Again, Her Majesty is sleeping on the pink pillow in my office, content in the way that only an old blind cat can be.
* * * * * * *
It was a long week. A surprisingly long week. The bit of a cold I was coming down with last weekend decided to try and find new frontiers in my chest. Given how sick I was with pneumonia last summer (and the lingering pain of the torn intercostal muscles that resulted from that), I decided that taking it *very* easy for a few days was the only smart course of action. Lots of naps, lots of tea, lots of codeine to suppress coughing.
But still, there was progress. The proof copy of Her Final Year arrived. We went over it to make sure everything translated OK for the printing, then ordered in promotional copies for my co-author and I. Uploaded the Kindle files. Built the e-commerce site to go with our website. Made sure the Kindle version translated properly. Got a Facebook page made. And are still working to get the final tweaks and changes to the website before going public with everything.
No, I didn’t do most of this. At best, my contribution has been to do a bit of writing for the website, try and help coordinate things. I know when to stay out of the way and leave others who are more skilled to get the work done. All credit goes to my Good Lady Wife and my co-author.
* * * * * * *
And likewise, I don’t deserve any credit for Her Majesty’s surprising resilience. Yeah, she’s sleeping quietly now, but the last few days have been remarkable. She’s still mostly blind, partially deaf. But she’s started navigating with much more intent, no longer randomly wandering in a lazy figure 8, bouncing off of the same things time and again. Her appetite has returned. Her desire to seek out and use the litterbox is back.
There was a point a week or so ago when I almost called the vet to discuss “that decision”. I held off because even though she seemed due little but pity, she also didn’t seem to be in any pain.
I am, of course, glad that I held off. Sometimes things come together in ways unpredicted.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
A follow-up to last weekend’s post: Where I’m at…
We’ve moved ahead on all fronts. The ‘interior design’ of the book (both Kindle and print-on-demand versions) has been basically done, and the final decision on the front cover layout pretty much accomplished. We still need to position photos of both Martha Sr and Georgia in the text, tweak a couple of entries, as well as design the back cover. Most of the accounting stuff has been done, and things put in place for the website domain and hosting. Now that the cover design has been resolved, we can be thinking about the website design, but that should go really smoothly.
In other words, we’re closing in on being done, and being ready to “launch” the book. My Good Lady Wife has done an amazing amount of work with all the nuts & bolts of this, and it shows. My co-author and his wife have also put in countless hours reviewing, revising, and responding (graciously) to my incessant pushing to get this project completed. Well, I’m good at being annoying, so I was the logical person to annoy everyone to keep working.
It’s exciting. Stay tuned for official announcements, perhaps even a sneak preview.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Guns, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
No, this isn’t a “Find Jimbo!” puzzle. Just a reference point for those who wonder about my sparse posting here.
Sent this in a friend a bit ago, in an email exchange:
Have a good weekend,
Yeah, thanks. The latest round of unexpected storms cleared out early enough for me to get in a walk after my PT. Now a shower, and then lock in for a prolonged session of looking for typos and formatting errors on HFY. Following that, due diligence with Amazon’s print-on-demand system so I understand what tweaks we need to make for that formatting.
In other words, the book is coming together pretty quickly, and we’re in the final stages of that. Got the necessary LLC bank account opened this week, next week I’ll set up the stuff with Amazon and Paypal. Tomorrow Alix, I, and John (the co-author) have a Skype session and we’ll probably outline the website design – the FB, LJ, and Twitter accounts will all follow suit, once that is up. We should be able to test drive the whole thing a few days before our scheduled July 1 ‘launch’, but that arbitrary deadline can be moved easily enough if we need to do so.
It’s fun doing this, I admit. Nice to be using a lot of different skills I’ve acquired. Regardless of how the book does, at least I have that.
And then there’s the book conservation & binding backlog, getting articles to guns.com, and general life stuff.
It’s good to be busy.
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.
150 years ago the US Civil War started. 50 years ago a man first went into space.
In a completely trivial and unimportant, unrelated note, I started posting on this blog 1065 posts ago. Yeah, this makes post #1,066.
So why mention it? Oh, because I’m amused by the number. And because it is something of a poke at myself – it’s important to have perspective. As the old line goes, “after Shakespeare, why write anything?”
And yet, I can’t seem to help myself.
Jim Downey
*Gratuitously stolen from the book of the same name, of course.
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
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
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 