Self Publish Progress « Deana Zhollis

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Power and Rainbows – Octavia Butler

Posted by deana72 - Monday, January 16th, 2012

Sometimes the lack of something in a young person’s life, or concentrated and continuous reception of pain, would form a hyper-creative mind.

I was reading over a transcript I had printed out on a forum with author Octavia Butler as the guest. It was in 2001 where the moderator/host was Ben Trumble for SCIFI. It was a promotional tour mainly for the novel Kindred which had been adapted into a four-part audiodrama miniseries for SCIFI.COM.

During the discussion, Octavia was asked the question about power…

QUESTION: “Ms. Butler, many of your novels deal with power relations: the gifted vs the normal, the time-traveler who knows vs. the manipulator. What about power interest you so much as a writer and human being?”

BUTLER’S ANSWER: “I don’t feel that Dana has power in Kindred, and only a little knowledge. Power is what she needs. Power does interest me. I grew up feeling so powerless, not only because I was Black and female, but because I was so shy. I wrote about power so I could understand it. It still interests me in the way that people use it. It’s such a part of being human.”

At those times where someone lacks power, the natural deepening of creativity explodes.

During the SCIFI discussion, Octavia states: “I used to live next to my landlady and I told everybody she inspired me. And you don’t need imagination because everybody has it. We carry it from childhood. And forget about talent. If you have it, wonderful. If you don’t…read a few best sellers and see who else doesn’t have it, then get to work.”

She stated that she began writing Science Fiction before she began reading it, or at least recognizing it.

And even after finally getting published, she still had to deal with a complete disregard when it came to her creative art.


First Cover	Newest Cover	Trilogy Cover

QUESTION: “I recently had a chance to see an earlier print of Dawn and on the cover was a Caucasian woman pretending to be Lilith. What were your reactions when you first saw that cover?”

BUTLER’S ANSWER: “Well, my reaction was the same as when I first saw any of my early covers. Writers have no control over that. Well, maybe Stephen King. It’s the luck of the draw and sometimes there is no luck. I think it was the marketing ideas of the time. Black people don’t read SF. Blacks on the cover don’t sell books. As my books sold more, that changed. I literally outlived the adversity. I have editors now who actually care what I think. My early editors frankly didn’t. They’d send a cover and say, “Isn’t it beautiful!” If I thought it wasn’t, that didn’t matter. They would explain to me why I was wrong.”

Octavia stated she received the audio script of Kindred as a finished product. She didn’t get a chance to view it before it went into production. She stated in the discussion that the audio told a different story than the one she was telling, but (she added as a positive note) it did what it did in a very interesting way. She also added another positive statement that she liked the way the slave narratives were handled.

When I read those two positive statements from Octavia about the audiodrama, I still could hear the disappointment, and perhaps even the anger, of these people who took it upon themselves to take her creative art and do what they wanted, only to tell her: “It’s All done! Look! You should be thankful!”

Today, though, one’s inspired creativity from the darkness of childhood experiences, can be shared to everyone exactly how the author intended it to be. Self-publishing allows just that. It takes time to see those beautiful lights of the rainbow especially right before the dark scenes of life. And I’m so glad that today has the true freedom of expression–the way that it was intended.

Authors, like Octavia, helped to pave that way, with their silent acceptance of what they couldn’t change, but bursting their light through in places where they could.

Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006)

As most know, every story that has ever been written has already been written. While I wrote in my young age, I never came across any stories similar to mine, until I picked up Octavia Butler’s book. I had no idea she was a Black author because of the cover, and a few years later, I picked up another book in the library, and started reading, and yes, I had already read it. It was Dawn, and I had now the Trilogy, and the excitement, to read the next few books of this story. That was in the early 1990s, during my college years. I had hoped one day that I would have the honor to someday sit down and speak to the wonderful author who wrote so similar to my own thoughts and imagination, but unfortunately, it would now never be.

Today, I can only continue my version of story telling in the similar steps as her own. And I’m happy to be able to do just that.

