with the right font. Setting the right margins. Finding a visually pleasing balance between a chapter heading, a leading quote, and the text. Tracking down all the improperly indented first paragraphs… resetting styles… making the often difficult choice between italics or bold or a combination of both.

Each font handles things differently. And how things look in print is often different from how they look on the laptop screen. So, it’s always important to get a proof copy up front, to make sure your vision carries through to the finished product.

Print-on-demand can be tricky stuff. They can replace your custom fonts with their own. They can trim your pages so they have a different margin than you want. All in all, the technology and techniques have come a long, long way, since I started in it, back around 2000 (or thereabouts). And the improvements have been great. So that’s a relief.

Of course, when you’re putting your own work out there, it adds to the work at the end. Probably the most problematic thing is how distracting it can be, when you start thinking about formatting before you’re done writing. Then again, as you’re writing and choosing your images, you have to keep in mind how the whole book is going to flow, not to mention how it will affect the overall presentation and ultimately cost. My 150 pages in the smaller font has expanded to nearly 200 pages with the larger font. I’ve shrunk the spacing of the text so it’s more compact (but still readable), and I’ve adjusted the page margins a bit. Another 50 pages to print will add another $1 to the production cost, so I have to consider that, as well.

Choices, choices. Tradeoffs galore.

Okay, I’m done thinking about formatting stuff. I need to run to Lowes to buy some home repair supplies. And later, I’ll get back to my reviewing.

It’s good to take a break. And it’s even better to know when to get back to work.

So, this book is coming along…

Beloved Distance proof copy cover — Beloved Distance – the proof copy has arrived – no cover design yet. That’s the last thing to be created.

I’ve been working on my latest book, Beloved Distance : The Separation that Connects Us to All, for the past year or so. Actually, I started it almost two years ago. Time flies. Especially when you get busy.

And yes, I have been busy.

Anyway, I “finished” the book a few weeks back — is a book ever finished? Hard to say. Some authors talk about “abandoning” their books, rather than finishing them. I know, for me, there’s always the temptation to add more… and more… and more. Because I think of a lot more salient details to add.

But that’s really what this blog is for.

Anyway, since I’m publishing the book myself, I needed to get a look at the print quality before I finalized everything. I needed to get a look at how the fonts came out, how the page dimensions look… Get the page numbering together. Table of contents. Sequences from chapter to chapter. Make sure there aren’t numbers on the divider pages. Check the line heights and margins.

Figure out the endnotes.

And of course give more thought to the cover design.

Not to mention, give it one last read — as an actual book — before calling it “done”.

All those last-minute details that make the project feel like it’s dragging on. But they’re very important details, so it’s important to pay attention at the very end. Especially at the end. Because that’s really the beginning of the book.

Fortunately, there’s a long weekend coming up, so I should have a chance to rest up some more and then give it a read. It’s not a terribly long book — about 150 pages, with extra spacing between the lines (which I’ll tighten up in the final version). And I’ve had a few weeks to clear my head, so I can come back to it fresh.

Fresh is good. Especially when an intense project like this is wrapping up… before launching into the world.

Strange Bedfellows – Foreword to the 2nd Edition

It’s now been over 20 years, since I had this dream in the upstairs loft of a pink house built not so far from my ancestral home. The story at first alarmed me with its scope and detail – who has dreams that are that vivid, that cohesive?

Then it intrigued me.

Then it annoyed me, as I tried to put it down on paper, only to find the pictures defying the use of words.

It took me years to finally get the story told. And all the while, it taught me many valuable lessons.

At first glance, this story might seem like a finger-wagging eco-warrior rant about the excesses of our toxic modern lives… our lust for luxury, our craving for comfort, and all the harm it does to Planet Earth. Indeed, when I awoke from this dream, all those years ago, that’s exactly what I thought it was: A wake-up call to alert us to Change Our Ways Before It’s Too Late… before our last chance to save the earth – and the human race – is gone forever.

And you wouldn’t be wrong to think that’s so. In a way, on the surface, it is very much about exactly that. We say we want to help the earth, but we make poor choices. We say we’re committed to change, but we set unrealistic and unwise priorities, and abandon them when we realize we can’t do it easily. We do things without thinking, and the world around us pays the price for our oblivion.

And yet, there’s something more to this story – something more enduring, something more global. It’s not just about a couple of spoiled, upwardly-mobile professionals who will stop at nothing to satiate their desires for success and luxury. It’s about much more than that. As you read the story in the coming pages, think beyond what’s on the surface. Look deeper into the behaviors and the choices that Paul and Christina make… and if you dare, look for signs of yourself in their shoes, making the same sorts of choices, for the same sorts of reasons, with the resulting consequences.

Your choices – our choices – needn’t only be about upward mobility, status, and prestige, to get us in trouble. They can be as seemingly innocuous as the decision to order takeout, instead of warming up leftovers. And abandoning our commitment to lasting change can be as casual as dismissing a set of New Year’s resolutions, because in February they’re just not as realistic (or fun) as they seemed back in December.

None of our choices are simple, these days. So many of them send ripples we cannot see into the world far beyond us. And it’s difficult to know how best to change course, and why. So, what better time to really think our choices through, really weigh the costs of committing to (or abandoning) them, than at this point in history?

