The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 160)

 

Once again we have a book suggested by a YouTube video I watched. Just a random one this time, and not the book he suggested, but one by the same author. And once again, I am going outside of my usual cow path of reading; a contemporary mystery novel. The library had ebook versions of it, so I put a hold on it, and got it sooner than I expected. So how did this experiment fare?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz  DNF 61%

As with all my reviews, I'm sharing my subjective opinions with you. This is probably a good book, just not one for me. I didn't hate it. You see how far I got into it before deciding that I didn't care to keep reading it just to say I finished it. Basically, there were too many unpleasant characters and the story too long for my taste. Indeed, I didn't even connect with the first person narrator protagonist enough to care how things turned out. Plus, at almost 600 pages (!), this murder mystery story runs way too long for a mystery. Even at calling a day at 61% mark, I basically finished a reasonable mystery story.

All those quibbles aside, I will say that it is an interesting book, with an interesting premise. More about that in a minute. This is the third book in the series, so a lot had happened to our narrator in the previous two books, which is brought up, and plays a part in this story, but I don't think it was necessary to read those two previous books to enjoy this one. The missing past wasn't my problem.

The first person narrator in this story is a freelance book editor. Returning to England from a less than successful love affair, she accepts an assignment to edit a book from an troubled young author. He had two unsuccessful books published by the publishing house she had previously been a senior member of. This author is the grandson of a famous children's book author, who was, in life, a very mean and domineering woman. She kept all her children close to her at the said Marble Hall by the ties that bind, i.e. the prospect of inheriting her vast fortune. This author had a terrible childhood, and is really messed up. Nevertheless, he was hired to continue the detective series of an author who had been murdered in one of the previous books, who was another unpleasant fellow, I gather.

As we go along with the story, the editor begins to realize that just like the murdered original author of the mystery series, this new author is using people he knows as the models for his characters in the murder mystery story he is writing, and perhaps events that happened at Marble Hall as well... 

What makes this story interesting is that we, as the reader, get to read this murder mystery he is writing a he is writing it. We are introduced to the "real life" characters and then we read the first 30,000 word section of the novel that he has turned in to the editor, right along with her. At this point, the story we are reading shifts to the story he is writing, set in a mansion on the south coast of France. After finishing that installment, we switch back to the present day. The editor, being familiar with previous events, becomes concerned, as I said, that the author is using real people he knows as characters in his murder story, perhaps family members, which could cause a lot of trouble down the road for both her and the writer. So she starts looking closer into his childhood, involving the reader in a second mystery running parallel to the fictional one. We then get another 10K-15K slice of the book before returning to the real-life mystery. An interesting concept, but at the cost of words. Lots of words.

The problem with this story for me is that I really don't like stories with unpleasant characters, and the author of the mystery story is this story is that in spades. He's a jerk who had just punched his wife in the story at the place were I decided to call it quits. Plus murder mysteries are not really my cup of tea, especially when there are two or more murders in a story in order to cover up the first murder, as in the fictional story within this story. That is a trope that I absolutely hate. And to top it all off, I think I had figured out who the murder was in the fictional story as well. It seemed almost too obvious, so when the editor didn't pick up on the clue...  I guess that was just enough for me to call it quits. I didn't care any more. Unlike my wife, I don't force myself to keep reading something I have to force myself to read. Especially since I have two other books waiting for me to read.

I have another mystery by Horowitz on hold at the library, and I will give it a try when it comes in, since it is in another series, and as I said, I had no complaints about the writing; only the characters.

The Founders' Tribunal is Currently FREE on Amazon

 

I just happen to notice that Amazon has price-matched my other venues and as of 6 Dec 2025, Amazon is offering The Founders' Tribunal for FREE. Save $1.99!  Act now!

THE FOUNDERS' TRIBUNAL ON AMAZON 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 159)

 

Another adventure story from an author that was one of my favorites. in my long ago youth. How does it fare in my old age? 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Prester John by John Buchan  C

The answer to the lede question; not well. Not that there is anything really wrong with the book, for what it is. It is just not for me anymore, for a number of reasons. But before all of that, the premise.

