Hey there, where ya goin’?

Not exactly knowin’

Who says you have to call just one place home?

He’s goin’ everywhere

B.J. McKay and his best friend Bear

Thus began the catchy jingle to a late 1970’s television show B. J. and the Bear. Born from the popularity of movies like Smokey and the Bandit, the show followed the lighthearted adventures of a truck driver and his chimpanzee companion. The freeness of an open life on the road spoke to many – apparently not enough, though, as the show only lasted a couple of seasons.

I’m in the contemplation stage of a new novel project. I’m just beginning to hash out the general plot and the main characters. For one of the major players, I’m toying with the idea of placing him or her (have not yet settled on the gender) as a truck driver. That freedom of driving anywhere and everywhere echoes the nature of the character I am trying to develop.

Whenever I create a character, a scene, or a plot element, I strive for realism. While B. J. McKay was entertaining, I assumed the depiction did not emulate the the true life of a truck driver. Still, my knowledge of the trade is quite limited, constrained by my own passenger vehicle driving experiences and sensationalized versions of drivers as represented in pop culture. While I respect the application of the laws of physics on these monstrous rigs and yield appropriately, the life of a truck driver is foreign to me.

One of the cool aspects of creating worlds through the written world is the opening of doors to learning about life outside of our limited individual experiences. Today I have spent perhaps an aggregate of an hour during lunch and after work researching the truck drivers’ world and am already astonished. The sacrifices one makes for such an important – no, a critical component of our economic and life existence cannot be overstated. These men and women basically forgo a regular home life so we can have everything at our fingertips – eggs, iPhones, aspirin, basketballs, furniture, cars, hot water heaters, lumber, newspaper, computers – our life.

Yet almost daily, I see some of my pedestrian drivers visibly upset at truck drivers. Many of them also appear not to understand the basic laws of physics as well. Don’t cut a rig off and slam on the brakes!

Truck drivers’ pay has apparently stagnated over the past two decades, while the economy has, over the same period, flourished (Great Recession included). Yet many take to the roads sometimes seven days a week to drive ten hours to make a living – and make our living. I can’t help but think it takes a special kind of devotion to choose such a life.

But this blog is about writing, not to extol the life of a big rig truck driver. Heck, at this point I’m not even sure if I have the profession’s descriptor correct, and if I don’t, I apologize – I remember vividly when I learned not to call a pipefitter a plumber. To bring a realistic life to the character I am contemplating, one must research. When writing – be it an indie novelist with light book sales or a highly followed author who can command six or seven figures per work – getting all story elements correct is necessary. One-dimensional characters do not advance a plot; they smother it.

So where are ya goin’ with your work? For me, I’m not sure yet. I don’t know at this early stage of the novel development if the character will end up as a big rig driver or something else. Still, I will never look at the pilot of one of those awesome transports the same again. Such is a benefit of writing – the opportunities to learn about the world we all coexist in – but only if we allow ourselves the privilege.

Photo – Screen capture of the opening to B.J. and the Bear S1E3

 

When you’re an #indiewriter, you do everything yourself, or you pay others to take care of some of the seemingly never ending elements of the self-publishing process. Part of the reason why I entered the independent author world is to learn about all aspects of publishing, so I of course opted to assign all of the chores to myself. You learn from mistakes – well, let’s say I have learned much, including today, when I entered the home stretch of releasing From the Loft.

Today, after some changes precipitated by rushing to publication as I explained in a previous posting, I loaded all updated files to Ingram Spark, confident they would all pass the file validation process, except for one. I knew I’d have issues with the EPUB file – I always do. And I always forget what the issue solution is.

To create the EPUB files, I use a program called Calibre. It’s an amazing freeware product that is intuitive to use, so much as a freeware product can be. If you’re a self-publisher looking for a great e-book management tool, I highly recommend looking at this product. When I launched my first publication over three years ago, Summer’s Drowning, I did so to learn the basics as I prepped for the release of my first novel, Forgiveness, a year later. I’ll detail some of the mistakes and frustrations of that learning process in a future post (creating the correct PDF format was an extreme challenge that had a wonderful, cost-free solution), but creating the EPUB file was not a major hurdle, except for some minor table of content issues.

