A Note on Excerpt Week

March 11, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 3 Comments

Hi, Folks!

I’m having a good time with Excerpt Week, though I wish more of you were playing. Come on, don’t be shy! We want to read…and SHARE…what you’ve written. A couple of points I need to make though:

1. If you area not a regular contributor to The Write Stuff, you can still share an excerpt from your books. Please email me at mmeara@cfl.rr.com and I’ll tell you how. It will work much better than trying to share in the comments section. I promise to post for you, or to tell you how to become a contributor so you can do it yourself.

2. I reserve the right (I’ve always wanted to say that) to insert the “Continue Reading” break into the middle of longer posts, though I probably won’t do it until the front page of the blog starts to fill up. This is just so that other posts don’t get lost. You won’t lose your readers, as they can click to see the rest of your excerpt or post. When it’s a slow day, this isn’t an issue, but as more posts come in, it helps keep things visible.

3. As you read and enjoy these exerpts, please, please remember to SHARE with all your friends. Reblog, post on Facebook, Tweet them out, email links to friends you think would be especially interested…whatever you want. But the main reason this blog exists is for writers to help writers, and that includes sharing far and wide to put writers in front of potential readers. We’ll all do the same for you, when you post.

And that’s it. Enjoy all the goodies our group has to offer! We are a widely diverse and interesting bunch, here. And take advantage of this chance to share your own work, whether published yet, or not. Let’s get your name out there!

As you were, people!

A Lesson in Uploading Changes to a Published eBook

February 7, 2015February 7, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 4 Comments

Been doing a bit of last minute editing before starting any kind of “official” launch or promotion of A Boy Named Rabbit, and had a real surprise last night. I made some changes, saved my newly revised document, converted it to HTML, and then uploaded it to Amazon. Well, lo and behold, the little spinning wheel that lets you know your file is being converted to Kindle format by Amazon wouldn’t stop spinning. It’s a process that I’ve seldom had take longer than 3 minutes or so, but after an hour, I gave up and went away for a while. When I came back again, it was still going. Obviously, there was a problem with the file, but I could find no way to stop the process. That big wheel kept on turnin’ and I was left doing my truly fine Tina Turner impression as I headed off to bed.

When I got up this morning, I found a message alerting me that there was something wrong with my file (ya think?) and it could not be converted. They advised me to try again. After about thirty minutes of checking various things in my Word document, I realized that in shuffling around some items at the back of the book (Author’s Notes, etc), I had failed to remove a Page Break at the end of the last page. And that, my friends, was enough to throw a monkey wrench into the whole process.

If this ever happens to me again, the first thing I’ll be looking at will be the very last page. If that’s not the issue, I’ll check the page breaks at the end of every chapter, and between the other sections of the book. And I’m sharing this with you today, so you won’t panic if it ever happens to you. Kindle does NOT play well with blank pages. A word to the wise, and a lesson learned by me.