UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

I’ve sort of wandered about the forum and decided I’d best get properly settled in.
I’m Jim, I’m many things, currently I farm, I’m a consultant, a freelance writer and whatever. I’ve written professionally (mainly freelance ‘journalism’) for over thirty years, but I’ve also done other writing, including books for the RPG hobby including ‘The Scaum Valley Gazetteer’ (http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=4867 ) if anyone wants to see what I’m on about and ‘The Compendium of Universal knowledge’ (http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=4792 )

Over the years I’ve always felt I ought to do something other than decorate chip wrapping paper and finally, having built the background, I wrote ‘Swords for a Dead Lady’. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Swords-Dead-L...

Currently with the publishers is ‘Dead Man Riding East’ and there are two more I’m working on.
They aren’t really a ‘series’, more stand-alone books set in the same background, although Dead Man Riding East takes some of the same characters from Swords for a Dead Lady and follows them further.

So basically, Hi

Oh hello - don't I know you from somewhere? Suddenly I'm craving jelly babies!

The voice is familiar... ;)

I'm pleased you've started your thread, Jim!

Gingerlily (or Cyberlily..) wrote: "Oh hello - don't I know you from somewhere? Suddenly I'm craving jelly babies!"


no, not the cravings, please, not the cravings, Noooooooooo

Patti (Stir Crazy) wrote: "The voice is familiar... ;)

I'm pleased you've started your thread, Jim!"

Well I thought I'd get in and tell my side of the story first ;-)
Just to repeat I am not responsible for the Jellybabies.I am a mere writer of fantasy, I do not deal in any form of starch dusted gelatin based confectionary!

especially not the fig syrup ones

I don't think I will ever forget the fig syrup ones

Isn't it nice to have a cultured discussion on great literature once in a while ;-)

Great literature? Ummmm I think I read some once...

Don't tell me, the pictures were classy and they had proper illuminated capitals for the text in the speech bubbles ;-)

there were lots of pretty colours

No Gingerlily
There were blue flashing lights and a nice man who asked a lot of questions but had at least brought his own handcuffs

I have pink fluffy handcuffs in my dungeon. And whips.

A friend of mine was rather short and a 'gentleman admirer' bought her a T shirt which she wore, tucked into her Jeans.
it read
"Sticks and stones may break my bones"

It was only when she wore it outside her jeans that you could read the second bit

"But whips and chains excite me"

I need that t-shirt!

I thought I'd have a look on google but it seems to be swamped with Rihanna who used the lyrics.
The T shirt was over twenty years ago.

I take it you guys have 'met' before? Else this is the most bizarre conversation ever!! Welcome Jim :-)

Hi Emma
I help out in rehab for people with jellybaby addiction, you meet some sad cases there but every so often you get a success, a person who can go back out into the world and survive without artifical stimulants, but just use chocolate, caffiene and alcohol like a normal person

yes,as you noticed, we've 'met' ;-))

Yes we have been hanging out on the Zoo for a while in a strange little group of comic fantasy authors. I have Jim's book but not read it yet. Its one of the 30 or so I downloaded to my new Kindle Touch so I may well get to read it on this holiday.

Actually that little group of comic fantasy authors is a real joy
There must be something about the writers of comic fantasy, they a fun bunch.

Actually Swords for a Dead Lady isn't written as comic fantasy but people have told me they find some of it amusing.

Pelgrane Press put up a blog page where I explained about how the background to the book was created which people might find interesting.

http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=8013

You get to discover ‘The tale of the Usurer Blevin fleecing the merchants of Beale’. Not as much a book (although there was a play once written) as a series of three paintings. The first is the classic ‘Usurer Blevin fleecing the merchants of Beale’, the second, less well known, is ‘The Usurer Blevin hiding in the dunny pit to avoid the searchers’, where we see the face of Blevin illuminated by thin shafts of light from between the boards in the privy floor, and the final, ‘The Usurer Blevin flees the nomad raiders’ which shows in the foreground the usurer desperately whipping his obviously dying horse whilst the nomads inexorably close on him.

