'Sup?

So, again I’m guessing you’ve noticed I haven’t been blogging at all lately, which means my previous vow to blog through thick and thin was nothing but a dirty stinkin’ lie.

However, here’s the thing:  this summer has pretty much been a complete medical nightmare for me, and I just couldn’t really see talking about that every few days.  Everyone seems to be having a rough time these days, so I know I’m not alone, and everyone has plenty on their minds without me giving a blow by blow of another sucky day I’m having.  So, that’s pretty much why I haven’t written in a while.  Deal.

I will admit to finding clever ways to whine a bit though (at least I think they’re clever).  Like yesterday I went to see my RA doc and I said, “In the last five weeks I’ve had the worst pain I’ve experienced since I was diagnosed, but I’m thankful that I can sit hear and tell you about it.  (He rolled his eyes.)

I find myself worrying about my relationship with my doctor.  I really like the guy and I think he’s a great doc, but . . . He is extremely thorough in his examination (which normally is a good thing since most docs seem to try to set a land speed record for getting you out of their office), but part of my doc’s examination is to check and manipulate every joint in my body.  He has a gift for just feeling a joint and knowing how much pain I’m experiencing; I rarely have to say a word.  However, and here’s the big However, the exam really hurts; like call out your mama’s name hurts.  And it takes me several days to get over all the pain and swelling from just the exam.  So my dilemma is:  why do I like a doc that hurts me so much?  I mean, come on, that’s really kind of twisted.  And worse, I pay him to do it.

I left his office with a handful of new and stronger prescriptions, my name on the nurse’s chalkboard for all the cuss words that slipped out during the exam, a new appointment scheduled in a month, and a warning that next time I hurt that bad I should call sooner. 

Say what?  I’m here to tell you I didn’t put up with it.  Oh sure I took the prescriptions, apologized for my potty mouth, and will make the next appointment (God willing), but there was no way I was going to take the blame for not calling sooner.  I looked my doc straight in the eye and said, “It’s not my fault I waited so long to come in.  I tell you I’m experiencing the worst pain in my life and you expect me to think rationally.  That’s just silly.  That’s like going up to some guy you just ran over with your car and saying, ‘Didn’t you see me coming?’” (He rolled his eyes again.)

I am hopeful that some of the med changes we are making will help me get back on my feet, and that I’ll be able to get back to writing again soon.  I’ve lost momentum on several of my projects, like I still don’t have a cover for Fighter’s Bane and stuff like that, but I have been working out a storyline for a new manuscript and I’m pretty excited about how it’s coming together.  So, cross your fingers that the meds work, and hopefully I’ll be telling you about my new story in a few months.

Dog Days of Summer

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written.  Sorry.  I think about blogging everyday, but these last few months have been so bad for me, that each time I started to write, all I’d put down on paper was sentence after sentence of whining.  So, I’d delete it and hope the next day would be better, figuring you really didn’t want to hear me blubber about my life.  My wife, however, thinks blubbering, or sharing as she puts it, would be good for me, and she is a very wise woman, yet somehow it was just easier for me to suffer in silence.

This blog, then, is a small compromise.

In short, at the beginning of the summer, my doc and I had to make some adjustments to my medication because what I was using was not keeping up with the progression of the disease.  Well, my body didn’t handle the adjustments.  I actually blogged about Remeron, so that might give you a better idea of how the summer has gone for me. 

So, with the bad reaction on my part, additional adjustments were made, and my body liked those even less.  My blood pressure shot up, stayed up, and three trips to a cardiologist haven’t helped much.

To make things worse, at least in my mind, my Rheumatologist (who’s one of the most remarkable people on the planet in my opinion) took a long and much deserved vacation.  Of course, I waited until he was gone before I fell completely apart, just so he could enjoy himself.  I finally saw him Tuesday and informed him that on his next vacation he’s taking me with him.

However, the result of that meeting was again, more changes in medication.  Including, and if you listen out your window you can hear me crying no matter where you live in the world, the removal of one of my very favorite medications.  He suspects that it’s the real culprit behind my blood pressure changes, but I didn’t care, I didn’t want to stop taking it.  The whole scene was pathetic, with me holding onto his leg, crying like a baby, pausing periodically to scream “No” and then crying some more.  Later I felt bad for him, since he had to drag me along on all his afternoon rounds before the nurses finally pried me off his leg.  However, my favorite med is no more.  Sigh!

I’m trying to adjust to the new meds he prescribed, but mostly I’ve been a vegetable the last few days, in part due to the new meds, and in part because the days after the RA exam are always bad for me.  Add to that that today was “shot day” and it’s not been the best week.

However, on the bright side, the summer wasn’t an entire waste because I’ve been working on two new books.  Whenever I get an idea for a story, I try to get it down as a synopsis, and then I dig into background details.  Names, for both characters and settings, often take me the longest to figure out.  Sometimes when I’m brainstorming that, I’ll start writing out scenes to help me organize my thoughts.  None of that is as fun as writing, but it all has to be done, and so that’s what I’ve been digging into during my rather sucky summer.

About a week ago I started actually writing one of the stories, and I like the results so far.  I can’t sit at the computer very long before the pain gets unbearable, so I have to work a little bit here, a little bit there.  This one story is coming into my head fast and furious, so I’m really bummed at how slow I have to go, with all the breaks and so forth, but writing is helping me cope with everything, so that’s a good thing.

