How long does it take to publish a book?

Well, using lulu.com it took me a grand total of 14 hours:

Research - 4 hours
Typesetting - 4 hours
Cover design - 3 hours
Uploading - 2 hours
Post-publication - 1 hour

(though of course writing the book in the first place took me over 16 years)

Research
This is of paramount importance - never rush into something like this without doing the research first! I spent a lot of time on lulu.com checking out the guidance offered, terms and conditions, copyright issues, the community areas, processes involved, etc. The lulu website is fairly comprehensive - lots of FAQs and guidance, though they're not set out as simply as one could hope. They were good enough to get me through the process in less than a day, which isn't bad I suppose.

lulu.com are a Print On Demand (POD) service. There's a lot of companies out there nowadays offering this sort of service, and it goes to say that some will be better than others. The lulu.com service is very basic - it really is a case of "you get what it says on the tin". There's an active community forum for people who are looking for help, but not much more. You are expected to format your book yourself, and they only offer a very limited stock of off-the-shelf cover designs. They will convert MS Word and OpenOffice documents into pdf for you, but that process is not interactive and there's no way to check a proof except by buying a book. lulu.com is certainly not for anyone not confident enough to do most of the work themselves!

Typesetting
Luckily for me, I'm stupidly cocky enough to think I know how to do publication layouts. Rather than produce a Word document and have them convert it into the required pdf format for me, I used my Adobe PageMaker programme to pull together the content. This included doing my own copyright page, my own contents page, page numbering, layout, style selection (I chose to typeset using the Tahoma font - serviceable for the 84 page document I was publishing, though probably not the best choice - put it down to a personal dislike of serif fonts), etc. A good hour of my time was spent going through the PageMaker help files to work out things I'd forgotten how to do.

In the end I had an 84 page document (at 6" by 9") - just enough to warrant perfect binding.

Cover design
This was fun! The instructions on lulu.com for producing your own cover design are fairly clear, and the website does offer templates for various book sizes. Me being me, I decided to use The Gimp. My original intention was to have a very plain black cover with just the title and name in a nice font on the front. But then I got a bit creative - a sandy background with one of those wierd poster fonts for title and author, a snatch of my conlang script at the bottom and a picture of a magnificent chicken which I'd taken a couple of years ago when we took Mother to visit the Hackney City Farm.

I also had to think of some words to go on the back cover, and I even gave in to vanity by including the photo of me and the monkey on the back. It's not the best, most professional cover design in the world, but I love it!

Uploading
To be fair to lulu.com, this should not have taken me more than half an hour. Unfortunately it was at this stage that I discovered PageMaker insisted on producing a pdf file that was security encrypted - which as lulu.com clearly say is a big no-no. I searched the PageMaker help files and the Adobe Distiller help files - no luck! I searched the lulu.com forums for an answer, but it seems PageMaker is not commonly used by the community (and given the price of the software I don't blame them - I bought my copy for myself as a crimbo prezzie a few years ago because I thought I deserved a big treat that year). Finally I went to the Adobe website and found the answer in about 3 minutes. Bloody typical!

With that problem solved, the publishing process was soon navigated, and I became the proud owner of my very first POD book!

Post-publication
lulu.com are in the US, and I'm in England. I'm also vain enough to want my book to have its very own ISBN number so people can order it through amazon.com - this is an extra that lulu.com offer and, as I have no shame about vanity publishing (I've been doing it for years on my website), I was happy to pay the money for their "worldwide distribution package". This sounds more awesome than it really is, as all it really means is that in addition to lulu.com's own printers, a second printer in the US and one in the UK will also be willing to POD my book for any order through the online bookstores. It also means the book will be listed in a couple of catalogues used by libraries and bricks&mortar bookshops - though I don't expect to ever see my little gem gathering dust on a shopfloor bookshelf!

Getting a book listed on amazon.com and the like can take 6-8 weeks, so I'll have to leave reporting on that aspect of the publishing experience until after crimbotime.

The final product
And if you want to buy my book? You can get it from my very own lulu.com shop for the measly sum of $10.00 + p&p. Enjoy!

Advertising the Poetry Periscope listing service

The Poetry Periscope has been running for about 3 months now. Its purpose is to give people with poetry websites or blogs the space to "advertise" (free of charge - I offer this service by the kindness of my heart) those websites, so readers can get a feeling of whether they want to visit the site or not. Currently the site has 17 listings. If you've not checked it out before (or have, but haven't had the time to submit a listing) then please do feel free to click on the link and have a good nose around.