Sounds riviting! Must check it out. Got any jelly babies?

I'm sorry but I'm not licenced as a purveyor of illicit narcotics!
Mind you, I'm awfully tempted to work jelly babies into the book I'm now writing!

Would that get it on the banned list?

Don't even joke about that to a writer, most of us are so desperate to get the book known, we'd lobby the banned list to be included!

Actually, thinking about fantasy generally, it strikes me that it breaks down into different sub-genres.
You get fantasy in a modern world setting, you get the high fantasy with elves and dark lords. You get the comic fantasy which can appear pretty well in any setting and you get the 'thief/rogue' driven fantasy, Nifft the Lean
Then you get some steam punk which has fantasy elements as well.
What strikes me is that with Fantasy, the 'world' is also a character. Even in modern world settings, the changes the author makes to our world are exciting enough to make it worth exploring. But I've come to the conclusion that the 'world' is almost 'the Star' and should at least get a decent dressing room and drinks after the show

Just to say I got a review for 'Swords for a Dead Lady' from Ignite, a review from a top 1000 reviewer

Can probably be summed up as
In Swords for a Dead Lady there are three secret weapons, lots of action, some humour, a little pathos, and an utter disregard for the apostrophe.
Sorry in Swords for a Dead Lady there are four secret weapons..........

It did give me some laughs Jim. (Not just at the apostrophes!)
See if you can get it tidied up. I'd do it for you but I'm up to my ears in proof reading at the moment.

The problem is I've had nothing to do with typography, don't yet have a kindle (nothing ideological, it's just my real book to-read pile is a hazard to air traffic and I'm going to get that down before I create a virtual to-read pile) but have read the pdf version.From what i've been told, some of the Kindle typography problems don't appear in the pdf. Some do and may be my fault.
Actually I was rather pleased with the pdf version but that might just be my inherently low standards.

Andrews set up the formatting and typography, but I genuinely don't know how much they edit.Perhaps not as much as I thought.
At some point I'll have to have a word with them about a second edition but I'm not sure how that works yet.
But thanks for the review, we need honest reviewers who are willing to say where a book falls down as well as its strong points.
But I was genuinely pleased at the comment "lots of action, some humour, a little pathos" because that was the book I hoped to write. One or two people have told me they liked some of the characters, others have mentioned they liked the background, so there's hope yet ;-)

It's not the kindle formatting Jim. It's stuff like 'as' for 'was' and 'of' for 'off' - Typos.
Draws for drawers - you might do a search for that one.

Yes, the characters were good. I found some of the background a little complex. Loved the gentle humour though!

Ah, thanks for that. The curse of the spellchecker! I'll do the searches
Glad you liked the humour (it might be appropriate at this point to mention I first wrote 'licked' the humour) and the characters.
The complexity of the background might be because of the 'depth'
I tried to emulate Jack Vance, part of his genius is to intimate 'depth' and 'complexity' not by writing it all but by dropping details into the book which create the illusion that the author who mentions in passing that there are 54 different herbal teas in a display has gone to the trouble of designing (and probably tasting) them all.
But I admit I am no Jack Vance.

Perhaps if you got to him before the copy editor did you'd find that HE'S no Jack Vance either!

PS I think dismembering a hunted beast is gralloching not galloching. Strewth, I've got some rubbish in my head. No wonder I can't remember where me keys are!

Yes I noticed the draws thing and one or two other bits, but it didnt stop me enjoying tbe story. Its a bit of a slow burner but well worth staying with.

Ignite wrote: "PS I think dismembering a hunted beast is gralloching not galloching. Strewth, I've got some rubbish in my head. No wonder I can't remember where me keys are!"

you're right. I've done it but with a Yorkshireman whose command of the gaelic was eccentric

Gingerlily (or Cyberlily..) wrote: "Yes I noticed the draws thing and one or two other bits, but it didnt stop me enjoying tbe story. Its a bit of a slow burner but well worth staying with."

I suppose a 'murder mystery' where you only realise it is a murder mystery a quarter of the way in isn't overly hectic ;-)

Ignite wrote: "Perhaps if you got to him before the copy editor did you'd find that HE'S no Jack Vance either!"