Tags: Book Cover Octavia Butler, Dawn Octavia Butler, Octavia Butler
Posted in Novels, Self Publish Progress | No Comments »

Template to format your MSWord Novel to Kindle

Posted by deana72 - Sunday, March 27th, 2011

I’ve put together how my book was constructed for the Kindle. I used the preview in Kindle to make sure it looks okay.

NOTE: Want to watch an Instruction Video for the below that has a template? Just go to Deana Zhollis Writing Tools.

The first step for the html programming I found on Critique Circle. I’m not a member. I actually was looking for something else and found this nifty way of getting your MSWord ready for html. If you use the MSWord converter, it just creates a whole lot of garbage html stuff that you really don’t need. Thus, if I had known this neat and quick way to change my MSWord to html WITHOUT loosing my italics, I surely would have used it instead of copying and pasting each-and-every-chapter into my Dreamweaver (for FREE html software, try out Nvu. I downloaded it and it works great!), and then comparing it with my MSWord document to format them.

I’ve edited Critique Circle’s instructions to make it more general.

STEP 1

You can convert bold, italics, underline and centered text in MS Word to html formatted text before copy/pasting your text into your html programming/code window. In this way, you will not loose your italics, for example, when you copy/paste. The below instruction explains how to do this with bold and then you can use the same steps for the other formats

To do that, open up MSWord document and then open your find-replace option (CTRL-H), and make sure you are working in a throwaway copy of your manuscript so that you don’t accidentally save over it.

In the find-replace dialog, make sure you have your focus in the “Find What” text box (just click it) and then click on the “More” button, at the bottom of the dialog. There is a “Format” drop-down button. Click that and select “Font”. Now, select “Font Style” and then “Bold” and click OK.

NOTE: There is an easier way. You can press CTRL-B to toggle bold, CTRL-i to toggle italics, CTRL-u to toggle underline and CTRL-e to toggle centered. Just remember to have your focus on the “Find what” box and use the “Clear formatting” or “No formatting” to clear out previous formatting before entering a new one (ex. it might say “Not Bold”, which is not the same as not searching for bold text. In this case you should hit CTRL-B again to clear the bold flag)

Under the “Find What” text box, you should now see “Format: Font: Bold”.

In the “Replace With” text box, enter [b]^&[/b] and click “Replace All”.

This will find every piece of Bold formatted text and encase it with [b] and [/b].

Do the same with italics, underline and center (that’s in the “paragraph” option group). In every case, make sure that the option you had before is no longer selected, so that only bold, italics or centered is shown below the “Find What” text box.

Even if you have text that is italics _and_ bold you use the same method.

Here are the codes you want to put into “Replace With”:

Bold: ^&

Italics: ^&

Underline: ^&

Centered: <c>^&</c>

STEP 2:

This part includes the following supported html coding the Kindle needs in order to look properly in their viewer. It will include the following things:

<a name=”TOC”/> for Table of Contents right before your Table of Contents

<a name=”start”/> for Go To Beginning where you want people to go when they first open your book

<a name=”cover”/> for Go To Cover where it will display your beautiful picture/cover of your book

<mbp:pagebreak/> for Page Breaks, which I mentioned in an earlier post

I researched if I needed to put the cover (<a name=”cover”/>) in my book or not. I couldn’t find anywhere where people were leaning more to the “to do” or “not to do”, so I left the cover out in my Kindle version. I can always insert the picture later on if I want. I read somewhere that I could put the cover at the end of the book, so that’s where I put it in the example below.

It also includes:

Table of Content in HTML
A bullet list in HTML
Dropped Case in HTML (The first letter of a chapter enlarged or larger)
A Glossary
A Prologue
About the Author
And stuff to put before the story begins (ISBN Number, Dedication, Website etc)

So, here goes my code. Hope it’s helpful.

<head>

<title>{Enter your Title of Book here}</title>

</head>

<body>

<center><h2>{Enter Prologue Title Here}</h2></center>

{Start the prologue text here}

{And keep on typing it all up}

<hr />

<mbp:pagebreak />

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

ISBN 10: {Enter Number}

ISBN 13: {Enter Number}

{Title of Book here}

Published by {Name here}

http://www.{web address}

Cover Design by {Name here}

http://www.{web address}

<mbp:pagebreak />

To my family and friends who ….

