So this took alot less time then expected

I thought that this would have taken 5 days but it actually took 2 hours. After I nailed trim sizing and margin numbers I had the words/lines per page matter to deal with. After not being able to find a way to do this without doing it manually, I decided to do it myself.

Here’s yesterday’s update of the format.

There were alot of unneeded spaces.

Here’s what it looks like now after I divided the lines into 27-30 throughout the entire book. Some breaks started between 27 and 30 to avoid widows. The most words per page will be 269 and the least will be 210. It gets no lower than 200 and no higher than 300.

In the above page I’ve removed all of the extra spaces. I learned last night that Microsoft actually does the paragraph spacing for you. It will look a whole lot cleaner and my page count reduced as well. It all evened out. The below page is how it will look with paragraph spacing.

I’m noticing that I posted the wrong pages but that’s not really important. I’m just showing you all how this is changing as I format it. The two 12’s have different words because after breaking the lines evenly some parts went to the next page. After page breaks the final page number came to 486. That’s less than what estimated.

I can even increase the font size. I’m not sure if I’m going to increase fonts and to an actual word count per page. After paragraph spacing I’ll see how it looks to the eye. I’m making it to where the reader won’t have to read a lot all at once.

I’ll update later tonight. At the moment I’m making plans for the book cover. The front and back cover will have things mentioned in the book so I might have to buy props before photography and graphic designs. I’ll keep you all posted.

If you LOVE romance or love to read in general FOLLOW THIS BLOG. Seriously, I follow back always and who doesn’t like mutual support? I’ve seen reviewers too. FOLLOW. Because I will need people to critique my books, good or bad, doesn’t matter. Some help is better than none at all. I’ll keep you guys updated. Thanks to all that follow me. If you have a fan page, I’ll be sure to follow you. Thanks followers 🙂  Keep writing and blogging

Update for 12-26-13

Hey bloggers/followers I don’t much time to spare tonight because I’m about to setup my workspace. This consists of a couch with pillows, my laptop, power cable, food, music, and the tv which I mute for some reason? I don’t know why but I have to work with the tv on but I always mute it.

Formatting is harder than I thought it would be. I had to do more reading and research today. I had to leave the house so I didn’t have time to work on it. Then once I got back, I took a nap. Now that I’m fully rested, I’m ready to tackle this. I have everything I need.

Alot of people that self-publish have told me formatting was one of the hardest parts of the process and now I understand what they mean. But they also said once you get the hang of it, things get easier. And I’m getting the hang of it 🙂 alright I’ve got close to 6-7 hours before I have to sleep. No sleeping in today because I have work tomorrow.

 

If you LOVE romance or love to read in general FOLLOW THIS BLOG. Seriously, I follow back always and who doesn’t like mutual support? I’ve seen reviewers too. FOLLOW. Because I will need people to critique my books, good or bad, doesn’t matter. Some help is better than none at all. I’ll keep you guys updated. Thanks to all that follow me. If you have a fan page, I’ll be sure to follow you. Thanks followers 🙂  Keep writing and blogging

 

 

Oversleeping! Grrrr

What can I say, it happens right? I woke up on and off between 10 and 12, got to the shower at 2ish, now here I am. Regardless of when I get up, I will posts on here daily. I aim for the mornings and afternoons. Sorry if you guys missed last night’s post. I forgot to place tags on it -.-.

Last night I stayed up meddling with the book format and educated myself on inside and outside margins,  and gutter. I didn’t know what they were so when I formatted it, it was pretty much a shot in the dark. Luckily CreateSpace had a downloadable guide. That helped out ALOT.

The books recommended that I look at books that I like and measure them. This makes alot of since. If you want to look professional, why not learn from the professional? So I fiddled around with it. At first it was hard and frustrating. My manuscript kept running into the spine and sentence cutoffs happened to every single even page. Finally somewhere around 3 a.m I finally got the hang of it.

