As I warned, I’ll try to promote my books a bit more. So, I’ll start with “1000”. It’s not edited and – on Wattpad – it will remain so. There are a few reasons why editing “1000” is a more challenging task than editing anything else. Before I continue, though, I should say that it is, for all I know, readable.
If you are a member on Wattpad and have enabled mature content, you’ll be able to see “1000” in my profile page. If not, you can still access it by clicking here, which will lead you to the first chapter, and from then on you can continue.
Back to the editing issues. Wattpad does a stupid thing. If you edit a chapter, or the whole book, it considers as date of publication the date of the last editing. “1000” already appears to have been published a bit more recently, than in reality, because of minor corrections I made. It’s unlikely that someone has used “1000” as theirs, but I’d rather not take that bed. WordPress, on the other hand, doesn’t do that, in case you didn’t know.
But let’s forget Wattpad’s stupidity and move on with the real editing issues.
“1000” is my first attempt to write literature in English. Because of this, I’m not … ehm… stressing the boundaries of the language. Yeap! That sounds good! In fact, I can easily see how much reserved I am and reluctant to express myself the way I normally do. I want this feeling to remain. It’s, in my mind, a part of my personal history, and I want to keep it like this. It would actually be easier to re-write the book, instead of only editing it, but I don’t want to do that.
There are mistakes, too, of course, and those I intend to correct, but I want to do it without changing its style, against my compulsions.
There are also a lot of “mistakes” because I was following the Greek rules. For example, fullstops and the like at the end of a dialogue’s phrase are outside the quotation mark, instead of inside it. That’s how it’s done in Greek and had never noticed the difference in English books. Those “mistakes”, too, will be corrected. And that’s all about editing.
Now, a few interesting – in my opinion, but they might not be 🤷♂️ – insights about the book and the story. The blurb of the book can be found here.
Peter (main character) and Jack (love interest) meet, for the first time at a park. The photo of the cover is taken at the actual park, and “Jack” sits in the same posture as Peter first sees him. We tried to arrange the photo-shooting on a day that had similar weather conditions as the ones described in the story, and at approximately the same hour.
Accuweather, unfortunately isn’t as accurate as the name implies, and, contrary to its forecast, the sunlight was too intense. We digitally reduced the intense sunshine, but it ruled out any close-up photos. Jack (the actual character) shouldn’t be affected by the sunlight, for certain reasons, but the model is a human and couldn’t keep his eyes as open as he should, against the sun.
On the bright side, the park was practically empty, as it should, according to the story, and that made the long-distance photos possible. This was a blessing I wasn’t expecting. And I think the long distance photo and the empty park depict quite well Jack’s emotional condition at the moment.
Not just the park, but every place mentioned in the story’s “present” (not the flashback) is a real place. Because of that, there is an odd moment that is never explained in the story. When Jack, following his instincts, is heading towards Peter, at a moment he receives two equally strong signals. The one is advising him to turn left, while the other is advising him to continue walking by the sea. He decides to turn left and he ends up at the park. Were he to continue straight (that’s the “by the sea” option), he would end up at a high school – Peter’s high school.
The year of the story isn’t mentioned in the book, but it’s the school year 2014-2015. Some dates are mentioned along with the day of the week and they are of that year. For example, the 1st of December is a Monday.
On September 2015, before the story started getting published on Wattpad, the buses’ fares as well as their routes changed. The bus Peter and Jack take would not go through the city, any longer. Nonetheless, they do take it from within the city, just like they would have done in 2014.
The flashback, or Clyde’s sub-story, was a huge challenge. Clyde lives in the same forest for a thousand years. Finding a place that could match what I had in mind and which would remain a forest from 919 until 1919 wasn’t an easy task. Not only maps showing the natural formations for the whole period were difficult to find, but also, places like the one Clyde lives have a tendency to get more “urbanised”. So, it felt like I had discovered a whole new land, when I found his place of residence. 🥳🎊😁 Studying the history of the period, so that my story would not contradict it, felt much easier.
I’m sure that these pieces of information feel more interesting to me, than to most, so I’ll only say one last thing. In the Ancient Greek religion the triplets Thanatos (Death), Oneiros (Dream) and Hypnos (Sleep) are considered to be the most irresistibly beautiful gods (not counting Apollo and Eros, of course). So beautiful that no mortal can resist them. Hence, all humans sleep, dream and die. All three of them are good hearted gods. Death, in the story, is based on Thanatos.
