Month: August 2018

The changes to the layout of the novel seemed to work, at least as far as the title page and the other front matter. The actual content of the book still had an issue. This was going to take some exploration. I think it may now be fixed.

The trick had to do with using Microsoft Word Professional 2016. Barnes and Noble Press let you upload your work as a formatted Word document or as a PDF. Converting from Word to PDF proved troublesome, so I used Word. It occurs to me now that the issue with the transformation may have been the same on I had with the publishing.

The book has two sections. The first is the title page and assorted front matter. Those pages do not have page numbers in my case. The second section is the actual text of the book and should have page numbers starting on page one of the story. Word lets you create section breaks and start the numbering on the start of the section.

There is an issue, however, if you use the default sections. One of the most annoying things about any Microsoft product is that it tries to be helpful. In most cases, it is about as helpful as a four-year-old. In this case, the default section settings try to optimize your layout so that you have no extra blank pages. This can end up, like for my novel, starting page one on the even side of the paper.

To fix this, you have to go to the Layout tab in their ribbon toolbar and specify that you want a section that starts on the first odd page. They have several choices, but unless you know to look for them, you would sit with the same frustration that I had. (When the revolution comes, I’m sure the Microsoft people will be lumped in with politicians and other hated figures.)

My hope is that this will finally fix the issue. I need to get it settled so I can start real promotion of the novel. I also need to stop working on it because my day job has just gotten busy with the start of the semester. By whining here, maybe this will help someone else too.

When last we visited our newly-printed novel, all the pagination was effectively correct except for being one page off. That meant the title page showed up on the left side instead of the right and all the page numbers appeared almost in the gutter. With some simple instructions from the publisher, I made changes. Now to see what effect the changes had.

The process was easy enough. As noted in earlier posts, I’m printing through Barnes and Noble Press. They have a good website that makes it easy to submit your manuscript and covers for publication. The site is short on instructions, so there is a bit of a learning curve. However, the responses from Customer Service have been relatively prompt and helpful.

The steps for making a change to the manuscript are almost the same as the steps for creating the project originally. You simply go to the book project on the dashboard, click on the ellipses in the upper right corner for the item to be changed, and choose “Edit”. From there, the site walks you through the same steps as creating the project, but you only have to upload new things. Once done, the processing starts.

A side effect of this process is that your book is not available for sale during the processing phase. I did note that the edit processing did not take as long as the original processing. There’s no way to tell if that was because I was just editing or if the servers were not as busy. Be prepared for a wait.

My new set of promotional copies are on their way. They should arrive about Thursday. I can start my devious plan to get them into the hands of people who may be able to encourage others to buy. It’s also just cool to have a box filled with copies of your novel in your car; it makes the publishing feel less abstract.

Unfortunately, my day job starts up with the fall semester. The last two weeks have ran me ragged trying to get ready. One of the disadvantages of teaching technology is that it is never the same from year to year. At least I managed to outline and make notes for a horror short story involving sock puppets (don’t ask). As the term settles, I should be able to get back to more writing-related activities.

It was quite exhilarating to actually hold a physical copy of my novel in my hands. For years, I dreamed about it. I couldn’t wait to start handing out promotional copies to get it into people’s hands. What I should have done was taken the time to inspect it better. Now I need to get some changes made.

First I noticed that the title page was on the wrong side of the sheet. In a traditional novel in our culture, you can open the book to the title page and the title will be printed on the right hand side. For my novel, it was on the left hand side. Okay, I thought, that’s odd but it’s a relatively minor thing.

It was not minor. Instead, it was a symptom of a larger issue. All the pages were moved to the wrong side of the sheet, i.e. off by one page. All the pages were there and otherwise laid out well, but the page numbers were in the gutter (the side nearest the spine) instead of the outer margin.

Since this is my first novel, I will assume that I screwed up. When I approved the layout, I did so online instead of looking at a physical copy, so I didn’t notice. I’m also the one who put together the electronic form of the novel for submission, so that is probably where it happened.

For the moment, I have a message to Barnes and Noble Press to see what I can do to fix the issue. My hope is that I can just make the paperback version unavailable for a very short time, upload a new file for the contents, and then make things available again. Fortunately, I have yet to do my promotion plan and haven’t spent any money on that.

I will chalk this up to a learning experience. I always tell people that when things don’t go smoothly it makes for a better story. I will have to heed my own advice.

In a recent Twitter post, author Phil Athans asked “What’s the hardest part of writing horror fiction?” My response was I find most horror to be humorous and don’t know why they find it scary. In response, he suggested some books. I’ve read some of those, and I here’s why I think I don’t understand.