And in the big scheme of things, I remind myself that life could always be worse, so I try to appreciate what I have now, and make the best of it.  I really will try to do better on the blog thing.  Marna thinks I should blog about all the medications I use, their side-effects, things like that, but I’m not sure that’s what folks want to hear about.

I admit, it’s interesting having RA and trying to establish myself as an author.  Not always fun, but most definitely interesting.

Shot Day - in more ways than one

All Right, so I just gave myself my Humira Injection, and I’m writing this with the hope that it will distract me for a little while. 

Every two weeks I have this nice little thing I call “Shot Day.”  I give the whole day homage because the psychological trauma, pre- and post-shot ritual, pain, and side-effects seem to make the entire day tremendously Sucky!

You’d think that after taking this medication for two years I would be an old pro, but sadly, I am not.  The truth is that every two weeks I dread Shot Day as much as I did that very first time.  I mean come on, getting used to sticking a needle in your leg should not be something that becomes old hat.  (By the way, Humira cutely calls their NEEDLE a Pen – give me a break.)

Now before any Diabetics jump down my throat and stomp on my liver, I humbly admit that your plight is much worse than mine, at least in terms of needles, etc., and I have nothing but the utmost respect and pity for you.  However, in my defense, I’ve been told that the type of medicine I inject, and the needle size I use, is different than any other types of medications out there, and that the injection is difficult (a gross understatement) for everyone.  But I tell you with the utmost sincerity, that does not make me feel one bit better.

I love how the manufacturer says the medication may sting.  May Sting!  It does NOT sting.  I was a beekeeper for over a decade, I know about stings, and I’d gladly welcome back my little furry friends in exchange for that stinking needle (yes, I have a thing about needles, but still).  The first time I gave myself the shot, I screamed so loud for my Momma that she opened the door to see if I was outside, AND SHE LIVES TWO STATES OVER.  I’m perfectly fine with my masculinity, so you can take my word that I didn’t break down and cry, but I did cuss like a sailor (to those sailors who do not cuss I apologize) for a while.  Sting my flabby fanny!  (Which, by the way, is not where the shot goes.  You can chose either the top of the thigh or the stomach below the belly button – yeah, right, I’m gonna jab a 3-foot needle in my belly and call it a day.)

I have learned, over time, that when I hit the button on the self-injector, and the massive needle rips into my tender flesh, one of two fates await me:  Either the shot will be excruciating for a couple of minutes and then fade into just a dull ache with lots of bruising; or the shot will sting (I use that word with heavy sarcasm), for a couple of minutes and then my leg will feel like I plunged it into a cuisinart, plus, it will hurt like the dickens (which I’ve heard is a euphemism for the devil) for the next few days.  Hard to believe, but I prefer the excruciating two minute pain, because the cuisinart thing is really unpleasant (yes, more sarcasm).

I’d tell you more about the process (like all the prep I have to do leading up to the shot, etc.), but sometimes it helps to walk around a while after the shot, really I mean hobble while dragging one leg and whimpering, and so I’m off to tour the house (and most likely call out for salvation each time I accidentally bump my leg).

In closing, for those of you who don’t know much about Humira, despite the rather unpleasant process of stabbing myself every two weeks, nothing has worked to reduce my RA pain as much as Humira has.  For the most part, the medication works by suppressing the immune system, which is where the bulk of the relief comes from (remember, with RA it’s your immune system that is trying to kill you). 

Sometime, when I’m not blubbering as much as I am right now, I’ll try to do a better job in discussing the benefits of Humira, but for right now I seem to be heading toward the cuisinart result I mentioned earlier, and so I’ll leave you with the only thing worth saying:  MOMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Can You Hear Me Snoring?

Once again I apologize for not blogging sooner.  I’ve pretty much been asleep for the last 3 weeks, and I found that seemed to conflict with typing anything.

I’m currently on 11 medications for my illness; yes, I did say 11.  There are actually a few more I could add to that list, but I only use them as needed, so I think just mentioning the one’s I take daily gives you some idea of what I deal with.

I’ve arrived at these 11 over a period of several years involving a lot, and I do mean a lot, of trial and error.  I’d say for every one of the 11 I’m on now, I’ve tried 3 before I found the one that worked.  In other words, I’ve been my pharmacist’s best friend for a while now.

However, in my overall therapy, I’ve still got some holes.  I especially struggle with medications for my Fibromyalgia and the depression that comes as a result of the weird chemical imbalances my RA causes.  So I’m still experimenting with finding meds for those areas, and especially looking at medications that do both.

Unfortunately, the best one I found for helping both, Savella, worked great for several months and then started giving me such debilitating headaches I just couldn’t stand it any longer.  My doc and I tried several ways to trick my body into accepting the Savella, but we finally had to throw in the towel when I started screaming for my mommy and crying like a baby about the headaches.

(By the way, if you suffer from Fibromyalgia, you should talk to your doc about Savella.  I don’t make any money from them, so I’m not a spokesman, and I no longer use the medication, but, and it’s a big but, while I was on the stuff my pain levels were consistently at their lowest point since being diagnosed.  I’m telling you, I had a little hissy-fit when I realized the most effective medication was out of my reach just because of a side-effect.)

So, last month, when I saw my rheumatologist, we picked another medication for me to try adding.  Intriguing enough, my doc’s fear of suggesting this particular medication was because it is known to have an “energizing” effect, and since I often struggle with insomnia, my doc was hesitant to prescribe something that would “amp” me up.

