THE BLACK BOX, AT LAST

My science-fiction novel, THE BLACK BOX, went live today, finally.

Since we last met, I went through it twice. Made over two hundred changes in the first pass, including the fixing of two actual errors.

The second pass generated about a third as many changes.

In between passes I targeted dashes (again), reducing their number from 86 to 20. I like writing in dashes, but it's a habit I really need to break. They just don't work well in ebooks. And they make the text appear a bit hysterical and gushy.

I also targeted ellipses, cutting them to the bone. Those guys are often even worse in appearance in ebooks, depending on the font size chosen by the almighty reader. If your characters use 'em a lot, they look tentative and a bit untrustworthy. (If that's what you're going for, fine.)

During the (most recent) final pass I noticed a pattern in my writing I needed to address. A character would ask a question of another, then "before he could answer, [this new event took place]." Some version of that sentence occurred a dozen times in 95K words. I revised all but three or four of them.

(I get hung up introducing unexpected action in a scene. I keep wanting to write something like: "And all of a sudden, the car blew up!" If I just wrote "The car blew up," that would certainly qualify as a sudden event, at least to the unsuspecting reader. I really shouldn't have to SAY the event occurred suddenly. Seems baldly stated, though, without a few words of introduction. It's just one more thing I have to work on.)

I added some images to the book: signs and lists and protest banners, etc. I think it's fun to do, gives the book some visual variety, and doesn't cost much. I used GIMP, indexed the image to eight colors, and saved it as a gif to minimize the file sizes.

The book (with its title page image) was right on the brink of tipping from seven to eight cents delivery fee. The images I added bumped it all the way, but not by much. Turns out, I had already done something else that put me squarely in the eight cent category.

The cover.

I tried using a cut-down cover to save money, but I found it looked skimpy in the Fire HD 8.9" Kindle. (According to Previewer.) Using the full sized display cover (1600 by 2500) got me a full screen cover image (from margin to margin) in every Kindle out there...and maybe some future versions, too. (In the HD 8.9" the image increased 47% when I went with the display cover file.)

I know handing KindleGen a big-ass image file (mine is 357,286 bytes) invites it to chop it down to 127K. I just think it does a fine job. But yes, doing it this way MAY bump you up a penny in delivery charges. (If you're already just over the half cent point, going this way won't cost you any more money.)

My next project will be the second book in the Trevor Blake middle-grade chapter-book series. (The first was THE EXPLODING WIZARD'S RIGHT-HAND BOY.)

Stay tuned.