Trial and error. That’s how you win it. So after I was satisfied with my competence with the format work, I decided it was a break. I went back and forth with my favorite blogger for a while as I worked on another story “Beyond A Lifetime” I believe I gave the story description in my earlier posts. I stayed up close to 5 a.m writing it. Passion and creativity put together will make 5 hours seem like one hour. After whitening my teeth, I went to bed.

And now here I sit, blogging :). I checked the facebook fan page and the like count grew. Some likes on there aren’t from friends, meaning someone from here peeped. Thanks you all, I really appreciate it. I have to go grocery shopping and possibly to my college campus so I can’t stay much longer. I’ll update later tonight. Stay awesome bloggers.

 

If you LOVE romance or love to read in general FOLLOW THIS BLOG. Seriously, I follow back always and who doesn’t like mutual support? I’ve seen reviewers too. FOLLOW. Because I will need people to critique my books, good or bad, doesn’t matter. Some help is better than none at all. I’ll keep you guys updated. Thanks to all that follow me. If you have a fan page, I’ll be sure to follow you. Thanks followers 🙂  Keep writing and blogging

Update 12-27-2013

Hey bloggers and followers! I’m a little proud of my consistency with the updates. So far, since I made this blog seven or six days ago, I’ve been making updates and posts twice a day. The goal is to keep doing this. It should be possible since I can update via phone and computer.

So today I spent more time on researching page formatting and I’m getting closer and closer. The page count is fine. But now I need to format the book so the margins and trim size meet distributor/market standards. This way I can sell my book in paperback and ebook form.

Today I followed the recommended margin setup I saw on CreateSpace. But my manuscript isn’t centered when I do this. The words on the even pages get sucked into the spine so some words aren’t readable. Not good. So I researched forums and site and fiddles around Microsoft word and I think I finally learned how to do this.

I’m really glad that I planned ahead for these things. I still have plenty of time to reach my deadlines. Here they are again.

Edit/Revision- December 22nd, 2013 (check)

Formatting-January 5th, 2014

Cover art and design- January 25th, 2014

Blogs/Fan page-January 15th. 2014 (Check, minus the Facebook fan page. That’s in the process of being available.)

Choose Distributor- February 1st, 2014 (Check)

So I have 9 days to meet my next deadline. That isn’t horrible as long as I stay on top of things and keep using my free time diligently. The most important things right now are the formatting and book cover. I know I can do this and all of the motivation I’ve been receiving is pretty helpful towards it.

Speaking of Facebook, oh my gosh. I never realized how HARD it would be to clean it. I have posts from 2011 to 2013. Deleting friends is one thing but those posts are another. It’s not that I have anything bad on there, I just have to untag myself from alot of things, unfriend a few negative people, etc. Basically making the page as clean as possible.

I might just make the page public and leave pasts posts private while future posts are public. There aren’t any bad pictures or anything so that’s something I don’t have to deal with. I have a fan page in the making. All it needs is a cover photo and it’s set. I might post that link so you guys can like it

https://www.facebook.com/T.EdwardRedd

Boom. Go crazy, haha. It’s pretty naked right now but over time it’ll get fleshed out as I make posts and posts pictures. I haven’t looked at my twitter yet. That will be easier since no one can tag me in things on there. I usually tweet motivational things or random things I’m doing with friends.

The social networks are at the bottom of my lists though. Formatting and a cover design. Then I’ll be ready to go into publishing. I can’t explain in words how excited I am, but, I’m pretty excited xD

If you LOVE romance or love to read in general FOLLOW THIS BLOG. Seriously, I follow back always and who doesn’t like mutual support? I’ve seen reviewers too. FOLLOW. Because I will need people to critique my books, good or bad, doesn’t matter. Some help is better than none at all. I’ll keep you guys updated. Thanks to all that follow me. If you have a fan page, I’ll be sure to follow you. Thanks followers 🙂 see you in the a.m. Keep writing and blogging

Awake!! Bright and early

Rise and shine bloggers! The sun is shining in the winter. Isn’t it supposed to snow? Whatever, take the win. It looks like a pretty good day.

