Just Another Writer's Journal

Recently, someone in a forum wrote: " For me, I feel like a piece of writing is never really finished; I feel like there's always ideas I can add, connections I can make more explicit, etc. But sometimes I nail it the first time, too. I guess for me it comes down to whether I have changed my mind about what I've written. " This prompted someone to reply with a quote: " A movie is never finished, just released. " ―  Orson Welles That quote reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, so I posted it: " Art is never finished, only abandoned. " ―  Leonardo da Vinci This is where things got interesting, because someone then posted this quote: " You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. " ―  Michael Scott What? It's a great quote, sure, but what does it have to do with the topic being discussed? Yeah, maybe it relates to " sometimes I nail it the first time, " but that wasn't really what the original post was about, or what

Someone asked what format I used to layout my books. Both Chasing Dante and They're Watching You are 6 x 9in, set in 12pt Minion Pro on 14.4pt leading. The inside and outside margins are 0.875 inch, the top margin is 1.125 inch, and the bottom margin is .875 inch.

 My new book, Chasing Dante , is now available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon. It's a gay romance, and here's the blurb. College student Owen meets Dante at a supermarket and falls in love. There's only one problem; Dante already has a boyfriend. Things get even more complicated when Dante's sister disappears, and Owen finds himself being dragged into the mystery. Owen has to work out what happened to Dante's sister, why the FBI is after her, and whether he can trust Dante. And why is he driving Dante to Pittsburgh?  

When is a book done? When is any artwork finished? It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. Two of my favorite quotes are: Art is never finished, only abandoned - Leonardo da Vinci The show (SNL) doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30 - Lorne Michaels I think about those quotes a lot as my latest book moves slowly but relentlessly towards publication. I really thought the book, Chasing Dante , would be completed about two months ago. The book was written, and was—for all intent and purposes— complete, two months ago, but the final editing process has been excruciating. A ‘one last review’ resulted in hundreds of minor corrections and changes. Those changes unintentionally introduced all sorts of minor errors. Talk about best intentions going badly—I think I made it worse after I ‘tidied it up!’ It’s ironic how just minor changes can unintentionally introduce tiny additional errors.  One of my mistakes is that I didn’t completely finish reviewing the book

 Next month—November—is the annual National Novel Writing Month. People are signing up, or pledging—or just thinking about—writing a novel in one month. I’ve thought about doing it before, but never actually managed to make the target (which is to write 50,000 words in a month.) Do you want to write a book that’s only 50,000 words? Do you think you can write that much in one month? All good questions, and personally, I’m not going to take part because I want to end up with a completed novel in one month. But  I’m pretty sure I can meet that goal (it’s 1,600 words a day) and I feel like it could be a fun exercise. And if it takes more than a month to finish, that’s okay too.
 Anyone else thinking of taking part? Even if you aren’t, you might want to check out the website for NaNoWriMo. It has some interesting resources for writers covering plot and characters. Things that are important whether you are writing a 50,000 word novel, or something more or less ambitious. 
 https://nanowrimo.

I’ve been setting up my next book in Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP.) This is the second book I have published through KDP, and it’s a reasonably straightforward process.   I first uploaded a draft of the book and cover months ago to check that I had the formatting right. This is something I recommend doing; if your text layout goes into the trim area, or has some other problem, the upload will be rejected. You want to make sure your design is right before you finish the layout of your whole book.     Anyway, I just finished the manuscript and went to upload it and the updated cover. When I did, I got an Internal Error for both the cover and the book. That confused me, as I hadn't made significant changes to the formatting. I tried uploading the previous version of the text and cover—the ones that had uploaded successfully some months ago—and got errors on those too!     I tried some different things uploading different versions and managed at one point to get the original cover to