Some say we’ve passed the turning point. I say we still have some turning left in us. But we have to be willing to turn – and stick with it.

Last two poetry books updated – now on to Strange Bedfellows.. and beyond

woodtype Okay, so that’s done.

I just updated the last two poetry books I published. It’s not difficult – just a lot of attention to detail. Changing half of your name, and then updating everything accordingly, can get a bit eye-crossing. Especially if there are ebook versions, as well as print versions. I still haven’t decided what to do about the ebooks. The name will have to change there, as well.

Just when it seems I’ve gotten everything fixed… I find something else. So, I check, and check, and double-check. Especially because I’ll be publishing to Amazon and other international distributions, which means I need to ensure everything – but everything – is pristine and perfect. Once you put an ISBN to something and publish it via international distribution, you’re locked in. So, you have to make it count.

Again, it’s eye-crossing.

But now, it seems it’s all set.

I’m digging into Strange Bedfellows, now. From a logistical standpoint, the work is more painstaking, because the file is bigger and takes longer to save. Plus, it’s chock full of images, which now and then have a tendency to shift around on the page – and then throw off the page count. Fortunately, I’m working in Open Office, so the file formats are the same (No M$FT Word for me, thank you very much). Plus, Open Office file sizes are a lot smaller, so there’s less drain on my finite system resources.

And that’s always nice.

If you have the proper tools, you can do amazing things. And if you practice good attention to detail, you can really create some professional-looking products that anybody would think are commercially produced. That’s one of the benefits of having worked in publishing before — both print and digital. You pick up tips and tricks, plus you develop an eye for the kind of detail that goes into creating quality materials.

Some people think that you have to have access to money and contacts and resources, in order to produce professional-looking books. On the contrary, I’ve been doing “guerrilla” publishing since the 1980s, and some of my “amateur” works look just like what you’d find in the bookstores. If you have the desire and you keep at it and you set your sights high –and never give up till you create exactly what you want — great things are possible.

If there’s one thing I’d want people to know about putting their own writing out there, it’s that. What I said above. I’ve come across a lot of people who have either had a sour-grapes attitude (“Well, of course you made something nice – you work for a big company and have access to their equipment!”), or a sort of resigned approach (“I don’t need anything fancy, just some copies made up at the local office supplies store.”)

I disagree on both counts. First off, my books don’t look great because I use my employer’s stuff. I don’t. I’ve figured out how to either use what little I have very creatively, or I found a way to get access to the equipment I needed on an occasional basis. You don’t need to have constant access to a full-feature printer, to crank out a handful of poetry chapbooks. You can mock everything up at the local library, print it out for 10 cents/sheet, and then take it to your local copy shop to create the finished product.

If you want to publish full-length books, you can do it for free at Lulu.com. They have everything you need to publish a full-length book with a nice-looking cover, and it won’t cost you a think to set it up. You can do the pre-production work on the computers at your local library.

As for “keeping it simple” and going with a bare-bones approach… It’s so straightforward, and so possible, to produce a really nice-looking work on your own, that there’s really no reason to do without good design. All you need for inspiration and guidance, is a trip to your local bookstore or library, to see examples for best-practices in book design and layout. And then you just copy what they do.

It’s really quite simple. But a lot of people make it hard in their heads.

Far more important than expensive equipment or professional publishing skills, is a keen sense for detail and what makes a published product look — and feel — great. Once you’re clear on that, everything becomes a lot clearer.

Now… on to updating Strange Bedfellows. I’m writing a new foreword, as well as a conclusion. The story, on the surface, reads like an eco-warrior treatise about the hazards of modern living. But beneath it all, there’s more… so much more.

And there will be more to come about that. Soon.

An epic tale of change – what drives it… and more

Strange Bedfellows - get your copy here — **Strange Bedfellows** – get your copy here

Everything is going great for Paul and Christina. Their careers are fast-tracking them to success, and their future prospects are excellent. They take what they desire and live life to the fullest. Everyone and everything around them reinforces their entitlement, and they have no reason to question their right to do what they please, when they please, to whomever they please.

But in the blink of an eye, everything they’ve worked so hard for is at risk. What will they do, when a grisly guest appears out of nowhere? Will they have the courage to make the changes necessary to save themselves from a horrible fate they have helped to create?

Strange Bedfellows is a cautionary tale for our times, a retelling of an epic, intricately detailed dream I received in 1992. This is a story of truth and consequence… entitlement and impoverishment… conscious choice and change… and the hazards of being motivated solely by self-centered fear and short-sighted ignorance.

>> Get your copy here <<

First three poetry chapbooks are updated – for now

I just updated my first three poetry chapbooks

First Refrains – my first poetry from decades ago. It’s still one of my favorite books, and it reminds me why I’ve always written poetry.

Sounds of Love and Hope – a fairly strong “sophomore” showing, if I say so, myself.

Depth Perception – where I dig a big deeper, not always as successfully as I’d like, but still with integrity.

I’ve got two more poetry books to go, and then the change to the few other books I’ve got, but that’s enough for today.