Category Archives: Writing notes

eBook cover adventure

Posted on by
27

The last week or so has been too packed to blog. Happy family visit, soft proofs to check, print cover to approve and The Great eBook Cover Design Competition. I was the lucky winner of a free Book cover from the Writer’s Workshop. This came too late for the print version, but seemed like a good idea for the eBook. I was given £189 credit for a bronze cover design from 99Designs.

First, I had to fill in a Design Brief including images to give potential designers a direction. Being naive, my brief was misleading and my reduced heading read: ‘An upbeat story about suicide, love and Slovenia’. Then, the brief is opened up to designers worldwide online for 4 days. You select the best designers during that time and then go on to refine entries until you choose to award a winner (total 7 days for bronze).

To start with I didn’t have many entries (though there were things I could have done to increase this). The ones that did appear were often distressingly inappropriate. Prettily-coiffed girls with computers in meadows and mountains – sort of modern Heidi on Holiday style. I rated (stars) and commented on each entry, and updated my brief to explain that in my story a computer is only used at night in Devon and that the girl had unruly hair (difficult for designers with limited English). Some Wild Girl in Wild Landscape designs followed –teenage adventure style. I tried asking for something a bit more grown-up and got raunchy, steamy romance covers, then Airport Monumental, I asked for sad and got Noir (I wish I could show you). By this stage I was struggling between laughter and tears. One designer was particularly persistent and I worried that he was putting in so much work with only negative feedback from me. I assumed that he was on a different wavelength.

There are also ‘watchers’, that is designers who follow the competition, looking at the entries and the feedback. You can go and check their designs and invite them to join in. However, out of the blue, my persistent designer produced a perfect (stock) image for my story. With enormous patience, and feedback from me, he adapted it, tweak by tweak, until it was just what I had hoped for. Here is the winning entry from didiwahyudi.trend all the way from Indonesia. It links quietly to my print cover, while giving me the all-important figure I need for the eBook thumbnail. Hope you like it.

BL- COVER fix

My proofs and the print cover went back to the printers last night and my new eBook cover arrived on my desktop 20 minutes ago.

Now I shall go and cultivate my garden.

DSCN6286 - Version 2

 

A Serious Business – with a smile

Posted on by
5

In A Serious Business, Roderick Hart takes us on a privileged tour of the inner life of the retail world – specifically behind the scenes at Mowatts, a venerable family firm. If you have ever worked in this world you will find yourself, with delighted and sometimes groaning recognition, in familiar company. Even your average shopper will recognise most of the characters in this cast. A Serious Business it is – a perfectly chosen title for this subject.

A Serious Business - frontcover

For me the appeal of the book lay in the ordinariness and variety of the characters, people not only from the varied ranks that we see daily: behind a shop counter, in the security guard’s uniform, fixing the window display, serving in the café; but also those we don’t: the now-obligatory IT department, the top-floor management, the basement maintenance staff. All these people are getting on with their work, but always in the light of the events and concerns in their personal lives.

Behind this complex tapestry is a simpler coming of age story, we watch the most self-effacing and likeable of the characters slowly coming, or perhaps more accurately being dug, out of his shell. Meanwhile the single-minded artist leaves mayhem in his wake, the stay-at-home son fails to comprehend that the world does not run for his convenience and the firm’s remaining family members try to steer the ship through the choppy waters of modern big business.

As with Roderick Hart’s Time to Talk, there are many funny and charming byways to both characters and events. Encountering racoons in the  stream of consciousness of our hero as he is dropping off had me chuckling, coming across a Precognition Officer for the first time in my life, and stopping short at ‘boilings’ (presumably boiled sweets to a Southerner like me), stick in my mind.

I finished the book with a smile on my face.

Self-publishing progress?

Posted on by
14

Another week of mayhem and progress – of sorts. Having made my proof-readers’ lives hell by pressing them to complete as much as possible against the clock (with the rather minimal bribe of runner beans) I entered all their brilliant catches into my final file in InDesign and… pressed the button to send the text to the printer.

I then got my head round the file requirements of the cover picture, recreated the file with the correct dimensions (then correcting that when I found I had misunderstood) and sent it for checking to a great designer (whose time I can only afford by the minute).

BL Cover Finaljpgsmall

On Saturday I received an email:

Apologies for the s – l – o – w announcement of a competition winner, but the announcement (and my reasoning) can be found here:
http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/win-a-free-cover-design/#comment-101835
Well done, Hilary. Commiserations everyone else. [there were all of 6 entrants]

Umm… although I have reservations about my cover (because it has no figure in it), I have grown fond of the beautiful image my daughter put together and I want it to go to the printers as soon as possible. (NB you are never sufficiently ahead of the game in publishing), so I felt I had to turn down this opportunity – something I would have lain in the mud for a few weeks ago. However, we have a compromise. I will now have a design by Bronze Design for my eBook version of Border Line.

CORRECTION: I now have bronze level design by 99Designs for my eBook version of Border Line.