<hr/>

<mbp:pagebreak />

<hr />

{Title of Book Here}

by {Author Name Here}

<hr />

</center>

<mbp:pagebreak />

<center><h2><a name=”TOC”/></a>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2></center>

<a href=”#Ch1″>Chapter 1 {Name of Chapter}</a>

<a href=”#Ch2″>Chapter 2 {Name of Chapter}</a>

<a href=”#Ch3″>Chapter 3 {Name of Chapter}</a>

<hr />

<a href=”#Glossary”>Glossary of Terms</a>

<hr />

<mbp:pagebreak />

<a name=”start”/></a><h2 id=”Ch1″>Chapter 1 – {Name of Chapter here}</h2>

Elephant went for a swim on a cool day. Begin novel story and stuff here.

Last Line of the chapter is here.

<mbp:pagebreak />

<h2 id=”Ch2″> Chapter 2 – {Name of Chapter here}</h2>

The sun went up and then down again.

Last Line of chapter and 1st part of book here.

The End

<hr />

<mbp:pagebreak />

<h2 id=”Glossary”>Glossary of Terms</h2>

Magic: Used thooughout the entire Novel to make things sparkle and look pretty.

Examples of certain techniques:

<ul>

<li>Song ability</li>

<li> Animal ability</li>

<li> Water ability</li>

</ul>

Poor: An individual in a state of despair and desperation.

<hr />

<mbp:pagebreak />

<h2 align=”center”>About the Author</h2>

Lori Jones is an instructor for elephant painting and dancing

<hr />

<mbp:pagebreak />

<h1>Other Books</h1>

Elephant? Where are you?

(Coming Soon…)

Elephant – Together at Last

Mice and Elephant

The Tusk Series

Tusk – White and Shiny!

</center>

</body>

</html>

Below Code is for Multiple Books within a Novel. It also includes:

Table of Content in HTML
A bullet list in HTML
Dropped Case in HTML (The first letter of a chapter enlarged or larger)
A Glossary
A Prologue
Book I and Book II (Book II has the Chapter Numbers starting from 1 again)
About the Author
And stuff to put before the story begins (ISBN Number, Dedication, Website etc)

So, here goes my code. Hope it’s helpful.

<head>

<title>{Enter your Title of Book here}</title>

</head>

<body>

<center><h2>{Enter Prologue Title Here}</h2></center>

{Start the prologue text here}

{And keep on typing it all up}

<hr />

<mbp:pagebreak />

ISBN 10: {Enter Number}

ISBN 13: {Enter Number}

{Title of Book here}

Published by {Name here}

http://www.{web address}

Cover Design by {Name here}

http://www.{web address}

<mbp:pagebreak />

To my family and friends who ….

<hr/>

<mbp:pagebreak />

<hr />

{Title of Book Here}

by {Author Name Here}

<hr />

</center>

<mbp:pagebreak />

<center><h2><a name=”TOC”/></a>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2></center>

BOOK I:

<a href=”#Ch1″>Chapter 1 {Name of Chapter}</a>

<a href=”#Ch2″>Chapter 2 {Name of Chapter}</a>

<a href=”#Ch3″>Chapter 3 {Name of Chapter}</a>

BOOK II:

<a href=”#Ch1_1″>Chapter 1 {Name of Chapter}</a>

<a href=”#Ch1_2″>Chapter 2 {Name of Chapter}</a>

<a href=”#Ch1_3″>Chapter 3 {Name of Chapter}</a>

<a href=”#Glossary”>Glossary of Terms</a>

<mbp:pagebreak />

<hr />

BOOK I

<hr />

</center>

<mbp:pagebreak />

<a name=”start”/></a><h2 id=”Ch1″>Chapter 1 – {Name of Chapter here}</h2>

Elephant went for a swim on a cool day. Begin novel story and stuff here.

Last Line of the chapter is here.

