No Peace is one step closer to publication.

I have used the same editor for eleven books, and once again, I'm beholden to her for saving me embarrassment. I always think I've submitted a perfect manuscript, only to discover a prodigious amount of red ink on every page. Contrary to popular belief, novels are not entirely a solitary task. Beta readers, editors, book designers, and cover graphic designers all play a major part in bringing piece of fiction to market. I am grateful for them all.

Can a manuscript ever be perfect?

Orgainc? Now that's embarrassing. 

A couple weeks ago, I went through the galley proof for The Return and found over twenty changes. Bummer. When I received the corrected galley proof, I found two more errors. Double bummer. The book is now in proofreading and if experience is any guide, a dozen or more errors and typos will be discovered. Makes you wonder if it's possible to write 75,000 flawless words. 

It's embarrassing when reviewers point out grammar or spelling mistakes. Yet, it invariably happens. My first book, published by Wiley, had three line-editors. That was standard practice fifteen years ago. Now, even the big houses have cut back to a single line editor. That's why you're seeing more mistakes in big-name author books. It's not the cost of editing as much as the time. Time is money, and when you have a potential bestseller waiting in the wings, publishers are in a rush to get it to market. 

Anyway, I'm rambling because I'm at a bit of a loss about what to do. The cartoon below explains my mood exactly, except I've finished writing my latest book. It's always been hard for me to start the writing process on a new book while my last novel is in the final stages. I know I'll get engrossed in new story and resent the inevitable interruptions that come form finalizing and promoting my prior book. I only allow myself to read books I've collected as reference material for my next novel. Besides, I need to let the plot percolate for a while before laying down the first word.

I think I'll head off to Pacific Beach and get in a little summer surfing. Reading and surfing ... that should fill my days nicely.

Books are such simple creatures

I’m currently going through the galley proof for The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale. In my supposedly perfect manuscript, I've already found over twenty revisions, errors, and typos. After these changes are incorporated into the text, the final step will be proofreading. Getting close.

The publishing process made me think that a book appears deceptively simple. Mental_floss recently published “10 Terms to Describe the Anatomy of a Book.” All of these words describe myriad parts of a book. Not such simple creatures after all.

Leaves

Endpapers

Edges

Wire lines and chain lines

Signatures

Manuscript

Head-piece

Half-title

Foxing

Diaper

Physical books are being shoved to the side by eBooks, so these terms will become increasingly important as books are collected for their aesthetic value. If you interested in the meaning of these terms, you can follow this link to mental_floss.

Fear and the Bleeding Manuscript

Once upon a time, I feared red ink … now I look forward to it. The red ink means another set of professional eyes are helping me write a better book. I tell stories; editors keep the reader’s head in the story. Errors, typos, and awkward sentences break the magic of storytelling, and since I spend about a year on each of my novels, I want uninterrupted magic.

There are bad editors, of course. I had one once. She was assigned to me by a major New York publisher and saw her job as bending my book in another direction. Bad editors can exasperate a writer and even destroy the commercial success of a book. Luckily, I now have a good editor, and she has worked with me on all six of the Steve Dancy Tales. It’s been a good partnership. She knows the characters, the storyline, and my foibles.

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters.

Another way to jerk the reader out of the story is to use a modern word or phrase in a historical novel. In my last manuscript, my editor caught the following words that would be inappropriate for 1880.

nonstop, 1902

freewheeling, 1931

racketeers, 1924

dim-witted, 1934

sidestepped, 1900

lowlifes, 1911

dock-workers, 1913

shoot-out, 1948

best seller, 1889

S.O.B., 1918

run-of-the-mill, 1930

blabbermouth, 1936

top-notch,1900

gangland, 1912

scam, 1963

headlock, 1905

paddy wagon, 1930

Most readers wouldn't catch these, but I’m glad they've been scrubbed from the manuscript.

I'll go carefully through each edit and editorial comment. Then I'll print the book and read it once again for continuity, clarity, and crispness.

See my earlier post on continuity, clarity, and crispness

When I finish with this round, it will be off to the publisher for interior design and proofreading. I wish that would be the end, but in this modern world, I’ll also need the book professionally formatted for different brands of eReaders.

