My wife and I have been doing some work for a friend who has put together a miscellany – a collection of texts and images which he finds worthy, and which all inter-relate in some interesting ways. It’s been a fun project, working to design the layout and format of the final book, doing editing and so forth. It’s been a project which has been some months in the making.
Just now I finished running through a printer’s proof, showing how all the pages go together in the proper sequence so the thing can be properly sewn in sections, then bound – work I will take joy in doing. This is a fairly straight-forward matter, but you do have to check it, page by page and section by section, to make sure it was done correctly. It was, and now the proof is back off to the printer.
And it was wonderful to hold that proto-book in my hands. Wonderful, and a little wistful.
Wonderful, because while most of the actual work has been done already, it just didn’t seem entirely “real” until I had those pages in my hands, was able to flip through them, handle the physical artifact. It’s another example of turning a dream into a reality.
Wistful, because of the frustrating delays in getting my novel to the same point. And something of the sense that the caregiving book will not seem entirely real when it is just in an electronic format. I’m a bookbinder, used to handling books as artifacts, some of them centuries old, so I suppose it goes with the territory. A bias in my reality.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Brave New World, DARPA, Firefox, movies, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube
So, the massive ballistics testing is done. Most everything has been cleaned up and put away. My head has stopped throbbing from the repeated low-level concussion of firing over 7,000 rounds of ammo, much of it very powerful and from very short barrels. Now it’s time to see if I can get my attention shifted over to all the other stuff I’ve ignored for the last couple of weeks.
Like this wonderful glimpse of the future here now:
I think it says something – a lot, actually – about the state of the world today that some of the first applications of functional brainwave-controlled mechanisms would show up in this kind of consumer product rather than a military application. It’s not the first such toy, either. Which isn’t to say that DARPA or some similar organization hasn’t been experimenting with such tech, but still.
Again and again, I am surprised at how quickly some of the predictions from fiction (including my own) are coming to be actuality. But that’s just the nature of the beast – what you think is going to happen later happens sooner, what you think is going to happen sooner sometimes doesn’t happen at all.
Related, I’ve just about given up on ever getting a straight answer from Trapdoor about if/when Communion of Dreams is actually going to be published. I’ll worry about it after I see to getting Her Final Year out. Some things I can control with brainwaves (indirectly), some things I cannot.
Jim Downey
Got a call from an old friend this morning. We talk pretty often. After chatting for a bit, he asked me if I could send him something I had written back when my wife and I were taking care of her mom. Since all of that material has been transferred over to the Care-Giving book, and I have been working with it extensively for the last year, I figured I’d know exactly what piece he was talking about and would be able to send him the relevant excerpt immediately.
“Sure,” I said. “What was it about?”
“Oh, about you losing your temper, yelling at Martha Sr. I know someone who is a care-giver, and this just happened to her. I thought that piece of yours would help give her some perspective.”
Hmm. It rang a bell, but I couldn’t identify it immediately. Still, I figured I’d figure it out after I got off the phone, and said “Yeah, sure, I’ll track it down and pass it along.”
We finished our chat, and I started poking through the manuscript, which is basically finished, just getting some formatting tweaks worked out.
And poked. And poked some more.
Nothing. Yet, my recollection of the blog post was becoming stronger. I knew I had written the piece he was talking about. But I couldn’t recall exactly which one it was in the book.
I decided to try a search through my blog posts. I now have almost 1100 posts, over 4 years, but I had an idea about when it had to have run, and after a few minutes tracked it down.
It was this one: I am not a saint.
I went back to the book. Searched for that post.
It wasn’t there.
That’s very odd. I re-read the blog post. Yeah, it is embarrassing, but no more so than a lot of the stuff in the book. And more importantly, it is *exactly* the kind of thing we want to share with others – because it is a very normal and human reaction. Now that it has been brought to my attention, we’ll get it edited and integrated into the book.
But what a curious coincidence – to have a friend think of the one post from almost 4 years ago that I had managed to skip over in the process of collecting and editing Her Final Year.
