Being Refactored

Now available on a Kindle/iPad near you!

The Last Aliyah - Book 1 of "The Time of Jacob's Trouble"

The Last Aliyah
(Book 1 of “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble”)

I’m proud to announce that my latest book “The Last Aliyah” is now available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble!

As many of you know, I went on a study tour of Israel last year and had a great time. While I was there, I learned a ton about the land and its recent history.

As a result of the tour and a lot of reading up on Israel’s history, I decided to go back and update my first book, “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble” and turn it into a trilogy.

The story has been greatly expanded since my first book, with more settings, scenes, and characters. If you enjoyed the first book, you’ll love this one!

The synopsis for “The Last Aliyah” is:

The tides of war are once again rising against the nation of Israel. Her old alliances are unraveling, while new alliances against her are rising.

Rocket attacks on Haifa and Sderot are increasing, and Israel cautiously prepares a response to a conflict that many fear will never end.

Iran has armed Hamas and Hezbollah to the teeth for years, and now rumors are circulating that several nuclear warheads have slipped through the Israeli blockade into Gaza.

And then a decision is made that will forever change the face of the Middle East.

Will Israel be ready as her Arab neighbors gather for war?

Also, this is the first book I’m publishing exclusively to the eBook market rather than going through a POD publisher.

The book is also available for review on BookBlitzer.com

Most of today has been spent publishing several of my books to the various eBook sites, namely Amazon, Smashwords, and BN’s Nook. This entry has two purposes:  to save others some of the headaches/time expended on this venture, and so I don’t forget everything involved in this ‘adventure’

Why those 3 eBook providers? Because there the biggest and the best – if you want a good ebook, it’ll likely be on Amazon, Nook, or in Smashwords (which distributes to Apple’s iBookStore and many others). This ‘tutorial’ assumes you already have working accounts with all three sites.

We’ll start off with Smashwords, because it’s the “pickiest” of all the eBook processors. However, if you can get it passed the Smashwords Meatgrinder, you can be fairly certain it’ll work in all the others.

Preparing Your Book for Smashwords

1. Create a Word document (or equivalent) and copy in your book.

2. Immediately format the entire document to the  Normal style (with Arial or Times New Roman fonts). For Chapters/Sections, use the Header type styles. Keep your styling very, very basic – if you have more than 4 styles in your document, the Meatgrinder may get picky.

3. Toggle the “reveal-codes mode” mode in Word to see all the invisible formatting and remove all the junk breaks/CRs, ALL tabs, and extra-spacing. Word hides a lot of junk in your book, and the Meatgrinder won’t like it.

4. When your book “looks good”, save a copy and then add in all the Smashwords copyright stuff and follow their Smashwords Style Guide (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52). Don’t worry about putting your cover image into the Word doc, because the Meatgrinder will do that for you.

5. To add a Table of Contents to your book (recommended), follow the “Creating a Hyperlinked Table of Contents” section in the Smashwords Style Guide. This TOC will work in all the other eBook formats, so you should only have to do this once.

Basically, this involves creating a ‘bookmark’ for each TOC entry then using hyperlinks to specify their corresponding locations in the document (Word specifies the Header styles by default)

SHORTCUT: Use Word to auto-generate the TOC, then copy it to Notepad. Then remove Word’s TOC and copy in the one from Notepad – this will save a lot of typing if you have lots of chapters.

6. Prepare a short/long description for your book, along with a good cover JPG image that’s roughly 600 x 900 pixels.

7. Upload to Smashwords and let the Meatgrinder do its work. If your book is rejected right away, then it has major formatting problems.

Uploading to the Amazon Kindle Store

While your book being processed in Smashwords, it’s time to format your book for the Kindle.

1. Open up the non-Smashwords copy of your book in Word and save it to HTML format (make sure it’s the ‘Filtered’ option so it strips out all the Word formatting junk)

2. Open the HTML document in Notepad or another non-UI editor so you can directly see the raw HTML.

3. Insert the cover image into the HTML doc by adding the following code right after the <body> opening tag (‘MyBookCoverImage.jpg” should be set to the filename of your cover image):

<body …>
<div id=”cover”> <center> <a name=”start” />
<img src=”MyBookCoverImage.jpg”></a> </center>
</div>

4. Add Amazon pagebreaks to the HTML file by searching on “page-break” and then adding “<mbp:pagebreak />” after the next closing </span> tag. Example is below:

<span style=’font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”‘><brclear=all style=’page-break-before:always’></span> (!!make sure you don’t put the page-break inside a span tag!)<mbp:pagebreak />

5. After you’ve added all the page-break tags, save the file and then open the HTML file in a web-browser. Check cover, Title (centering) and that the TOC works correctly. Don’t worry about the page-breaks, because browsers ignore them.