Word-of-Mouth is Still King

Goodreads has completed a survey of their members about how they discovered books. They published the results at the link below.

Goodreads Survey





How do people discover what book to read? Unsurprisingly, word-of-mouth is still king. A recommendation from a trusted friend is the top answer, with "Everyone talking about it" in second place. The third most frequent answer: a book club recommendation. Since book clubs are made up of trusted fellow readers, I would add this answer to the word-of-mouth category. These three answers put together dwarf all of the other responses.

What does this mean for an aspiring author? One thing, and one thing only: write a good book. There are many out there who believe the trick is to jump on the next e-book marketing gimmick. That works ... but only for a brief period. People don't recommend or talk about shoddy books. If word-of-mouth is the #1, #2, and #3 best way to sell books, then authors need to write books that people want to share with friends. As Goodreads says, the survey pointed out "one powerful need: wanting to be connected with our 'tribe' through stories." 

So if you want to be an author instead of a digital huckster, write a good story, polish it to perfection, have it professionally edited and proofread, and then do it all again.

Featured Author on Wordpreneur

Wordpreneur has a regular feature called Peeps. These are short pieces about indie-authors and they were gracious enough to do an article about me.

“Many people claim traditional publishing’s marketing prowess is a huge advantage, but they never mention that the big houses do very little for unknown authors who haven’t committed a high-profile felony. When it comes to marketing, you’re on your own whether you traditionally publish or self-publish.”

You can read the full article here.

Continuity, Clarity, and Crispness

I’m making pre-editing revisions to my latest book. I want to share my goals for a final pass-through for any of my books. After I have the story the way I want it and falsely believe that I've caught every error, I do another revision for continuity, clarity, and crispness.

Continuity
In film, a script supervisor makes sure the placement of furniture is consistent from scene to scene. Novels need similar scrutiny. During this revision, I keep an eye out for characters getting up from a chair more than once or magically changing rooms, clothing, or weapons. I also review each character’s dialogue to make sure what they say is consistent with their character. Last, I review the timeline to make sure I haven’t excessively compressed or expanded time.

Clarity
Oftentimes an author knows exactly what he intended, but a reader goes, “huh?” Making things crystal clear alternately means adding a bit of explanation or deleting extraneous description that might lead the reader down a false path. Clarity also means making sure the reader knows who is talking. This can be especially confusing when there are more than two people in a conversation.

Crispness

Good narratives move crisply. Sometimes this means deleting a sentence that interferes with a smooth flow, but it usually means deleting superfluous words. I think of this process as removing speed bumps and filling in potholes. As Mark Twain said, "Substitute 'Damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be." Ideally, every word, sentence and paragraph should move the story forward.

I said ideally because I always fail. Despite my best efforts, the manuscript comes back from the editor with marks on every page. Sometimes they fix errors, but most of the time they suggest ways to improve continuity, clarity, and crispness. Thank heaven for editors. 

robertpeecher Reviews The Shopkeeper

Robert Peecher is a journalist and author of  the Jackson Speed Memoirs. He has posted a blog article about indie-publishing and included a review of The Shopkeeper. Peecher has said some very nice things about my book and I appreciate it. Here is a brief excerpt:

"The Shopkeeper is great on content. Best’s characters are well-developed, his plot is unique and engaging. At no time reading his book did it cross my mind that I was reading a book by an indie author. I found myself caught up in the story to the point that when I got to the last few chapters I abandoned all other plans for the day and just read until I finished the novel."

This link will take you to the full article.

Read some of his other postings. Peecher writes engaging articles with a generous dose of self-deprecating humor.

I Hate Punctuation

I love editors. The reason I love editors is they save me from embarrassment. I make errors and typos with punctuation and seem to miss them when I self-edit. This is especially true for commas. I just can’t seem to get them right. I think I have them figured out, but when I get my edited manuscript back, I learn that some savant surreptitiously changed the rules ... again. Or at least I prefer to think the rules changed, rather than I remain befuddled.

The Oatmeal does punctuation here.

