The New Book - Still Death

Regular readers of the blog may have noticed that while I've posted about writing, I haven't actually mentioned anything about a current project for some time. That's about to end, as I'm thrilled to say my latest book is due out on 8th November. 

While I'm in the early stages of writing a book, the ideas often feel so tenuous I don’t like talking about them. Winnie the Pooh best sums up this feeling, 'When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.' 

Once I have the feel of the characters and the ideas are firmer, my problem then is finding a title. It's quite difficult talking about your current project when you don't know what to call it. Once I've written the first draft, I spend ages coming up with words and phrases that link to the ideas and themes of the book. This time I took so long to find anything I liked that I'd actually got to the beta reader stage and was still without a title. I gave my beta readers the list of ideas I'd been playing with, and fortunately they all liked the same title - Still Death. As you might guess from this it's a murder/mystery!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working with Andrew of Design for Writers, and once again he’s come up with an amazing cover. Unlike some of my previous novels, I knew exactly what I wanted, and Andrew has captured the opening scene brilliantly.

So without further ado – drum roll – the cover for Still Death.

I find writing the novel easier than writing the blurb that goes with it, but if you're interested in knowing more about Still Death, here goes... 

The first was a hit and run.

The second a murder/suicide.

Who will be next?

Lexie believes Patrick has been set-up for the murder of his girlfriend, but she is the only person who does.

After living in London, she thought life in a small town would be boring, but there are too many accidents to be a coincidence, and they all appear linked to the death of Patrick's girlfriend.

Lexie is determined to find out who is behind it until her family becomes one of the statistics.

Death still lurks in the quietest places. 

In the next post I'll talk a bit more about writing the book and give you a sneak preview of the opening scene.

Book Blurbs and First Chapters

The first quarter of this year has been packed with a significant number of stressful life events. These are rather like public transport; they leave you alone for some time and then all come along together, as if you’ve been having things too easy and it’s time to see if you crack under the strain.

Selling our home and moving was planned, but the other events obviously decided this was waaaay too easy and they’d come along for the ride - big sigh! However, back to the moving. One of the things I decided to do before the move was to significantly cull my books and get rid of some of the bookshelves.

When choosing a print book to read, I tend to look at the cover and then reread the back page blurb to remind myself of the story and why it interested me. After doing this a few times I settle on one to read.

When I first starting using my Kindle I had a relatively small number of books on the device, and most were books by favourite authors or classics I hadn’t yet read. In all cases I was aware of the book premise simply by looking at the title. Since then I’ve purchased many more books, and often they’re on my Kindle for some time before I read them.

An eReader is a little like Mary Poppins' carpetbag. You can fit in a large number of books without it looking any different, whereas when I tried to find room on the bookshelves for new purchases I was always aware of the number of books I hadn’t yet read, and I felt guilty for buying more.

When I’m selecting a book to read from the electronic list on my Kindle, I tend to be too lazy to look at the book blurb on Amazon, so all I have to go on is the book cover and title, and a tagline if there is one. This means I often have very little to go on as to the storyline or setting.

From a writer’s perspective this means we’ve really got to make that first chapter work hard, (not forgetting that all important first paragraph). Is there enough to draw the reader in and keep them reading and wanting to know more, without confusing them totally?

The opening chapter needs to introduce the protagonist, give the reader a feel for the genre or type of book (you should also get an idea of this from the title and cover), give a feel of the narrative voice (is it a warm confiding tone, ironic, amusing, frightening), and introduce the setting and time period. By the end of the chapter there should also be an indication this is going somewhere, that there is conflict, problems to be solved and stakes high enough to ensure action is taken. As readers we don’t want endless ramblings of the protagonist's everyday life or lots of backstory.

Opening chapters have always had to do that, but now they need to work even harder if the reader doesn’t have an indication of the storyline from the back cover blurb.

Some time ago I released a romantic suspense novella (Driftwood). In the reviews I’ve noticed a couple of comments along the lines of ‘it’s a quick read’. That’s true, it’s a novella, and comes in at around 46,000 words. The blurb on Amazon states it’s a novella, but of course, when you open it on your eReader you don’t have any idea whether it’s a doorstop of a book or a quick read. For these reasons I’ve decided that in future I’m going to add the short blurb to the front of my electronic books, so the reader is oriented as to the main outline or premise of the book before they begin. It doesn’t mean I can relax on that first paragraph and chapter, it still has to pull its weight, but at least the reader has the same information they would if they were reading a print version.

As readers or writers, what do you think?

Lies of the Dead - Cover

I'm really excited that my latest book Lies of the Dead is just about there and thrilled to unveil the cover created by the talented Andrew Brown of Design for Writers.