However, in hindsight, he had nothing to worry about.  I really don’t know why I’m so weird, but the medication had the exact opposite effect of what we expected.  The titration was to start off with a low dose, and then double it after a week, and then again after another week. 

About the second week I fell asleep.  And I’ve pretty much been asleep since then.

Okay, so I’m exaggerating a tiny bit, but I swear, that’s very close to how it worked.  Even when I was awake, all I wanted to do was sleep.  I would sleep for 12 to 14 hours, wake up to take my pills, stare at the tv until it went out of focus after a couple of hours, and go back to sleep for another 12 hours.  One day I slept for 21 hours.

Now I’ve mentioned in other posts that Fibro likes sleep, but too much sleep really ticks RA off, so you can imagine, or maybe you can’t, that by sleeping that much I really, really, really ticked my RA off.  So basically, I’d sleep while writhing in pain and dreaming about being tortured. 

Here’s the kicker though:  when I was awake, I was very relaxed, laid-back even, and my family agreed they loved that about the new medication (I mean, come on, was I that bad before?).  I admit, I was indeed laid-back, because the only thing I really cared about over the last month was going back to sleep, pain and all.

So, tomorrow I go back to see my RA doc, and have to explain to him how the medication that causes “excitability” actually put me to sleep for a month.  That ought to be a fun conversation.  Plus, we will start the whole process again, because I really do need something more for the pain I deal with each day.

So, I apologize for not blogging, and all I can do is entreat you to enjoy the silence while you can, because next he might prescribe a “sedative” and I’ll be so amped-up that I blog ten or twelve times a day.

New Reveiw at YABooksCentral

There's a new review of Davina's Magical Radio at YABooksCentral.  Right after the review went up they changed their entire website, so it took me a little while to track down where the review was at after the change, but the link above is the most recent one that is accurate.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately, I've been so down-and-out that I haven't even been logging on these last few weeks.  Sometimes weird things happen to me with all this RA stuff, and the last few weeks has been no exception.  I'll spare you the details this time, but again, I'm sorry about not staying in touch.  However, I will try to do a better job of blogging in the future.

The paperback copies of Davina's Magical Radio are now available here.  I have to admit, it's pretty exciting to have a printed book for sale, and just holding a copy in my hands is amazing.  However, with all my RA baggage, I've been slow getting the word out.  But I'm working on it, slowly but surely, and I could sure use your help.  If you've read it, or when you read it, please take the time to put up a brief review on Amazon or wherever you got your copy.  Thanks!

Celebrate

Today’s my anniversary, Sunday is Father’s Day, and next Friday is my birthday; I know I’m whining, but it seems unfair to have so many cool days jammed that close together.  It’s like having your birthday in December, you just know you won’t get as many presents as you would if your birthday was in another month.  So, I’ve decided to not just enjoy my three jammed-together days individually, but make the whole week one big celebration, with feasting, music, and frivolity!  So (claps hands), let the games begin!

Other than that, I've been dealing with an ugly flare-up these last three weeks, sorry about not posting.  I hope I'm headed in the right direction finally.

I haven't been doing much marketing, but when I can I've been working on the sequel to Fighter's Bane.  I'm still hoping Fighter's Bane will be out this month.  I'm waiting on feedback from a couple of folks, and I need a cover.

In the middle of the night I got an idea for a werewolf book, so I've been furiously jotting down notes since then.  Who needs sleep?  It's so overrated.

My Brief Romance with Remeron

Okay.  Okay.  I know that title is slightly provocative, but it caught your attention, didn’t it?  But, not wanting to lead you too far astray, I must admit that Remeron is a medication and not a woman with a strange name and loose morals.

For the record, Remeron (the generic is Mirtazapine) is used for several things.  In higher doses it is used to treat depression, and is also sometimes used to treat eating disorders because it causes rapid weight gain.  (However, I can do the rapid weight gain thing all on my own, thank you very much; I certainly don’t need a pill to do that.)  But, in small doses, Remeron is used for insomnia.

So, the true beginning of my romance with Remeron starts about three weeks ago.  I’ve mentioned lately that I’m fighting a lot of pain, at times so much I can barely stand and have to use a cane to support myself while I walk, so it’s no real surprise that I started having trouble sleeping.  I would fall asleep okay, no problems there, but I’d wake up in 2 to 3 hours, doze for another hour, and then not be able to fall back asleep at all.  Now 3 or 4 days of limited sleep I can take, it really happens all the time to me, but usually after about 4 days I have several nights of really long, peaceful slumber, and wake feeling as refreshed as possible for someone with advanced RA.  However, my catch-up days never happened this time, and at the end of two weeks of only sleeping for 3 hours a day, I was pretty miserable (an understatement) and looking for any kind of help I could find.  And so, Remeron enters the picture.

Remeron has kind of an unusual quirk, the lower the dose, the better it is at making you sleepy.  Strange, but true.  So, my doc prescribed that each night I take half of the lowest dose on the market.  And so I did.

By the way, as a side note.  Along with the RA I have Fibromyalgia.  Now those two diseases often go hand in hand, but they have some strange quirks of their own.  For instance, Fibro likes exercise, but RA not so much.  If you do too much with RA, you most definitely will pay.  Fibro also likes sleep.  If you can get 7 or 8 hours of good rest, Fibro loves you.  However, if you don’t get at least that much rest, Fibro is very vicious and makes you pay with pain.  But, on the other hand, if you’re not careful, and get too much sleep, your RA makes you so miserable you don’t ever want to sleep again.  So, balance is key.