I have also been in touch with the travel company, Just Slovenia, who, way back in 2009, helped me set up an itinerary to research many of the places that feature in Border Line. They responded and I have now sent them a PDF of the novel.

I’m not accustomed to so much progress up the ladder, I’d better get ready for another snake.

More is sometimes less in printers terms

Posted on by
15

I have learned something today. The manuscript I am close to sending to the printers has come to a total of 218 pages. I have decided to go for litho printing (minimum 300 copies) rather than Print On Demand, because this reduces the cost per copy. This in turn increases the chances of at least breaking even after subtracting postage and/or discounts.

So far so good. I get an estimate from the printers quoting for 216 pages. When I point out that I have 218 I am told it is either 216 or 224. It has to be evenly divisible by 8. I spend the day killing a few more darlings and re-setting the text. I am on the last few pages when I get a further estimate from the printers for both 216 and 224 pages.  The estimate for 224 pages is shown as a good £100 less than the 216. I thank them, say I want to go ahead with 216, but they have got their figures the wrong way round, and I finish resetting the text to 216 pages.

I get a further email explaining that:

 It would work out cheaper to produce the 224pp as this would consist of 7 x 32pp sections, whereas 216pp would have 6 x 32pp sections, 1 x 16pp section and 1 x 8pp section. The extra plates and folding in production would therefore make this more expensive.

Got it? I can’t face re-setting the text yet again, but I have added pages front and back with some lovely spaces to create an MS 224 pages long. I am a wiser self-publisher than I was this morning.

A sunny interloper in the vegetable plot.DSCN6281

A lovely cosmos Chocolate given to me in memory of a friend.

cosmos Chocolate

cosmos Chocolate

 

 

 

Book rave – And Then Like My Dreams {a memoir}

Posted on by
10

Last night I dreamed about a real person I had never met, Charles ‘Chic’ Stringer. I was, I think, on holiday with my husband and he took this lovely man’s hand very carefully, because we knew that Chic was now fragile… that’s all I can recall.

Chic is the subject of And Then Like My Dreams by Margaret Rose Stringer – a book like no other I have read. Entertaining, unique, breathtakingly honest, funny and heartbreaking, AND all true. In this story the blood, the glory, the coffee and the cream of love are so real it makes fiction and newspaper accounts look like feeble ghosts.

DSCN6248 - Version 2

The structure of the book is also unique. While it is told, like any other memoir, in the first person, Margaret Rose (M-R) and her beloved husband, Chic, inhabit the film world, so she slips regularly and seamlessly into screenplay mode. This gives the narrative a rare light and shade quality and is often used to hilarious effect. Footnotes are scattered throughout. Occasionally they supply further information, more often they are chatty asides, a personal reinterpretation of the truth and often very funny.

I have not even mentioned that half way through Opera (my personal rave) turns up. M-R and Chic live and love mostly in their home, Australia, but they also take four magnificent trips into Europe (where M-R clearly learns to speak French and Italian fluently, but fails to mention this strength). Food, photography, engineering, cats, language, France, Spain, Italy and Germany also feature.

There is only one ending to the book, as we know from the very start. Chic is going to die. We don’t want this book to end, but it continues to be gripping, and yes, even sometimes funny, to the bitter end. M-R wrote this book so that others would know about Charles ‘Chic’ Stringer, Stills Photographer, and never ever forget him. Her own larger-than-life personality flows over every page as does her love, wonder and grief. But she has succeeded; we will envy what she had and we will never forget Chic.

Beans, beans, beans and proof-reading

Posted on by
18

Little garden interlude. The runner beans, having started to mature, are unstoppable. Luckily I have hungry neighbours.DSCN6237 DSCN6233There are as many courgettes as we care to eat and the first french beans are cropping too. I have at last transplanted the leeks and we had torrential rain yesterday, so I am not looking out of my window worrying about thirsty plants. Mind you, we are promised the tail end of Bertha, the hurricane travelling across the Atlantic, tomorrow. As the beans are mostly held together by elderly bamboos, some string and their own tendrils, they may be on the ground by Monday.

So, after a morning putting in proof-reading corrections, I will, I will, get into the garden for some re-enforcing work.

My last proof reader did not really enjoy Border Line. Although this is, naturally, depressing, it is also more helpful than vague praise. I have learnt some useful stuff from what she said (and did not say) and it is not too late to make some, hopefully crucial, changes. Knowing WHAT to change is a great boon. Thank you JL.

Little story – happy author

Posted on by
17

I started this blog, Green Writing Room, early last year. One of the first people I followed was a young music student from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Charlotte Hoather. As she started putting up clips of her singing, I could hear she had a generous voice with enormous promise. In the following eighteen months I have heard it develop in strength and clarity. Charlotte is warm, dedicated, disciplined, thoughtful, with a wonderful supportive family and she looks lovely too. She takes on every challenge that comes her way. Her blog has rocketed in popularity and I have every hope that she will one day be on the opera stages of the world. She is already giving many people pleasure in concerts and competitions around the country.

