Time to revamp my blog

I have been blogging for a year and a bit.  I only ever started  as an experiment and to let loose a bit of my own creativity in the form of writing, not just illustration.  I was only playing at it really.  While it has been pleasant to see that people around the world are finding it but has made me realise that you really need to put a lot of effort in to spreading the word if a blog is going to really generate traffic and, one fine day, increased book sales.  Perhaps I am ready for that now.

Although there is loads of information on the internet, I feel there is too much to digest on screen so I have turned to my local library and picked up a good old-fashioned book:  "Blogging All-in-one for Dummies".  I still prefer paper to digital publications despite being sat in front of screens more than I used to be.  Reading this book (a substantial tome so reading is also a physical work-out) has made me think that I ought to split the blog up into separate blogs for self-publishing and home-education.  The travel elements come into both so I will just incorporate them as necessary.

I had never even heard of Technorati or IceRocket - blog search tools.  I had heard of "backlinks" and I knew they were important in promoting a blog but I never found time to investigate how key they are.  All that is changing...gradually.

I intend to run three blogs:  one for self-publishing; one for home education and finally one for my Mr Smile character.  The Itinerant Poet and I have decided that Mr Smile's success with children and adults merits his own outlet for all things happy.  This will range from poems to thoughts for the week, videos, podcasts and whatever else we dream up.

Here they are then:

Home Education blog - Doing it our Way

AND

Mr Smile's Happy Blog

Technorati Blog post verification 46S7FXRGSNRT

46S7FXRGSNRT Test post for Technorati verification 46S7FXRGSNRT

Publications that don't fit standard Genres

If your book does not fit into any of the marketing pigeonholes for age range and genre, you are even more likely to have your manuscript rejected by publishers.  The Itinerant Poet's latest creation will definitely fall in this gap so we are not even considering submission of the manuscript.

When a writer has a eureka moment and the muse is riding high, I don't believe it is possible to deny the creative urge: a book is begging to be born.  The decision needs to be made to commit hundreds of hours work to its production - it is not for the faint-hearted.  So, why should it matter that no one will publish it?

There has been much coverage in the media of the extent of mental illness in adolescents and adults.  Often the sufferers go undiagnosed and untreated because they feel the condition to be a social stigma.  There are obviously too many other related issues to consider in this post but the topic came up in conversation between the Itinerant Poet and myself about what we might be able to do to help children avoid sliding down the slippery slope.  What could we do to help children manage their lives so that they learned how to be happier and more content?  A book is born!

Further inspiration came in the form of a post by the Canadian blog Collective Evolution entitled Ten simple things that you can do today to make you happier backed by science.  The post was obviously aimed at adults but made us think that we could use it as a basis for a self-help publication for children, in the more palatable form of fiction, that could act to prevent the slide to begin with.  So we did.


The finished product needs one more edit and a few illustrations but it looks good.  I just can't decide which cover to go for.  However, there is only one way to offer it to the world...self-publishing!

The Big Warm Shed

Once again, the above book was created in the warm seclusion of Son Antem near Llucmajor in Mallorca.  Our annual pilgrimage extended to four weeks in November and December.  The lack of responsibilities and every day chores freed up the creative juices.  The first draft was completed on the final day.

Further editing has been done in the rather cooler climes of Cheshire.  For economic reasons, the Itinerant Poet does not switch the heating on when he keeps to his early morning rising as per the Central European Time Zone.  Hence he has been at the dining table from about 6am each chilly morning.  He definitely finds it more difficult writing back in the home environment.  In our new house, there is no studio to escape to so the small hours are the only quiet times of isolation when he can shut out the rest of the world...and the household.

Home Education and the Teenage Years

Home-educated or not, there is no doubt that the teenage years can be very challenging - both for the teenagers and their parents.  The children are emergent adults and wish to take more responsibility for themselves, it is just not always in the direction parents may wish.  At what point do you stop trying to guide them according to your experiences and let them make their own mistakes?  I don't believe there is any REAL text book for being a parent, you just have to fly by love, instinct and your own upbringing.

We continue to pursue IGCSE Geography and Physics with our two teenagers.  It is difficult sometimes when the desire to create worlds on Minecraft or trade horses on Howrse outweighs the appeal of text books.  These are the only computer games we allow access to and we try to strike a fair balance between the two.  However, it never happens without a bit of animated discussion!