But for me, after two weeks of only 3 hours a night, my Fibro caused me more pain than the RA did.  It was murder, I’m telling you!  And so, Remeron to my rescue.  Or so I thought.

Now, the first night, I took my prescribed dose, stretched out on the bed, put my little ear phones in and listened to some of my favorite music (right now it’s Tom Petty and Taylor Swift), and got ready for sleep.  However, I had read that Remeron only takes about 20 minutes to work, so after an hour I was thinking...well, you can fill in any word you think appropriate, but I was convinced it wasn’t going to work.  And then, voilà, I wake up 14 hours later – yeah, I said 14 hours later.  Unfortunately I felt like I had a hangover.  Huge headache, ringing in my ears, tremendous pain because I slept too long and my RA was ticked, and maybe worst of all, I felt exhausted, even worse than when I went to sleep.  Plus, I kind of felt like I hated the world; everything ticked me off.

But I figured, hey, so I’ve got some minor (lol) side effects to deal with, things will get better.  So, I struggled through the day, and at bed time took my little half of a pill and bam, I wake up 16 hours later.  And all of the bad symptoms from the previous day were even worse.  Plus, again, I felt exhausted, and my RA was Furious, and so punished me relentlessly.

Day three, bedtime arrives, and with some trepidation, I take my little half a pill and shazam, I wake up 14 hours later pretty much wishing I was dead.  It was a terrible day to endure.  Every bad side effect times infinity.  Mostly I stayed in my room. 

But when bedtime arrived, I thought, crossing my fingers, tonight will be better because a lot of the people on the forums say the side effects wear off after three days.  But as I’m getting ready for bed, Pip, my often annoying cat, starts whining outside my door.  It’s a problem sometimes, because he wants in the room, and the little stinker will literally throw himself against the door again and again and meow loud enough the neighbors could hear.  So, I shooed him away.  He ran, came back just as I got into bed, and I got up and shooed him away again.  Now I won’t get into the behavioral issues here, remember, this is a story about Remeron.

So, to make this long story shorter, I will tell you that after the 5^th time of this happening, I found myself chasing Pip through the house, throwing furniture and screaming at him at the top of my lungs.  It’s kind of funny when I write it, but it wasn’t really funny for me, Pip, or everyone else in the house.  I don’t behave that way.  I simply don’t.  There’s a lot of reasons I carefully control my temper, but control it I do; until that night.

So, realizing the only thing that had changed in my life was the Remeron, I decided to do a little more research.  And sure enough, it didn’t take long to find that one of the signs that your body is having an adverse reaction to Remeron is, now get this, RAGE.  I kid you not, that is exactly what I found, and exactly how I felt.  I think it actually said:  excessive aggression, explosive anger, and Rage.  Laugh out loud.

By the way, Pip is fine.  He’s a quick little booger and I never caught him, and even if I had I wouldn’t have hurt him.  Animal abuse should be a capital offense in my opinion.  So Pip was fine, gave me little Pip hugs afterward, and I apologized by rubbing my beard stubble all over his cheeks and neck (he goes crazy for that – it’s weird to some, but there’s nothing like hearing him purr when he rubs against my face).

So, night 4, no Remeron.  But dang if that stinking medication doesn’t have side effects for stopping cold turkey.  Now come on, I only took 3 half pills, so I didn’t expect withdrawal symptoms, but sure enough, the next few days were really wacky for me.

Thanks Remeron for pretty much ruining a week of my life.

Now I did read that Remeron helps a lot of people, and so I don’t in any way want to take away from the good that it does others, but it did not work for me.  Falling instantly asleep was neat, but the side effects were miserable.

So, I dumped Remeron after only a 3 day fling.  I guess I’m the love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy.

Biscotti-like Shortbread Cookies

Well, I made a disastrous first attempt at Shortbread Cookies last night.

I’ve been hurting pretty severely these last two weeks, and only sleeping about 4 hours a night, if that, so I’ve been prowling around trying to find things to distract me.  When I hurt this bad, it’s hard for me to do any one thing for very long.  I can’t concentrate to write, TV doesn’t hold my attention, and I can barely move, so gardening or anything physical is out.  I did read several Dean Koontz novels and both of the books by Patrick Rothfuss, so that helped some.  But I got the idea last night that I’d give shortbread cookies a shot.

For the record:  I cannot bake!  Now it’s not really something I worry about, but since I’m actually pretty good in the kitchen, it’s kind of embarrassing that I’m sooooooo bad at baking.

Chicken and dumplings, I rock.  Thanksgiving turkey, people rave.  Smoked bacon & chipotle bbq sauce on smoked tri-tip sandwiches, they line up around the block.  Shortbread Cookies?  The way mine turned out you could slap a coat of floor sealer on them and have a drink coaster that would last for eons.

I’m a “splash-of-this pinch-of-that” kind of guy when I cook.  I like flavorful food, and so spices are my friends.  I’ve got kind of an intuitive sense of how to season dishes and when something is fully cooked.  Don’t know where it came from, and haven’t really tried to hone it, but it’s there nonetheless.  If you want a great grilled steak, I’m your guy.  Stir-fry?  Look no further.  Baked goods?  Keep on walking.

A few years ago, well, maybe over a decade, my sister gave me a stand mixer.  (My sister, btw, is an absolutely phenomenally amazing cook and baker.  I’m just sayin’.)  However, her attempt to nudge me into baking with a really good mixer, failed.  The mixer looks cool on the counter, but in all these years I’ve never used it.  Not a single time.  I know, I know, what a waste; honestly, if you could see my face right now you’d see that I’m thoroughly ashamed!  And so, faced with mind-numbing pain and a cloak of shame, I slid the mixer into a more prominent position on the counter and assembled my ingredients.