Curious, indeed.
Jim Downey
With a thanks to my friend Jerry for helping make the book more complete.
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Guns, Health, Publishing, Writing stuff
I usually try to avoid posting things on April 1, since *I* don’t trust hardly anything I see online on April Fools. So I held off, other than the link to my Guns.com article.
Anyway, some interesting things to report. First off, the numbers. March had 768 downloads of my complete novel, which means there’s been over 2,000 downloads so far this year, and some 31,000+ total. No, I have no idea when it will be actually published by Trapdoor, so don’t ask.
Hits to BBTI have slowed a bit – down to only 350,650 for March. That puts us at 5,759,535 total hits. Even with it slowing down, we should break 6 million total hits sometime before the end of this month.
Writing for Guns.com has been fun, and seems to have gone well enough. The articles are being well received from what I can tell. I’ve been asked to start also doing ‘Editor Reviews’ of some handguns, and those will start to show up here any day now, if you are interested in such things.
I had another CAT scan this week, following up on the ongoing health issues. Preliminary report from the scan is that things are clear – no major problems show. Which is good – there’s nothing serious going on. But also somewhat frustrating, since it doesn’t show what is causing the lingering pain I feel in my ribs on my right chest. I see my doc next week to discuss things, but mostly I think it will be a matter of just dealing with the pain and getting on with life. Best guess is that it’s probably some kind of muscle/tendon damage that can’t completely heal because I keep breathing. And I’m not willing to stop doing so in the hope that the pain will go away.
But the real news is that yesterday we filed the paperwork with the Missouri Secretary of State to form “HFY Publishing, LLC.” Yeah, on April Fools Day. Seemed appropriate.
No, seriously, while this is a small and largely symbolic step, it was an important one. An even more important one is that I’ve now heard from all of the beta readers, and gotten some very valuable feedback. We (my co-author and I) need to expand the introductory material of the book, to better explain how and why the book is structured the way it is and how to use it to best advantage. We also need to tweak the layout of the book for clarity. Neither of these are major changes, and we should be able to get them sorted in the next week or so.
Well, that gets everything up to date, I think. Now time to go do some home repairs.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, John Scalzi, MetaFilter, Predictions, Publishing
Via BB, this ‘bingo card’ from John Scalzi, on the subject of e-publishing:
Scalzi’s website contains complete information, and you should read it – Scalzi knows what he is talking about, and has been having these arguments for the better part of a decade that I’m aware of (I follow his blog, and see him discussing these issues on other forums, such as MetaFilter).
That said, just because he knows what he is talking about doesn’t mean that he is *always* right, nor that his position is a simple black/white one on the topic. He’s too thoughtful and nuanced for that.
When I voted to go the self-publishing/e-publishing route with our care-giving memoir, I did so fully aware of all the pros and cons (in large part thanks to discussions I’ve seen with Scalzi.) What he says is valid, but I find myself saying “yeah, but . . . ” as pertains to Her Final Year, largely because the care-giving memoir is a niche market, and therefore many of the problems with publishing are more manageable than they are for general or genre fiction.
But we’ll see. I’ll be asking for your help to beat the odds.
Jim Downey
Been a busy few days.
Got through close editing (formatting, typos, similar such) of both Her Final Year and His First Year, all except one chapter which needed more work from my co-author and his wife to tighten up some passage. I’m still waiting to hear back from the ‘beta readers‘ whether there are major problems from their perspective, but I am generally very pleased with the book(s).
Why the (s)? Because we still need to decide whether we will offer an e-book version which has the two together as the only option, or whether we’ll offer the two titles separately with a discount incentive to buy both. Any thoughts on this would be welcome.
Well, was just taking a break from getting some much-needed yardwork done, thought I should post an update. Not much else to tell, though I always seem to find things to post on facebook.
Jim Downey
Got a call Sunday afternoon – old friends K & L with whom we are in sporadic contact were in town, wanted to get together sometime this week, if it was convenient.