Recently, I found some solace and re-balancing of my own approach when I stumbled across the video by Logan Laplante - a home-educated 13 year old boy in the U.S.A. - that has accumulated over 4 million views.  It is well worth watching and made me think again about what makes children happy versus what makes adults happy.  There are plenty of areas for consideration and discussion so take a look...

Breathing new life into old manuscripts

December is the most productive time in our year.  We take ourselves off to our retreat on the glorious island of Mallorca and work our socks off for a few weeks!  Only when we are away from the telephone and the mundanity of everyday jobs can our minds be free to create.  What we produce will be finalised following our return and published in appropriate formats.

This year, we have at least four projects to work on.  One of these may be submitted to publishers or agents for consideration which is something we have not bothered doing for years.  However, the idea is extremely sound and is worth a go...or so we think at the moment.

Of the other three, two involve the resurrection of long-dormant manuscripts.  "The Dog Book" will be the main focus.  It has nearly been published under different titles and guises for about ten years.  Each time, the Itinerant Poet has decided it just wasn't quite right.  We even came close on a publishing deal on one occasion but apparently "episodic fiction wasn't in".

The second project is actually one of my own little indulgences.  I am going to epublish the Itinerant Poet's first children's novel.

In the Shadow of J.K. Rowling

We self-published "Leo's Magic Shoes" way back in 1999, long before the advent of digital printing and seamless use of "save as PDF" in Microsoft Word.  Back then, the files were converted for Pagemaker 5 before the local printer scanned in the images for us, produced the cover design and created the plates for the litho run.  The minimum run was 1,000 copies too!  It was not cheap.

Publishers were not interested in the manuscript.  The industry was in a Harry Potter feeding frenzy and a cute little story with mere magic shoes was not enough to sate its hunger especially as it was submitted by someone without a suitable sponsor to encourage anyone to lift it out of their slush pile.  We sold out of the 1,000 copies that same year and printed more.  We have long since sold out of those.

We re-released the book with some revisions, new illustrations and a new title to try to appeal to American publishers but alas to no avail.  We still managed to sell all of those 1,500 copies too.  The book has always been popular with children even though the adults selecting what they should be offered did not think it would be.

Digitally re-mastered

What has inspired me to bring it back?  The Itinerant Poet recently visited one of the first schools at which he worked in the late 90s, in the local village where we lived at the time.  The school bought five copies of the book.  In 2013, they were all still in regular use albeit looking a little dog-eared.  The children at the school today have no idea that the characters within were based upon my two eldest children who used to attend the school (they are now 23 and 21) and yet the appeal of the book endures.  Three of the books were "retired" as the spines had disintegrated but the other two live on...for the moment.  Their eventual demise is what moved me to consider creating a digital version for the digital age (hmm...that sounds a bit corny).  I don't want to see the book die out.

I may produce colour images for the inside pages.  This will involve doctoring the originals that were created in black ink by the artist Kirsty Munro.  I also have to hope that the original scanned TIFF files have not become corrupted or I will have to dig the hand-drawn copies out of the depths of the loft.

I may offer the finished article as a complete freebie on Kindle...

Chocolate Temptations

The original book contained a second, shorter story entitled "Another Quarter Pound of Chocolate Drops, please!"  The temptation to produce this as an additional publication may just prove too much for me!

Stress, Creativity and Balance

I can hardly believe it has been so many months since my last post.  The reason is quite simple: stress and creativity do not mix!  Our family has been in upheaval during the protracted process of a house move - a relocation to a completely different region of the country.  There is a good reason why reports list house moves alongside death and divorce in the stress top three.

The Itinerant Poet has been unable to write a single line.  The school Summer break meant that there were no school workshops and normally we would have been travelling and writing at the same time.  However, now we are beginning to settle in our new location, the levels of anxiety are diminishing and the resumption of school visits is restoring balance.  He has not found his new "shed" yet but we will wait and see.  Meeting colourful characters living on canal boats on the nearby waterway are proving to him that inspirational fellow eccentrics are always out there...somewhere!

Furthermore, we have booked our annual pilgrimage to the wonderful island of Mallorca for our Winter of creative output (unlike Chopin and George Sand).

 Ideas are beginning to sprout from tiny kernels deep inside the mind and now we have two major projects to complete in the four week period of our stay.