I suppose that is true enough. One problem is that I had to re-read most of his stuff (hardly a problem) because I was asked to put a gazetteer together, and his writing style can sink into you. One friend of mine on the same project ended up using the phrase 'in all candor I've forgotten the question' in an answer he wrote for a junior minister! (in a previous administration)

One thing that did occur to me when reading the comment about copy editors is how ones opinion of copy editors can change.
For a writer, the editor is important. But when I've done free lance journalism, experienced journalists have told me "send in more than is needed, because if they suddenly need to pad yours out to fill in space, it's better that the copy editor has something of yours to use, than if they have to make it up and just stick it in themselves.

I've had journalists tell me their horror stories of how copy editors invented facts (charitably things they thought they knew about the subject) and the journalist with his name on the story was the one who got hauled over the coals over it.

Perhaps with writers, we don't put copy editors in the position where they frantically have to produce 400 words to finish something ;-)

If you've seen http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=8013 you'll see how we create world background. And there was a nice email exchange which fleshed out a character who up until this point didn't exist as much more than a name (she was another characters little sister)
The exchange consists of messages passing between Yellow Dovlin (some might call him a panderer, but he is as able to find cooks, ladies maids and seamstresses as more salacious female trades and a junior business assosiate of his, Elia Corngold

Yellow
I have had a word with the caravan master and he has fresh and dried fruit.
He also said that we will pay protection (or he will on our behalf) to
Clarow, Bandit Queen of the Snake Mountains, and she will ensure safe
passage.
So it seems that our diet, bowels and security have been adequately
considered
Elia

Elia,

Clarow, Bandit Queen of the Snake Mountains my foot!! That is little Suli, otherwise known as Lady Sulana Perfection Zi-Zi-Jancedalph, Vermillion, gambler and sometime hirer of girls as look-alikes to fool her creditors, would be lovers and the Magistrorum authorities. She should be paying you!

Yellow

Yellow
Well she rode into town and the head of a band of fighters that even my
Urlan treat with respect. She seems to have made links with the folk of the
upper Visa who dwell in the mountains. At one point they were (according to
one of the guards) so unused to money that they were accepting glass beads
for prime beillie. She explained one or two details to them and now she is
effectively their representative.
There seems to be problems with Scar renegades and all sorts in the
mountains, but her people deal with them.
Elia

Elia,

She seems to have done very well for herself, and hopefully will remember you fondly, also the Red Willow, who came to her aid during an unfortunate incident on Supplicant’s Hill when she first came up to the Magistrorum. There had been a dung-rolling – of a mime, I think – and some drunken Blues were threatening to give her the same treatment, but the Red Willow offered to dance for them instead, allowing Sulana to escape and probably preventing a riot.

Yellow

And now, I can proudly announce, thanks to the attentions of the worlds foremost English Language proof reader, Swords for a Dead Lady is available with added punctuation!

Good man, all you have to do now is promote it.

Oh he's too shy to do that Will. ;)

Patti (Migrating Coconut) wrote: "Oh he's too shy to do that Will. ;)"

she's right. I can barely bring myself to mention the fact that this unworthy individual has written a book of unparalleled brilliance.
Look at that punctuation, see it sparkle.

Seriously it is an object lesson in the value of good editing and proof reading

All we need to do now Patti, is to keep Jim out of his tractor for a while...to concentrate on some promotion

Well I have an interview with Adam Sifre to complete tonight.
Then it's just a matter of a couple of suitably eyecatching stunts, suitably photogenic maidens rescued, you know the sort of thing

You could get stuck on a high wire, like Boris Johnson?

And he'll end up in traction instead of a tractor!

<< doubtfully >>

Well if you think it'll sell more books......

<< even more doubtfully >>

I'm not sure I've got the hair for it.

I'll volunteer to be rescued if you would prefer that one...

Yes, we'll go for that one.
Perhaps I could rescue you from having to accompany a small child to New Zealand?

No no no, you have to climb her ivory tower and brave the dungeon.