Recently she came third in the Voice of the Future category of the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod. For the last of her three songs she sang one of her favourites, Rusalka’s Song to the Moon (Dvorak), and I feel great delight as I hear the development of her voice in this version compared to her earlier recordings.

Screen Shot 2014-08-06 at 07.30.02

Do listen to the final song on this video recording from the competition.

http://llangollen.tv/en/clip/c1-2/

Charlotte reminded me a little of the young man, Luca, that I had dreamed up for my novel Unseen Unsung. I thought her parents might enjoy reading the book. So, late last year, I made contact and sent them a copy. I did not expect Charlotte to read it, because she has a schedule that makes most of the rest of us look like sloths. However a few days ago, she wrote on my post about Unseen Unsung :

My last post didn’t come through don’t know why? Just wanted to say I love, love, loved this story, kept me guessing and intrigued all the way through. Really related to the story, loved the references to opera, good luck with the e-book promotion. Best wishes Charlotte 🙂

As Unseen Unsung had been originally been published in 2008 I was not expecting it to make waves as an eBook but this, along with other wonderful responses from you kind and generous readers out there have made this writer delirious with happiness.

Lindy Hopping and the Marx Brothers

Posted on by
12

[I may have put in too many video clips, just take a dip or two]

Important questions first. What is Lindy Hopping? It is basically Swing Dancing, it started in  America in the 1920s and gathered pace with many variations through the next twenty years. To see the genuine article watch this clip from the Marx Brothers Day at the Races. The Lindy Hopping sequence doesn’t start until about 3.25 mins in, and the Lindy Hop dancing really starts about 5 mins in, but I love the section with Harpo and Who Dat Man that precedes it.

And no, I can’t dance like that.

Here’s a modern version of it.

I can’t dance like that either – but I try (the front couple in this demo were my first teachers).

In the last twenty years there has been a massive revival of Swing Dancing, particularly Lindy Hop and some of the original dancers were still with us until very recently. Most famous and beloved was Frankie Manning (d. 2009). Here he is age 90 doing the Shim Sham (a group Lindy dance)

(and if you want to be cheered and moved watch these two clips of villagers in India doing the Shim Sham in honour of Frankie on his Birthday).

Lindy is a partnered dance for all ages and everyone dances with everyone, you are either a lead (traditionally male) or a follow (female), but both men and women try the other roles. There are clubs in most big cities across the world run by enthusiasts. It is the best and most enjoyable exercise I know and I swear it has given my knees a new lease of life.

Web surgery – Kristen Harrison

Posted on by
12

It’s been a while since I put up a post, because I have been hard at work trying to update my embarrassingly old-fashioned website at hilarycustancegreen.com. Screen Shot 2014-07-30 at 17.24.04

Today, through the Society of Authors, I signed up for a tutorial on my website and social media presence. I spent a generous and productive hour with Kristen Harrison of The Curved House.

My fear that I would be told to get onto various media outlets and advertise my books according to some hidden ‘rules for authors’ was unfounded. The session was unexpected for three particular reasons: 1) Kirsten had already checked out both my blog and my website and her first questions were designed to understand my work and interests. From there she swiftly showed me how to rearrange and redistribute the information on the web about me and my books. 2) She listened to, and understood, my concerns about cover design, about which she was extremely knowledgable (more about covers at a later date). 3) She aligned her advice with my understanding of the Internet and technology and with my needs outlined in a pre-session questionnaire.

How rare is that? All I have to do now is to put all this into practice…

I did manage to weed the vegetable plot and we have eaten the first runner beans.

DSCN6207 DSCN6220

But there are 74 posts to read in my emails and I am going Lindy hopping tonight.

Threadgold Press – lessons learnt

Posted on by
24

[This is a moan, so feel free to jump to pictures at the end]

One of the privileges of being your own publisher is being able to choose your own book cover. Over the last month I have really concentrated on this (actually since April, if I’m honest). Ignoring the Really Good Advice to pay for professional work, I have become intimate with the foibles of InDesign; my numerous attempts to create a cover now run to over 50 files.

I am exhausted and depressed, I have used up all my credit with my nearest and dearest, the garden is untended, the vegetable plot a riot of weeds and my in-tray is overflowing. Each night I have new ideas and each morning I start again expecting the perfect cover to appear under my hands. But it hasn’t, and I am now finally ready to compromise. My daughter, Amy, has produced something better than any of the ones I attempted and while I still feel, churlishly, that it is not what I had in mind, it is simple and beautiful and I need to stop NOW.

So here are a few more rejected designs (and they are not the weirdest):

BL cover tests29.pr BL cover tests32.pr - Version 3 BL cover tests26.pr BL cover tests21.pr

That’s enough amateur graphics. Here are some lilies (smelling heavenly) and hydrangeas to finish with. Tomorrow, I will pick beans and weed the veg bed.

DSCN6205 DSCN6202 DSCN6201 DSCN6199I’ve been Lindy Hopping this evening, so I feel more human.