Much like writer's block, I think the best course of action in the face of stress is to let time pass and think upon the fact that life does come back into balance, although it may not be quite the same as it was before.  I try to avoid using cliches but I take a few deep breaths and trot out the occasional one to myself as its mundanity seems to have a calming effect upon me: "It's all part of life's rich pattern."

Fighting on the Home Education Front

Another couple of successes on the IGCSE front mean that our two teenagers are piling up a stack of useful qualifications.  The nearly 16 year old is now looking to her future in the world of further education and employment.  The past year and a bit has allowed her to develop her enduring passion for animals, in particular horses.  You can imagine the conversations we have had regarding aims matching abilities but in the end, the decision is hers - guided by us (hopefully).

She may take an early gap year from 16-17 if the recent changes to UK law allow.  She intends to work and the job will involve elements of training so I am hoping that will suffice - more research needed though.

I am really keen that our children are indeed passionate about what they choose to do so that they can be happy when they are doing it.  I don't mean walking around with a smile on their face every day but that they have a sense of contentment in their chosen path.  It is looking increasingly like 'A' levels are going to be necessary for our daughter to achieve the entrance requirements for the undergraduate course in "Veterinary Physiotherapy".  This also means that she will be going to an educational establishment for the first time in her life.

The balance in her life is changing - I hope we can support her through the inevitable stresses through to a new state of equilibrium and help her to retain her evident creativity.

Epublishing a backlist

The job of epublishing the backlist of poetry books in printed format, has been calling to me for some time from my to-do list.  I had put it on the back burner because of the headache over the inclusion of images.  I really want the children's poetry books to retain their images in digital format as I took a lot of time and trouble to create them.

So... how long did it take me to tweak and epublish a book with no internal images?  Any guesses?  And... how long did it take me to epublish a shorter book with images?  Well, it took me about 25 minutes to do the poetry book with no images and about 25 hours to do the one with the images.  However,  the good news is that I then went on to process three more books with images and I have improved on the 25 hours.  This is also partly due to updates to the Kindle Direct Publishing software since my last attempt way back in October 2012 that have made file conversion work properly.

The main problem is that the Kindle software shrinks the images.  It specifies that the maximum size that can be displayed on a Kindle is 600 x 800 pixels (presumably this is for the basic Kindle like mine).  I duly went through the entire book, deleting all the pictures.  I re-processed the originals using Photoshop Elements 6.0 and re-sized them to 600 x 800 before painstakingly re-inserting them into the Word document.  The result was exactly the same (give or take) as the first attempt at conversion BEFORE mucking about with sizes.  Either way, a picture that should have filled a Kindle screen was shrunk.  As a consequence, I gave up re-sizing for the subsequent books and there is no apparent difference except perhaps in the file size but it's not big enough to create a huge financial hole.

The other problem with the images is that they don't always behave properly.  You think they are in one position on a page but they appear somewhere else instead, like at the top of the next page and obliterating half of the poem on it.  I think I have sussed this now - you need to check that the little anchor marker for the pic is definitely above the page break line.  I found switching to Web Layout View in Word was the best way to check this.

I am still not totally satisfied with the way they appear on the screen but I can't see how to improve them so that is how they will stay.  I only have one further book to convert but I can see it is going to be the most challenging.  They are all listed on a Listmania list on Amazon.

Home Front or Foreign Shores?

We are now at the planning stage of our June tour.  In previous years, we have journeyed around western Europe in the mighty Burstner but this year, we may opt for the UK.  The cost of fuel is one factor but also is the fact that we have never been up to Scotland in the van with the crew.  I have fond memories of a wonderful holiday in the far north-east of Scotland 31 years ago when I saw the Northern Lights in the distant summer sky.
 I have wanted to return ever since.

However, I also REALLY love going to France and Spain.  France is my favourite - such diversity of geography within a single country - and the Dordogne in particular!

We will almost certainly go there in September this year so I am more tempted to to the UK trip.  This would mean that some amazing museums in the north of England could be visited en route - Beamish Museum for a start.  The idea is to find loads of cycle trails too.  I love this sort of research so can't wait to make the final decision and get started.

When we do the long trips, we often see if there is a school or other educational establishment where we may be able to find a day's work and to offer it at a discount.  This way, some of the mileage counts as business mileage and helps to offset a proportion of the costs on the motorhome in our annual accounts.