In the course of the conversation it came up that they had just realized that L’s mother, who lives alone here, wasn’t just experiencing the normal forgetfulness of advancing years. No, there were clear signs of something else going on: age-related dementia.
Ah.
I discussed it with my wife, Martha. We made arrangements to get together last night. Fortunately, the local Alzheimer’s Association chapter was having a support group meeting for care-providers early evening.
* * * * * * *
Yesterday was . . . difficult. I was distracted by the latest news from Japan. We had some information about a legal tussle we’re involved with which wasn’t very encouraging. I was hurting a bit (residual problems related to the pneumonia which I have been struggling with these last months). Work on editing Her Final Year was slow.
But come the early evening, we got together with our friends. Drove to the Alzheimer’s Association building. My wife and L stayed for the support group meeting. My buddy K and I went out for a beer.
We chatted. He knew that we had taken care of Martha Sr through the arc of Alzheimer’s. He knew that I had been working on a care-giving book. He needed someone to talk with.
* * * * * * *
Later, all of us wound up back here at the house, talking. Martha and I discussed with them where L’s mother was in the progression of the disease (very early), offered advice on the steps they need to take right now, what they should be thinking about further ahead.
K & L are both intelligent, well educated, professional people. They listened to our advice, asked the right kinds of questions, were already thinking through the necessary steps and how to resolve them. We offered suggestions on local resources (part of the reason why we wanted to make sure they got in contact with the local Alzheimer’s Association). We discussed some of the experiences we had, problems encountered, ways we did or did not resolve them.
It was a good conversation. They were both coping, but clearly a bit stunned by the suddenness of everything.
They left, after we made tentative plans to get back together with them tomorrow or Friday, depending on how things go. They’re going to want to have someone to talk with again about this, after they start getting into the nitty-gritty. Even if they don’t realize it yet.
* * * * * * *
This morning on our walk, Martha and I discussed last night. She observed that K seemed a little more out of his depth than L was. We chatted about possible reasons for this. Perhaps it was due to her attending the support group. Perhaps it was due to the fact that L had seen her grandmother struck down by Alzheimer’s. Perhaps it was simply due to the fact that typically, more women are used to being in the role of care-provider, and so tend to think in terms related to that.
The comment jelled something in me that I hadn’t quite yet put entirely together: the realization that there is a solid likelihood that if things go well, it may be that the most important thing I can accomplish in this life will be to raise awareness among men that they too should be thinking in these terms. That their parents, their spouses, are just as subject to age-related dementia. That watching for the signs, preparing for the possibility, is something that they should get used to.
I would never have predicted that this would be an important milestone in my life. Perhaps the most important.
Funny how life is, isn’t it?
Jim Downey
The editing continues. I’m making real progress with it, should be done in another week or so. Preliminary feedback from the ‘beta readers’ is positive.
And it couldn’t come too soon:
Almost 15 Million Americans Now Caring for Loved One With Alzheimer’s
TUESDAY, March 15 (HealthDay News) — Nearly 15 million Americans are caring for someone with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia, and the number is rising, according to a report released Tuesday.
“People with Alzheimer’s who are otherwise healthy may live as long as 20 or 25 years,” said William H. Thies, chief medical and scientific officer at the Alzheimer’s Association, which is publishing the report in the March issue of its journal, Alzheimer’s & Dementia. “These are individuals who need increasing levels of care over time, and that can be very difficult for families.
About 5.4 million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s disease, and their 14.9 million caregivers provided a total of 17 billion hours of unpaid care, valued at more than $200 billion, according to the report, which also highlights the physical and emotional burdens that caregivers face every day.
The full report can be found at the Alzheimer’s Association.
Jim Downey
So, the discussion has been had. Information has been gathered. Tactics and strategies have been considered. Preliminary schedules have been drawn up. Problems anticipated. Pros and cons debated.
We’re going to do it. We’re going to publish Her Final Year ourselves.