I woke up pretty early and it’s because I plan to get a lot done today. I don’t have work and I’m on winter break so I have a lot of free time. I will be dedicating most if not all of this time to book work. I’m still pumped about yesterday. I’m under 500 pages! My book has a fighting chance now yes, yes, yes!!I feel like that guy on the Mighty Ducks after they won at the end. Remember that movie?

 

And it’s not that I didn’t think the book would get readers in the first place. It’s just that if a book looks to be the size of a dictionary, I doubt anyone would bother to look at it unless the cover was AMAZING. I honestly believe readers will love Hero’s Tale. It’s one of those books that touch you at the core. It may even inspire you.

Before I send the book to CreateSpace and start on cover designs I need to format the interior just right. I went through it last night and did it. Right now I’m going to check out standards to make sure it’s finished properly.

Aside from that you all should know that I have an account on pretty much every popular social network. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram are websites I can be found on. I’ve been getting adds on both tumblr and facebook. It’s virtually impossible to find me anywhere besides Facebook and that’s because they’re all either extremely private or…well that’s the only reason.

Now before any eyes start to rise in suspicion let me explain. The accounts are set on private to prevent stalkers or people who I would otherwise prefer didn’t have access to, well, my life. I posts so much and there’s alot of info about me, especially on my Facebook.

But since I will be a public figure soon with the publish and all, I think you all should be able to see “me” as in learn who the author is through those personal things. So I just have to do some cleanup work on the sites before I make them all public. No adds will be necessary, you’ll just be able to look me up. This is all part of a plan I made for my book publishing. I knew that I was going to use Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Hadn’t thought about Instagram, but why not. So it’s in my schedule to have those sites public before the 1st of February. I’m aiming for early January.

Alright, it’s time for me to get to work. Have a great day you all and thanks for following 🙂

 

If you LOVE romance or love to read in general FOLLOW THIS BLOG. Seriously, I follow back always and who doesn’t like mutual support? I’ve seen reviewers too. FOLLOW. Because I will need people to critique my books, good or bad, doesn’t matter. Some help is better than none at all. I’ll keep you guys updated. Thanks to all that follow me. See you later this evening xD

 

I’m back in this!! Update 12-26-2013

Sorry I’m late bloggers/followers. I work at this cool little frozen yogurt shop and when I close shop it’s usually at 9. Takes me about 45 minutes then the drive home is like 30…if I don’t speed 🙂

So I texted my trusty editor during work to inform her of the page dilemma. Her reaction, priceless. I’m expecting her to freak out like I did, but she VERY CALM. I’d go as far to say nonchalant.

Her response went something like this.

Me: We have a problem. After formatting it and adjusting the trim size it came out to be over 700. Text me asap.

Her: So how is that a problem. The font should be smaller then.

I mean…DUH! Why hadn’t I thought of that?? Last night I almost had a heart attack or something. 700 pages, way too long. But I never thought about changing the font size AND THE STYLE! On top of her advice I got alot of advice on here. You all were helpful, thank you.

So here’s the update. After changing the font and style which was “Time New Roman-14” to Garamond-(Between 10-11). The pages knocked down to 456 with a word count of 115,176. So now I can breathe again. I’ll have format the paragraphs and footers again. But this looks great.

Now I’m excited. Hero’s Tale is an amazing Romance novel that I want to share with readers. I don’t want it turned away because readers see how thick the book is.

So now I need to format this doc, then do a book cover design. The sooner I get the cover then sooner I’ll be ready to start the whole process. My fingers are tingling from the excitement xD.

Well all, I have to get to work. I’ll be on here making comments and checking out blogs for a while too. Some of you have a tumblr and a facebook. As soon as I set the pages up, ADD ME. I can’t tell how great it is to finally know more writers, poets, musicians. You know, creative people. I’ll have links on my page soon 🙂

If you LOVE romance or love to read in general FOLLOW THIS BLOG. Seriously, I follow back always and who doesn’t like mutual support? I’ve seen reviewers too. FOLLOW. Because I will need people to critique my books, good or bad, doesn’t matter. Some help is better than none at all. I’ll keep you guys updated. Thanks to all that follow me. Well it’s time for me to get to formatting.

