Next week, I’ll begin posting The Invader’s Guide to Earth by Nrrlian Imperial Observer Merl–his human name, not his real name. (He says his real name’s pronounced like Rastafarian with Ms for the Rs and Ls for the As, or maybe it’s Ts for the As. Whatever…My poor human tongue can’t pronounce it.)

It’s experimental science fiction, satire, and at times just plain bizarre. (I still don’t understand why Merl thought his bosses needed to know about bride’s maids and butt bows. Apparently, his bosses didn’t either.)

Some will argue this is Kindle’s downside. It’s not. If the book is properly formatted, you won’t have problems. However, if the file creator took shortcuts and/or flat-out flunked HTML 101, go find the Kindle charger because you’re screwed.

On Saturday, I learned the book I was reading had previously lost its battle with the e-book formatting gremlins. (Either that or the publisher was lazy. Take your pick.)

In response, I’ve tweaked my book review template.

If I can’t scroll to the next chapter with the navigation button…4 out of 5 ease-of-use stars.

If you didn’t use a symbol for scene breaks and one of lands on the next page (on my kindle, not yours) without a big gap at the bottom of the previous page…3 out of 5 ease-of-use stars.

A two or one is possible, but you’d have to do something egregious like center and italicize the entire book. Of course, then I won’t finish reading your book, much less review it.

What formatting problems will make you put down an e-book? Should ease-of-use be weighted less than grammar?

Hey, it could be worse…Actually, it couldn’t. I’m 28 with a BMI of 20.3 and I have high blood pressure. (Let’s not discuss causes. I still have this fairy tale belief that one day I’ll get it back under control.) Voluntary ingesting something I know raises my blood pressure by around 14 ml (top and bottom according to my numbers) is stupid. So is quitting caffeine cold turkey.

Yes, I’m questioning my intelligence. It’s 2:20 pm and my eyelids are propped open with toothpicks. My neuron gremlins are on their knees begging for a jolt. Out of deference to them, I finally drank some OJ, but sugar is a poor substitute. I crave a sip of black tea or coffee or even Mountain Dew. Considering my undying hatred for how soft drinks taste, this is a problem.

Fortunately, I’m out of black tea, so I can’t brew another cup without ordering some. (I’m picky and wouldn’t drink the bagged, grocery store stuff with your mouth.) The rooibos chai I normally sip in the afternoons is running low. The greens–they have caffeine, but not enough to cause too much trouble–didn’t look appetizing this morning, but are looking better by the minute.

The odds I’ll cave and swallow a few mouthfuls of caffeinated green…95%.

Good writing software can organize your research, check your spelling, and help format your submissions. Everything else is still on you. It can also drive you batty, have high learning curves, lock you into a file format you can’t open on any computer without X application installed, and/or save your precious novel in a binary file format. All for $40-120 of your hard-earned cash…or not.

Writing

• LyX : With a full screen view, minimum formatting, export to rtf, LaTeX, and pdf, it rocks for chapter books. I particularly love the split view, which lets me work on two documents at once, and the outline.
  

  LyX Side by Side View Example

• TextRoom: Full-screen writing without distractions or windowed, distractions-free writing, whichever you prefer. Some prefer Focus Writer, but the mouse overs and indent-less format drive me batty. I’m sticking with TextRoom. Note: .txr is .rtf. Just right click on your .txr file to open it with another word processor.
  

  TextRoom Example

• LibreOffice: A fork of OpenOffice, LibreOffice includes many performance upgrades that never made it into OpenOffice, mostly for political reasons.

Organizing

• Novel Mind Map (Use Freemind or Freeplane): If you’re a visual learner, you’ll love this. It’s great for brainstorming and noodling your way through plot points. It lets you see the big picture.
  

  Novel Writer's Notebook MindMap

• Zim: Yes, I still wax poetic about Zim. It’s stable, has spell check, custom buttons, a calendar, limited formatting, and saves my work as text files. The actual document format is a type of wiki markup.
  

  Zim Novel Notebook Example

Formatting

• AbiWord: If you’re submitting, this is a must-have. Open Office .rtf does not look the same in Word as it does in Open Office. Fortunately, Abiword .rtf looks the same in Open Office, MS Word, and Abiword. (Don’t even think about using saving a .odt as a .doc and submitting it. When someone says “manuscript format”, they mean manuscript format. Unless you’ve checked the .doc in Word and reformatted it to their standards, stick with the .rtf and always double check it with several programs.)
  

  AbiWord Example

• SFFMS (Latex classes and rtf exporter): I like it for printed proofreading copies and print/pdf submission formatting. Lyx classes are available on my github account.

Proofreading

• Artha: When the right word is on the tip of your fingers, but you can’t seem to find it, a good thesaurus/dictionary helps.
  

  Artha Example

• After the Deadline: A plugin for Word Press and OpenOffice / LibreOffice, the developers say it provides “contextual spell, style, and grammar checker”. I say it’s a dream come true. It checks for clichés (yes, it flagged the previous sentence), redundant words, and jargon. It works on any machine. No Windows required. Note: After the Deadline is really a server-side application. If using someone else’s computer to grammar check your work bothers you, you can download their code and run the server yourself. They even have the server pre-packaged.