Last year, we linked up with a bilingual group to the south of Poitiers.  We investigated an international school near Toulouse but the proximity to the end of term is an issue so I have contacted a small village school near Crieff.  They contacted me to see if we could help out with a last-minute booking for World Book Day in March but the Itinerant Poet had been fully-booked for many months.  The head teacher sounded really nice and I promised to call her if we were travelling north of the border in the motorhome.  I was really happy when I called her yesterday and she remembered me making the offer.  Plans are now underway...

Now that the IGCSE English exams have been sat (and hopefully passed) we are looking ahead to next year's selection.  Current favourites are geography and physics.  Wherever we go, the diverse landscapes and map-reading can be incorporated into the geography study and the pressure/weather patterns into both.

The Buzz of a brand-new Book

There is no doubt about it; the thrill of opening the first box of a new publication.  You slave over its creation for months or even years.  You pull the files together and allocate the ISBN number.  You send it off to the printer and the proof arrives in a couple of days.  Then comes the frantic correction of the odd typo, page layout, illustration contrast before re-submitting it for production and delivery!

This week, the Itinerant Poet is working down in London and the first box of the new children's poetry collection had to be delivered directly to him at the school for a Book Launch, so I have had to miss out on the pleasure.  He called me to let me know that the entire school - staff and pupils - was in that same state of excitement and anticipation of the book's arrival.  There is a certain magic within that printed page...

So here it is!  The first collection written specifically with younger readers in mind, aged 5-8 years.  All the material has been written, tried and tested with audiences before making the cut for the book.  I had great fun experimenting with full page illustrations for every poem.  I have set them behind the text which meant I had to amend the contrasts and positions of key features of each picture.  I also found I had to put a white glow on the black text to make the words stand out.

I spent so long on the internal pictures that I almost forgot the cover.  We had a pretty good idea what to put on it as the book's title was pretty specific.  The ever-popular Mr Smile features alongside a late addition - a cartoon of the Itinerant Poet flying an aeroplane (this was the suggestion of son Rory who then criticised me for not making it a very realistic biplane!)

It is now listed on the Inspire to Write website Book Shop for sale and I have sent off the files to Nielsen to register the ISBN and images so it should appear on Amazon in the next couple of weeks.

This shortly to be followed by a collection of poems on school.  It is currently in production at Orbital Print Services and will also be delivered directly to the school in Essex where the Itinerant Poet is working next week and doing another book launch.  It is the only opportunity he will have to sell books at the school so time is tight.

I spent more time on the cover for this than on the book above, it ended up being a MASSIVE file as I had started it in 600dpi.  It even blew the memory on my iMac so I had to scale it down.  The proof looks great but we discovered a little oversight.  I started the book way back in January then shelved the project for a few months.  In that time, we had decided to revert to A5 size publications after a brief flirtation with smaller sizes.  Unfortunately I forgot this and the entire internal pages appear in the smaller size but printed on A5 paper.  In actual fact, it doesn't look too bad so, bearing in mind the tight deadlines, we left it as it was.

A5 is just so much easier to both hold and read.  You can use slightly larger font sizes and spacing so it is more child-friendly too.  In the end, the cost was not much more than the smaller books.  I am listing it in our Book Shop whilst I remember to do so.

Examinations Ahoy!

Next week sees our two teenagers sit their IGCSE English Language examinations.  Quite apart from all the book-related work, there is a lot of study support going on in our house.  I think that English is probably the subject that requires the most background reading and coaching of all the IGSCE subjects we take.  It is not just a case of correct spelling and grammar, it is also having the ideas and being able to express them clearly, concisely and eloquently.  As ever, the crucial part is being able to deliver the goods on the day (to use a couple of cliches) in order to sail through the stormy seas of the examination sitting (metaphor with alliteration) and within the allotted time.  I wish them both the very best of luck.

The Call of the Open Road

As the Spring still refuses to arrive properly in the UK, we can hear the distant call of the open road drawing closer to us.  Our original European travel plans were thwarted after my accident last September but now the Itinerant Poet and I are dreaming of the green hills and valleys of the Dordogne,  the pine forests and oceans of Les Landes and the azure of the Mediterranean.  We are trying not to recall the mosquitoes, humidity and difficulty sleeping in the heat.  Soon I will find myself investigating the prices on the cross-channel ferries and the world beyond this sceptered isle.

On the other hand... perhaps a UK tour?  Oh, the (in)decision!  What fun!