Life begins ...

The best thing about passing the age of 30 is that you stop worrying. The realisation comes that you're never going to be a supermodel or international rock superstar, you're not going to be a multimillionaire by the time you're 30, or the CEO of your own multinational company. You stop expecting too much of yourself and start enjoying what you do have instead. Friends and family become more important than making it big in the world. The day-to-day enjoyments and harrassments of life take over from the Big Picture stuff.

Life gets to be more fun, especially when you learn that what you think of yourself is far more important than what other people think of you. You can wear what you want, rather than worry about the latest fashion. You can take pleasure in food and drink, rather than be seen to be eating the latest fad-cuisine. You can listen to music you enjoy, rather than trying to convince yourself that the latest trend or band is brilliant must-listen-to music.

People who fail to make this tranformation are dangerous, in my opinion, and should be hunted down with dogs and shot.

Rik, contentedly 41 years old.

Names writ in water

Bird flu has reached Turkey, and suddenly the UK media seems to have woken up to the danger. It's no longer a two sentence story to put in the sidelines about how those strange asian folks are going around slaughtering all their chickens. The death rate from infection is about one in two: the Nazis (who were surprisingly green in their outlook) would probably be muttering about "survival of the fittest"; the evangelicals will no doubt be whinnying on about "God's will". Suddenly I'm interested in a new lottery - who gets the flu jab should the virus finally succeed in transforming itself into a human-transferrable disease. If people had sense, the bulk of the vaccines should go to children and students, not because they are our future, but rather because they're the most likely to spread it through the rest of the community. Playgrounds are dirty places.

I did some quick checking up when I heard the Turkey news - I'd visited a bird reserve while over there a week before and was a bit worried that it was the one mentioned in the news reports. Luckily not: Lake Bafa is a couple of hundred Km south of the infected farm. This is good news, as Bafa Lake is a magical place - enough off the beaten tourist track to be authentic Turkey, with a stunning lake, a village built amid the ruins of an ancient city, and a mountain with a mythological history. Walking around the place, I could understand why so many hermits and mystics chose to live here.

Endymion the shepherd lived on the mountain, and was visited when he slept by the moon goddess. Eventually he sired over 400 daughters without waking up once as the dirty deeds were committed. Then the head honcho god turns up and offers little E whatever he wants in the way of supernatural powers: "I'd like to sleep forever, so those wonderful dreams don't stop", says E, who gets his wish granted. As the Rough Guide to Turkey notes, this makes Endymion the demigod of wet dreams. Superb!

John Keats wrote a long poem (called Endymion) about this myth, published when he was 21. The book was savaged by the critics of the day, though it has one of those really famous opening lines:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.

John Keats died when he was 25, of consumption (tuberculosis - his lungs rotted while he still lived). He demanded that he be buried with nothing to mark his grave except the words: Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ In Water - though the man who buried him chose to modify his commission, which seemed too bitter. I feel there's truth in Keats's words, though. Once we are gone, nothing remains of us, except the memories of those who knew us. Unlike Keats, I do not view this as an altogether bad thing.

But let's hope the bird flu doesn't put this idea to the test this winter.

Caveat Emptor

I feel no guilt for not posting for 3 weeks. This blog does not rule my life!

A poem to celebrate my return to blogland:

Caveat Emptor

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Facelifting

A couple of months back I decided I was going to be the extremely unofficial (and highly dubious) poet-not-quite-in-residence (but living round the corner) for the forthcoming olympic games in London. This is the first draft of the second poem written for that marvellous folio:

Facelifting

Workshy, rushed, rushing
to work late like binmen.
Exit chores: the disposal
of food waste has me
leaping for air, fungus
spores lifted by the glush
of rot from bucket
to bin to neck me like
a ribbon, gold in a light
from a blue-sky morning.

Later, waiting for buses:
a glass carriage drawn
by white horses, plumed.
A train of sleek cars,
mournerless, parading
through Mare Street. Silver
handlebars decorate
a white coffin: I shall
remember those ornaments
around a stranger's corpse.

Hackney Town Hall must have
fresh steps, new adornments
to match the flutter
of flags. Seven years
to spruce this corpse,
recycle this pock-worn
friend of a town. Folks
need architecture to recall
the momentary glory,
the bronze of bling.

