Stephen J Sweeney's Blog

Book 2 Progress Update

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:35:00 +0000

I recently went back across BFTSS:Book 2, tweaking parts and adding in details that were needed.

The whole book now weighs in at 145,000 words, spread across 27 chapters. That's rather a lot. THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS was 128,000 when all was said and done, so this one is 17,000 words longer. This, I suspect, will come down once it has been to an editor, though.

I also printed out the cover, too, just to see how it came out. The result is quite pleasing: it's a great deal more striking than the HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS, but might need a little bit of tweaking to tone done the colours a touch. I'll do this once I begin to order in real proofs of the book.

I'll upload the cover and reveal the title in the new year.

Wow! That's some jump!

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:24:00 +0000

I suffered a small heart attack when I saw this:

All it really means is that someone bought a copy of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS on amazon.co.uk. Still, it's quite an increase in rank. Always good.

Oh, in case you're wondering: the first number indicates the current sales rank on amazon.co.uk. The second number indicates the increase in positions. Since the last time the rank was checked.

Open Office Curly Quotes Solution

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:31:00 +0000

Today I decided to take the manuscript for Book 2 and format it as though it were ready for print. Sadly I discovered that in a number of places, the curly quote marks were completely wrong: closing quotes had been used instead of opening quotes.

After searching around the Open Office forums I discovered what promised to be the solution to my problem:

Convert all the quotes to standard quotes (search and replace)
Select All
Select Default style
Select Tools -> Autocorrect -> Apply
Select All
Select Default style

Sadly, this didn't work. There appears to be a long standing bug in Open Office where the curly quotes won't be applied in certain circumstances, such as when they follow a tab. And as someone who is writing a novel, this is a big deal since my manuscript is filled with such instances.

After playing around with it for a few hours, I finally discovered a forum post (here) where one user described a solution. I will repeat it here, in case it goes for a walk. For this to work, ensure you have Regular Expression selected in the search dialog box.

Search for: "\<
Replace with: (curly quote character)
Select Replace All

Then

Search for: "
Replace with: (closed quote character)
Select Replace All

Hopefully I'll have saved someone from the world of pain which can be the Auto Correct feature.

www.bookdepository.com opens

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:35:00 +0000

Actually, it's been open for quite a while now; since August, as I understand.

Still, it great to see they're now available State-side (though they were delivering to the US free of charge anyway, even when buying from the UK).

HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS is there, of course.

http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780955856105/The-Honour-of-the-Knights

And at a good price: $14.82, a saving of $6.13

Sadly, Amazon.com still continues to sell the book for £20.95, so I'm not really surprised that there have been so few sales (about 3!).

In the US and want a copy of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS? Head to bookdepository.com

Even More Stocks

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:23:00 +0000

Just this morning I received an email from the Stevenage branch of Waterstone's to say that they've just ordered in 3 copies of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS. This is great news. I do hope that the stocking of the novel will continue. I will continue to post updates and that things move along.

I've also found out that there is an extra copy of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS in the Ladenhall branch of Waterstone's that I've not signed yet. I'll be heading in there later on today to give it a quick swish with the pen.

More Stocks

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:05:00 +0000

It appears that my approaching of more Waterstone's to stock HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS has been somewhat successful. I discovered this morning (through the magic of geek tools) that the Dorking branch is now stocking the novel. It also appears that I made some more sales on Book Depository, too.

I'm rather stoked; this is going better than I thought it would. It also puts me into a great position for next year when Book 2 comes out.

With luck I will more than surpass my goal of 100 copies sold by Christmas... with luck. So long as the stats at BookDepository are true, then it's looking good.

Remember that if you want to keep up with what is happening with myself and the novel, then you can always subscribe to the various RSS feeds available.

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http://www.battleforthesolarsystem.com/rss.xml

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Revisions, Stocks and Sales Ranks

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:55:00 +0000

Yesterday I got started on the final set of revisions (for now) for Book 2. I had a few notes that I needed to tweak into the text, and though I thought it might take a day or so, it only took a couple of hours. I also ran a grammar check through the manuscript (being a Kubuntu user I use Open Office, which doesn't have a built in grammar checker). It found a number of errors, such as a instead of an, duplicate words and stuff like that. Nice to see that Free grammar tools are getting better. I'll start revisiting chapters today, which I marked as being overwritten.

Aside from that I also noticed that the Bedford branch of Waterstone's has now got stock of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS. Sadly I won't be able to sign these copies, since they are a little out of my way, but it's nice to see that the circulation of the novel is improving. Hopefully there will be some more stocking at other branches... which reminds me: I must find out what the deal with the Piccadilly Circus stock is.

HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS' sales rank on Book Depository remains active, hovering around the 150,000 mark. I'm actually not too sure what that really means: Every day or so, the sales rank has climbed a few places. The Amazon sales rank also climbs a little, too; but only by a few hundred places. So, I'm not sure whether sales are occurring or if its gremlins. Hopefully the former.

Rather annoyingly, Lulu reported 0 sales for October. I happen to know this is wrong, since Waterstone's bought in at least 5 copies, so they would have registered. I think it might take a while for Lightning Source to register the sales, though.

Anyhow, onwards.

More Signings

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:50:00 +0000

I signed a few more copies of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS this weekend, for Waterstone's Canary Wharf and Waterstone's Brighton. If you're in either area then get down to the branches and grab yourself a copy. I got some nice compliments from the staff, too. Both branches were impressed with my efforts and said that the book was selling well. Understandably, I'm rather pleased with this.

I'd love to work with a small press now, to get the book into Waterstone's 3-for-2 offers. It'd only drive down the cover price, too. Of course, I'd need to find one who is interested first. Still, I'm pleased with the progress so far.

Oddly, the traffic to my website has exploded this morning. www.battleforthesolarsystem.com received over 11,000 page hits last month and this morning there were over 800 already. Might not sound like a lot, but when I first opened the site there are only about 2,000 each month. It's gradually crept up, though.

However, I think it's probably just spam bots going nuts. There are no referrals anywhere, so it's direct requests all the way. We'll see what happens.

UNF Insignia iPhone Wallpaper

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:25:00 +0000

Not sure how I forgot this one, but here it is.

Wallpapers Pt. II

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:05:00 +0000

Last night, I had a crack at doing the United Naval Forces insignia. Actually, it was more like about 2 or 3 cracks; I couldn't quite get it right. The gold on the insignia didn't contrast too well with the rest of the glass effect. So, I decided to simply make the entire thing out of various levels of white glass. The result wasn't too bad in the end, I guess; it was never going to be an easy logo to recreate.

I've also made some iPhone versions (320x480) of the wallpapers, too. These will be added to the website in the new year, but I'll put them here, now. These images are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommerical-No Derivative 3.0 unported.

GMail Spam Tip

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:24:00 +0000

I expect a lot of people know this already, but I'll repeat it here for anyone else who is interested.

Google's anti-spam works well, but are you still depressed at seeing something that resembles,

Inbox (3)
Sent Mail
Drafts
All Mail
Spam (14)
Bin

Wish that horrible unread spam counter would go away? Simple. Just do the following:

* Go to Settings (top right)
* Go to Filters
* Click "Create New Filter"
* Type in:spam into the "Has the words" box
* Click Next Step. Ignore the warning.
* Check Mark As Read
* Check Also apply filter to x conversations below
* Click Create Filter to finish

Now, whenever spam turns up it will automatically be marked as read. It means that you'll need to manually check your spam box every few days. Maybe once a week or so, but that should make your Gmail look a little more pleasent.

Wallpapers

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:51:00 +0000

Whilst still on break from writing and editing (which will resume next Monday!), I've been creating wallpapers and stuff for the update to www.battleforthesolarsystem.com. They're coming along quite nicely and I hope to have them up and ready sometime in the new year. My POV-Ray skills don't seem to have abandoned me yet, so I was able to turn around some nice glass-ified versions of the main naval insignias.

I've still got the United Naval Forces insignia to do, which I'll have a pop at tomorrow or the weekend, or whenever.

I'll be offering them in 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x920 and 1920x1440. They'll be placed under a Creative Commons by-nc-nd 3.0 license.

From top to bottom: CSN Insignia, INF Insignia, Honour of the Knights, Honour of the Knights sans text, Concept cover.

www.battleforthesolarsystem.com Update

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:55:00 +0000

Whilst taking a break from working on Book 2, I've been updating the BATTLE FOR THE SOLAR SYSTEM website. What I've been doing is adding in new character profiles, updating others, and shuffling things around. I'm also going to update some of the graphics and offer a few more downloads. Nothing fancy, mind; just the emblems rendered in POV Ray or something like that. I would probably offer them as in a number of resolutions, from 800x600 up to 1920 x 1200. Depends on what people want.

One thing I've been thinking is that I need to be mindful of introducing a load of spoilers into the character profiles. Since they will now contain updates from the goings on from HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS, it would mean that potential readers could have much of the story ruined for them.