As a side note:  I make really good chocolate chip cookies – I mean really, really good; and I don’t measure anything very carefully, but you can get away with that on chocolate chip cookies.  At least I have.

But in true baking, you need to measure, and measure carefully.  Paula Deen, I’ve been listening.  So I got everything ready, which was actually only three ingredients, and I let the disaster begin.

First, my butter was too cold when I put it into the mixer.  I missed the part where it was supposed to be room temperature.  So, step one, which was supposed to “cream” my butter, resulted in the wire mixer thingy getting filled with two sticks worth of cold, unmixed, completely congealed butter.  Refusing to admit that I could be that stupid, I carefully picked all the butter out of the wire mixer thingy, turned the mixer back on, and proved I really was that stupid since all the butter once again jumped inside that silly wire mixer thingy.  (Wire Mixer Thingy:  a hideously evil contraption that most people would identify as a whisk.)  Since by that time it hurt too much to stand, I took a break and let the butter reach room temperature while I tried to do the same.

So, a long while later (it took me longer to “cool off” than it did for the butter to “warm up”), I finally got back to it, deciding I would just throw the sugar in there to help “cut” the butter into the much-sought-after creamy stage.  And it kind of worked.  (Just FYI, Rascal does NOT like the sound the mixer makes.)

So, according to the directions I had printed out, my next step was to take my concoction and add in flour, mixing it by hand with a wooden spoon.  What?  Why use the mixer for anything in the first place?  I could have just nuked the butter and tossed in some sugar if I was gonna have to do the hardest part with my hand.  (People with RA do not hold wooden spoons very well.  And hand-mixing, forgetaboutit.)

So, after spending ages trying to scrape the “creamed” butter-sugar mixture off the satan-spawned wire mixer thingy, I added my flour.  I learned that the cookies are called “shortbread” because you add the smallest amount of flour you can until you reach the desired texture.  What I didn’t learn was what the “desired” texture really was.  But I winged it, figuring the right texture was the one I reached when my hands hurt too much to continue stirring.

Next, the directions told me to divide the mixture between 3, 8-inch round cake pans.  Um...  Well, since I never bake anything you can’t really expect me to have 3, 8-inch cake pans, now can you?  Or even anything resembling a cake pan, for that matter.  I did find a ceramic dish I use to make broccoli-rice-cheese casserole.  So, since it was good and deep, I just threw all the “dough” into there and pressed it down hard to flatten it out evenly.

The directions said 30 minutes at 325.  I know my way around a stove, so that part was easy – or should have been.  At the 30 minute mark my dough was still the color of raw flour and as goopy as soup.  I left it, checked it again in 5 minutes, then 5 more, then 10 more, still goop.  So, at the hour mark I said...well, my mom might read this so I’m not going to tell you what I said, but needless to say:  I gave up.

Much to my delight, the goopy mixture began to harden as it cooled.  Whoopee!  But it just kept hardening...and hardening...and hardening – is there a mathematical symbol for hardening to infinity?

Once I managed to chip them out of the dish (using a chisel and hammer), and broke them into pieces using an even larger hammer, my shortbread cookie (pieces) weren’t that bad.  Well, as long as you soaked them for half-an-hour in some coffee.

Shrug.  Did I mention I’m not so hot at the whole baking thing?  I did?  Good, because that should pretty much sum up the experience.

Inserting HTML Line Breaks

Something has always bugged me about my uploads to Amazon.  When I have Davina’s Magical Radio as a Word doc, it looks amazing, format-wise at least — would I lie to you?

But, I then convert it to html for Amazon, and they convert it to the Kindle format.  And — drumroll please — it doesn’t look so hot after that.  It’s kind of squished.  All the spaces are missing, like between the chapter title and the first line of that chapter.  No biggie in some ways, but looks like I don’t know what I’m doing — amateurish — which may be true, but I don’t want everyone to know.

And along comes the magic line-break.  Years ago, believe it or not, I knew HTML — way before it was even cool to know it.  I actually designed one of the first web pages for a city I contracted with — it wasn’t beautiful, but it was still one of the first.

However, html has flown from my brain, as have so many other fine tid-bits of info.  But I knew, deep, deep down, I knew there was a way to fix my line-break problem.

And last night I found it.  Now it is probably not the fastest way — those of you who really know html can go ahead and laugh, I really don’t mind — but it is A way.

I use/insert <br/> at the end of a line when I want a break before the next one.  I convert the Word doc to html, and then use Notepad to modify the html code.  It takes a long time to insert all the line breaks I want, but it makes my happy when I see the final result:  No more Squishy!

So, the next time you’re reading Davina’s Magical Radio on a Kindle, and you come to a pretty line break, you can say, “Not only did he write the book, he made it pretty for me too.”

Forgetting to Blog

Okay here is something I hate to admit, yet I’m doing it with a smile at the moment:  I seem to forget a lot of stuff these days.

I have 5 versions of Davina’s Magical Radio (master copy, print copy, 1 copy for each of the 3 major ebook-readers), so when I spot a formatting or grammatical error in one, I have to change it in every version.  Yet, here I am, a month of solid work on finding even the smallest errors (especially formatting), and I keep finding things that I know, or think I know, I’ve corrected before.  Often I will spot something wrong in one version, but when I check the others I’ve already fixed it there.

