The Hurrier I Go, the Behinder I Get

I'm coming down from a hectic month, and things going forward look about as congested as what I see in the rear-view mirror.

The done list:

• I finished my first draft of Crystal Queen.
• Salt Lake Comic Con - We had a vendor booth and sold a bunch of books. I had some early copies of Crystal King and nearly sold out. I did a lot of networking and attended a couple of presentations.
• Snake River Comic Con - I presented on virtual reality and augmented reality. It's part of what I do for the day job. I met some new folks and had lots of fun.
• League of Utah Writers Fall Conference - I did some volunteer work, team-taught a Virtual Reality class aimed more at authors, and sold some of my newly re-acquired stockpile of early copies of Crystal King.
• I did a proofread pass on a friend's book and fired off a list of changes last night.

The to-do list:

• I may join a podcast this week to prep for my book release.
• I was invited to contribute a short story to an anthology, due this month.
• I want to write and send something to an open submission to another anthology due by year-end.
• I want to send something to Writers of the Future before year end to see if my semifinalist placing can be repeated or beat.
• Finish my first edit pass for Crystal Queen, then start another pass with specific goals in mind, such as fleshing out scenes or adjusting voice.
• Prep for NaNoWriMo. I want to get a draft of Crystal Prince done in November, then I can look at the two drafts side-by-side.
• Move my short story Crystal Prince to be a freebie available on Amazon. This will take some formatting work, but shouldn't be too tough. I've done it before, and it's almost done as-is with the copy on InstaFreebie.
• Find a venue for my Crystal King release party. Yes, I've let this fall between the cracks and get lost for too long.

So, why did I give you the play by play? It's not to convince you I'm busy so much as it is to convince you that it's possible for you to make effective use of your time, and for you to schedule, work toward, and achieve your own goals.

I've told the kids at our house that I wish I had time to be bored. I would still not be bored, I just wish I had the time. They were not amused when I had dozens of assignments to hand out to cure boredom. It's like my view on sports cars. I'd love to have the cash for a Maserati. I'd go invest it sensibly instead of buying the car. Your mileage may vary.

No matter what it is you like to do, it's up to you to make it happen. I like to make things. If I don't schedule the time and put in the effort, I make nothing and I have nothing to show for how I've spent my time. Having plans to build a desk or write a book is a good start, but it's nothing more than that. You can't sit at a desk that hasn't been built yet (aside from using VR) and you can't read a book that hasn't been written yet.

If you want to create something, do it. Ideas are only useful when you do something with them. I have faith in you.

Book bomb for Isle of Sound and Wonder

So what's a book bomb, you ask? We're getting a spike in sales of Alyson Grauer's book tomorrow, March 4th, 2015, and the publisher is pitching in their profits to Alyson's father's cancer treatment fund. The e-book is just $0.99 right now.

Here is the direct donation page.

Here is the book on Amazon.

Here's some more info on it. (The two links on the picture are the ones I just showed you.)

Please donate or buy the book! You can track other book bombs for various causes on twitter with the tag #bookbomb, as you might expect.

Text to Speech and Editing

Wow. I just had my Kindle read a Work In Progress to me as I followed along in my word processor. If you haven't done that, or better yet, read it aloud to yourself, do it! The Kindle text to voice has a few quirks, but it helped me find about one significant typo or grammar issue per 1000 words.

It's pretty easy to set up, too. I just use Calibre to convert my MS Word document to an e-book. Since it's just for audio proofing, there's no need to get picky about formatting. Just the raw conversion will do.

Calibre menu

Here are the steps to follow:

1. Click on "Add books."
2. Select the Word document.
3. Plug in your Kindle or other e-reader, In my case, it detects it and connects, which activates some new menu items.
4. Convert the document. You can do this via a right-click menu, or via the "Convert books" button. Be sure to select the right book format in the upper right corner. I use MOBI for my Kindle conversions, but you can use well over a dozen formats.
5. Wait for it to finish the conversion. Full books will take a lot longer.
6. If your device was recognized by Calibre, you will have a "Send to device" button. Select your story and click it.

Now that your story is on your device, set it to read the story aloud. On my Kindle, this is an option on the menu you can open from inside the document. It's the same menu where you can turn on wireless, shop the Kindle store, and work with bookmarks. Select "Turn On Text-ToSpeech."

And Bob's your uncle. Listen as you read, and figure out where it sounds clunky, and where you have those editing typos that seem to pop up all the time.

You may not see as many issues as I did depending on your skill level, but I'd be glad to hear about your results.

Edit: Windows has a Narrator app to read text to you, but it's a lot more difficult to configure since you have to tell it all sorts of things like whether you want it to read your keystrokes and a bunch of stuff like that. The Kindle text to audio is easy to set up, and takes no real configuration.