February 2012
15 posts
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Lengthy: Software, Editing, Gadgets
I am, while I try to finish the rest of it, rereading and editing a partially-finished book. On my phone. Not because I’m an outrageous techie geek or an idiot, but because it’s the best available option, though it shouldn’t be, if Android were everything it’s supposed to bloody be.
There are four options available to me:
I can print it out, Old Skool, and go at it...
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They Shoot Novels, Don't They?
Last night I decided to down tools on the current WIP nearly halfway into the story and about a quarter into the actual word count. (Because I tend to skip bits if they’re awkward/simple and then back-fill later.) This 1:1 ratio of done to skipped is a little higher than usual, and the fact I’ve been working on this for (allowing for Christmas, family death plague, et al.) a month or...
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“This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be...”
– The Smashwords license boilerplate is - to my mind - unnecessarily dickish. (Not that I’m using them, but read at the start of James’s NATURAL CAUSES.)
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A Kids Story: Billy McPugh & The Monsters' Ball
It’s book season in reception and I wrote a story to read to Aidan’s class last week. Some of the rhythm is iffy and the rhyme pattern shifts all over the place, but thirty 4-5 year olds loved it. They played the part of the Squeaks (there’s a line naming three of them and their teacher; amend to suit) and got to roar all together at every RARGH! in the text. And no small child...
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“If you’re expecting that we’ll replace fossil fuels and do it on the cheap, you...”
– The excellent Do the Math reaches the first stage summary. The blog should be required reading for anyone wanting to sound informed on energy issues.
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Aar! Take Two
Further thoughts following responses to my previous ‘pirate crew’ writers’ collective notion via all sorts of different channels.
Consensus seems to be that it’d be a fascinating idea, with the potential to descend into a howling shitstorm of hatred, accusations, and rage should such a thing prove successful. (“A good way to lose friends” I think was how my...
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Thank You, And Good Night
Seems iBA has been updated with a clearer EULA with this at the top:
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you want to charge a fee for a work that includes files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author, you may only sell or distribute such work through Apple, and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple. This restriction does not apply to the content of such works...
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MY BAD - Anthony Neil Smith: 2012 →
While we’re on the subject, this from @DocNoir - as opposed to the bullshit from Trestle after the fact (edit: now linked as a FreezePaged copy of the Google cache) - is how you define a mistake (as opposed to knowingly ignoring the rules), and the correct, classy way to deal with one. Good stuff.
Edit to add: Incidentally, I don’t have Neil’s vast back catalogue, but of the...
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Aar, A Writer's Life For Me
And so, while the Trestle Press art theft debacle unfolds - seriously, the ease of finding some of the originals is laughable - I find myself thinking of a notion I had a while back. Nothing so fully-formed as an idea. A dream, maybe.
A writers’ co-operative.
Modelled along pirate lines.
I, uh, should probably explain. We’re all either involved with or at least watching the...
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Trestle Press, Art Theft
I know a few people with ebooks put out by one-man-band publisher Trestle Press, who have a stable of decent writers under some (apparently famously) deeply shonky typography. Now it seems Giovanni “G-Man” Gelati, the one man in the aforementioned band, has been using massive amounts of copyrighted images for cover art without the artists’ permission.
Gelati has responded to...
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“I don’t give a fuck anymore. Whatever will be, will fuckin’ be. I...”
– Ray Banks on the e-ndustry (if you see what I did there).