Most of the time I have every version open at the same time, and when I’m making an adjustment I go down the line and fix every version, so I have no idea how this keeps happening, other than I must simply forget what I’m doing right in the middle of doing it.  I hate to think that’s correct.  My family will have a field day because now when I make a comment about something I think should have been taken care of, they can say I never told them, or I forgot to tell them — a little mean on their part, but they may zone me out because I repeat myself, forgetting I’ve already said something.

Wow, all that is confusing.  I mean, I don’t have Alzheimer’s (thank Goodness), but for a guy who used to have an exception memory (one of the things I privately was very proud of), I now seem to be habitually forgetting things.

By the way, I haven’t posted about this already have I? — ha, ha.

Apparently I've been forgetting to blog lately too.  But I've been assembling some Indie publishing notes these last few weeks, so I'll try to get some of those up soon.  I hope they help those of you who've been asking about publishing your own stuff.

The Dark Days of Dark Courier

There’s nothing like having to fix a mistake a million times to teach you not to ever make it again.

For the last few hours I’ve been making corrections to Fighter’s Bane.  Not the normal kind of corrections you might expect, but instead corrections needed because of a “technical” snafu, boggle, insert your own word for stinkin’ mistake.

A while back I did some research on the preparations for manuscripts prior to sending them out to publishers or agents.  Font was, of course, a consideration.  For the most part I was pointed to Courier as an acceptable choice.  One author suggested Dark Courier since it showed up better on the page and thus saved some eye strain from those I hoped to win over to my side — that seemed like a no-brainer.

So I converted Fighter’s Bane into Dark Courier thinking that one day I might try to send the book out to an agent.  For whatever reason, that font seemed to not like spaces between sentences, and often — following no pattern I could discern — would just drop a space and squeeze a couple of sentences together.

So, not really liking that, and not wanting an agent to think I'm an indiscriminate spacer, I meticulously picked my way through 100k worth of words, looking for missing spaces.  I kind of didn’t like Dark Courier at that point.

Now, fast forward to a few months ago when I made the brilliant decision to be my own man and publish my own material — I don’t need no stinkin’ agent, editor, publisher, etc., etc., etc., I cried, my fist thrown triumphantly in the air.  (No offense to any of you who actually hold those jobs, because I wish you really were a part of my life at this point.)

So, ready to make my bold debut in the publishing world, I’m momentarily slowed down when I learn Dark Courier really won’t cut it for E-books or CreateSpace — not only does it seem to go wonky when you convert it, but it drops even more spaces when you convert it from Word to PDF, which really limits your ability to love it since you spend so much time grumbling under your breath while you hunt for more missing spaces.

So, out with Dark Courier and in with Garamond — which is a TrueType font and can be embedded in PDF documents; something CreateSpace really likes. 

But does Dark Courier go without a fuss?  Oh no my friend, it does not! 

Much to my dismay, it not only once again tosses out blank spaces like a fastidious baker throws out moldy bread, stinkin’ Dark Courier decides not to share italic formatting information with Garamond; meaning that I have a 100k document without a single italicized word.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to hunt through that many words, trying to find the ones that need to be italicized?  Now I’m not a complete idiot, so I did keep a copy of the old document still in Dark Courier, allowing me to search for italicized words in that document, and then, finding one, switch to the Garamond document, again hunt down the word, and finally apply the much needed italics.

Honestly, stuck at home because of my medical condition, it’s not like I have a ton of things pressing on my time — other than constant pain, medicinal side-effects, and those kind of things — so I have the time to do all this hunting and correcting.  But do I want to?  NO, I most certainly DON’T want to.

Now, I’m sure that one day I’ll find out there’s a simple way to fix all my problems — at least my font conversion problems — but for now, here I sit, taking a break and writing this up for you, so that you can give me much needed sympathy when I once again start tracking down all those naked words so desperately needing to be clothed in italics.

You are NOT my friend Dark Courier, and you should most definitely not expect a Christmas card this year.

Tomatoes, Co-Writers and Delays

I’m sorry I haven’t been writing, blogging, et cetera.  (As a side note:  et cetera can also be written as one word, which is becoming more popular, and is abbreviated etc. – it must always be followed by the “period.”  Some people make the mistake of using “ect.” – I admit I have slipped – but ect. is wrong.  Et cetera means: and so forth.  I share all this because I just looked it up.  My mind went blank when I started to write the abbreviation – that happens to me sometimes, and not just when I’m writing abbreviations.  Now that I’m done sharing, I’ll get back to the post.)

I’ve mentioned I like to garden, and on the advice of a friend, I’m trying a new type of tomato plant (big boys).  (New to me at least, I normally grow cherry tomatoes.)  I planted the big boy seeds in 6 inch pots a while ago, and let them grow indoors in the kitchen window, thinking I had plenty of time to get my tiny garden space ready (it’s a tiny garden because whoever lived here in the past buried their garbage over most of the back yard and after a year of uncovering buried trash I finally found a small area they hadn’t gotten to yet).

Well, one thing led to another and the big boys got 4 feet tall and started taking over the kitchen, but I still hadn’t felt well enough to get the garden ready.  So, this last week, in desperation and terrified that the plants would eat one of the cats, I started working on the garden.  Now I’m only good for an hour or so, and I need constant breaks, but today, with Ademar’s help, I finally got the garden ready.  I got a few of the plants out of the house, but I’ve got to tell you, I’m beat.  Most of this last week I’d work for an hour, clean up, and then hit the pain pills, heating pad and bed.  So, no writing.  But each day I seem to be a little worse, and I can feel that I’m heading downhill quickly and a major flare-up is imminent.  Fearing that I’d lose another week before I could post, I’m humbly submitting some current thoughts now, just in case.

