Too Fast at Car Speed

swamp at sunrise in East Fork State Park, Ohio (photo by jhy)

I'm sitting here surrounded by maps, files and a box of photos. Yes, I'm working on North Country Quest again. There have been several false starts, over the past seven (yes 7) years, but I'm hopeful this won't be yet another of those misfortunes. That said, I'm leaving town for three weeks on April 23, and this is not a good project to work on while away from home base. But at least I'll get a few chapters done before then.

I figured out what was wrong with my previous opening chapter. I was trying to force it to be something it was not. Of course one can tweak a chapter to give it a certain flavor, but above all, my account in North Country Cache was honest, and I want to continue that plan.

So the previous first chapter will now be the second chapter, and the new first chapter is "Too Fast at Car Speed."

And, except for tweaks, I think it's done. Here's how it starts:

“The world moves too fast at car speed,” I grumble into the tape recorder, the annoyance clear in my voice.

North Country Cache ended with an eagle “seeing” the whole trail. North County Quest begins with a grasshopper who can’t see where it’s going.

Two heavy green thighs push out, then thrust backward in unison, propelling the slim body of the grasshopper through the water with a frog kick. I laugh out loud at the absurdity of its cross-species motions. Who knew that grasshoppers can swim? He has taken on a daunting task, this little summer insect, to swim across a creek hundreds of times the length of his body. I wonder if he is even aware of the far bank, or is he just responding in desperation to an unintended watery landing after a careless jump?

I feel a bit like a grasshopper myself. Here I am again, sitting in the damp vegetation on the bank of some unnamed creek, soaking my hot feet and eating a crackers-and-cheese lunch in the middle of a hiking day, in the middle of a hiking life, in the middle of a hiking trail.

The trail is, of course, the North Country National Scenic Trail, and I’m beginning a theoretical second half of my quest to hike the whole thing. It’s theoretical because this trail will be under construction for many more years. The exact length changes every year as new sections are built and taken off road, or previous routes changed for various reasons. Just two weeks ago my distance hiked-to-date totaled 2300 miles, half of the 4600 estimated miles of trail which stretch from New York to North Dakota. Thus, I’m now, like the grasshopper, past the point of no return. Every step and every day on the trail from this point forward will be a countdown to completion. It looks as if the grasshopper will make it across the stream before I finish eating. My journey will take longer.

In fact, I’ve already been working on hiking this trail for thirteen years. Mine is not a race to the finish line. Rather, I choose to sample the seven states of the NCT in smaller bites, savoring the local flavor of each piece. However long it takes is not the issue for me. Instead, I want to know this trail: its moods, its secret places, its windings through history and the local cultures. If it takes another thirteen years, so be it.

I'm trying to act more like a serious writer... writing nearly every day, not just when the muse is hot. I've managed that amazingly well for the past three months, actually getting the first three Dubois Files books out on my planned schedule. Now it's time to keep that going.

And, yes, I'm glad you noticed, this picture is the one used for the cover of News from Dead Mule Swamp. I took it at sunrise after a night in the car at East Fork State Park, in SW Ohio.

See Picking Up the Quest

Arrivals - Part 3

I now have 100 copies each of The Secret Cellar, The Hitchhiker, and The ABZ Affair.



Now I can show you all three. I love how cover artist, Linda Sandow, used different palettes for each one and yet kept the tone similar and the wonderful intensity of the colors! Here are the fronts together.



And the backs:



I even like the spines together. How about a whole shelf full of these volumes? Maybe someday. I have plots for two more in my head already.



I also ordered padded mailers today. Linda and I will have a marathon signing session early next week and get these out to you if you've pre-ordered.

Only three more days at the reduced price and guaranteed autographs. Pre-order (through March 31) the set of the first three Dubios Files books for $24 (no discount after March 31), they will be signed by the cover artist Linda J. Sandow, as well as by me. Signed sets can be pre-ordered at Books Leaving Footprints

See Arrivals - Part 2

Graphics and EPUB - JPG vs. PNG Formats

I've been beating my head against a wall for two days now trying to get the Dubois Files books to pass the EPUB check. This is the format needed for ebooks at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks and Overdrive. I do this through Smashwords.

Let me say right away that the Smashwords Style Guide is impressive. If you follow its excellent and careful directions, you are likely to have very little trouble getting books through the formatting checks. It can be used by anyone, whether you publish through Smashwords or not.

However... When I got to the part about adding images to the file some of the language seemed to have changed. I've always used jpg images (also jpeg extension- Joint Photographic Experts Group). But the guide said that png formatted (Portable Network Graphics) images seem to work better for EPUB. So I thought I'd go that route. These children's books have a lot of graphics and I wanted to minimize the headaches, right?

There is a difference in the formats. Jpg is "lossy," which means that some of the detail is lost when the file is compressed. Png is "lossless," which means it should withstand being moved across platforms with better resolution at the end point.