 

 

 

Update 12-23-2013

Hello bloggers and followers! Today was pretty insightful. I did brainstorming for book cover designs and calculated prices for the whole self-publishing process. I’ve decided to publish through a website so I had to get my numbers right.

I won’t tell you guys the price for all of this but I will say things are looking up. I spoke with my friend Tylor and he says that he will help me create a cover. The cover is top priority right now. Before anything can go forward I need the outside design of the book. So these next few weeks will be spent towards that.

With the holidays approaching it becomes pretty difficult to keep up with everything but somehow I’m managing. I’m keeping up with this blog, my book work, purchasing gifts for family members, while still having the leisure to hangout with friends and work on another book. How do I do it? I have no idea. It gives me a headache thinking about it. Even when I’m working and have school, somehow I find time. Small sacrifices win the battle. I know when I sell my first book all of this effort will be worth it.

My blog continually grows each day and it’s a real surprise to me. Day four or five and I’m already close to 40 followers. All of who are readers, writers or book reviewers. I’m liking it, I’m loving all of it. I’m confident that if I stay on top of things I’ll be taking a big step towards my dream to write novels for a living.

So at the moment, top priority=Book exterior design. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to have. The back cover will have some sort of symbolism or reference towards the story so when the reader reads they’ll look back saying, “Oh that’s why that’s there.” You know, to make things interesting. The front cover will have the title “Hero’s Tale” and I’m thinking of going with a beige color with either black or red text. Bear with me here, I’m still coming up with ideas. I’ll keep you guys posted.

Thank you for those who comment, follow and like my blog. All of you are very motivating and I appreciate it. Some would say 40 followers is relatively small compared to others. But to me it’s huge, especially when people have been commenting and liking posts daily. It really means a lot, so thank you! 🙂

Stay posted I’ve decided to update my blog between the hours 7-10 in the mornings AND at night. That’s not including random posts I’ll make with random thoughts and such. I probably won’t be punctual ALWAYS but I will try my best. Thanks again guys.

If you LOVE romance or love to read in general FOLLOW THIS BLOG. Seriously, I follow back always and who doesn’t like mutual support? I’ve seen reviewers too. FOLLOW. Because I will need people to critique my books, good or bad, doesn’t matter. Some help is better than none at all. I’ll keep you guys updated. Thanks to all who follow me. Keep blogging!

 

Goodmorning!! Good…er…Afrernoon!!

Hey bloggers, followers and other people who populate this site. It’s a pretty rainy day but for some reason it feels REALLY sunny!

That could be because I finished the revision last night!! Finally, finally got finished. With the holidays coming up it’s easy to get distracted but great things require focus and effort so I made sure yesterday that if it was the last thing I did Hero’s Tale revision would be complete

I stayed at a Steak ‘n Shake until 3am with a friend reading over the manuscript. The book has been reduced to 470 pages more or less, im the interior design is looking the way I want it so things are looking good.

Things I’ve got to do now are: Book cover design and create Facebook Fanpage. While in my 30 day exile I came up with quite a few ideas for the front cover design and I’ve got connections with pros if needed so I just need to pinpoint an idea. Fun fun.

I will most likely post the cover ideas online to get feedback and critique along with the book’s back cover description. I consider these next steps the “fun” part of the journey because editing and revision took FOREVER. I did it myself many times but there were still errors so I had to hire an editor. Things look golden now, by February they’ll be perfected. Stay posted 🙂

If you LOVE romance or love to read in general FOLLOW THIS BLOG. Seriously, I follow back always and who doesn’t like mutual support? I’ve seen reviewers too. FOLLOW. Because I will need people to critique my books, good or bad, doesn’t matter. Some help is better than none at all. I’ll keep you guys updated. Thanks to all that follow me. I’m going to start posting at a scheduled time. I’ll give the times tonight.