Many people think punctuation is boring … but not The Oatmeal. They even sell posters suitable for framing about different aspects of grammar. Maybe you can even get your teenager to replace their Janelle Monáe poster with one about how to properly use an apostrophe. Good luck with that.

It all depends on how you look at it—Point of View

I’m reading a thriller from a big name author. It’s a bestseller published under a Simon & Schuster imprint. Yeah, I found a few typos and stray words, but they didn’t bother me. I miss some mistakes myself, so I’m pretty charitable. What I found discombobulating were the sudden shifts in point of view. With no warning, the reader was thrown from inside one character’s head into the thoughts and feelings of another character. These were stray single paragraphs wedged into an otherwise consistent point of view. It might just be me, but when this happens, it stops me cold.

There are three proper ways to change point of view: a section break, a chapter break, or use an omnipotent point of view. (I’m not going to address tense or first, second, and third person which should be artfully reliable throughout a book.) 

Omnipotent is when the reader regularly gets inside the thoughts and feelings of different characters. An omnipotent point of view (POV) is difficult to carry off, but with a deft hand it can be done so the reader never notices. In fact, the reader should never become overly conscious of the point of view. It’s distracting.

That’s why I prefer a fourth technique. Never change POV. My four Steve Dancy Westerns and The Shut Mouth Society use a single POV throughout the entire story. This was difficult for The Shut Mouth Society because the thriller has two protagonists. I tried switching POV between the hero and heroine, but decided that it added to the mystery if the reader didn’t know what one of the major characters was thinking.

I used a different approach with Tempest at Dawn. Since this was a novelization of the Constitutional Convention, I used POV to heighten the conflict between the opposing forces at the convention. Every other chapter alternated POV between James Madison and Roger Sherman. This allowed the reader to feel the emotions on both sides of the issues.  (I first ran across this technique thirty years ago in Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer.) 




It was difficult to keep the POV consistent when Madison and Sherman were together. Revisions and editing finally scrubbed out the irregularities. In the final chapter of the book, I made an exception to a single POV per chapter. Since both men were together for the entire concluding chapter, I switched to a distant omnipotent POV. In other words, I never entered the thoughts or feeling of either man, but described scenes as if a narrator was telling a story about what he observed. This is similar to a movie, where the viewer never gets to read the thoughts of a character.

People deride the errors in indie-published books, but turn a blind eye to the increasing number of mistakes that prestigious publishers allow to get into print. Sixteen years ago, when I published The Digital Organization, Wiley had the manuscript line-edited by three different editors. They told me a single editor always missed something. I suspect that economics has forced the major publishers to cut this to a single line-editor. It’s a business mistake because this is a level of quality indie-publishers can compete against.

The Evolution of a Novel

I just spent a week writing and surfing in San Diego. The writing went well, the surfing not so much. The weather was crappy for three days and I was crappy the other five. My mind tells me what to do, but by the time my body reacts, it’s too late. Surfing needs to be an unconscious reaction. When you think, you get cold water down the back of your wetsuit. Actually I had a few decent rides, but nothing to write home about.

Speaking of writing, The Return is in its final revision before professional editing. I start each day by revising what I wrote the prior day, so by the time I complete the manuscript I think of it as a second draft. Then I go through it one more time on my computer. I make revisions, but this third pass is primarily for continuity, clarity, and crispness. I've now completed this step for The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale.

My next step takes me to Staples where I print four copies. Three copies go to ornery people who will give me honest feedback. (Okay, one is my wife. She’s not ornery. I didn’t mean that. Really.) The last copy is for me. I use a traditional red pen and really scrub the printed version.

Here is a previous post where I related revisions to antique car restoration.

I always see odd and outright embarrassing things when I review a printed version. There is something about ink on a page that is totally different from a backlit screen. Stuff jumps out on a page where the eye glides over it on a computer. When I finish my review, I consolidate all the revisions from the four copies.  It surprises me that obvious problems are often missed by one or more of my reviewers. I’d like to think it’s because they got lost in the story, but it’s probably human nature.