Previously, I had subverted that by simply removing the table of contents in the Calibre editor. However, this time around I wanted to understand the errors Ingram Spark said I had made (a minor ego hit, yes, but I’m in it to learn, right?), so I closely examined one of the messages that said the play order did not equal 1.

What the heck did that mean?

Google – what a wonderful tool. Apparently, Calibe attempts to build a table of contents based on metadata in the Word document (I format all of my works in Word – again, a topic for a future blog post). However, if a table of contents is not existent in Word, Calibre makes some odd programming assumptions – that which Ingram Spark throws a red challenge flag at.

Here, Calibre’s table of contents editor is your friend. No, not the CLI emulator as shown in the picture above, but its GUI representation. Yes, I know I’ll get flack from old (and I do mean old) network engineering colleagues who think using a CLI to configure network equipment is akin to blasphemy – and I would agree – but xml coding is not, nor will it ever be, my specialty.

I navigated the editor, created a basic table of contents, saved the file, and submitted to Ingram Spark. Success! Another tidbit learned, satisfying a primary objective – learning.

Now I just hope I remember how to do this when I attempt to create the EPUB for the next project.

I use an editing service for most of my writing projects, but often after the “final” edits are completed, I “tweak” the results, often more than once. Well, perhaps ten or twenty times. At some point you just have to “let go” and give the work you have labored on to the public, and realize as soon as you release it you will find fifteen things you would like to change – all in chapter one.

The danger here though is in introducing new errors to the manuscript. As an indie writer who reads my manuscripts likely hundreds of times during the entire creative process, simple spelling errors are prone to overlooking. I try to reduce that possibility by first reviewing the “final” manuscript in Microsoft Word, then the formatted PDF (on my PC and Kindle and a copy printed at home), then the MOBI file on my Kindle. All of these steps to ensure that when I send to Ingram Spark, it is an error-free product.

Ingram Spark recently had a promo for indie writers – for the period of a month, Ingram waived all setup fees. I’m all about saving $49, so I rushed through my final proofing and submitted on the last day all error-free files – the pdf of the full cover and manuscript (for printing) and the properly formatted EPUB file (for eBook readers). I was quite pleased with myself for meeting this self-imposed deadline.

Still, there is one more check I like to perform before the book goes on sale – ordering one printed copy for myself. Actually, this time I ordered two – I was so confident the resultant product would be perfect that the second copy was for a gift for my mother. She provided material I thought I had lost for the project, From the Loft, a compilation of articles I had written for a magazine years earlier. She would get the second printed copy for Christmas.

I excitedly opened the package, confident of the contents. Immediately I noticed an error, if only a sight one – both front and back covers were slightly off-center. Sizing these for printing is somewhat of an art. Still, the error was not obvious, and I figured most would not see an issue.

Then I opened the book to the last page of the preface. I had changed the last line at the last hour before submission to be “Read, chuckle, enjoy!” But somehow between my typing, proofing and submitting, the “u” in “chuckle became an “i.”

“Read, chickle, enjoy?” Nope. That was in your face (even if few read the preface in books anyway).

Of course, that one error led to a review of the whole book, to which I discovered a few more minor errors and another major one – “Chapter Twenty-Sox.” The review also led to about two dozen minor changes – see the end of paragraph one above. An artist is never satisfied with their work.

The lesson learned? If you rush, be prepared to pay. In the next few days, after I finish my final, final, final reviews of Word, PDF, and Kindle files, I will submit the updated files to Ingram Spark and pay the $49 I had tried to avoid. But the end product is better, and I come away with another tidbit of experience to pass on. And that is why I entered the indie writer world over three years ago – to learn, experience, and share.

And my mother will still get the “collector’s edition” – errors and all.

 

Welcome!

I am an indie author with four published works – two novels, a collection of poems, and an anthology of humor articles. I began my indie journey a few years ago after a random discussion with a colleague of mine about a new indie resource his company had just launched (Ingram Spark). With 4+ years experience in all aspects of book creation, I hope my musings will provide my peers and others interested in the indie space information, comfort, and encouragement.

My works may be found on my indie author website, www.rhm.884.myftpupload.com.