I’ve wanted to talk about my co-writers for a while now, and this finally seems like the perfect time.  “Co-writers”? you say; but I only see your name on the book.  Well, I’m stingy that way I guess – at least I’m giving them credit now.

Mattie with her favorite toy

Let’s start with dear, sweet Mattie; an elegant lady if there ever was one.  Well, maybe not so elegant, - yes, that's her back leg in the air - but she’s darn cute.

Mattie is the best-behaved co-writer I have (and the only one I can trust alone in my office).  If she gets tired from the demanding schedule I keep, she just plops down and naps right on the floor, even though she normally sleeps on a pillow inside a cardboard box.  See, what a trooper.  If I ask her about a plot twist or how a character should behave in a certain scene, she’s filled with dozens of ideas, meowing her little head off the second I say, “Mattie.”  It’s a bit annoying that she thinks best when I’m brushing her belly, since that kind of takes away from the actual writing, but undaunted, she flops down at my feet and rolls onto her back, signaling the beginning of a deep-thinking period, at least seven or eight times a day.  I swear that one day she will be an Internet sensation, if I ever shoot the video, because she loves to floss her teeth, and come on, how many other cats have you seen do that?  (By the way, never let a cat EAT dental floss, since it is extremely dangerous to them – Mattie always throws her dental floss away.)

I've almost got it dad!

Previously I’ve written about Pip’s efforts to help in my office, so I won’t post much on him right now.  However, he’s currently asleep on the printer, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that he’s managed to keep all the other cats away from the printer today, fearing they might waste paper – which happens all too frequently since they think it’s a hoot to step on the print key and watch paper come shooting out of the machine.  Overall, Pip is very helpful – here he is untying my shoe for me.

To know me is to love me!

Rascal snuggling with his sister

Another frequent co-writer is Rascal.  Hold on to your chairs girls, because I’m about to reveal a huge secret: I consult Rascal on every romantic scene I write.  His cuddling skills are unprecedented.  He never misses an opportunity to snuggle, and he gives some pretty amazing Eskimo kisses (albeit, slightly wet ones).  He frequently points out that if you love someone, tuna breath shouldn’t be a problem.  And, he says that if you’re feeling neglected, don’t be shy, just jump on a person’s chest and rub your face against theirs until they give you a hug – it works for him every time.  

  

Rascal snuggling with Pip

All clear here dad - you're safe for now!

He’s very protective too.  For some reason he thinks I hate paper towels, and he often hunts them down and kills them for me. That's Balto with him.

 

Yes, I am this cute!

And speaking of Balto.  He's the strong silent type.  He doesn’t talk much – unless he wants a drink from the faucet – but if I read a scene to him, and he doesn’t like it, he’ll just yawn and go back to sleep.  One time he was sitting on top of my monitor, and I read the first page of a new story to him, and he promptly turned around and started swishing his tail back and forth across the screen – clearly indicating I needed to erase the whole thing and start again.  He’s always pushing me to be a better writer that way.

 

Boo winking at the camera - I told him the teeth were a bit distracting

  

And I can’t forget Boo; he’s the oldest of the bunch and is determined to single-catedly bring the word “aloof” back into the common vernacular.  He doesn’t come by the office very often, he mostly prefers the wide outdoors, but he’ll stop in from time to time to offer moral support, catch a quick cat-nap using my foot as a pillow (I wear thick, padded socks), and complain a bit about the weather.

So there you have it.  Not a page gets written without one of them having some kind of input.  I’ve often wondered if “two many cooks in the kitchen” applies here, but at least I don’t have a mouse problem.  (Just FYI, Ghost, the little female snuggling with Rascal above, now lives with some dear friends of ours and goes by a different name.  We miss her terribly, but I hear she is spoiled out of this world and glad she doesn't have to share a cat-box with three messy brothers.  By the way, that's her yawning in my avatar.)

And as for “Delays.”  I had hoped to get Fighter’s Bane ready for publication this month, but since I’m running out of month, I’m now predicting May for the release date.  I’m still waiting for some readers to get back to me, and just today I thought of a little twist I want to add, but all-in-all, I’m close to being finished.  Gray Area needs a bit more work, but it’s close too.  When the tomatoes get into the ground, the cats and I will try and pick up the pace some – well, maybe, apparently Mattie wants to think about it since she just plopped down at my feet and rolled onto her back (clumps of cat-hair and minor back pain here I come).

New Pages

I finally posted about my medical condition.  Since it was so long, I put the post up as its own page under My Disease Rant.

I also put up a new page with a sneak peek at the first chapter of Fighter's Bane.  The book's finished at 107k or so words, but I'm having a bit of a formatting problem.  I didn't write the story in a single document, instead writing different parts at different times.  When I pasted them all together I realized that I'd used different formatting settings and lately I've been going over the document section by section and fixing the bugs.  A number of things I was able to fix with global commands, like changing all the text to the same font, but little things are still popping up.  (I miss the old days of WordPerfect where you could actually see every formatting code.)

I seem to recall already posting blurbs about the storyline in Fighter's Bane, so I won't do that again, but I thought I might explain a little of the "kookiness" (hum, is that spelled correctly?) that went in to writing the story.