The story opens with several kids in Scotland. While playing hooky from church they discover someone performing some sort of pagan ritual around a fire on a deserted beach at night. This someone turns out to be a visiting black clergyman. Discovered, he chases the boys, but they escape.

Fast forward ten years, and the narrator is offered the opportunity to make his fortune in South Africa as a merchant. On the trip down, he discovered the same clergyman, who, of course doesn't recognize him. And well, the rest of the story is about the fact that this clergyman, a spiritual descendent of a fabled Ethiopian emperor said to be Prester John, is the leader of a great African uprising, that, of course, must be suppressed. One desperate adventure after another ensues.

Buchan spent two years in South Africa as an aide to the British high commissioner, so he knew the setting and the people, and could described it, in great detail and in authentic terms. Unfortunately, many of those terms meant nothing to me. And then there is my usual problem of not being able to picture what is being described, so that a lot of the words describing the scenery and such was wasted on me. He also has pages and pages of rock climbing descriptions, which like battles, just confuse and bore me. He also has a lot of internal dialog, which I may've put up with in my youth, but I find tedious these days. I did a lot of skim reading in the last third of the book.

Part of the problem with this book and similar ones, is that I don't care about the fate of the English Empire. So when you have these heroes giving it their all to save it, I'm not really caring all that much. For example, in this case, if this great leader rose and led the Africans to toss out the European colonialist, I'm on their side. Laputa, the black clergyman and leader of the planned uprising is sort of an African Fu Manchu, sharing Fu Manchu's desire to overthrow European colonial rule. Time has made these fictional villains the heroes of these stories.

I will give Buchan credit; he treated the blacks with respect and sympathy for their plight. The Laputa was seen by the first person narrator of this story as a great and noble man, and the natives were not serotyped savages. 

However, in the end, though there was fast paced danger and adventure, there were also long sections towards the end that read like history lessons, and for some reason my ebook reader would freeze every time I got to a certain page within the last ten pages of the end, so I never could read, or rather, skim to the end of the story. Oh well. I don't think I missed much.

I am probably not doing this book justice. John Buchan wrote a couple of my favorite stories and writes well. However, as in the case of Robert Lewis Stevenson, it seems that these old time adventure stories are no longer my forte. 

This book is available for free on the Gutenberg Project.

Some Random Thoughts on Contests

 

These random thoughts were inspired by the current Self Published Fantasy Blog Off "SPBO" contest. Which, I should add, my books are not part of. I had entered Beneath the Lanterns, and Sailing to Redoubt in the previous two contests, but this contest is a "Campion of Champions" contest that pits the ten winners from the first ten years of the contest. And well, it struck me, at least, as; how unfair was that! I felt sorry for those authors. They all had been champions... but when this contest ends in a month, well, ten champions will have been reduced to just one.

But on to my random thoughts...

Entering art into any sort of contest or juried show is a crapshoot. All art is subjective and all judges are to one extent or another subjective when judging art. The "winner" will be the piece that best matches the subjective taste and/or assessment of any objective criteria that the judges are tasked with evaluating. One needs to understand that the results of these contests are essentially a matter of luck, i.e. since it boils down to the choice of judges, in order to avoid soul crushing disappointments. 

There are, of course, ways in which contests attempt to camouflage the subjectivity of the results, often using popularity as a gauge of excellence on the theory that being more popular suggests greater success. For pure art popularity does not confer superiority. Pure art succeeds on an individual level. However, popularity can be a truly objective way of judging art - when art is considered as a product.

And, well, art can be, and often is, considered a product. In the case of books there is one objective way of measuring its worth, and that is the profit a book generates. Unfortunately, the publishing industry and most authors, are very closed mouth about how much money a book earns, which would be a truly objective way of determining what are the "best books," at least for the publisher and author. Contests that use popularity assume that the books that generate the most popularity reflect commercial success. So as long as everyone understands that the criteria of success is commercial appeal rather than artistic excellence, the results are authentic.