Conbiology for beginners

It stands to reason that if you develop a fantasy world, and have people in the world speaking fantasy languages, then you'd want fantasy wildlife to go with it - man-eating triffids and the like.

Well, that's what this post is all about. I'm going to introduce you to a bit of Kaliedan biology. (Kalieda, for those who have not been paying attention, is my constructed world - the world where people speak my constructed language Gevey).

To make this a bit interesting, I'm going to introduce you to a species of "animal" that sort of looks a little bit like a monkey, and has 3 sexes.

So, how can a creature have 3 sexes? It's not easy to design, believe me. Especially when you start to think about triple strands of DNA (impossible) and genes that come in threes. That thought in particular is guaranteed to implode your brain if you think about it too much!

So instead, my monkeys stick to the regular sort of DNA-type genetic coding material, and cells divide into twos rather than threes. Nothing scary here.

The way I tackled the problem is to invoke something called alternation of generations, which happens a lot in plants. The terrestrial form of this phenomenon allows the generations to alternate between haploid forms (one set of chromosomes) and diploid forms (2 sets of chromosomes). This happens in Kalieda, and the lifeforms representing plants and insects follow this pattern - the diploid "plants" giving rise to the haploid "insects", which in turn mate and produce new diploid "plants".

Now bear with me. This is fun!

The normal form of alternation of generations wasn't good enough for my monkeys. Instead, I doubled the cycle. The haploid phase is reduced to single celled gametes (just like in humans), but the diploid phase alternates between mobile and sessile forms. And these forms are determined by genetics.

In terrestrial mammals, sex is determined by the sex chromosomes: XX gives you females and XY gives you males. During reproduction these chromosomes split in half so you get an X and another X from the female, and an X and a Y from the male. The offspring can be XX, XX, XY or XY.

Still with me?

So here goes. We have two types of monkey: a big, tough monkey that stays in one tree, and a smaller, more agile monkey that only comes to the tree to breed.

And we have the tree - its kind of shaped like a monkey, but it has leaves instead of hair and the bones are greatly elongated and the brain and sensory organs much degenerated. This is one form of the third sex (thopugh in fact it's assexual, in that its only purpose is to act as the brood chamber where that alternation of generation thingy happens).

So as not to confuse things, I'll call my monkey's sex chromosomes B and b - the breeder chromosome. When sex occurs, we get a mix of BB, Bb and bb - and each of these genotypes selects for a different sex.

Now the big monkey is BB and the little monkey is bb. The monkeytree is Bb. The little monkey visits the monkeytree and, after calming down the big monkey with presents of food, etc, has sex with the big monkey. The result of this mating is a sack of soft "seeds". Now because BB has mated with bb, all these seeds will be Bb. Two things can happen to these seeds.

The first thing is that the seeds can be laid in pouches within the monkeytree, where they are nurtured for a little while, turning into slug-type hermaphrodite Bb creatures which can breed with each other - these are the real third sex, though most people would assume the monkeytree itself was the third sex.

Now the results of breeding Bb with Bb will be 25% each of BB and bb, and 50% Bb. Let's discard these second generation Bb slugmonkeys - perhaps they develop much slower than the proper baby monkeys, who eat them as they grow within the monkeytree pouches. Soon enough the monkeytree gives birth to a new generation of miniature BB and bb monkeys, who grow up in the monkeytree until grandparent monkey drives them all off.

This is where option 2 for those Bb seeds comes in. Grandchild BB takes the Bb seed with (let's call it) her when she leaves the monkeytree. Now because this particular Bb seed never made it into the confines of the monkeytree's brood chamber, the brood chamber hormones have not been working on it, which means that once the young monkey finds a nice place, she can plant the seed and feed/guard it while it grows into a new brood tree.

I told you it would be fun! Maybe next week I'll post some sketches of my Kaliedan monkeys, if I can find time to do them.

I am a prosopagnostic!

Huh? What in hell's name is a prosopagnostic?

Now there's a question. Prosopagnosia is not a widely recognised illness or condition, but nevertheless I suffer from it. Let's call it dyslexia for faces. I can't remember them.