<mbp:pagebreak />

<h2 id=”Ch2″> Chapter 2 – {Name of Chapter here}</h2>

The sun went up and then down again.

Last Line of chapter and 1st part of book here.

<mbp:pagebreak />

<hr />

BOOK II:

<hr />

</center>

<mbp:pagebreak />

<h2 id=”Ch1_1″>Chapter 1 – {Name of Chapter here}</h2>

Sarah found a wonderful shade next to the elephange

Last line of Chapter here.

<mbp:pagebreak />

<h2 id=”Ch1_2″>Chapter 2 – {Name of Chapter here}</h2>

Water fell down from the elephant into her eyes

Last line of Chapter here and last line of the entire book. Hurray! You’re finished! Good job!

The End

<hr />

<mbp:pagebreak />

<h2 id=”Glossary”>Glossary of Terms</h2>

Magic: Used thooughout the entire Novel to make things sparkle and look pretty.

Examples of certain techniques:

<ul>

<li>Song ability</li>

<li> Animal ability</li>

<li> Water ability</li>

</ul>

Poor: An individual in a state of despair and desperation.

<hr />

<mbp:pagebreak />

<h2 align=”center”>About the Author</h2>

Lori Jones is an instructor for elephant painting and dancing

<hr />

<mbp:pagebreak />

<h1>Other Books</h1>

Elephant? Where are you?

(Coming Soon…)

Elephant – Together at Last

Mice and Elephant

The Tusk Series

Tusk – White and Shiny!

</center>

</body>

</html>

Okay. So, that’s what I used for my three (3) books for formatting. I hope this helps you guys out there with formatting from MSWord to HTML a little easier.

Note: the image html would look more like:

To see what it will look like, click <<here>>

Until next time…

Tags: free formatted template for amazon’s kindle, free template for kindle novel books, how to make a novel, kindle format for ms word, kindle format html, kindle formatting free, kindle html, kindle html template, kindle template example, kindle template for microsoft word, template for kindle
Posted in Novels, Self Publish Progress, Tools | 2 Comments »

Smashwords…Here I am! And…here I go…to Researching Writing Software

Posted by deana72 - Monday, March 7th, 2011

I’ve took the time to reformat my books to Smashwords submission process. They require a Microsoft Word format using Bookmarks and Hyperlinks for the Table of Contents. So now I have four (4) versions of my book: 1) HTML format, 2) Kindle format, 3) PDF format and 4) Smashword format.

It’s taken months in between to figure out where I wanted to send my books and if I wanted to do the formatting for them and when to do all of it.

I’m hoping a standard format will come soon, because it’s been a pain to re-format my books to each, individual publisher’s requirements. Maybe the standard might be epub (something I just recently found out about a few weeks ago while researching on the web to find some kind of software that, with a push of a button, it would recreate my books to whatever format the publisher wanted).

ePub

What is ePub? Well, from what I found out, ePub is short for “electronic publication” and it’s a format that allows eReaders like Barnes & Nobles Nook and Sony Reader to read it. A list of devices that support the ePub format is at wikiMobileRead. What it is, is a creation of XML files (mostly XHTML) all zipped up together. It basically makes a file for Every-Single-Chapter of your book. Take a look at a picture of it at addictivetips.

I’ve looked occasionally at MobileRead.com to see what the programmers have to say about all these different “e” stuff, and that’s where I begin to hope for a STANDARD eBOOK FORMAT.

There was one particular forum that someone was asking for a software that produced multi-format ebooks. One person replied stating: “…I have to consult my notes each time I do my conversions, to keep the differences in format conversion processes straight. If I worked in large volumes, I could see it driving me crazy…”

He went on to talking about keeping up with sooo many formats:

“…my biggest concern would be how well this tool could adapt to changing format standards (or how they were used by the end-user) over time. And with multiple formats to be concerned about, any little change in one of a half-dozen formats (or how an e-reader reads them) could require major rewriting of the tool.

