If a picture tells a thousand words, then the word count on this one is huge!

The book files are now at the printers, getting magically turned from digital files to a shiny new book. So what's happening during this waiting time...?

Well I've been phoned up and offered a table at a Christmas fair - so I now have my first event booked for Christmas 2014!

I've managed to finish a book I was reading, and buy another in the series... plus another that just took my fancy... so I suppose you could say I've been book shopping.

...and next I need to do all the paper work involved in the actual publishing of a book - namely register the ISBN of the new book, so that it will be out there for all to see...

And what about the publicity?

The experts say that a book should be advertised long in advance of it coming out, but what can be more annoying than hearing about a book long before you can get your hands on it; and at that point I didn't know some of the crucial details - such as how many pictures it was going to have, final word count and number of pages...  In the end there are a lot of colour photos - so if photos of kittens is your thing you're going to love this one, and if a picture tells a thousand words, then the word count is huge!!

New book finished and sales to report...

I may be a week later than everyone else, but I've got that just broken up feeling. And why am I feeling this way...? Well I've finally finished my latest book, and zapped it off to the printers! It's a great feeling to finally finish a project - next I'll get to see my proof copy in all its glory - now that will put a big smile on my face... :)

Meanwhile, other good news this week included another sale of A Face Full of Snow on kindle - well it is ski season, and with the winter Olympics ongoing, it's a very topical book to read. I think  the athletes all have better trained skis than Eric (or me for that matter...)

Overcoming everything to write a book...

It seems that everything possible has got in my way, to stop me ever finishing this book, even, or perhaps especially the characters themselves. But in truth, when the technical side of editing, formatting and publishing gets on top of me, it's the characters - namely my cats who keep me sane - who could resist a cat meowing at the door to go out and play... 

And so I'm finally done - although at the last hurdle I've had my email hacked and am now locked out of my account - but did I let it sabotage my day...? No, I've pushed on and done the finishing touches, and if email still lets me down tomorrow I'll deliver the files on a disk to the printers...

Nobody ever said that writing a book was easy...

I think I've compressed my brain into a zip file...

After an afternoon of trying to make my book cover - both in Word - with interesting results, and then in photoshop, where I got totally stuck and had to resort to online tutorials... I feel as if my brain has been compressed into a zip file.

I did have a brief breakthrough when I decided I had to feed my brain to make it work better, and I must admit that the fudge did seem to help.... I do now have the beginnings of a book cover in photoshop, in layers and everything!!

So next I'll be sloshing around in pixels, getting some colour onto the job, and when I have something I'm happy with, I'll post it on my blog and website and see what reaction I get - it's nearly time to put on my promotion hat and start revealing what I've been working on...