How to Format Your Novel For Kindle, Nook, the iBookstore, Smashwords and CreateSpace in One Afternoon

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Way back in the summer on Kindleboards and in other places I kept reading about people laying out their print books for CreateSpace using Scrivener. Long term readers of this blog will know that I can’t praise Scrivener enough. It is the single best program for long form writing I know. Now it seemed Scrivener’s utility had expanded into an entirely new arena. I knew it could create ebooks easily and well, but print books? I have always used Word, or if the need arose, InDesign for that.  Being the sort of man that I am, I thought I should investigate the possibilities. Read more…

RIP, Datamancer

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I was looking through Boing, Boing yesterday when I saw an announcement that shocked and saddened me. Richard Nagy, Datamancer, had died. Richard was an amazingly talented artist, known for his work in the steampunk genre. He made astonishing artefacts that felt like they had come from an alternate universe of tesla coils, brass and vacuum tubes. What’s more, they worked. I first came across Richard’s work somewhere on the Internet in 2007 and I was gobsmacked. I looked at his variants on the Von Slatt keyboard and I wanted one very badly. I did something I have never done Read more…

The Pomodoro Technique

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Over the years I’ve tried many different productivity systems—I am a sucker for them just as I’m a sucker for any piece of software that promises to increase the number of words I get done daily. Recently I have been experimenting with the Pomodoro Technique. This was originally developed by Francisco Cirillo back in the 1980’s and is essentially very simple. The basic idea behind the method is that you productivity increases if you include small breaks between your work sessions. These should be interspersed with longer breaks whenever you have done a certain number of sessions. The basic unit Read more…

A New Tablet

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So I finally got round to buying a tablet. In a week where the whole world was going mad over the iPad Air, I bought an Asus T100T. A what? I hear you cry. An Asus T100T. It’s the latest release from the people who brought us the original netbook and more recently the very lovely Zenbooks. Why did I buy it, rather an iPad? Well, I was curious, about a lot of things, Windows 8, Intel’s new Bay Trail processors and how useful a tablet would be in general. Given my needs a Windows tablet looked like it would Read more…

The Joys of Kickstarter

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Yesterday the nice man from DHL brought me a package. It contained a copy of Monte Cook’s new book Numenera, a role-playing game that I have been looking forward to for quite some time. I’ve had the PDF for awhile but there’s nothing quite like holding a physical book to make something real, as I know from my own experiments with producing a print version of Stealer of Flesh.  I don’t want to do a review of Numenera right here, right now. Free time has been in short supply this year and I’ve just skimmed through it. It’s a good Read more…

Stuff!

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So that was Gamesday then. As ever it was an enjoyable and, as I was sitting at a signing table between Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill, somewhat humbling experience. I got to see the newly released Bane of Malekith but during the chaos of departure yet again forgot to pick up an author copy. Never mind. I’ll do that at the upcoming Weekender. It was a pleasure to meet and chat with readers. It was also a pleasure to be able to catch up with Black Library writing and editing folks I’ve known for a long time and meet other folks Read more…