A suggestion: Another way to look at this might be from the other end of the conversion process, that is, the reader end. As opposed to a universal SW (software) tool that converts and exports from one standard format (say, XHTML) to multiple formats, maybe there should be a set of clear guidelines for the e-reader of whatever HW/SW type to import and convert 1-2 standard formats to their proprietary format. In other words, rules that dictate how the elements in the original standard format must be read on the end-user’s e-reader, and the e-reader itself does the conversion.

The advantage to this plan is that it does not require the SW tool to adjust every time a new e-reader or doc format comes along, which can be costly and logistically challenging for the standards body, at best. Instead, it is up to the e-reader to conform to the guidelines.

This still allows the consumer the ultimate freedom, that is, to decide which e-reader they want to use based on features. And all that your group needs to be concerned about is the standard format, and the conversion guidelines, and you’re done.“

Yeah, I know, I quoted a lot, but I liked the way he put his thoughts out there on a multi-format ebooks. To create a one-for-all type of software to convert everything would be a nightmare for programmers, thus it’s better if everyone just came to an agreement on ONE FORMAT.

ePub Conversion Software

So, then I research the MobileRead forum for software that would help you create the epub format that… uh…I didn’t have to buy.

I came to this listings:

Calibre
eCub
ePubHub

Calibre seems to be the most popular. Adobe InDesign can do it too. A list of other software on “How can I create ePub files from my books?” is at LexCycle.

And why was I looking at ePub? I mean, I already sent my books over in the other acceptable formats for the publishers. So, I don’t need to do the ePub thing (which I haven’t); but I really just stumbled into it.

WRITING SOFTWARE

Storyist

Well, I was first looking for that darn software that can convert my book to all the types of format requirements that all the different publishers wanted. I ran across Storyist that has now added the conversion export for the Kindle format. And as I researched if I wanted this thing, and decided I did want it since it looked like it had so many neat features to keep all your data for your research and files that I make when writing a book (like character listing, a location listing with a field to type the description for each place and also helps me to keep track of them), I found it that it’s only on the Macintosh computer! Then I saw StoryMill, but that was another Macintosh software.

Scrivener

Then I found Scrivener, which, at first was another Macintosh software, but now it can also be used in Windows sometime in 2011 (the above link has a beta download). However, Scrivener doesn’t have a timeline feature, but it sure does have some neat corkboard stuff (look at a YouTube video of it). More on Scrivener down below…

Liquid Story Binder XE

However, Liquid Story Binder XE looks pretty good too, but it seems to be a lot more complex, and I’ll get so absorbed with all the features, and not get any writing done.

PageFour

Then there’s PageFour which looks to be simple and something very easy to use; the same as

WriteWay

or WWV), but WriteWay has a few more features. What I really didn’t like is that certain parts of the software isn’t available unless you pay for it. There’s a standard version and a professional version. It’s the only writing software I saw do that. And the price was really up there. It is quite similar to …

WriteItNow

WriteItNow, which doesn’t look as nice as WriteWay , but I loved the idea of the relationship chart.

StoryWeaver

I saw StoryWeaver, but the look just wasn’t there for me (you gottah scroll all the way down to get to see the pictures on the website).

Dramatica Pro

Dramatica Pro just had too much other stuff (mostly on characters and such) than story, and it costs WAY too much on how the screenshots looked (Liquid Story Binder XE “looks” more like a $200.00+ software than Dramatica Pro).

NewNovelist

NewNovelist looked very nice and it reads your story back to you or you can talk you story into it (says the webpage). I remember years ago when the speech stuff was introduced and it wasn’t very good, but like I said, that was over a decade ago. Things might have improved today (which it has…more about that later down the way).

Pricing as of Feb 2011

PageFour ($34.95)
Liquid Story Binder XE ($45.95)
Scrivener ($45.00)
WriteWay (Standard $24.00/Professional $49.00)
WriteItNow ($59.95)
StoryWeaver ($29.95)
Dramatica Pro ($209.95)
NewNovelist ($49.99)

FREE STUFF

You know me, gottah research to see if there was some free stuff that might be equivalent to what’s on the buying market.

I found a freesoftware called Jer’s Novel Writer Screenshots, but again, it’s for Macintosh .