Unlike Driftwood and Lives Interrupted I had absolutely no ideas for the cover of Lies of the Dead, but working with Andrew makes the process incredibly easy. He asks a lot of questions about the plot and characters, important (poster) scenes, my own likes and dislikes, and then he goes away and works his magic.

Lies of the Dead is set predominantly in Cornwall which is an area I love. Writing those scenes has allowed me to wander through villages, along beautiful cliff walks and feel the sand under my feet on the glorious beaches. The setting of Poldrayth is fictitious but it is based on a real Cornish village to allow me to play around with the geography a little.

What would you risk to find the truth?

How well do we know those closest to us? When Liam kills himself, his older brother Tom needs to know why suicide was the only answer.

Tom's search leads him, and his sister Andi, to a criminal world where their ideas of right and wrong don’t exist, and where people aren’t who they claim to be.

Liam’s legacy of deceit is dangerous and when Tom and Andi and her twin daughters are threatened, Tom realises that truth may have too high a price. 

Thanks a million Andrew for a wonderful cover - drumroll

Driftwood

Salvador Dali said, ‘Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.’ I can certainly relate to that.

Samuel Johnson’s quote is a little kinder. ‘It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.’

Back in 2006 I started writing a novel. I’d been honing my craft and writing skills on short stories for some time, and decided it was time to start work on the characters and story that became Driftwood.

In 2010 I entered Driftwood into a competition for unpublished romance novels, and to my surprise I won, and Driftwood was published. As I read it I found there were parts I enjoyed and felt proud of, but also parts I wanted to change.  I have a huge streak of perfectionism when it comes to my writing, so strong it is often difficult to know when it's time to let go. 

I kept the electronic rights for Driftwood, and decided as a goal for this year to read it and make some changes. It's been a good experience working on something I originally started six years ago, and I've tried to keep to Elmore Leonard's advice of leaving out the parts that people skip.

It has also been great fun working with Andrew of Design for Writers on the new cover for Driftwood. He's created an amazing cover which I loved from the moment I opened the email with the proof.  He commented about his design thoughts. 'It is hard to escape that central image of the driftwood, but I wanted something more than golden sands and blue sky. This image is darker and suspenseful, hinting at that darker side of the book. It is also wistful in some way, like a memory.' I totally agree, and the image sums up the tone of the book beautifully. 

If you'd like to look at Driftwood, it is now available as a novella through Smashwords and Amazon. 

Juliet, the protagonist, is a strong character. She is passionate about building her business, but uses it as a shield from emotional involvement. Her strength comes from her past, and has grown as a defence mechanism. On a work trip to Christchurch, New Zealand, she bumps into Luke. She thought she had managed to forget him, but from the moment they meet again, her life is not the same.

Luke wants to renew their relationship, but Juliet has strong reservations (to put it mildly), and tells Luke they can’t recapture the past.

Within days of meeting Luke, events escalate and Juliet realises someone is trying to harm her. She is relieved to leave Auckland for Sydney to work with a new client, but trouble follows her, and then Luke appears. Can she trust him, or are his secrets more deadly than the ones she is hiding? 

I have also included the opening chapters of Lives Interrupted, and the first four chapters of my new novel, Lies of the Dead, which should be published in April this year. 

I've had a great time working on Driftwood, and I'm now looking forward to final edits on Lies of the Dead, with the help of good feedback and comments from my beta readers.

Popular Posts and Christmas Wishes

I've just been looking through my blog stats and noticed this is post 100 for this year.  Yay, as that means I'm not far off my goal for the year of posting twice a week.

I've been writing this blog for just over two years now and I've been amazed and humbled at how the readership has grown. When I first started it felt as though I was talking to myself, but then we writers are used to that!

My first posts were just before I had a publishing contract for Driftwood, and as I look back on them I realise how much I've learnt in that time and how much the publishing industry has changed, and the opportunities we now have as authors.

This time last year I published my second novel, Lives Interrupted, through Kindle and CreateSpace, and that was another learning curve.

The posts on my experiences on formatting and uploading a manuscript to Smashwords and KDP are searched regularly, and it's good to know they're  useful.  I've had some great emails from people asking questions and sharing their experiences.

I was interested to see what posts were the most popular for this year and thought I'd share links to the most viewed, excluding the formatting and uploading ones for Smashwords, KDP and CreateSpace as they're only interesting if you need the information.

So of the non-writing posts, one of the most viewed this year was The Sound of Thoughts. The photo of the Opera House is there because I wrote this post in Sydney.

Quite a few of the posts are writing related in some way, and another popular post was on Positive and Negative Character Traits, and this one on the topic and CSI.