There are also in the book industry a number of contests that use some form of jury system to judge a book by its artistic worth. However, as I said above, the results will reflect the tastes of the judges, informed by the expectation of the genre and general readership. But these results represent a non-representational sample of readers, and as such, can be dismissed under the category of not ever being able to please everyone.

But even if you can come up with some sort of objective basis of judging art, what purpose does it serve? It must serve some purpose, or why bother? Officially it is "honoring" the creator for their outstanding effort. And there are no doubt artists who value that acknowledgement. But I can't help but believe that the main reason for contests is to promote sales. You can add "Winner of ___" to the cover of the book. And maybe it does. Anything is possible.

But what is not often mentioned is that there is a dark side to contests. Contests are, by their design, exceptionally efficient at producing "losers." The more people who enter their work in contest, the more losers a contest will produce. There can, by design, be only one winner. And while most contests give secondary prizes for runners up, there is still, only one winner. Every other entry has been judge inferior to the winner.

This feature of contests is obvious, but, as I said, often overlooked. Unless you're one of the losers. This effect struck me forcefully when I view the current Self Published Fantasy Blog Off contest. For the last 10 years author Mark Lawrence has run a contest to promote self published fantasy books to a wider readership by running a contests that features 300  self published books submitted submitted by their authors. The books are judged by various fantasy blogs and YouTubers. My gut feeling is that the state goal of the contest haven't been very successful. I suspect that the people who read self published books don't need the encouragement, and the readers who don't, won't for reasons that publicity will do little to change their mind, if they ever notice the contest. Videos reviewing these self published books as part of the contest are often the lowest watched videos on any booktube channel. Still, I suppose any odd mention helps the cause. 

But,  as I said at the top; the current SPFO contest is a "Champion of Champion" which pits the winning books from the last ten years against each other. They were indeed, all champions in the year they were entered. Now, however they are being ranked against each other to determine which book is THE CHAMPION, the best and it doesn't matter how often any judge might say that they're all champions, at the end of the day, only one of them will be judged the best. And the other nine can only be regarded as losers, former champions.

Despite my negative attitude to contests, as I mentioned above, I have entered two of my books in the above mentioned contest and two in a similar contest for science fiction books. I did so on the grounds that it's free and easy promotion and the hope that I might hear what an experienced reviewer might say about my book after being forced, in a way, to read it.

The free and easy as promotion aspect has proven to be a bust. I never saw a sales bump for my fifteen minutes of effort. And as for the feedback, the sum total has been two reviews posted on two obscure blogs and on Goodreads for the two books, which was nice, but didn't move the needle. The other two contests resulted in nothing more than a mention when all the books were introduced, i.e. nothing. A waste of 15 minutes.

One bonus result of entering these contests was to give me a sense of anticipation and jeopardy for a while, i.e. add a little spice to life, which proved to be almost all that made entering the contest worth it.

Going forward, I won't be entering any more of my books in these contests, since I am not writing books that fit the usual mold for either genre. I have no reason to believe I even advance to the second round, but I might risk a iffy review out of the process. Plus, I don't need the publicity since my free book readers seem to find my books at a pace most self publishing authors would envy. So I might as well let some other deserving author take my spot and get their shot at glory.

So to sum it all up: little effort, little gain. However, not being naive about what the results of judged shows and contests deliver, I suffered no heartbreaks. Only disappointments...

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 158)

 

Something a very different today. I discovered a new genre.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Apothecary Diaries # 1 by Natsu Hyunga illustrations by Touko Shino

One of the booktubers I watch named the 11th volume of this series as one of her three favorite books of the month, and went on to say how much she liked the series. The premise she described sounded interesting since I like stories set in China, or something resembling China, and this story was described being that of a young girl making her way from the bottom up in a Chinese style court, with a mix of court intrigue and humor, all of which gave me Emma M Lion vibes. So I tracked it down both on Amazon and at our local library. All off which led me down something of a rabbit hole, which is the main purpose of this "review." But first a quick summery of the series.

