Showing posts with label Formatting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Formatting. Show all posts

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Goodreads Ask The Author

Good Morning. For those of you who have read my books and are wondering about certain aspects of the writing, or characters, or research, or what-have-you, I've finally opened up the Ask the Author page on Goodreads.  https://www.goodreads.com/AnneGallagher    I've set my preferences to "daily" so I will get email alerts whenever you pose a question. I will try to answer within 24 hours. When I have enough questions, I'll post them to my blog for the general readership. I'm also going to try to do a Twitter feed with this as well, but haven't worked out the details yet.

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In other news, WHEN ALL HOPE IS LOST was supposed to be published today. However, due to some exceedingly worrisome wonkiness with both my desktop and my laptop, I've run into some
very nasty snags in my formatting. I've been working on this issue for the last several days to no avail. After spending more than 6 hours on the internet looking for solutions, I think I know what the underlying problem is, and hopefully, will have this book published by the end of this week, if not sooner.

**Yes, I did end up publishing this book today. It should be available on Amazon Monday, on Smashwords today, and Barnes&Noble, Kobo, and Apple by the end of the week.


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I have uploaded the first three books in THE RELUCTANT GROOMS series to Google Play. Unfortunately, they are only in PDF format. (Another formatting issue.) I'm working on having the rest of the series up and running by the end of March.

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Also, as soon as HOPE is published, I'm going to begin the work to get the rest of my paperbacks in order. I'm hoping those will be finished by the end of April for those of you who like paper between your fingers. Eventually, I'm going to offer the series in one complete set in paper. I'm looking at a few printing companies in my area to design a "box" to hold them all. You'll be able to buy them from here for less than what you would pay through Amazon or CreateSpace. I'll let you know when that happens.

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And finally, because I've been living with 1970's pineapple wallpaper and a "unique" maroon and beige color scheme upstairs in my house, for the remainder of the spring, I'm going to be remodeling, painting, and putting in new floors in my house. So if you don't see me, you can bet that's where I'll be. I've been trying to do this since I moved in 3 years ago, but writing has taken up all of my free time. Now the series is complete, I NEED to do this for my own sanity.


Thanks for reading. I'll see you soon.

Anne Gallagher (c) 2015

Sunday, August 19, 2012

A New Story to Wait For

Funny what happens when you spend five hours painting the hallway and dining room. I found a new story. Not that there's a whole lot I can do with it at the moment. I'm still working on the old house and haven't had time to think, let alone write something down.

BUT...

The seeds are there.

A couple of months ago, I found pictures for a few characters for a new story (as I was building my A -Z Challenge posts for this blog) THE SEDUCTION OF MR. SUMMERVILLE. I have two beautiful sisters and only one man to marry. I do know which woman will get Mr. Summerville. However, I didn't know what would happen to the other sister.

Guess what, I do now.

It seems in LADY CADORET'S LONGING I have an extra duke hanging around with nothing to do. Who needs love badly. Who wants to marry and raise children. Only problem is, he's a first class jerk. Not the stumbling bumbling Winsbarren kind of jerk. Or the "I'll do whatever I want" kind of jerk like Robert in THE DUKE'S DIVORCE. No, the Duke of Straford is a first class jerk with nary a hint of decorum or nicety about him. Someone who is not a sympathetic character at all.

And I can't wait to write about him. Unfortunately, if I look at my timetable, I won't be able to get to him until 2014.

That's the problem with this writer. I can't write everything I want to when you want to. Unfortunately, writing takes time and is something in short supply at my house these days.

However, the Monster Child goes back to school this Wednesday (1/2 days) and then back in full time the last week in August. I have 6 solid hours every day of that last week to get everything completed and finished at the old house. Come September 4th, I am dedicating those 6 hours every day to get the last of the formatting issues completed on THE ROMANTIC REGENCY COLLECTION and then it will be published both in e-book and paperback.

Then I will go all out crazy to finish up THE LADY'S MASQUERADE because I am just so sick of that book being the albatross. Yes, it was the one that started it all, but it needs a lot of work to get it right. I need to tie up all kinds of loose ends in that before I can even think about starting THE SEDUCTION OF MR. SUMMERVILLE.  (Talk about a lead-in).  But before that book can even be started, I still have to finish THE CAPTAIN'S LADY, and THE EARL'S ENIGMA. (Which, according to my calculations, will be next year.)

(And then, let's not forget about the writing I do under my other pen name Robynne Rand. I'm working on a collection of short stories and two more novels on that side.)

You know, this is real life. In every project I ever start, I need to do 19 things first, BEFORE I can even begin to do what I want to do. You should see how long it takes when I try to clean the kitchen...

Tell me -- How frustrating is it for you as a reader to wait for the next book from an author? Do you ever wonder just exactly what they do with their time instead of writing?

Monday, November 7, 2011

Smashwords

I just wanted to let you all know that THE LADY'S FATE, is now available on Smashwords. 

If I've learned nothing else from this experience of self-publishing it's how to format for every single type of e-reader available.  With the time change, I was up at the ungodly hour of 4 am, and with nothing to do, I decided to try and upload to Smashwords.  Which I did, but it kept bouncing back to me saying that my file was too big.  So I had to "strip it".  Which means, I had to take out ALL the formatting. 

ALL the formatting.  And then reformat the entire document.  It took me all day Sunday.  4 am to 4 pm.  I kid you not.  12 hours.  I had to learn a  bunch of new techniques and then re-upload the document.  But by 6 pm it was "pending" with no glitches.  So I was a happy girl when I went to bed last night. 

Hah!  And I though the learning curve for the Kindle was hard.  That was a cake walk compared to yesterday. 

But now I know how to do it.  And yes, I am very proud of myself.  I never, ever thought in a zillion years, that I would ever know how to do things with a computer that would end up becoming a book.  A published book at that. 

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?