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| Launch Cannon: Fire! |
Come back often over the next several days, there will be updates. The raffle is now in place!
First off, White Pickups is on sale for 99¢ all week. If you haven’t grabbed the book that Michael Tate said “should be heralded as the poster child for how self-publishing should be done,” grab it while it’s 66% off! If you’ve already bought it, download a fresh copy to get an edition with a new cover and a handful of typos squashed. (Updated edition may not be everywhere at this moment, but it’s coming.)
OK, now for the blurbage and linkage:
“Humanity decides its own fate and the means by which it comes.”
War, locusts, vermin. The world continues adjusting to the Truckalypse, and to the sudden disappearance of billions of people, seeking a new balance. People in Laurel Hills and elsewhere survive and try to rebuild what they can.
When a vision reveals the nature of the trucks, it is young Cody Sifko who must become humanity’s champion. His friends—and the enigmatic Delphinia—will stand with him, but he must face his inner demons alone.
Pickups and Pestilence takes you on a ride from suburban Atlanta, to the heights of Heaven and the depths of Hell. Buckle up and hang on!
A couple places around the net where you can hear from both author and characters (and others):
- Interviewing the Indies series by Rachel Desilets (ran May 1 at examiner.com)
- An “Out of World interview” with Cody, by Mia Darien
- Eric “Frodo” Townsend has reviewed both White Pickups and Pickups and Pestilence
- +Katherine Hajer (@eyrea) wrote a thought-provoking piece about resistance culture, keep pushing and the momentum will come, that uses the Pickups and Pestilence release as an example
- others? Stay tuned!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Congratulations! I just got a copy from Smashwords.
ReplyDeleteThanks much, Katherine! That was you, then. I sent Smashwords (and Nook) a (very) clean EPUB I set up in Sigil, and held my nose and set up a DOC file for the rest of the formats.
ReplyDelete[begin mini-rant]
Smashwords really needs to put EPUB on an equal footing with DOC. They already validate incoming EPUBs, and Calibre has already done the hard work of writing open sourced EPUB-to-anything converters. There's no excuse anymore.
[end mini-rant]
I remember you saying that Sigil crashes and burns on your Linux system. Is that still the case? It's not as convenient as Scrivener for writing, but it can be used as such. Alternatively, you could write in LibreOffice, export to HTML, then run it through Tidy and a cleanup XSLT script I wrote (which strips out spurious SPAN elements). Split at chapters, add a stylesheet and cover, tweak anything that needs tweaking, then validate and go. I'm getting this process streamlined a little more with each book!
Yeah, I think I'm sticking with Libre Office for now.
DeleteBut your comment reminded me that the ODT format is basically a group of CSS/XHTML files rolled in a ZIP anyhow -- much like EPUB. So I did a quick Google, and it turns out ODT to EPUB conversion is already a big topic and there are utilities/extensions available. I'll have to check them out.
And yeah, I don't get the obsession with the DOC format. It's still the norm for business users (well, DOCX), but not so much outside that. And DOC is RTF based. Ew.
Yup, EPUB is zipped HTML+CSS+graphics; ODT is zipped XML+graphics. I'll have to look into what's out there. Might save some time.
ReplyDeleteSigil isn't quite as convenient as Scrivener for writing, but it's adequate. (Oh, and Scrivener files are also packaged XML.) The advantage of working directly with EPUB is that it's easy to eliminate all cruft associated with file conversions - and zero cruft means fewer surprises. :-)
Hiya Larry,
ReplyDeleteI would have sworn I left a post over here this morning. Oh well.
Good luck again on the launch.
I loved reading you and Katherine talking back and forth on the ODT, HTML, etc. Of course I don't understand a word of it. I feel lucky that I just remembered how to bold and put stuff in italics.
Good luck Larry with the release of the second book!
ReplyDeleteBest of luck on new release, Larry!
ReplyDeleteI've got my copy, and I'm looking forward to tearing into it once I'm done with my current book!
ReplyDeleteGodspeed, Larry! Hope this release is another hit for you, especially after that one earlier this year blew up so well.
ReplyDeleteCongrats!!
ReplyDeleteI'm so pleased that things are going so well for you, Larry.Your writings are always a blast to read.I look forward to many more hits for you my friend.
ReplyDelete