Or, more accurately, we’re going to form our own publishing group, and publish it under the auspices of that organization. Fortunately, in this day and age the actual mechanisms for doing so are already in place and do not require massive investment in plant and equipment.
I won’t trouble going into detail. But we hope to have the book ready by this summer. Wish us luck – there’s a lot of work ahead.
A first component of this will be getting some “beta” readers – I need several people who are willing to completely read the manuscript, tell me whether the book “works” for you or not. I am not asking for editing – just general feedback (we can discuss this further). I would need this feedback in the next couple of weeks in order for it to be of use. If you are willing, and agree to not pass any portion of the book on to anyone else, please contact me directly – I will send you a pdf version of the book. And when the final version goes to press, you will be thanked in the acknowledgments and sent your choice of an e-version or hardcopy version of the book.
Exciting, eh? I’ll probably post here about different aspects of the whole process.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Feedback, Hospice, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
I’ve written a lot here over the last few years on the disfunctional nature of the publishing industry today. This blog was ostensibly started to chronicle the process of finding an agent and/or publisher for Communion of Dreams, after all. That was four years, and almost 31,000 downloads of the book, ago. Trapdoor Books is supposed to publish Communion of Dreams sometime soon, though that has been pending (and driving me somewhat nuts) for four months.
Also pending for four months has been a submission of Her Final Year to a publisher. They were supposed to get back to us a month ago, according to what they told us in our initial submission. A number of other publishers and agents we’ve also contacted have not bothered to respond at all.
Now, I’m not ready to give up on Trapdoor – they seem to be honestly working hard to establish themselves in the “geek fiction” world, and whenever everything comes together to get Communion of Dreams actually published, I think it’ll work to my benefit (and theirs).
But my co-author and I are giving very serious consideration to publishing Her Final Year ourselves. And I would appreciate your feedback on whether we should or not. Let me outline what I see as the advantages and disadvantages
First, and foremost, it gets the book out there where it can do some good. This is actually very important to us – there is a great need for more “nuts & bolts” care-giving information regarding Alzheimer’s/Dementia in general, and from a male care-giver’s perspective in particular. So, immediacy.
Next, there’s cost. Particularly if we concentrate on e-book sales (predominately through Amazon), we can likely keep the price down a fair amount over a conventional paper book (though we would likely set it up so that people could get a Print-On-Demand version if they wanted it). This will help get the book to people who need it. We could designate some portion of all sales to go to charities such as the Alzheimer’s association and still get a fair payment akin to conventional book royalties for myself and my co-author. There’s cost.
We would have more direct control over not just the book, but also for an associated website which could function as a support group for care-givers and their families. We’ve intended to do this from the start, but by bypassing a publisher we avoid issues related to control over the site. That’s control.
The disadvantages? A lot more work. We would probably form a small corporation to function as the umbrella under which all of this would be done. That doesn’t bother me, as I know how to do such things from previous experience with the gallery, but it would be more work and some cost. We’d have to do all the promotion ourselves . . . but these days, authors are expected to take a very active role in promotion, anyway. We wouldn’t have the gravitas of an established publisher behind us, and that would mean limitations in getting the book distributed though conventional bookstores. We wouldn’t have the benefit of an in-house editor and design team. Those are the big disadvantages that I see.
So, I’d like your thoughts. Do you think a niche book like this could be done successfully as a self-publishing project? Would you trust it enough to buy a copy, or would you want to see a ‘name’ behind it? What price point for the electronic version would compensate for that? $9.99? $4.99? Would say a pledge to donate $1.00 from every sale to the Alzheimer’s Assn or a Hospice organization make a difference?
Like I said, we’re giving this serious consideration – but it is a big step. Part of my motivation to do this is just based on how long the whole process of getting Communion of Dreams published has taken (and continues to take). Do you think I am letting my frustration over that outweigh more practical considerations?
Let me know, either in comments here, on Facebook, or in a private email.
Thanks.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 