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Writer's pictureStephen Burckhardt

Whatever Wednesday: Technical Difficulties . . .


Hello, Posse!


I hope you are all having a wonderful week. I would like to start out by telling you that if you bought copies of the ebooks in my Into the West Saga Serial, I am sorry if you got tons of notices about new updates this week. The good news is, I should be done with that.


When I first started writing the Into the West Saga Serial, I was writing it in Word. I had to go through a lot of steps to get the stories formatted correctly for printing. Later, I bought a formatting program, Vellum for Mac, which made everything so much easier. Seriously, I love that program!


I always thought one day I would sit down and get all the books loaded into the Vellum program and reissue the first books so everything would have the same look and layout. That day finally came. I had to get everything set up for the new hardcover editions, so I thought I might as well reset all the books in the process.


I spent this last week getting everything updated so the books contain most of the same things. All the books except part one, Into the West: The Orphan Train have recaps for the books previously released, naturally book one would not have that. A few of the books have glossaries in them, but not all. I do not use German or archaic English in all of them for which you would need a translation or definition. And Last, the first few books did not offer a sneak peek at the first chapter of the next book if you answered a trivia question about the books serial. Since those books are already published, I did not see a reason to go back and create sneak peeks for them when you can just read the whole book now. Other than these minor differences, the books are now all the same. I wanted to have this ready while I look into issuing a boxed set for Christmas. If I can figure out how to do this, they would all need to be formatted the same.


I think I am being very ambitious right now. I still have the last book to write, a companion fun book I want to create, a box set to figure out how to do, all set for Christmas. This only gives me basically a month and a half to get every thing created and ready to go while I keep up with the usual blogs, ads, etc. No pressure!


Luckily, things are working out in my personal life to help give me the time I need to work on everything. My husband, Pedro, has been incredibly supportive and has taken over most of the household chores the last week and a half so I can spend all my time devoted to getting all the books set up. I think it helps that I promised to get him Bugatti if I ever make money from writing.


I would be much farther ahead right now if I hadn't over estimated how well the Kindle publishing programs worked. Do not get me wrong, they work great just very, VERY slow! I was about to throw the computer last night. I would upload a cover image and it would take anywhere from 10-15 minutes or more for the image to load. Then, I would click to open previewer and it would take another 10-15 minutes to load into that to view. If I had something that needed correcting, I would have to make the corrections, upload again, preview again and by that time more than an hour had passed. It was maddening. This morning about 4 am I was trying to load up what I thought would be the last version for a cover and it took so long, I just gave up and went to bed. I left the computer on so it could finish and this morning I was finally able to see it.


As incredibly frustrating as this process has been, I am really happy with how everything is turning out. Going forward when I do the next book in the Territories Saga Serials, I can start out with this set up and everything will match from the beginning. It will all be so much easier!


I was trying to think of something I could do to get rid of some of the old versions of books I have. I decided to go around to the free libraries in my town and put books in them. I am also going to offer some local libraries or independent bookstores a gift bag to give away at Christmas. So much planning going on, but I really want this book serial to finally get some attention. I've been working on it since 2015 and I finally feel like I'm figuring out how to do this all well.


In other news . . . sort of, it's October (you're shocked, I know), the month of my favorite holiday!!! Be sure to watch my blogs for a special treat I am working on for everyone on my mailing list. If you are not on it, join today. It is always free and I never spam with a lot of stuff. My mailing plan only allows me three mass emails a month, so you will never get more than that. Plus, you can quit at anytime, no strings attached! You have nothing to lose, and free stuff to gain!


In the spirit of Halloween, I wanted to share a great DIY Halloween decoration video I found. I will be heading out this weekend to pick up a few things to finally decorate a bit here. Halloween is not big in our neighborhood. We only ever get about two trick-or-treaters every year. That is so weird to me. When I lived in Kansas, I was known as the house to go to for Halloween and I would often get more than 200 kids in a few hours. I miss that! It was always so much fun. Here is hoping we can get four kids here this year!


Watch for more news coming Friday.


Have a great week, Posse!

Dianne


P.S. don't forget, the entire Into the West Saga Serial is now free to read in Kindle Unlimited! I would love it if you would read the books, leave a review, tell your friends or just share this blog on social media. Every bit of exposure helps me in ways you can never imagine.

Thank you!






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