Professionally Format e-books

How long before the book is ready for the general public? Months, I’m afraid. The next step will be professional editing, and then my final review of all of the recommended changes. This is an important step because I've been separated from the book for a while, which allows me to see it with fresh eyes. Along with accepting/rejecting line-editing, I frequently make adjustments to the plot. In the meantime, a cover needs to be designed and finalized. A designer needs to lay out the interior, back cover, and spine. The back cover includes a synopsis or elevator pitch for the story. This tantalizing piece of copyrighting will eventually be the book description displayed by online sellers. After every change is incorporated and the interior layout complete, a proofreader scrutinizes the modern equivalent of a galley proof. Now, it’s off to the printer … but not eReaders. The last step is professional eFormatting.

Front, spine, and back cover design

I’m involved with every step, but I prefer professionals do the design, editing, proofreading, and formatting. I’m just no good at it. I’m only a storyteller. 

Frederick Faust, aka Max Brand

Frederick Faust was one of the most prolific writers of all time, publishing nearly thirty million words in his lifetime. Faust had more pen names than Destry had bullets. (In the film, Destry Rides Again, based on the Faust character, James Stewart famously shoots his Colt seven times.) He wrote more than 500 novels and short stories—all with two fingers on a manual typewriter. In his day, Faust was one of the highest paid writers in the world. Late in his career, Warner Brothers paid him $3,000 a week and he made a fortune from radio, film, and television adaptions of his Dr. Kildare character. Despite writing poetry and fiction in every genre, it was Westerns that made Faust famous, albeit under the pseudonym Max Brand.

Although Faust had once worked on a ranch, he was not a true Westerner. He was born in Seattle in 1892 and grew to maturity in California. He attended the University of California at Berkeley for four years without graduating. He was enamored with the Greek and Latin classics his entire life and often incorporated ancient mythology into his stories. His real life’s ambition was to be a poet, and he wrote genre fiction in the afternoons so he could pursue his passion for poetry in the mornings.

Faust wrote his first Western as a magazine story in 1918. Faust’s editor had recently lost Zane Grey to a competitor because Grey’s Western stories had become so popular. This editor convinced Faust to try to fill his boots. Faust’s first Western novel, The Untamed (1919) was highly derivative of a 1910 Grey Western titled The Heritage of the Desert.

Grey and Faust were different writers. Grey was enthralled with the landscape and expansiveness of the West, while Faust preferred to explore internal conflicts. Grey brought setting almost to life as a character, while Faust had a knack for describing animals in a way that made them vital characters in his stories. Faust preferred pursuit plots, delayed revelation, and his fiction was character driven. Faust was a more literary writer, especially when he put his mind to it.  Jon Tuska, a literary critic/agent, wrote: “The Biblical overtones that run throughout Faust’s Western fiction are as striking and unique as his imagery from classical literature. Indeed, Zane Grey’s avowed pantheism is wan beside the vivid evocation of the presence of God in Faust’s fiction, whether as the Great Spirit of the Plains Indians or the Christian Deity … every story Faust ever wrote seems to have to a degree both surface action and a subtext, a story within the story that functions on the deepest level.”

Although Faust received praise from literary critics, his lack of historical accuracy, scant descriptions of the landscape, and minimal actual experience on the frontier generated harsh criticism by those who admire realistic detail in Western fiction. Additionally, His writing quality was inconsistent. Most of his books and stories were produced at a breakneck pace, which sometimes amounted to 6,000 words in a single day. His work has also been butchered by editors who severely abridge his serialized stories for publication as novels.

Frederick Faust was a one-man fiction factory. He was also a great storyteller who invented enduring characters. Faust believed that “there is a giant asleep in every man.  When that giant wakes, miracles can happen.”  This was certainly true for him.