Of course, everyone forgets faces (except for those tiresome people who go around saying "I never forget a face!"). But this is a bit different: it's like however hard I try to remember a face, the bits of the face just won't gel into a whole face when I attempt to recall it. If I think "eyes" then I can recall a person's eyes; when I think "mouth" then the same thing happens. But try to think "face" and I get to see eyes and mouth, but they don't seem to have any relationship to each other. Don't ask for noses or ears - my brain just doesn't seem to process them.

It's a bugger, I tell you.

So how do I cope? Well, I tend to rely on other things to help me identify people. Hairstyles are useful - except that when a person changes their hairstyle the chances are good that I won't recognise them. Clothes and jewellery are less useful because they change more often. Voice is a godsend! I can recognise people's voices quite easily, so sometimes I have to wait until someone else speaks before their name clicks into place. There's also something I call "face types" - maybe a few dozen stock outlines of a face which I seem to use to help identify people - useful for recognising families, but not much help identifying individuals within the family.

Because prosopagnosia is not a well reported condition, I never knew I suffered from it until I stumbled across a reference to it in some magazine or other earlier this year. Google brings up about 74,000 hits for the word. Some of the more interesting hits include this one and this one - both personal accounts of living with the condition. And here's a more scientific site.

Finding those websites was a comfort to me. Firstly, I had no idea I had a problem until I came across the word - I just assumed everybody went through life like me, the only difference being that they had better ways of remembering who people were than I did. And secondly, reading through the websites made me realise that if I had the condition, then it was quite mild compared to what others suffered. I can remember a face if I'm in fairly constant contact with a person (very helpful for work colleagues), or if I have their photo around so I can remind myself of what they look like. My Mother's photo is kept on the fridge door - going to meet her at Victoria coach station and realising I couldn't remember what she looked like is not an experience I want to repeat! Luckily she's only little and has light grey hair in a perm, and her voice is unforgettable. Following films and TV is not too problematic either - though don't ask me to name the actors.

Yes, I have had some embarrasing moments. Cousins can be particularly troublesome - I know they're related to me but can't remember exactly who they are. They tend to sound quite similar too, and they always insist on asking me "do you remember which one I am?" Chatting people up in a bar can be hazardous. And I hate - hate - networking.

But it's not too much of a problem. Everybody seems to answers to the word "you".

Website housework

I've had a productive morning: I've reviewed the poems in my workshop, tampered with a couple of titles and decided that 3 poems are completed enough to move out. One I've added to my showcase, while the other two will languish in the archives.

If the above meant nothing to you (dear reader), then I suppose I'd better do some explaining.

I don't play the publishing game. I have no time, inclination or interest in submitting poems to magazines or doing all the networking on the local scene that's associated with trying to get a chapbook publication deal. I don't enter competitions. I have become an internet poet, and I use my website as my showcase to the world. On my website, the casual visitor can find all the poems I've written over the years that are fit for public consumption (no barracking from the back row!) and also the poems I'm currently working on.

The website is divided into a workshop page and a showcase page, with links to poems I'm working on and poems I'm particularly proud of respectively. I also include links pages to the poems in my 2 collections - 22 Facets of my Father and Play Time - which are also available for download as formatted .pdf files. (Yep, that's right, I'm one of those oiks who chooses to self-publish). Behind all of this is an archive page, with links to all the poems on the website. A poem that doesn't make it onto one of the other links pages is left to fester in the darkness, with only the archive page link connecting it to fame and fortune.

Internet publishing has advantages and disadvantages. On the negative side, the chances of qualifying for prestigious awards (for best book, best first book, best poem, etc) are zero. There's no reviewers fighting to heap praise on my latest .pdf chapbook, and PR and promotions is entirely left up to me. On the positive side I am my own boss. I retain all copyrights to all my poems, and there's no chance of some bastard trying to anthologise my work against my wishes. Especially important, I don't have to do the networking stuff: attending dreary poetry readings, pretending to be nice to people who have bored the living shit out of me for the previous 2 hours with their monotone drone; playing publication house politics; dealing with all that crap which seems to go with "minor celebrity". I'm also free to write whatever I bloody well like, with no need to craft my work to current fashions and tastes - if I fancy doing 2,000 lines of Alliterative Verse, I do it.

Anyways, some links to the recently completed poems, for those of you who are interested:

» She Forgets and Remembers by Touch
» The Office as a Form of Inspiration
» After eating strawberries, I ask my father for two bullets

Enjoy!

