And yes...a day late with this too!

This week has been okay. No Creative Writing Group as we’re on holiday for the moment and as I am giving advice (which I should have declined) about self-publishing and I have finally got my act in gear and decided to sort out my paperback version of my first fantasy novel. It was supposed to be a trilogy, but things went somewhat awry, hence the reason I completely changed tack and decided to try my hand at the romance genre. It also helped that I’d read a number of romance novels – especially from the Regency period – and I thought that most of them were terrible. I know that these authors do their best but I found many, many spelling errors and errors in the writing itself. Half of me, as a proofreader, wants to e-mail the person concerned and ask if they need someone to proofread/copyedit their next manuscript, but the cautious person says, ‘Don’t. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself.’ Of course we all know that’s how Perceval/Galahad depending on which version of the Grail story that you read, lost the Grail. But that’s by the by. So I decided that I could do so much better. Which is why I decided to write my Romance Novel. But working out the correct size for my book was a nightmare. Eventually – which I admit – I should have done in the first place – I downloaded the template for the book size and pasted the whole text of my first novel into it. After two attempts, that seemed to work; then it was the fun job of actually getting the text to sit where I wanted it to in the book. And by that I mean whether I wanted said text on the recto (right) or verso (left) page. That took some jiggery pokery and although I’ve ordered a proof copy of it, there’s no guarantee that it’ll look exactly as I want it to. So we’ll see. Have posted a photo of my book cover below – and trust me, it seemed to take forever to design and I’m still not sure I got it right. Coupled with this, is the fact that my cover is not exactly the same as the one I uploaded. I have no idea what happened to that image, and the one below is the best I’ve been able to recreate. So you’ll have to make do with that.

It will be Easter on Sunday – although one could argue that I’ve been a bit of a cheapskate and bought all my Easter treats from Aldi this year. The only Easter Eggs I used to really enjoy were Thorntons and unfortunately the last time I bought a Thorntons egg it didn’t taste right – or maybe my tastebuds weren’t right. Either way since I got my Easter treats from Aldi last year and they tasted fine (actually better than fine) I thought that Aldi would be the best choice this year. (And if you can follow that, you’re a better man than I am Gunga Din.)

On the plus side the writing seems to be going quite well. Admittedly it’s a little slow writing the Romance Novel, but I’m getting there slowly. Of course, my ink pen decided that at this moment it would run out of ink and I have no cartridges that would fit it. I do have other ink pens, but none that write as well as my main one. But we’ll how things go. Well no more news from this week, will let you know how things go.