Another free software is called StoryBook, but it doesn’t seem to have the actual “writing” function. It’s mainly to help you organize. I didn’t see a main workspace for writing your novel. It’s a great tool if you want to keep the writing and the characters/outline separate though. More on StoryBook below…

I found RoughDraft, but it’s not being updated anymore.

And then there was yWriter, which looks really good for a free software. The video in YouTube definitely explained a lot for me on this software. And this YouTube Video was hilarious (Evil Prompts!!) and was so true to what I wanted, and also mentioned yWriter. So…. I downloaded it.

More on yWriter

I went in and put every scene of my book Creations that I’m currently working on into yWriter. I currently only have 11 Chapters and about 2-8 scenes in each chapter–that took me several hours. I didn’t quite know what a “scene” was, but I figured anywhere that I put double paragraph space to represent time passage or a change of scenery or anywhere I put ***, that’s where I had a scene. A very NEAT thing about importing an entire MSWord document into yWriter is that if I had put a *** break throughout my entire document, yWriter would break out every scene automatically for me (I didn’t find out about this until AFTER I inputted everything in manually), and it would beak out the Chapters if it had the word “Chapter 1″ for instance in it. If I opened a scene and it had “* * *”, I could choose “Split scene on ‘* * *’” option, and there you go. It makes a new scene from the stars. I didn’t know if it worked since it looked like it blanked my entire scene out, but when I closed the Scene window, it had the next scenes already in the list. You do have to retype the descriptions and titles for each scene though. But, when I copied and pasted my book Creations into it, I had to do all of that anyway.

More on Scrivener

After playing around with yWriter, I decided to give Scrivener a try. Heck, it’s free for right now anyway with the beta testing. I figure I would take a look. I installed it and it told me it would expire in a week, where then I have to go and re-download another beta updated software. That’s cool. I just wanted to take a look.

It mention a tutorial that would take 30-45 minutes. I was like, ok, I had the time for that. Hmmm. This is a Beta, so you can’t expect very much in instructions. I mean, there was no pictures. Written instructions can only do so much with describing what you should click and where you should look. I found myself re-reading instructions 5-6 times before I accidentally found out what it was trying to tell me. Needless-to-say, it took me about two hours to get through. And when I wanted do a “show-and-tell” and tell my husband about the software after I finished it, I forgot most of what I went through.

Back to yWriter

Bottom-line, going through Scrivener made me appreciate yWriter even more. I didn’t really need a tutorial for yWriter. I just jumped right in. If I wanted to find out more, I did a search for it later. Doing Scrivener tutorial also told me how the other software programs I mentioned Above would need a learning curve as well, LOTS of learning, especially Dramatica Pro

I had so much fun with yWriter, I decided to download StoryBook. Well, just like I thought, I couldn’t find, anywhere, where I could actually write my story. I thought I had missed something, but I didn’t think I did. If I did, please let me know, because I didn’t find it anywhere.

However, in yWriter, there is a way to write in a full screen (Just Right-Click inside the Scenes area when you have it opened and select “Full screen text editor”). There’s also a way to make a Scene or Chapter unused simply by Right-Click and select “Toggled Used/Unused”. An Icon will display to state what mode it’s in. You can make something else, other than a “Chapter” and change it to “Other”, which would work great to make a Timeline using the scenes. Hmmm..I think I’ll just make another post just about yWriter. But as you can see, I’ve chose yWriter as my tool of choice! It’s easy, I can jump right into it, it’s free (though I loved it so much, I donated), and it’s simple.

WOW! A long posting today, huh. It took me several days to get this all in and looking at stuff. But it was fun.

Until next time!

Gonna go play with my yWriter My Bestist Friend

Posted in Self Publish Progress, Tools, yWriter | No Comments »

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Archive for the ‘Self Publish Progress’ Category

Power and Rainbows – Octavia Butler

Template to format your MSWord Novel to Kindle

STEP 1

STEP 2:

Smashwords…Here I am! And…here I go…to Researching Writing Software

WRITING SOFTWARE

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