Writing a Book is an Adventure

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

“Very” is the Most Useless Word in the English Language

“Very” is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen. For example, would you rather hear the mincing shallowness of “I love you very much” or the heart-slamming intensity of “I love you”?

FLORENCE KING

It Is People's Secrets We Want to Know

God preserve us from writers who regurgitate what they have learnt from books! 
It is people’s secrets we want to know -- it is the natural history of the human heart that we have been trying to put down for a thousand years and everyone must and can leave their contribution.

AUGUST STRINDBERG

Reviews on 'The Eleventh Hour'

  Some of the fantastic reviews on 'The Eleventh Hour'

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/85666

Review on Sep. 11, 2011 :
An excellent selection of short, dark fiction. Each of the eleven stories is well paced, nicely written, and there's some surprising twists. Highly recommended!
(reviewed within a week of purchase)

Review on Sep. 11, 2011 :
A wonderful collection of dark fiction tales. I thought all the stories were good, some great and one in particular, brilliant. Well worth the read and I hope to see more published. 5 stars from me.
(reviewed within a week of purchase)

Review on Sep. 05, 2011 :
A great collection of short stories. My favourite was 'The Journal'. Would definately recommend it.
(reviewed the day of purchase)

Review on Sep. 03, 2011 :
A great collection, I especially enjoyed 'The Journal', will recommend to others.
(reviewed the day of purchase)

Review on Sep. 02, 2011 :
This is a wonderful book! I especially enjoyed "The Borrowed Book" story; amazing twist! Would recommend this collection to a friend!
(reviewed the day of purchase)

Review on Sep. 02, 2011 :
This is a great collection of short stories. It's hard to pick a favourite, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it.
(reviewed the day of purchase)

You Must Have A Sacred Place

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL

Post thoughts on self-publishing an ebook

I have just self-published my first ebook.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/85666

 I decided to do this because I really wanted the experience of self-publishing an ebook, and I have to say overall I enjoyed it.
I first looked at the Amazon site and went through to Kindle to use their publish section. Well after a few hours and a few swear words, I gave up and went over to Smashwords. Their site was very easy to follow and other than a few formating problems, such as indented paragraphs, it was easy enough to finish the project.
Smashwords will not let you proress until everything is correct, formating, copyright, cover picture etc. The good thing is they do tell you what sections need addressing, you re-submit and when it is all correct it will allow you to use one of their ISBN which is an International Standard Book Number, it is a 10-digit number that uniquely identifies books and book-like products published internationally.


When I had successfully finished my ebook I thought I would re-try Kindle, so that my ebook could be sold on Amazon. It must have been the fact that I now had an ISBN, I completed the task in 5 minutes, what a breeze. On Kindle it takes 24 to 48 hours to appear in their shop, so I'm looking forward to that now.

ISBN - In Smashwords you can provide your own, I have no experience on this but apparantly it is cheaper if you buy them in blocks of ten. Or you can avail of a free one from Smashwords, if you have no interest in becoming a publisher and/or want to keep the costs to 0.00 then this is the way to go.
So if I was to make another ebook, I would definitely use Smashwords first, avail of the free ISBN and then use the Kindle setup, and save myself hours of swearing.

Relevent links:
Smashwords - http://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_on_smashwords
Kindle - https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help

The Eleventh Hour - ebook goes on sale

The Eleventh Hour

My collection of eleven dark fiction short stories has just been published on ebook, hope you enjoy it.
Each one individual and gives us tales in Possession, Guilt, Paranoia, Depression, Secrets, Grief, Haunting and Murder

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/85666