I like sharing resources and interesting things I find and a TED talk inspired this post on what makes a good story, and I'm obviously not the only one who enjoys daydreaming.  

It's been an interesting year, and I'm looking forward to 2013 and am busy concocting plans and goals for the things I want to achieve.

Lives Interrupted is free to download on Amazon US and Amazon UK today (21st December), and if you missed it, or are waiting for Santa to deliver your eReader, it will also be free on 26/27th December.

Have a great weekend. 

It's Beginning To Feel A Bit Like Christmas

The work projects are in their closing stages, the Christmas tree is up AND I’ve actually wrapped presents and put them underneath the tree, so to misquote a song title, it’s beginning to feel a bit like Christmas.

I walked along my local beach earlier and the pohutukawas are looking beautiful. There are some photos of them sprinkled through this post. They bloom in December and so are known as New Zealand’s Christmas tree.  The cliffs at the end of the beach are ablaze with them at the moment.

Christmas in the southern hemisphere takes some getting used to if all you’ve known is northern hemisphere snowy celebrations.  At the moment all the windows and doors are open, and it’s still hot.

I do feel sorry for the shopping mall Santa's.  They’re dressed in warm red robes while the rest of us are in shorts and t-shirts.  Hearing/singing  traditional Christmas songs about the cold and snow also seems a little out of place.

We are approaching the longest day of the year, and the children have just started the long summer holidays. This means that Christmas and New Year holidays tend to stretch well into January in New Zealand, as families head off to the beach for holidays. Turkey and ham are Christmas favourites, but so also are family BBQs at the beach.

I’ll put my hand up for some extra reading time during the holidays.  I’ve been doing some serious work on the Leaning Tower of Pisa that is my ‘to be read’ pile, and that’s just the overflow from the bookshelves. My Kindle is also bursting, though fortunately no-one but me knows that!

It’s a year since I first published Lives Interrupted, and as it’s a present-giving time of year, Lives Interrupted is free to download on Amazon on 20 and 21 December  - Amazon UK. 

If you don't have an eReader, but are getting one for Christmas it will also be free on 26 and 27 December. 

Happy holidays and happy reading. 

Bits and Pieces

I wrote a short story last night. It's been a long time since I even had an idea for a short story as I’ve been busy with other projects, work and life in general. This one came out of the blue and mostly complete. The problem is that it came to me around 2 a.m. as I lay restless and tired, but not sleepy. You know what’s coming! I should have got up and actually written it. 

I remember most of it now as I sit at my laptop, though the sparkling prose isn’t quite as sparkling it was in the early hours. But I will persevere…

It’s interesting (for interesting you can read annoying/frustrating) how something that should help in your work can initially slow you down.

I have a shiny new toy, except that when a laptop is a requirement for your job it’s not a toy.

Recently I had problems with my (old) laptop which necessitated taking it back to factory settings. Fortunately it didn’t just die so I was able to ensure I had all my backups, but the reset meant I lost many of my customised settings in programmes. I recreated a lot of those settings, and now with the shiny new laptop I’m doing the same, plus getting used to the new operating system. 

New is not necessarily better, at least until you get used to it.

This week I’ve also been battling a back injury; hence the lack of posts as sitting hasn’t been an option for a few days. 

There is an old saying along the lines of, ‘you don’t realise how good it is not to have a headache until you have one.’ I can certainly agree with that one this week, when every movement has been accompanied by vocal noises ranging from a groan to something louder depending on the pain scale.

So that’s been my week in a few paragraphs. Sitting is still problematic, but my Kindle has been a boon as I've been able to read and make editing notes on the book I'm working on. Hopefully normal service will be resumed shortly.

Cover Image Changes for Kindle and Smashwords

One of the reasons I started this blog was to share my experiences in writing and publishing.

After having a novel published, I decided to publish Lives Interrupted myself using KDP and Smashwords for the electronic version, and CreateSpace for a print version.  I documented the steps I took and what worked best, and earlier this year decided to pull those posts together in an electronic book Smart Formatting.

About a month ago some of the requirements for cover images changed and I've updated the dimensions and information in Smart Formatting.

Below is the new information.

In mid 2012 Smashwords changed the minimum image pixel dimensions, as Apple required higher pixel counts. They require all ebook cover images to be at least 1,400 pixels wide. If you are looking for a good height to width ratio, say 1:5, you could go for an image of 1,600 wide by 2,400 tall.

KDP has a minimum of 1,000 pixels for the height and state an ideal ratio of 1:6. They recommend that images be 2,500 pixels high. For this ratio you could create an image of 1,600 wide and 2,560 high. The image must be in RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colour mode. I uploaded my image as a .jpg file although KDP say they will also accept .tif files.

