A "Publishing Machine"

It sure seems like it. August and September 2015 have witnessed the release of three full-length novels: The Dragon Wore a Kilt, Pure Iron, and Willow. The fact of it is that two of these manuscripts were well over a year in the hands of beta readers for review and editing. I greatly appreciate my beta readers: their hard work really improves the books. But they finally came together all at more or less the same time. Why wait to release them?

Altogether it's been a busy year which includes the release of Cassia and The Barbary Lion, too. Four full length books and one novella.

I have realized lately in the conversion process what works and what doesn't work quite so well.

I use Calibre, a free-to-download program, to convert manuscripts to e-book format. I have learned that Microsoft Word documents convert most faithfully to MOBI format than do RTF documents. I'm no one's idea of a progammer, so I don't get into the intricacies of editing metadata or the programming language of the e-book file. Regardless, it seems to do a decent job of it, better than the Kindle conversion available through CreateSpace or Kindle Direct.

I also noticed, to my aggravation, that Kindle Direct will not accept a book's ISBN-13 number if that book has not already been published through CreateSpace. As I said: aggravating.

So, I've been flirting with ideas for the next novel. As usual, there are a dozen unfinished manuscripts just waiting to be completed. But those aren't sparking any interest. I considered going back to a recurring idea of rewriting a fairy tale, but the most well known fairy tales have been done over and over. What about one of the more obscure fairy tales? Hmm. Some interest begins to simmer. I also flirt with the idea of the "after the fairy tale" story. Nope, not a single spark.

Well, it's off to the old fairy tale books that my Aunt Jo, may her soul rest in peace, gave me when I was just a little girl to fine the right story for retelling. The books are fabulous: most of them obscure fairy tales with absolutely amazing illustrations. They just don't make books like that any more. Unfortunately.