This is a series of "light novels" featuring a young woman who was kidnapped and sold to the imperial court as a washer of clothes for the concubines of the emperor. Her father was a doctor, and she had acted as an apprentice and aide to him before she was abducted. In this first volume she inadvertently calls attention to herself with her medical knowledge. It seems that two of the concubines, having given birth to children who would become a prince and a princess, are wasting away, along with their infants. She recognized the reason why this is happening and contrives to warn them. One takes her advice, and both the mother and child recover, while the other doesn't, and the would-be prince dies, and his mother continues to waste away. This is as far as I got in the story itself.

I only read the first six chapters of this book, but I'm not going to count it as a DNF, since I was reading the sample pages on Amazon in order to get the flavor of the story. It would hardly be fair to say I DNFed it because in fact, I just stopped reading it when the sample ran out.

I was interested enough in the story to see if my local library had copies. In the online catalog they -seemingly - did have the first three volumes "on order," with a fairly short waiting list for them. I say "seemingly," because I discovered that there are two versions of this story. One is a manga and the other is the "light novel." 

What, you may ask, is a light novel? I did. So I asked Google.  Here a summery of the AI response:

A light novel is a style of Japanese novel that typically targets teenagers and young adults and is characterized by its short length, simple language and inclusion of manga-style illustrations. They are primarily markets to middle and high school students, but with a readership that extends to young adults and older readers. They are comparable to a novella, ranging from 40K to 50K words and frequently include both color and black and white illustrations in an anime or manga style.

Well, I learned something new. I further discovered that the books available at the library were the manga version of the story. I've never been a very ardent comic book reader, and have never even dipped my toes into manga or anime, and have no desire to. So if I wanted to read the light novel version of the story, I'd have to buy the books. I looked into getting the books second hand on Abe Books, my fist place to look when I consider buying a book, but the prices, including shipping were just about the same as new on Amazon. And with the ebook versions going for $8 each and not in Kindle Unlimited, they were also not an option, as anything for than $5 for a digital file is more than I am willing to pay. I'd rather pay more for a real, paper book.

However, returning to the story itself; the sample I read was certainly written at a middle school level, simple and direct, but cheerful enough. However, being a reader of writing rather than story, I found the writing rather sparse for my taste, though, as I said, its sparseness did have some charm to it. But not enough for me to pay money to read it. That said, I think that when one considers that there are currently 15 books in the series, which is to say, a story of more than half a million words, I can see that its simplicity might be very misleading, and how one might well get drawn into the story. If you could afford it.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 157)

 

Let's keep a trend going here. What trend, you ask? Since I've likely read all of the  Anne of Green Gable books I care to read, we'll move on to some other books that one might have read to one's children at bedtime, back when I was reading bedtime stories to my kids. i.e. a long time ago.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett   B

This is, of course, a very well known book, with the story adopted half a dozen times over the years in film, TV, and the stage. It concerns a 10 year old orphan, Mary, whose neglectful parents both die, as Europeans often did, in India of cholera or some such thing. She is then sent home to live with her uncle in England; in a great house on the moors of Yorkshire. Unloved Mary is a very unpleasant you child, raised by servants that she could boss around, and did. She now finds herself in a strange house of a hundred rooms, most of which are unused. Her uncle, with a bit of a twisted back, is still morning the death of his wife ten years before, so he's rarely at home, roaming the world, half mad with sadness.  He has a son, who fears he will end up crippled like his father, and much like Mary is used to getting his own way. However, in this house, Mary slowly discovers the love she was denied, as well as, a mentor in the form of a 12 year old boy, Dickon, who is one with the moors and the out of doors. And she steps up to give her cousin the love and courage to move beyond his fears and discover the wide world outside his windows.

Lots of nature, lots of gardening, lots of inspirational writing, with a touch of Gothic atmosphere, as two unloved children began to blossom with love, friendship, and a healthy helping of the bracing life of the Yorkshire moors. And did I mention, gardening? A nice uplifting story. I enjoyed it.