For an ebook on an average sized reader, tablet or phone, however, it's kind of a "who cares." These two images are jpg on the left and png on the right. Screens like these only support 96 pixels per inch anyway, so it doesn't matter if you've got an image with 300 ppi- it will get downshifted to 96 for display.


Anyway, I was still stuck on the wording that said png is the better choice. I spent all day yesterday and part of the day before trying to figure out errors like this one: The file 'tmp_f0de42d4eb6865730fa0631fca336cc0_9P8O4M_html_5895aa02.png' does not appear to match the media type image/png, as specified in the OPF file. (ERROR)

Yikes! Well, it turns out you can find out which image this is (I certainly didn't name any file like that!) with some maneuvering, but that just got tedious when the images were rejected over and over again. There seemed to be nothing I could do to correct the problem. I tried using two different converters in addition to my own graphics program. Still got the same errors.

Finally, I decided to go back and put the pictures back in as jpgs. Guess what? The whole thing passed on the first try.

So... if you, too, are beating your head against a wall some day over this, try the other format!

You can still pre-order (through March 31) the set of the first three Dubios Files books for $24 (no discount after March 31), they will be signed by the cover artist Linda J. Sandow, as well as by me. Signed sets can be pre-ordered at Books Leaving Footprints



Formatting and more

Arrivals - Part 2

I guessed these might arrive today based on when I received notice that they had shipped. 100 copies of The Hitchhiker have joined those of The Secret Cellar. The spines look really nice side by side. I'll wait till I have all three to show that. But those won't be here tomorrow. There was a time lag while I got the formatting done on the third one.



Today I got Library of Congress Catalog Numbers assigned to the books. They won't be in this first printing, but that's ok. It's pretty easy to tweak files on CreateSpace.

I also updated my list of events where I'll be wearing my author hat this summer. You can see the full list at Meet the Author

If you want to pre-order (through March 31) the set of the first three Dubios Files books for $24 (no discount after March 31), they will be signed by the cover artist Linda J. Sandow, as well as by me. Signed sets can be pre-ordered at Books Leaving Footprints




Formatting and more

Arrivals - Part 1

This doesn't need a lot of explanation! It doesn't matter how many books you've put together. Receiving that first case is always a rush! 100 copies of The Secret Cellar in my house. 30 sets of the three books are already sold. Is one or more coming to your house? Ten more days to pre-order.



The life of a writer has variables. Today I thought I was going to give myself a break. Instead, when I got home from work I learned that a man who was a good friend to the North Country Trail had died, and I was asked to write his obituary for The North Star (magazine of the North Country Trail Association). I write for them fairly often, but it's all volunteer, of course.

If you want to pre-order (through March 31) the set of the first three Dubios Files books for $24 (no discount after March 31), they will be signed by the cover artist Linda J. Sandow, as well as by me. Signed sets can be pre-ordered at Books Leaving Footprints




Formatting and more

That One Tiny Thing- Ha!

 
Remember, I said I had one tiny thing to do and The ABZ Affair would be ready to be sent off for approval. Ha!

I started by proofreading the crafts, and as I suspected, it was a good thing I didn't try to do that last night. There was a fair amount more to do on those.

This lengthened the book by a few pages, and that changed the size of the cover, so I had to fix that.

Then I remembered that I wanted to find a better font for the map. I didn't like the one I was using, but the commercial use was free. Did you know that you can't just use any font you want in a book? For a lot of them you are supposed to purchase a commercial license. But I found one I liked that has no restrictions, so I redid the text on the map. I like the results much better. I'll swap them out in the first two books before I order more copies.

Then I also remembered that I wanted to tweak the illustration with the forklift just a little bit, so I did that.

After that.... I did the one tiny thing, which actually took a couple of hours, a general floor plan of the canning factory.

Then, the cover file had to be converted to a pdf, which took forever for some reason today.

But.. ta-DA! By 4:30 I had the whole thing uploaded to CreateSpace and proofed. Clicked the button to have it approved. Hoping everything goes well, and I can order these books tomorrow.

But, I just did one tiny thing, right?

Cases of the first two, The Secret Cellar and The Hitchhiker, have already shipped!

map of the East South River Road Neighborhood for The ABZ Affair


Illustrations for The ABZ Affair

ABZ Affair - Almost There

 
So close to being done with The ABZ Affair! I got the two craft/skill sections done today, but that's about all. It takes a long time to describe things so that a ten-year-old can read and follow the directions. Hope I've succeeded! This is a coder/decoder for a simple substitution code.

the substitution coder/decoder wheel craft in The ABZ Affair

the template coder/decoder craft in The ABZ Affair

This one is a lot more complicated, but it's also a lot tougher to crack. This book was aimed at kids who like a challenging puzzle, and since there are two crafts per book, anyone who doesn't want to try this still has the other one to make.

I illustrated these two crafts with photos.

Wrote the Acknowledgements section. Now I think there is just one tiny, tiny thing to do, and I can send it off to be approved.