The Intelligent Designer (v2)

Right, then. Time for some poetry. I've been working on my intelligent designer poem, mainly because several people have told me they haven't got a clue what I'm trying to say in the original. Then again, not many people are stupid enough to attempt to write a "history of the universe" poem, so the fault for the confusion lies entirely with me (however much I'm tempted to blame the reader).

Against the advice to cut, I've decided to expand the poem substantially. Hopefully there should be enough signage in the piece now to help people navigate my madness. The first 4 sections are new, with the old draft bringing up the rear. I've not yet edited the last section, mainly because I want to give the whole piece some time to settle before I cut and trim to size.

So, here goes: version 2 of ...

The Intelligent Designer

1. Before The Beginning

It starts as a web of dimensions rolled
together, a strand which He loops around
His fingers, a hammock of plans that fold
in knots to the size of an orange. Bound

within are equations and constants, stuff
designed to become His new home, a place
to realise His dreams. When it's taut enough
He spins it, and - BOOM!

2. Let There Be Life

He sits in a hole in a swirl of stars,
determining chance within chains, their codes
a knot of electrons entrapped by spars
of forces He tethers in quantum modes.

He blows, and the flames of a billion orbs
contort in their tubes, a magnetic flux
of notes in a chord. Something stirs: absorbs
the heat, recombines in new styles, unplucks

His codes and commands. It divides, a splice
expected, and yet - He observes - unique
in ways unforseen. He relaxes, smiles,
accepts this new turn in His plan and speaks

to worlds without ears: "I shall give you ears
to hear Me and eyes that shall find My love";
and scattering dust to the void He cheers
"success goes to those who believe enough!"

3. Survival Of The Fittest

It seethes - like a stew on the boil, a steam
eruption, a kite in the gale. Each cell
competes for a spot in the sun, the stream.
Detritus consumed gives an edge, a spell

for breeding, expansion to cover rock
in slime, an extended affair of kin
and cousins who work as a team to stock
the pond. Soon they're cock of the shore: the kings

of change. There's Jane who can taste the good
from bad; Uncle Pete who can row the tribe
through water, and Heather who eats the food.
Inside sits their ma and their pa. They scribe

their names on new eggs soon to grow strange lobes,
or fins or a vascular system. Eyes -
He's waited so long for the eyes to grow.
He nudges the codes and the chemical ties,

the nets in the cortex to capture the views,
the lenses that focus the light on cones
and rods that react to the strokes of hues -
designed to His plan, which is good, He knows.

4. Towards The Kingdom Of Heaven

They tried to convert me, but I held true!
'My Lord is my shepherd, and I'll not walk
through valley and shadow of death alone'.
They pile up the faggots in stacks around
my feet, and the crowd calls my name. 'The Pope's
own bitch - she deserves to be flamed!' But I
can see my sweet Jesus: he died for me
and I must be brave as the smoke begins
to catch in my throat. I must sing and clap,
for Heaven awaits me - I'll take this test
and suffer the torments for God, my Lord -
sweet Mary of Mercy: 'I burn! I burn!'

5. Revelation

God sits in a hole in a heap of stars,
His thoughts a device of repeating chains -
each molecule brought into time by chance
divine in its placement around His frame.

The multitudes flame in their chanting praise
and steep in his aether, their souls now saved:
He made them, accepts them inside his head
though sometimes their stories upset his thread

of plans and conceits that He weaves through space.
He knows about flames, He invented them:
or maybe He made the equations, braced
in sigils constraining numbers, stems

consumed in a flux of exhausts - but why
would someone accept the embrace of flames?
To glorify Him? Such accounts defy
intelligent thought. Put it out, reclaim

the pureness of plans. He exhales, and charms
pop in and then out of existence. Souls
arrive in their swarms: He radiates calm
and notes how their patterns depart from goals

He's set them. No time now to worry: plans
can change in His scheme. There's some quarks to spin
and matter needs herding. An eye expands,
intrudes on His thought - He remembers sin,

the guilt that can't hide in the eyes of those
who know they've done wrong. He invented eyes -
or maybe He set the design, exposed
those strands that became His desire for life

to sunlight, and set them to seek the warmth
that bleeds from His suns, let equations build
the chemical paths and let physics form
the shape of the lens so that eyes could fill

with tears and lament - such a strange result,
this gift to perceive His design! He scans
His schedules for flaws and corrects the fault:
"for all things must end, even me", He plans.