Coming Soon

• LyX-Outline: This is a promising, LyX based, alternative to Scrivener, but it’s not quite ready for production use.
  

  LyX-Outline Example

I wake up in the mornings feeling like I haven’t slept in a month. Lava drips into my joints. Until recently, I had a kris in my kidneys and someone kept twisting the damn thing. Given all this, the ants crawling up my sides and constant exhaustion really weren’t big deals. The doc killed the kris wielder or at least temporarily disabled him. We still don’t know what’s causing the latest madness. All anyone has is a list of possible conditions and more tests.

Quite discouraging.

I’ve always dealt with this to a certain extent, but lately it’s worse. I’m not sure if the exhaustion/pain combo actually decreases my IQ or just kills my concentration. Either way, I shouldn’t be working on servers right now, and Drupal isn’t the easiest system on the block to administer. Sure, it offers killer options, but what good are options if you can’t use them?

Drupal was my personal act of self-denial. I’m a geek with a MA in International Commerce and Policy. I graduated with honors. I’m…clinging desperately to a past life my body can no longer live. It was my last act of defiance. My way of saying I wouldn’t let this damn stuff define me. My mind loved the technical challenges it represented, and I spent many days hacking code, writing modules, theming, and updating. But I have other challenges, ones I can’t always code or multiply my way around. Drupal now represents a challenge I don’t need.

So where am I?

Knitting hurts too much. Drupal requires more energy than it’s worth. Some days, I have trouble walking the dog. Yeah, the woman who ran marathons, biked eight miles to work, and practiced martial arts is dead. She’s not coming back.

But the person she was, the girl who scribbled stories ideas on the backs of napkins and carried a notebook everywhere, is still here. Like a rose that has lost its petals, my core still lives.

I have eight novels, about a hundred short stories, and more jotted ideas than I want to think about in my drawer. Why? Not to publish or submit somewhere. These scraps of paper are my escape, the reality I created because the one I live in sucks. When I write, I zone out, immersing myself in another world, leaving my body behind. For a time. An hour or two on a bad day. Four on a good. Six on a superb. I don’t have many superbs. It helps more than Tylenol, which is about as effective as sugar, and is less irksome than meditation, which I still practice even though it only helps if the pain’s below a 7.

My scraps of paper, computer files, and notes are proof that I still exists. Many days they are the only tangible proof I have, so I choose to cling to them, not Drupal, because they get me through the day.

Reading also helps. The escape isn’t always as good as what I create on my own, but on bad days especially, a good book helps.

Connecting with people through forums, email, and here helps more than you will ever know. Emails from friends and family, blog posts about a new author or someone’s dog, YouTube, Hulu–to feed my lifelong anime addiction–Twitter, more emails, Ravelry, LHC, Critique Circle…all help me feel like I’m not alone.

In my final analysis, I’m left with three things I can do–reading, writing, and the web–that help. Word Press is easier to use, one click updates and less scrolling on the admin side, than Drupal, so I swapped. A year ago, the swap would’ve taken six hours max. It took a week. Things aren’t perfect. A few posts are still MIA, and I haven’t decided what to do with my knitting course materials, patterns, and the unfinished patterns/courses cluttering up my hard drive.

Camellias: A Reason to Smile

Please don’t feel sorry for me. Right now, the dogwoods are just beginning to bloom, bread’s rising on the counter, my fountain pen’s full of ink, my kindle battery’s at 100%, and I have daffodils on my desk. All reasons to smile.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sons of Lyra: Runaway Hearts by Felicity Heaton hits all the marks–hot guy, steamy sex, girl with some sense, and space ships. A perfect combination.

Lyran crown prince Sebastien has a problem–a mother with a bad case of weddingitis. When she signs a marriage contract and tells Sebastien his wedding date, he does what any sane person would do…he runs.

When Terea picks Sebastien’s pocket, he sees an opportunity–an unknown face/travelling companion who can buy tickets off world without rousing suspicion. He offers her a ticket if she’ll join him and Terea, needing immediate passage more than money, agrees.

Add in alcohol and a prince who holds his liquor better than Terea expected, and you have lemons, romance, a painful separation, and a joyous reunion. In the end, they even make the Rents (his mother/her father) happy.

Well, as happy as parents like them can be.

My Reaction

If a book begins with a character thinking about him or herself, I normally skip the beginning, but Sebastien’s opener was entertaining. His reaction to “petty flattery” and thoughts on marriage, his brothers, his position, and his parents were interesting and humorous. The first pages painted a picture of this handsome prince who gives his mother more nightmares about his future relationship status than I give mine…love.

The tension builds continuously until the last scene with escalating sexual tension, military intervention, and parental machinations all playing a role, keeping my thumb on the next page button and my eyes glued to my Kindle.

I’m sure there were a few grammar wobbles–commas are so subjective–and the formatting was so-so. (Centered scene breaks would be nice.) But the plot moved quickly and the premise was believable. It was well-written and steamy.

Terea’s big reveal felt a little contrived, I prefered her as a pickpocket, but it meshed well with the plot and gave the novella the expected warm-fuzzy ending.

This novella pairs well with lazy evenings, fuzzy bathrobe, and spiked hot cocoa (peppermint schnapps or grand marnier for me).

View all my reviews