6. Create a ZIP file that contains the HTML  file + the JPG cover image(s).

7. Go to Amazon and create your new Title, and upload the ZIP as the new book (http://kdp.amazon.com), not the HTML file or the Word doc.

8. After it has uploaded, check your book/image in the Kindle Preview and complete the new-book process.

Uploading to the BN Nook Store

Uploading to the Nook Store is pretty straightforward compared to the others.

1. Go to Pubit (what a goofy name) at http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com and upload the HTML document you created in the Amazon step, (not the zip)

2. Check the Nook preview and complete the new-book process.

While You’re Waiting…

All your books should be processing now, and most take about 1-2 days to process. Meanwhile, you can use that time to add your new book(s) to your blog, website, and/or other sites. You may have to resize the image(s) you created in earlier steps since some sites like smaller images.

If you’re updating your websites/links and know some basic information about your book (such as Smashwords ID, Amazon’s ASIN, or the book’s ISBN), you can update the links by using the basic ‘template’ below (just replace the 012345.. with the relevant number of your book:

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/0123456789

Nook: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?EAN=0123456789
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=0123456789

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/01234

BookBlitzer.com is a new website/service I’ve created for writers wanting to have their books read by a wide audience, and for book-readers looking to earn extra income by writing book reviews.

Books sales on popular distribution sites such as Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com are largely driven by customer reviews. But if you’re a new or unknown author, getting book reviews can often be a frustrating and expensive task. With typical book-review services, it can be weeks or even months before your book is reviewed, and that’s only if it’s fortunate enough to catch an overloaded reviewer’s eye! BookBlitzer.com alleviates these headaches by directly connecting authors to readers.

But BookBlitzer isn’t just for authors – it’s also for avid book-readers!  If you’re someone who loves reading books, why not get paid for it? Most authors are always looking to have their books reviewed, and are often willing to pay for honest reviews – and this can mean extra cash for you! Also, the great thing about BookBlitzer is that you don’t have to buy any books in order to write reviews, you can pick only the books you want to read and then return the books when you’re finished (or keep them if they’re eBooks).

The BookBlitzer Review process is simple:  just select and read a book from the BookBlitzer website and then write a review for it. After the author approves your review and it’s posted to Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com, you’ll be paid the ‘approved’ review price. If the author rejects your review of their book, you’ll be paid the ‘rejected’ price, so your time spent on the book will not be wasted.

If you’re interested in learning more about BookBlitzer.com, please join us by going to http://www.bookblitzer.com/ . Registration is completely free, and more books will be added as more authors sign on. Currently, only my books are listed, but we will soon be promoting the site to other authors, as well as adding Contests!

Ok, I had my first experience with “writing the end first” yesterday — and it turned out pretty well. I’ve been stuck for the last week or two on how to wrap up the current book I’m working on (“The Cell”).

I knew basically how I wanted the story to end, so rather than rack my brain to figure out the rest of the plot, I ended up writing the last couple of scenes first and then working backwards from there. A day later, I figured out the last major plot points, put together the outline and scenes, and now just need to fill in the gaps.

The story ended up taking a much different turn in getting from the 3/4 mark to the end than I had planned, but I think it’ll turn out well. Usually I try to lock down a detailed plot and all the story elements in the very beginning, but “The Cell” seemed to take a few different twists (or rather, contortions) along the way.

As this is will be my fourth book, I’m finding that I use the draft phase for working out most of the story and dialog between characters. Then all the “sensory” scene details, grammar, plot/story cleanup and polishing are in the second (and sometimes third) draft, and then the re-polishing/finishing happens in the last round of drafts.

This will be the second book I’ve used iWriterPro on, and it’s working great! I’ve found a few bugs along the way, but nothing too significant. I suppose I’ll get around to fixing those after this draft is done in a few weeks.

Whew! The book-writing software I’ve been working on — iWriterPro — is finally finished! OK, at least the first release is finished. In Software-Land, nothing is ever “finished” — there’s always “one more bug…” (or one more feature).

It’s been a work-in-progress for the last year or so, in the midst of writing/editing two books, side-jobs, and of course, working. Much of the time (at least at first) was learning WPF, Microsoft’s latest client-development framework. iWriterPro was the project I chose to force myself to learn it, and now I’m fully sold on the technology. The data-binding and templates alone were worth the learning curve, not to mention Linq!

I’m a firm believer in “eating your own dogfood” while doing software development, and used iWriterPro with the next book I’m working on, which also slowed down the release — I kept finding new features to add (like Status Coloring, Email Backups, and Book Object popups)! Needless to say, I’m about 75,000 words into the book, and the software has held up great; even the searches are extremely fast over large amounts of text.