Bad Review Got You Down—Even the Best Get Dumped On

Huffington Post Books published an article titled "Bad Reviews Of Great Authors." When you get a bad review of your work, it’s comforting to know that supposed experts hated these classics.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

"There is not in the entire dramatis persona, a single character which is not utterly hateful or thoroughly contemptible."  Atlas, 1848

The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

"Mr. Updike’s descriptions of these magical doings are cringe-making in the extreme, not funny or satiric as he perhaps intends."  Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

"... the book is sad stuff, dull and dreary, or ridiculous. Mr. Melville's Quakers are the wretchedest dolts and drivellers, and his Mad Captain ... is a monstrous bore." Charleston Southern Quarterly Review, 1852

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that... Only Gatsby himself genuinely lives and breathes. The rest are mere marionettes—often astonishingly lifelike, but nevertheless not quite alive." H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, 1925

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

"Unfortunately, it is bad news. There are two equally serious reasons why it isn't worth any adult reader's attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive." Orville Prescott, The New York Times, 1958

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

"... it is impossible to imagine how any man's fancy could have conceived such a mass of stupid filth, unless he were possessed of the soul of a sentimental donkey that had died of disappointed love." Rufus Wilmot Griswold, The Criterion, 1855

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

“What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?” Gore Vidal

Leonard's ten rules for writing

Elmore Leonard

In 2009, The Western Writers of America presented Elmore Leonard with their prestigious Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement. Leonard wrote 3:10 to Yuma, Hombre, Last Stand at Saber River, and many other Westerns. He also wrote novels outside the Western genre, including Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, and Out of Sight.

Leonard published his 10 Rules of Writing, which was actually a padded version of his New York Times article. The book may be panned for its brevity, but the advice is sound.

Leonard's ten rules for writing

1. Never open a book with weather.

2. Avoid prologues.

3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said."

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke out."

7. Use regional dialects, patois, sparingly.

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.




The book is pricey, but you can get the gist of Leonard's advice at the New York Times archive.

Polish your manuscript

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat.

Seneca (c. 5 BC-AD c. 65), Roman writer

A friend of mine unintentionally changed my attitude toward revisions. He restores antique cars and starts each project with barely more than a chassis and some rusted sheet metal. With utmost care, he painstakingly replaces every single part until his recreation is better than the shiny piece of the American dream that was driven off the showroom. When he finishes, we go on a ride and I can tell he enjoys the envious looks and honks from other car enthusiasts.

After these inaugural rides, I always assumed the cars were finished, but every time I visited, he would be in the garage replacing this piece or that piece. If he wasn't installing a newly acquired part, he would be polishing nooks and crannies that no one in a standing position would ever see. Sometimes I'd come over to find that he had painted the car a different color or replaced perfectly good upholstery.

One day I asked him if he ever tired of constantly changing an already beautiful car.

"Hell no," he said. "Building the car is work. This is the fun part."

"The fun part?"

"Whenever I start a new project car, I look forward to the day when the basic restoration is done so I can perfect it . My joy is in making it flawless. I fix the little details so people love to spend time with my creation."

"But you keep working on it. How do you know when it's perfect?"

"One day I'll walk all around it, open the doors, lift the hood, examine the truck and there won't be any more changes I want to make." He shrugged. "Then I sell it and start all over again."

Now I look forward to completing a manuscript so I can tighten and polish it until there are no more changes I want to make. Then I sell it and start all over again.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

I haven't read a Stephen King book in a couple decades. 11/22/63 reminded me why I used to read King’s books as soon as they were published ... and why I quit reading them. King is a good writer, has a great imagination, knows how to pen an engrossing story, but is exhaustingly verbose. I wanted to make a little circling motion with my finger to tell him to hurry up, but of course he wasn't in the room to see it.

Fiction writers have the unique ability to bend time. We can do what we want because it’s our world. We make it up. The premise of 11/22/63 is that our intrepid hero discovers a time portal that takes him back to 1958. After a quick touristic holiday, he decides to go back to 1958 and wait until November 22, 1963 in order to save John F. Kennedy. King proceeds to tell us everything that happens in the intervening five years. Why? It was King’s decision to have the portal go to 1958. He could have chosen 1961 or 1962. I think he just loves to write.

That aside, this is a well told story. I like time travel because they are basically fish-out-of-water tales. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur'sCourt by Mark Twain is the apex of the genre. 11/22/63 may have been overly long (880 pages in paperback), but it was still a fun read with some creative twists on time travel. I didn't agree with his speculations about altered history, but they didn't interfere with the story. If you like to be immersed in Stephen King’s world, you can have an extended stay with 11/22/63.