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Update 22, 2012!!

Maybe I should start numbering my updates. I would but I know I’ll be on here religiously for a while with the book publishing coming up. I’d lose track. Meh, whatever.

Hello bloggers and amazing followers 🙂 this will be my update for today. I’m thinking about scheduling times for me to get on both mornings and evenings just so it’s more consistent. I woke up today around 9ish on and off, finally got out of bed at 10. Excuse my laziness.

Speaking of laziness I didn’t finish the revision YET. I got down to 28 pages left to read over. So it looks like I’ll be meeting my original deadline. Very good. I expect to finish by late tonight.

So I try to post at least twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night. The night times is where I tend to get more social with the site and browse around, comment and like posts I find interesting. I’m going to try and amp it up a bit. I just don’t want to be one of those people who make posts about literally nothing. If I posts it will be an update or something interesting.

Thank you for those of you who follow, comment and like my posts. I try to follow everyone who follows me and look at all of your posts. I get more followers each day and I’m starting to realize that it will become hard to follow EVERYONE back, let alone comment and read their posts….or will it? Just make posts and get on weekly and you’ll get a comment, like and maybe even a conversation with me eventually.

I actually had a pretty nice back and forth talk with one of my followers last night. “billyrobin” I believe is what her name is or at least that’s what displays when she leaves a comment or likes. She’s pretty cool. I recommend following her and checking out her blog. Seriously, she’s pretty freaking cool.

If you LOVE romance or love to read in general FOLLOW THIS BLOG. Seriously, I follow back always and who doesn’t like mutual support? I’ve seen reviewers too. FOLLOW. Because I will need people to critique my books, good or bad, doesn’t matter. Some help is better than none at all. I’ll keep you guys updated. Thanks to all that follow me. Enjoy your Sunday and stay warm out there.

Update 12-21-13

Eventually, these posts will be made earlier. Today went pretty swell. I did more research today. Check out my previous post and you’ll see some of the book covers I looked at today.

I don’t have much to tell at the moment. I didn’t work on the revision today. Well that’s a lie, I worked on some but didn’t finish. There’s maybe 70 pages left to read. It’ll be done by noon 🙂 very excited.

I spent about two hours working on another book I am writing called, “Beyond a Lifetime”. Let me give you guys a blurb.

Violet is a girl who has the extraordinary gift to see the future through her dreams. Theom(pronounced Tom) has a voice in his head that occasionally speaks to him to warn him of dangers. Strange? That’s only the start.

One day while working, Theom sees a girl dressed in all purple clothing walk into the frozen yogurt shop, where he works. She tells him that she known him, for years actually. Through her dreams Violet learned about a boy she had never met, until now. Theom soon realizes that the voice he hears sometimes in his head is hers.

Violet tells him that he and her are mortal angels who were once lovers in a preexistence, the time before they became mortals. Initially he doesn’t believe her. How could he? How could things like girls from the future, angels and demons, and premortality exist? To top it off he has a girlfriend whom he deeply cares for.

After warding off a police officer who turns out to be a ghoul, seeing Violet heal burn wounds with her hands and fighting a demon on the beach, Theom soon begins to realize that Violet’s dreams are more than just dreams. This is a story that will forever change his life in this epic series.

That’s what I would put on the back cover. I decided to make this a series. The ending will be made to lead into another. So far I like the story.

Well it’s that time of night. I must be getting to bed so I can finish my revision in the morning. Goodnight bloggers

If you LOVE romance or love to read in general FOLLOW THIS BLOG. Seriously, I follow back always and who doesn’t like mutual support? I’ve seen reviewers too. FOLLOW. Because I will need people to critique my books, good or bad, doesn’t matter. Some help is better than none at all. I’ll keep you guys updated. Thanks to all that follow me. Goodnight 😀