First, a quick note. Since I’m going to be describing what I got from some books, I may be giving away important plot elements. Read on at your own peril.

The Haunting of Hill House

At the top of the list was The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I’ve read this and thoroughly enjoyed it. Apparently, many see this as a story about a horrible house built by a horrible person, Hugh Crain, and the way the ghosts of the house persecute the living. My assumption is that such readers are not paying attention or live in a very small world.

If you read the story carefully, it is a tale about Eleanor, a woman who has lived for a very long time in an abusive environment. With the death of her abuser, Eleanor is cast out into the world with no support structure. In this odd house, she has a full mental break down. It is very sad, but is also a reasonably realistic representation of what a person in that situation would go through. You do not need ghosts anywhere in this tale.

With research, it becomes better established that the supernatural often derives from the structure of the brain. Because of this, insanity can resemble hauntings. As Joseph Campbell put it in the fourth volume of his Masks of God books, “The shaman swims where the madman drowns.” Some would argue that the brain is just reacting to the supernatural that already exists or that the brain interprets what is seen in a human way but does not create that object. Either way, poor Eleanor needed a good shrink more than an exorcist.

H. P. Lovecraft

Also on the list are the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. Most people know Lovecraft as the originator of the Cthulhu mythos. His writings tell of horrific, indescribable beasts from other dimensions and planets. He can easily spend several pages describing how indescribable these monsters are. When I first read his stories, in my teens, I found them dry. I read them later in life and decided they were okay.

I can see where being faced with the unusual can be unsettling. People are wired that way. Likewise, an encounter with something powerful that wants to harm you can also instill fear. That’s why most of us avoid lions. Even with my more mature reading, I found it hard to relate to the characters, who often brought about their own demise by being nosy.

Much as the Godzilla movies, and related giant creature flicks, were a response to the nuclear age, Lovecraft’s writings respond to early thoughts on multidimensional space. The math and physics were coming into place to tell us that the universe had sides we could not see. A beast lurking in another dimension could be just as much a threat as a beast behind the tree. This is not much different from old fairy tales of someone passing into the fairy realms and suffering their adventures there. Honestly, when walking in the woods, I will avoid walking through anything that looks like a door, but that is for my own amusement and not out of actual fear of ending elsewhere. If I did end up in another dimension, I could simply await rescue by the student loan people wanting their money.

Alien

The list includes the novelization of the movie Alien. This is getting closer to what I can see as scary. I’ve not read the book, but the film is one of my favorites. In this case, you have many great horror components. The setting is cramped, dark, and isolated. Even without the monster, if anything goes wrong you could die in the vast emptiness of space. Then they add the unknown that evolves into a predatory beast intent on killing everyone from the shadows. Those are good scary things. I don’t tend to be frightened by movies, but I can see the intensity of this flick and why people would see it as scary. It is not as supernatural as some others; it relies on primal fears.

And the Rest

I have yet to read the other books on the list, but I intend to. It should be educational. However, just analyzing the items I have read, I think I might be seeing part of my problem with understanding horror.

I tend to be a bit grounded. I blame all that math and science I studied to get my college degrees. It’s much more likely that it comes from a life of hard work (before college) and all the other banal things. That’s not to say that I haven’t seen some weird stuff, because I have, but it left me without fear of those supernatural things. The danger in the stories rarely seem believable to me, so I don’t get it. I can see the patterns and know generally why other people find them scary, but not me.

What Scares Me

What are the things that scare me? My usual response is, “idiots in large numbers”. It sounds flippant, but it is true. I don’t have the stamina to fight more than a dozen idiots in hand to hand combat before they overwhelm me. That’s assuming that they don’t take me down before then.

The other fears are mundane as well. When I walk in the woods, often at night, I worry about a few things, in order of likelihood: deer that feel cornered, belligerent drunks, feral dogs. My sturdy walking stick will take care of a frightened deer or a drunk; not so much feral dogs. There is nothing supernatural about any of these things.

What this suggests to me is that I may want to limit my horror writing to the more natural terrors. The bad thing in Stephen King’s Cujo is just a very naughty dog. There are plenty of mundane things that could frighten the casual reader. Most don’t like the idea of being swallowed up by the ground (partially happened to me as a kid). Parasites burrowing into the skin and slowly working their way to your tasty entrails should cause discomfort in a reader. It could be disconcerting if some psychopath is convinced that you are his father and now intends to eat you.

I think horror could be a lot of fun to create, but I will have to work on it. On the other hand, how does it make you feel to know there is someone out there who thinks horror is funny?