Maybe I'll shove in some spoiler toggles into the pages to begin with, so that visitors can opt to filter out stuff that could spoil the story.

Book Review: Two Caravans

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:19:00 +0000

TWO CARAVANS is a novel by Marina Lewycka, the author of A SHORT HISTORY OF TRACTORS IN UKRAINIAN. The novel follows the story of several migrant workers who come to England, seeking their fortune. They all begin working in a strawberry field for a farmer, living in two caravans: one for the men and one for the women. Primarily the story centres around two Ukrainians: Andriy and Irina.

One of my favourite characters in the book was Dog - a dog. His parts of the book are written entirely in capitals, without any sort of punctuation and in very basic English. Just as one might expect a dog to think.

The book is very witty, playing on some of the naiveties of the characters and their wide eyed innocence of what they might be getting themselves into, whilst others exploit them. It's also something of an eye opener for how migrant workers can be treated how what kinds of jobs they end up doing, as well as whatever-else they have to put up with. I chuckled a number of times whilst reading it. There are also some parts in the book where I felt concerned for the well-being of the characters, such as at the hands of the callus and unsympathetic Vulk, who showed little warmth and treated the workers like cattle.

The one thing that I didn't like about the book, however, was the constant swapping of points of view and writing styles. Some of the characters points of view are written in first person, whilst others are written in third person present tense. This sometimes caused me to wonder who I was reading about and I might not fully grasp the character I was currently following until half way through the passage. In these cases Dog was an easy character to follow, owing to the quirky font and all capitals.

I also felt that the pace of the book slowed down a bit in the last 1/3 or 1/4. Whilst things were still happening, it lacked a lot of the humour and punchy excitement of the preceding pages. The ending also felt a little sudden.

Even so, it was a great read.

The Good: Funny, insightful and quite a page turner.
The Bad: The POV and writing style swaps can be a little jarring and might cause one to lose track of the characters.

Waterstone's and All That

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:57:00 +0000

As I had promised to do, I took a walk around the various branches of Waterstone's to see if they would be interested in stocking THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS. The answer was yes, but they all then asked me to drop them an email with the relevant details. They seemed rather impressed that I had sold 85 copies since May. Well, hey... most self published books don't sell more than about 10. The average is 100 copies, a number which is skewed by the odd self published success story that will sell thousands; so I'm doing well.

Fingers crossed that they will be interested in ordering in copies.

I'm hoping to get as many branches of Waterstone's as possible stocking HOTK now, so that I there will be a good load of stores on board when it comes to the release of books 2 and 3.

Sales on Book Depository are still quite steady, too. I'm looking forward to see how they affects my sales come Christmas. Hopefully I'll hit 100 copies sold before the end of the year.

Turns out...

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:57:00 +0000

... that adding all those notes I had left to integrate didn't take as long as I had thought. I had about 7 or 8 items that I needed to deal with, but I found I was able to tweak them into the text rather quickly. Another readthrough is, of course, required. But I'll do that in a month's time or so.

In the meanwhile I'll get back to pounding the streets and seeing which other branches of Waterstone's are willing to stock HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS. I have about 3 or 4 branches left on my list that I wish to visit, so we'll see what happens.

Book 2 Finished

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:10:00 +0000

This morning I finished the re-draft and re-edit of BFTSS:Book 2. There are still a few notes to add and some chapters that need to be revisited, but for the most part the book is done.

The word count at this stage clocks in at 141,500.

Over the next couple of days I will make a few additions from a handful of notes that I still have, but these will be very quick jobs that will only take a few hours at most to complete.

Likely the book will need another edit, but it's a relief to come to the end of this for now. I first started writing the second book in the series directly after the first and so I re-write was badly needed. I feel that this book is far better written than the previous and far more than a worthy sequel to HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS. I will probably have to shorten it, though.

Tomorrow I'll start on adding the bits that need to be added, but for now I can say I'm done.

Oh... and that cover is still fake.

BFTSS:Book Two Progress (100%)

Book Depository

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:35:00 +0000

In recent days I've noticed that the HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS' sales rank on the Book Depository has been rising steadily. To be quite honest I'm not actually sure whether its just their system doing something funny - books being added and deleted and therefore shuffling my novel's rank about a bit. There again, I doubt it would be as extreme as it is.

(click to embiggen)

Today it jumped up nearly 13,000 places, with the days before that leaping a few thousand, too. I don't have any solid sales figures on hand, since they will only appear whenever Lulu decides that they're going to tell me. With luck the constant jumping about means that people are actively buying the book. I would have expected to see a little bit of a rise in traffic to the novel's official website in that case, but it has remained constant so far.