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett  B-

Like The Secret Garden, this is a book for younger readers, a century ago. Which is not to say I disliked it, but I could see children enjoying the riches to rags and riches again story of Sara Crewe. The story opens with Sara's father, a British Army Officer, comfortably supplied with money, bringing Sara to a London boarding school at the age of nine. Her mother had died, and he felt that India was an unhealthy place to raise a child, so he reluctantly arranged for her to say at this boarding school, lavishing her with fine things, including a pony and a maid. Sara is a very thoughtful young woman, gifted with imagination and much given to making ups stories to the delight of some of her classmates, but far from all. She is envied by some because of her privileged position as the daughter of a rich man, and is the pride of the school. But all good things must come to an end, and end they do, when her father, investing seemingly unwisely in a diamond mine, runs out of money, falls ill with fever, and dies penniless. Sara must now work for her room and board, and living in an attic room with a tame rat, she is very ill treated by all. And yet she is able to maintain her spirits and dignity by imagining herself as a princess, and only doing what a princess would do.

Once again, it's a nice story with lots of uplifting moral messages. Sara is a very nice and interesting character. A enjoyable read, if somewhat predictable. And it did, I am quite sure, improve my character. 

Robin by Frances Hodgson Burnett  DNF 16%

Now, this one is not a children's novel, but rather one about a young woman, Robin, whose mother, a widow is the mistress of a man reputed to be a rake and as such, not acceptable in polite society. Her rakish lover, however, sees that Robin is raised and educated in order that Robin can make a living, suggesting that he isn't all bad. The inciting incident of the story is when Robin as a young child, raised without love by servants, a running theme in Burnett's books to date, meets a boy in the local park and they spend a few days of playing together... until the boy's mother realizes just whose daughter Robin is, and after doing so, whisks her son away. They never forget those days, and meet again when Robin is 20 years old, when the world is on the brink of World War One. This is when the main part of the story kicks in. A promising romance set in a haunting time.

Alas, this adult novel still has all the moralizing and mush of her children-focused books. More of it, in fact.  Indeed, I found it filled so much of the characters' conversations, and musing on the phycological and moral effects of the early months of that war that the story just dragged on and on. It was very much a novel of its time. I found that I didn't care enough about the characters to wade my way through all the talk and anguish to carry on reading it.

All in all, I believe I've sampled enough of Frances Hodgson Burnett to check her box and move on.

My Writing Process

                                                                                                                

I spent last week finishing up on my current writing projects; The Isle House Ghost, a Red Wine novella, and Nine Again, another Red Wine story, but this time a short story. Nine Again is an extension of The Isle House Ghost, story, basically an afterthought, but an irresistible one. However, to have tacked it on to the main story would have destroy the symmetry of that story, and my ending, so it is its own separate thing. 

But that's not what I want to talk about here. I want to outline the steps I take to produce a story. And since I'm never at a loss for words, on a page anyway. let's begin.

Step One. Dream up a story. I usually spend three or more months just thinking about the story I want to write, getting to know it from beginning to end. Ideally. And often going over key scenes dozens of times, or more, in my head, so that when I sit down to write the story, I am telling a story that I know. Again, ideally.

Step Two. Write it. If I've done my job and know the story I want to tell from nose to tail, all I have to do is to put the scenes into words. Putting the story into words will add to and alter the original story somewhat as it goes along, but it will follow the outline of the story I dreamed up. I write it from beginning to the end. However there have been stories that I find, when I get to the middle of them, that I did a little too much handwaving over what happens in the middle, and have to stop and think about what I can come up with to fill in that gap. Sometimes I've had to put a story away for a while time, even a year, while I try to come up with stuff to fill that middle. Or in one case, just decide to make it into a novella. You don't need middles in novellas. I usually go back and start editing what I have written while I come up with things to fill out the middle of the story.

This first draft is the most important part of the story, since I do not make major changes to it in subsequent drafts, or edits, as some people call the process or revising the first draft. The first draft is the hardest part of the process because it sets the pattern, and so I need to be happy with it before going on, because I know I'll be only tinkering with it in subsequent drafts.