The Internet is right ... except when it is wrong.

I made a significant error when writing Principled Action, Lessons from the Origins of the American Republic. I attributed a quote to James Monroe that was actually written by James Madison. When it was pointed out, I couldn't believe it. I had a solid source, the manuscript had been fact checked, footnoted, edited, and proofread. Through Google Books I discovered a James Madison paper that was the true source of the quote. About a third of the references in a Google search attributed the quote to Monroe. (You're right, that means two thirds of the references said it was Madison. Alarm bells should have gone off.)

An eBook can be corrected fast.

Darn. How does that happen? Through some additional research, I found the source of the error. Around 1900, a historian had written a serious academic book and mistakenly attributed the quote to Monroe. An easy error. The two neighbors share the same first name and the last names have similarities. The historian probably had a momentary lapse in memory and his editors missed the mistake. From that point forward, anyone who didn't go back to the original source document had a high likelihood of propagating the error.

I'm bring this up because I did the presentation on the hazards of internet research.
(This link will take you to some fun wisdom on the Internet.) 

The Internet may have accuracy issues, but relying on nonfiction books can lead a writer up the garden path as well. I guess if there is a moral to the story, it's that a careful writer should not rely on secondary sources unless absolutely necessary.

Finding The Past from James D. Best

Writers say the darndest things.

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.--Steve Martin

Writing a book is a adventure. To begin with it is a toy and 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 out to the public.--Winston Churchill

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.--T. S. Eliot

When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over a ball.--Raymond Chandler

No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.--Isaac Babel 

A tired exclamation mark is a question mark.--Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.--Stephen King

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.--Solomon Short

In a thousand words I can have the Lord's Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Hippocratic Oath, a sonnet by Shakespeare, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and almost all of the Boy Scout Oath. Now exactly what picture were you planning to trade for all that?--Roy H. Williams

Success comes to a writer, as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.--P. G. Wodehouse

A writer should have another lifetime to see if he's appreciated.--Jorge Luis Borges

A Rude Awakening

In the olden days—like maybe four years ago—Kindle and Nook readers were fairly tolerant of formatting errors. The technology was brand spanking new and early adopters always accept a few lumps with hot innovations. Times have changed. The cost of eReaders have collapsed and, in many categories, ebooks outsell the old fashioned print variety. Readers have also become more demanding. They want their ebooks professionally formatted so they're never distracted from the story or subject matter.

For the most part, I write novels. My latest book, Principled Action, Lessons from the Origins of the American Republic, was non-fiction. Since it had a table of contents, index, footnotes, illustrations, and section headings, I had it professionally formatted for every eReader on the market.

I thought my novels were different. They were narratives with only chapter breaks to interrupt the flow of words. In fact, I had sold tens of thousands with nary a complaint. Occasionally, I would do an update when I became aware of an indentation problem or a stray character that defied interpretation, but these were rare.

Then I got an email note from Amazon saying a reader had complained that one of my novels did not include a Table of Contents. Amazon concurred and suggested I add one. At first I thought this was odd. I don't have chapter titles, so the TOC would merely be a numerical list. Granted, it could be  navigation tool, but would it really be that helpful in a straightforward novel? Then I checked the five novels I had backlogged to read on my own Kindle. Each had a table of contents and most were only a numerical list. Darn. Times had changed and I hadn't kept up. What else was I missing. Were there other glitches that would jerk my readers out of the story and back to reality?

Since I was busy getting Steve Dancy out of trouble once again, I didn't want to invest the time to insure that my six Kindle books were completely up to snuff. My solution was to go back to my non-fiction book formatter. I used "eB Format" and like the first time, my experience was excellent. The job was done with an expertise that would have taken me at least weeks to learn, and they were reasonably priced and quick. If you have ebooks that need added features or need a thorough scrubbing for format glitches, I highly recommend eB Format. Click on their logo if you would like to visit their site.

Buzz Feed' s Collection of 30 Writing Tips

This is a fun posting on Buzz Feed. Some very good advice, as well. 

Before you become too enamored with other authors' perspective on the craft, I'd like to add this piece of advice from Raymond Chandler: "Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say."

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