We'll see. Fingers crossed I'll hit 100 copies sold by Christmas.

(The image? Yes, I've written some tools that automatically send me sales data and stuff like that. Very, very useless and very, very geeky. But by now you probably expected that of me anyway!).

Book 2 Progress Update

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:55:00 +0000

Yesterday I finished reading through the 22nd chapter of book 2. It's another chapter that will need to be revisited to ensure that it reads correctly and that all the important details have been dealt with and made made appropriately clear.

I now only have 5 more chapters and 50 or so pages of A4 to read through before this re-draft is finished. After that I'll chop, revise and re-edit some more and mark off chapters that are currently as good as they're going to be able to be made.

I'm also planning on adding a glossary to this book, something that, in hindsight, would have been useful for the first. Still, one day I may be given a chance to write a Second Edition of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS. That would be a good day.

BFTSS:Book Two Progress (81%)

The Rats and the Ruling Sea Signing Event

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:32:00 +0000

Last night I attended the RATS AND THE RULING SEA signing event at Forbidden Planet, in London. There I got to meet Robert V.S. Redick, the author. I had spoken to Rob on Facebook a number of times, but had neither met him in real life, nor been to any book signings before, so I wasn't really sure what to expect.

I actually ended up having a great evening. It was an absolute pleasure to meet Rob, who I found was a very approachable, chatty and genuine person. Before attending the event I'd actually ordered a copy of his book off Amazon, but since Rob had come over from America (where he lives) to do the advance signings in London, I decided I wanted one there. I'm now the proud owner of my very own copy of RATS AND THE RULING SEA, signed and with me a week before the actual release date! I was thrilled!

I also met Stephen Deas, author of THE ADAMANTINE PALACE, and his wife Michaela, both of whom were just as charming and nice to chat to. Michaela was exceptionally bubbly!

As well as the writers, I also met Mark and Liz De Jager, who run a blog called My Favourite Books. Again, thoroughly nice people to chat to and very encouraging about my own writing and publishing efforts. They didn't hang around for too long after the event, though - they had tickets for the London premier of THE ROAD. Can't say I blamed them wanting to hurry along to that!

After the signing we went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, where we had Mexican tapas, beers and chatted about writing, inspiration and all that. I was very interested to hear Stephen Deas' own experiences with writing and publishing. I will certainly be looking into picking up a copy of his novel at some point in the future.

So, all in all I had a great time... and have a personalized signed copy of RATS to look forward to, too.

Re-stocking

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:07:00 +0000

Following on from the recent out out stocks, the Brighton and Canary Wharf branches of Waterstone's each received new stock of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS. I'll be getting around to signing these copies in the near future.

Nice to see that it appears the stocking issue at Waterstone's is finally getting resolved. Only two more stores left to deal with: Piccadilly Circus and High Holborn.

Amazon Pricing

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:53:00 +0000

Looks like Amazon.co.uk have dropped the price of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS to compete with Book Depository. You can now save 10% on the cover price at both stores (so, £8.94 now)! Excellent!

Brighton Waterstone's

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:31:00 +0000

I just noticed this morning that the Brighton branch of Waterstone's has sold out of THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS. Very pleased with that. Hopefully they'll get some more stock in soon, so I can go in there and sign them. With Christmas coming up a signed book with make a nice present.

I'll keep people notified as to when stock returns. There are still copies available in a number of other Waterstone's branches (8).

9,000 words

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:39:00 +0000

That's the length of Chapter 19, The Littlest Things, from Book 2 that I just finished reading and going over. It's clearly too long at that length, so I'll have to find ways of cutting it back. From here on out the chapters become a lot shorter, with one of them being a little more than about 1000 words.

There are 8 chapters left to go over, so it's likely I will finish going over this re-draft by the end of October as I planned.

Right. I'm going to go for a run.

BFTSS:Book Two Progress (70%)

More Signed Copies

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J Sweeney) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:15:00 +0000

I was able to sign more copies of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS this morning. It looks like Waterstone's might slowly be getting back to normal, with Ladenhall Market (close to Liverpool Street and therefore in the heart of the City) have just received their stock of the novel.

I'm a little gutted it hadn't happened sooner, though, since I imagine the novels would have sold very quickly whilst I was in the press all those weeks ago. Certainly it helped to sell the copies in Brighton and a number of other places.

Still, I'll keep signing and promoting them as much as possible.