That’s all! Hope you’ll enjoy the story, if you read it, and even more so do have a beautiful day!
💖💖💖
I love reading about the background of stories, and I love that you took such care to make the real world match the fictional world, or…the other way around. lol
But Yorgos, when are you going to publish on Amazon?
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😍😍😍 I like reading the background of stories, too! 😁
Publishing on Amazon is not in my plans, for several reasons and most importantly because Amazon, strictly speaking, doesn’t want some of my books. According to their rules they ban books that depict teenagers as lustful. Right! If a teenage boy isn’t lustful, there is something very wrong about him. Either a serious mental health issue, or a serious physical health issue. And I’m talking seriously (how many times will I use this word, in a row?)
I prefer to present teenage boys the way they are, and then make sure they’ll find their happiness. I don’t want my books to insinuate that they shouldn’t be the way they are, or that they should feel shame for being the wonderful beings they are. So, I fundamentally disagree with this rule. And publishing the books that the characters are 20+ there, and not the ones that they are still teens, is like admitting that Amazon is right and I publish on them only the “proper” books. So, not happening.
Also, “Gregory Kirk”, which as a book includes “Gregory Kirk and the Vanishing Man” is intended to be permanently free, which Amazon wouldn’t allow, even if they wouldn’t ban it because of the previous rule.
I had some plans some plans about making the publishing happen that didn’t proceed well, due to covid and not only. They are still in my goals, but I don’t see them manifesting soon. I also found a publishing house in my city that doesn’t find my context problematic, and is willing to do the publication (of “The House in the Lake”) but, although they cooperate with some Greek big book stores, their international sales are done only via Amazon, so, it’s the same problem. Due to Brexit (and covid, but most importantly Brexit) publishing via an UK’s publishing house became very challenging. Not impossible, but very challenging.
So… ahem 😇 I was thinking of annoying a dear friend, who knows a lot about online publishing, and, from what I know, she knows where and how one can have a permanently free e-book, too, to guide me for the publication of “Gregory Kirk”‘s e-book and “The House in the Lake”‘s e-book and probably physical book. (Although I’m still tweaking some things on the later, including the cover.) Yes, I’m talking about you 😇😇😇
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Oh! I didn’t realise Amazon had such silly rules. Of course teens are lustful, boys and girls. I guess Amazon just doesn’t want to be sued or something.
I would love to help, but most of what I know is to do with Amazon.
That said, I know you can publish an ebook with Smashwords, and you can also publish to a variety of distributors via Draft2Digital, but both those options require that your ebook be in epub format. That’s good in a way because epub is much more universal than AZW or whatever Amazon is using at the moment. It may require a bit more work though.
Basically, I use StoryBox dedicated writing software to create the epub for me, then I can use that epub as is on Smashwords [don’t use], of Draft2Digital [don’t use any more] OR I can give free copies away by uploading the epub to sync.com [there are other options as well].
Now, to make an epub without StoryBox, download Calibre [free] and it will convert your Word file into epub.
One word of warning though, Word puts a lot of extraneous code in so it’s always best to keep your Word file as clean as possible. That includes NOT using the Track Changes function.
Hmm…that came out a bit confusing. Email me and I’ll try to be a bit clearer. 🙂
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I don’t know why Amazon has such rules. It’s not to avoid getting sued, as it bans such books even if they are published by other publishers, and not via them. (That’s why even if I use the local publishers Amazon still won’t sell them) But, anyway!
No, not confusing at all. I use Libre Office, which produces lighter doc files than MS Word, so probably less of this unnecessary code. I’ll check if I can “purify” the file even more. I’ll also check Calibre and see if it works for my OS, and if not what might work, and then spam your inbox 😆
Thank you, Meeka!
😍💖😍💖😍💖
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Welcome! One way to get rid of all the excess, crap code is to save the doc file as either .txt or .rtf. Both formats strip the file down to its basic components, which is…words. 🙂 Be careful of .txt though. It’ll strip out italics and bold etc along with the more complicated stuff.
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Yes, I new about the .txt format, and this won’t work for me as I use and need the italics to remain. I’ll check the .rtf format, then! Once a gain, thank you! 💖💖💖
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.rtf is what I use and it does the job while still allowing me to keep italics etc. 😀
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Once again, thank you!
😘😘😘😘💖
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You’re very welcome. -hugs-
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