This step, writing the first draft, also takes about three or four months for a novel.

Step Three. Second draft. After finishing my first draft, I usually turn around and start my second draft. While experts often say that you should wait a while before starting to edit your work, I figure that the nose of my story is at least three months in the past, so that should be far enough in the past to view with an new eyes, and since revising is a lot easier than writing, the momentum of this draft will carry me all through this second draft. 

I don't make major changes. I will typically add 10% more words, as I fill out sketchy descriptions and dialogs. Most the changes involve straightening out my words; eliminating as many of my "and"s as I can, and taking all those phrases that I tacked on to the end of sentences and moving them forward to where they should be in the sentence. I seem to have heard somewhere that the German language adds a lot of phrases at the end, so this propensity to tack on phrases at the end of a sentence might be a heritage of my German ancestors. I also, of course correct all the typos I find along the way. But hardly all.

This second draft may take several weeks to complete.

Step Four. Third draft. I go over the story again, but hopefully I find less to tinker with. These days I do my third draft in Google Docs, as it has a better grammar checker, and the text looks different, which might make things I would miss going over the same text a third time, stand out more. I tried loading the document onto an ebook ereader, and then reading it, and then make changes when I found the clunkers when reading it as a book, but that proved to be too awkward. 

Ideally, after finishing my third draft, I should feel comfortable with the story as written. I know that anytime I read something of mine, I will find things I want to change, no matter how may times I've gone over it. So that at some point I have to say "Good enough." and go with it, or I would never get anything out.

Step Five. This is an optional step, but one I find I'm taking more and more; namely. a fourth draft. This happens when I don't feel completely comfortable after my third draft. The Isle House Ghost has gone through four drafts. It is an old fashioned mystery, and as I wrote it, I came to realize that I needed to change things that I had already written to be consistent, so this back and forth, even in the second and third draft left me uneasy. I did more drafts for The Girl on the Kerb, as I wasn't comfortable with my first "finished" version, and I had the time while I was querying it. 

Step Six. Online proofing. In the last several years I've introduced this step with great success. I upload my work, chapter by chapter to the free online version of Grammarly to find typos, wrong words correctly spelled, where to put commas, etc. Everything underlined with red. I don't use their premium grammar suggestions. This is just for proofreading. I then take these Grammarly-proofed pages and upload them to Scribbr's own online grammar checker, and correct all the mistakes that Grammarly missed. And decide who's comma suggestions I'll take and whose I wont. All of this is time consuming, and discouraging. They find so many mistakes. But well worth it.

Step Seven. I then print out a copy of the story and hand it to my wife to proofread and offer any comments or suggestions. Thanks to the online proofreading, her job is much easier than it used to be, with entire pages going by without needing me to fix anything.

Step Eight. When I've made all the corrections that my wife has found, I offer it to my beta readers. My beta readers mostly act as proofreaders - many of them became my beta readers by offering corrections in my published works that were far more prevalent in my early books. Some do offer suggestions as well, that I take into account.

Step Nine. Prepare epub versions. These days for Amazon, I use  their Kindle Create app on my computer to format the ebooks and audiobooks for Amazon. Otherwise, I use Draft2Digital to format my books for them and for Google.

Step Ten. I reformate my stories for paperback books using LibreOffice, the same program I write the stories in. It isn't too hard, and I'm not overly fussy. I grew up reading mass market paperbacks. I also have to paint or find painting for the cover of the books, both ebook and paper. And I do an interior page one illustration, and sometimes maps as well for the paper edition.

So that's my work flow. At present, I have turned over The Isle House Ghost and Nine Again to my wife for her proofreading. But with a release date in February 2026, there is no hurry for to get at it, as I will probably only sent it out to my beta readers after the holidays. I have a cover for The Isle House Ghost that would work for both the ebook, and the omnibus paper version of  Those two books and The Founders' Tribunal that I intend to release around the same time. But I have an idea for a separate cover for the ebook version of The Isle House Ghost that I would like to paint. We'll see.

So, with all of that, you are up to date with my writing.