My growing story

My book, The Speed of Darkness has no official page count because as of now it only exists within computer files. (Yes I'm still sure that someday it'll become popular enough that someone else will pay to print it. I can dream can't I?)
Before today or at least until recently Amazon estimated its length to be around 117 pages. That may have seemed a little short to me, but hey I wrote it; I realize that I'll probably see it as bigger and more important than anyone else. Hell, MSWord only has it as 104 pages; I just thought that the average book page was quite a bit shorter than the average document page.
117 and 104 seemed a bit too close to me, but maybe my whole page-length idea was just wrong. Whatever... Except when I was getting its Amazon page today, for some reason they've recalculated the book-length to 143.
Where did that come from? Were they miscalculating in the first place and so advertising my story as less than it is? Have they stuffed the back end with adds that they aren't paying me for? Either way, that just doesn't sit well with me.

Nothing to do with Amazon, The story actually IS growing. Right now I've started putting some notes together and rereading The Speed of Darkness to collect the elements I need to make a prequel. Right now I think it would be somewhat funny if I could fix it to be exactly 9,999 words because most of the short story publishing submission guidelines ask for a story of less than 10,000 words, but my length is not essential. If I build up a good story that gets messed up when I try to tweak the length, that idea can easily be abandoned. Mainly, I want a story that would easily stand alone but would also happily lead into the existing story. With my lack of advertising budget, this could be a great way to have others notice my writing. Even if it isn't, I had a ton of fun making The Speed of Darkness, and even if nothing comes of the prequel being an ad idea, it could eventually lead to my reediting of the original to offer in some sort of combo edition.

Gaaa!!! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!!

So I just sent off another round of review requests for my book, The Speed of Darkness, yeah? Of course I've found that most reviewers who offer to review for unknown authors ask for a copy of the book or a coupon to go buy it free.
Hey, I understand that! I'm not asking people to give me money so they can have the privilege of determining whether or not I'm a crappy writer. 'Twould be almost ridiculous (Not to mention that it would practically encourage fast thoughtless writing by people who write for the express purpose of turning around and to get rich directly from the reviewer's pockets.)
Anyway, I look in my email this morning to see I got one of those reviews posted. I'm OK with the misspelling of my name, that's common enough, but then I see my character referred to as SAM.

IN MY FINAL COPY, THE GUY'S NAME IS ERIC

Little story behind that... I wrote The Speed of Darkness nearly 3 years before I published it. By the time I put it on Amazon, I was in the middle of another still unfinished story/stories (online here) that also have a pretty important character named Sam. Having no real reason to keep calling people Sam I decided to switch one of their names to Eric. (A tribute to, I forget the name of the story, but it has a pair of twins named Sam and Eric). I forget why, but that other guy's name was unchangeable.

I tried to make the change everywhere, and I'm pretty sure now Sam Omlup is always Eric Omlup everywhere the book can be downloaded online. In most places on my computer it is changed too.
(I must have 15 different copies of the book on my computer to be ready for all the different file-formats people ask for, I also have 1 or 2 with the slight modifications Smashwords insisted on before they would send it to Barnes & Noble)


Looking back through my file system to destroy the offending 'Sam' files and create new 'Eric' files to replace them, I found 2 instances that hadn't been fixed within the folder where I was pulling copies of the story to give to reviewers who asked for them: the .pdf and the .mobi.

These are the two most common file-types reviewers want. So now I can look forward to a good score of possible reviews with names that don't quite match my story.

I've been interviewed today

Today I had a nice interview by Author Marcia Carrington.
Marcia's Book Talk

This is fun

I check my email/facebook and see that my book now stands within The Book-Junkies Library: Sarah Baethge page

Now, I might have tried to put it there myself, but I truly don't remember this one. Nice little surprise.

It's not mine, but if you like ebooks...

You want an ebook you don't have to open your pocketbook for? http://theriaka-ebooks.blogspot.com/2012/02/ebook-giveaway-falling-by-lc-smith.html It's a fantasy called Falling by L.C.Smith.