When I was a wee-lad, a certain role-playing game came out.  I got hooked, big time.  I enjoyed the game with friends, and played for years and years until computer versions of fantasy-adventure role-playing games became popular.

I still don't know why, but when I was thinking about writing Fighter's Bane, I got this nutty idea that it would be fun to create a dungeon and some characters, and then write the story by rolling the dice and having the characters work their way through the dungeon based on how the dice landed.

For instance, I used an 8-sided die to determine which direction my characters took, e.g., a 1 or an 8 was north, a 2 or a 7 was south, a 3 or a 6 was west, etc.  Seemed fun at the time - but do you have any idea how many times I had to roll that die in order to finish the book?  But once I started, I stuck with it.  Like I said: nutty.

I also used dice to determine the outcome of battles, treasure, etc.  I kind of really got into it.  And most definitely some weird things happen to my characters as a result of "chance."  Someday I'll post more about the details, but for now you just need to know that I rolled myself up a 100k plus (word) book.

I'm still working on the cover, but one of the die I used is so old and so worn from the adventure, that I'm thinking of honoring it by sneaking in a small picture of it on the cover.

My fervent hope is that I rolled up a winner.  I enjoyed writing the book, and I hope you enjoy reading it when I finally finish all the silly formatting garbage (which is, unfortunately, an important part of actually reading the thing).

Looking Back - March 20th, 6am

I'm a bit obsessive about forgetting things, so I tend to take a lot of notes.  Most of the time when I'm working on ANYTHING I have a blank Word page open so I can jot down thoughts I don't want to forget.

Most of the time of course I FORGET to save the notes or I forget where I saved them at, but that's fodder for some other post.

Today I'm sharing one of those "forget me not" notes because when I found it a few minutes ago it made me remember when I wrote it, and that made me laugh.  I hope you laugh too, but I'd settle for a chuckle or at least a snicker.

Here's the note:

Createspace – Davina’s Magical Radio - March 20th, 6am

I just finished uploading all the information for Davina’s Magical Radio to be published on Createspace.  I would not recommend the process for the timid.  At one point I had 13 different applications/programs open at the same time, just trying to get the details on the cover right.  And at this point I think I’m approaching 30 revisions of the cover, most of which I saved just in case I screwed up the next attempt.  However, I uploaded something, let’s hope it sticks. 

I’ll be happy even if it sucks so bad people talk about it and laugh.  That’s publicity, right?  By the way, I had to pick up the basics for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrater in order to make the cover.  Prior to this attempt I’d never used either program.  And I’d just like to say, if anyone knows who designed those programs, please kick them in the shin or stomp on their toes (not really, I don’t want to be libel).  But come on, why must "cut and paste" be so difficult?  I’m sure lots of folks love the “layers” thing, but it drove me crazy for the first few days. (Now, of course, I love the "layers" thing.)

Formatting the “interior” pages for the book wasn’t that bad, but I did struggle to find the correct information because I’m working with an older copy of Word (I can’t afford an upgrade until you buy a lot more books).  There was plenty of information on Word, and I'm thrilled about the many joyous hours I spent searching through web sites that didn’t mention their information only applied to Word 2007.  Not.

By the way again, I’ve got Taylor Swift's “Forever & Always” blasting in my ears so loud it’s a wonder I can even write a single sentence the doesn’t include the phrase: “back up, baby back up.”

Everyone was asleep when I hit the final “Complete” button on Createspace, so I opened a can of tuna to celebrate with the cats.  They weren’t even finished with the first can when they started begging me to upload a second book so we could celebrate some more.  So I threw a toy to distract them and then ran into my room and closed the door.

Using ?? as a Writing Tool

Often when I write, I kind of get into a typing frenzy.  I’ve heard some writers are very slow and methodical, picking each word carefully.  For me, what usually happens is I will “see” a scene in my mind and work feverishly to get it all down in print before I forget the details.

Of course I always go back and edit it, sometimes again and again, trying to fill out the initial picture I saw in my mind to get it just the way I want.  But when I’m actually “doing” the writing, I don’t want anything to stop me from getting as much on the paper as I can.  And that’s where the double question mark (??) comes in handy.

Sometimes I’ll type a word and my fingers will freeze because my mind has recognized I either used the wrong word or misspelled what I wrote.  I find that if I dwell too long on trying to fix that specific problem, I’ll lose other parts of the scene.  Poof!  Gone forever.  I hate that.

So I use the ?? (double question mark) to save me.  If I get stuck on something I need to look up, I’ll just type ?? and move on, knowing I can do a search for ?? later (on my version of Word it’s Edit/Find ??), and it will take me right back to the spot I marked.  The reason I use ?? is because it’s easy to remember, easy to type, and easy to spot on the page.

I use the ?? for tons of things I can’t decide on right at that moment, like spelling, double checking specific facts, punctuation, grammar, and so on.  I may be writing about a character and can’t recall if he was wearing a green or blue shirt in the previous scene, but instead of taking the time to look it up, I just ?? and move on.  My rough drafts are filled with dozens and dozens of double question marks.  It allows me to stay in the “flow” of the writing while giving me an easy way to mark areas I want to come back to.

Sometimes I even write myself a short parenthetical note along with the double question mark like: (?? Is parenthetical a real word).  But most of the time I can see the problem just by marking it with the double question mark.

It’s a writing tool I learned years ago, and I’m sharing it with you just in case it helps you too.