In addition to being a 100% WPF application, iWriterPro also uses .NET’s ClickOnce technology, which automatically installs the software on a user’s machine. No more writing goofy InstallShield/DemoShield installers that need who-knows-what dependencies on each user’s system! Nor are the installs 10’s or 100’s of MB in size, either — iWriterPro is less than 5 MB, and ClickOnce downloads the required components from Microsoft automatically.

The ClickOnce technology also periodically checks a user’s system automatically and pulls down updated components and files as they become available on the website. This feature helps keep all the remote clients at roughly the same version.

The last week or so, I’ve been reading up on the Facebook development platform, and added a tab to iWriterPro that displays it’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/iWriterPro/34221219777. It’s a basic start, and I can see more web-apps/client-apps soon utilizing the social-networking platforms to draw in more customers and increase the user-base.

If you’re interested in taking iWriterPro for a test drive, just go to the website (iWriterPro.com) and click the Download link. It has a 30-day free trial that’s also fully functional.

And now, onto something else for a while!

The writing software I’ve been developing the last year (off and on) is now available — it’s called “iWriterPro” and is available for beta use at http://www.iwriterpro.com

I finished most of it up about two months ago and have worked out most of the bugs. “Eating your own dogfood” (how Microsoft terms it) isn’t always much fun, but I’ve been using it for the two new books I’m working on now. The last major issue with the software was a crash caused by a bad auto-save timer.

To get a copy of the software for free, go to the iWriterPro website and click “Download Latest”.

Whoa – looks like I took a long hiatus from blogging, since it’s now been over six months! All the entries older than this one were imported from Blogger.com. They were ok, but I don’t agree with some of Google’s policies or politics.  I had heard lots of good things about WordPress, so I finally made the jump.

Also – this “misty” theme is very nice – it sort of has that Hobbiton/Shire feel to it (yeah, I like Tolkien’s stuff; doesn’t everyone?)

Both my books (“Endeavor in Time” and “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble”) have been published and listed on Amazon and B&N  — they’re listed on my personal website (http://www.chrishambleton.com) and on my writing website (http://www.cwhambleton.com). They’re also listed in Google Books if you’d like a preview.

A Japanese snowplow that “eats” snow and “poops” snow/ice bricks! This could come in very handy in my cul-de-sac, which always seems to get snowed in after the bigger snow storms.

————

What’s cute, yellow, eats snow and poops out bricks of ice?

Meet Yuki-taro, a Japanese robot built to quickly clear roads after heavy snows.

The cute little guy, about 5 feet long and 2 and a half feet high, simply plows into snowbanks, taking in the white stuff, compressing it and neatly stacking it in two-foot-long bricks on his rear bed.

Created by a consortium of private companies, municipal governments and university researchers, Yuki-taro is equipped with two video cameras in his “eyes” as well as a GPS tracking system to be completely self-guided.

The prototype has already won a design award, and doctored photos of it modified to look like the popular Pokemon character Pikachu have popped up online.

I’ve been playing around with LINQ and WPF for a few months now, and have found it interesting that more companies (and recruiters) are not looking for people with WPF experience. Maybe it just hasn’t taken off yet (even though it’s been in Beta for over a year), but WPF has a lot of benefits over ASP.NET, and these are enumerate here quite well:

Reasons For Choosing WPF Over ASP.NET For Our Very Large Project

One drawback I see is that direct connections to a database are not allowed in Xaml Browser applications – these apps perform their database I/O via web services. This actually isn’t that much of a drawback, since having a webservice layer between the datalayer and the business layer is usually a good practice (especially when a CIO/CEO) decides that the entire company needs to switch database platforms! This practice also reduces the possibility of SQL injection attacks and other forms of site/database hacking.

I had written a sci-fi book back in college, which has been collecting dust for the last 15 years or so. Anyway, I’ve recently printed out a copy and started reading it, just to see what it would take to rework/polish it up to get it into a “sell-able” condition. I figure if I’m going to spend months writing and editing something, I might as well go the extra mile and try to sell it (capitalism is very natural – embrace it!)

After reading through the first couple of chapters, I can see that many of the subplots will need to be changed (or at least updated to follow modern technology). Some of the plot’s settings take place in the future (about 2009), and considering that it was written in 1991, technology and it’s effects on everyday life have changed dramatically from even 15 years ago. For example, cell phones, fast PCs, and the Internet played little or no part in the futuristic settings of the story, simply because they were not widely used at the time the book was first written.

Some of the subplots are quite silly now, but hey, when I first started college in 1991, I knew everything, and now I know much, much less… 🙂