My First Book

      It took me a long time, a lot more effort than I thought I could give, and mostly, it took patience I really don't have. Alas, I have finally been published! After finishing the rough draft just barely on my deadline on the past Easter, I thought I got over the hard part. But no, life has more surprises. Day after day, I have been correcting and editing until I couldn't take it anymore and looked to Smashwords to get published. But as a just-in-case preparation, I read Mark Coker's Style Guide, and boy was that helpful.
     To get published I had to re-format the entire manuscript! About to give up, I went and read the guide three times and gave it a try. Well, I finished, but then I realized, "Ah, what about a cover?" So I went and looked at the pricing for cover-designing people and fell out of my chair. All I could think was "Sheez, what do I do? I can sculpt a little and make pretty things, but jeez, a cover? And everyone's gonna see it too..."
Finally, I looked all over the internet, studied covers of books I owned and some on Google Images (^_^), and finally came up with a design. Excited about what took my four or so hours of striaght-no-breaking-taking drawing, I put it in the print, trying to scan. Kamput, my printer died. Officially died. I would give it a proper burial, but it was so cheap, cruddy, and a pain in the butt I settled for tossing it in the trash. So, no scanning. Fine then! I stole my mother's mouse (since I use a laptop, I usually use the flat-pad thingy) and clicked on paint. Now before you lies hours more of "click, click" paint!
     Long story short, please check out my fantasy story, The Fox and the Flute! In next blog I'll tell you more about the story! Here's the link to Smashwords: The Fox and the Flute