Normal service will be resumed in the next post, and I'll continue with positive and negative character traits. 

  

Formatting eBooks

I'm thrilled to say that Smart Formatting: How to format and upload your novel to Kindle, Smashwords and CreateSpace is available from Amazon and Smashwords. It should also be available from other retailers shortly.

Smart Formatting covers the MS Word settings and formats you should use, and gives full instructions on these.  It looks at the elements you need to have ready, and the uploading process to KDP and Smashwords. 

Should you also want to produce a print book, I've included a section on formatting your manuscript to upload to CreateSpace.

I've used my experiences working in MS Word on a Windows PC system, so the book doesn't have any instructions for a Mac.

Here is the Table of Contents to give you a better idea of what is covered.

What Do We Mean by Formatting an eBook
The Elements You Need for Uploading Your Manuscript
   Book Cover Blurb
   Front Content
   End Content
   Book Cover
Sorting out MS Word
   Things You Shouldn't Do or Use
   Track Changes
   AutoCorrect
   Word Styles
   First Line Indents and Block Paragraphs
   Creating a Table of Contents using Hyperlinks and Bookmarks
Formatting for KDP and Smashwords
   Paragraph and Heading Styles
   Images
   Formats for Saving Your Files
Publishing with KDP and Smashwords
   Uploading Your Book
   What Happens Now?
   ISBN
   Checking Your Book Without an eReader
Troubleshooting Formatting Errors
Creating a Print Book
   Book Interior
   Formatting Your Manuscript
   Paragraph and Heading Styles
   Front Matter
   Checklist for Interior Formatting
   Uploading Your File
   Creating Your Cover
   What Happens Next?
Author Central

If you click the Smart Formatting image on my website homepage, there is a free PDF you can download of the MS Word section of the eBook.  It has the same instructions as the eBook, but a few more screenshots, and has the advantage of being in colour!

I think the book is good value for $0.99. 

The next post will be back on writing topics, I promise.       

Formatting eBooks for Kindle and Smashwords

On this blog I've posted about my experiences with formatting and uploading my novel and short stories to KDP and Smashwords, and also creating the print version of Lives Interrupted.  I've corresponded with quite a few people answering questions about the process, and so I decided to put the posts into a more helpful format.  I've worked on that for a while, and have been editing it over the past week or so, and hopefully Smart Formatting should be ready to go by next week.

Uploading to Kindle

I had been told, or read somewhere, to save my Word file as an .html to upload to KDP (Kindle), but when I read through their help files I saw they accepted .doc and .docx files, and so I uploaded my Word.doc file.  Not a good idea, at least for me.  For whatever reason all my paragraphs, formatted in a Word Style with a first line indent, appeared as block paragraphs. 

Fortunately the upload to Kindle is very quick, and so I tried again with the same result.  Yes I know the definition of insanity...  and in my defence I only repeated it once.

Anyway lesson learned I saved my manuscript as an .html file and uploaded it.  Perfect first line indents!

Kindle doesn’t do the free downloads that Smashwords does, but once you've uploaded your file successfully a button appears asking if you want to preview your book.  The correct answer is yes, you really do want to do this.  A virtual Kindle appears and you can click through your book checking it is as perfect as it should be.

I formatted Lives Interrupted for both Kindle and Smashwords over the same weekend, and opened both the accounts at that time.  As I've mentioned in a recent post I didn't find it that difficult, and a lot simpler than formatting the print version!

Pricing an e-Book

One of the decisions you have to make is how much you're going to charge for your book.  Like everything else I did some research on this - by looking at the prices of other books, and reading other people's thoughts on the subject.

I decided from the outset I wasn't going the 'free' route, which incidentally you can do on Smashwords, but not with Amazon.  The minimum price you can set with Amazon is $0.99. 

If you are selling the first book of a trilogy or series, I can see that hooking new readers by selecting 'free' has some advantages.  Lives Interrupted is a standalone book, and while letting it go for nothing might give me some readers for the future, I believe it is worth something.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence, and comments from other authors, on the best price to set.  Some say between $2.99 and $4.99, while others between $0.99 and $2.99.

I decided that $2.99 was a fair price for my work.  Not only did I put a lot of effort into writing Lives Interrupted, but also in making sure it was as perfect and error free as I could make it.

Time will tell whether that is a reasonable price.  Watch this space and I'll let you know.

More Exploits with ePublishing

I've read and listened to a few discussions about whether to format the manuscript yourself or pay someone else.  Ultimately we have to make the best decision for us, but it's not difficult.  I didn't time the process but it didn't take me more than two hours and some of that involved starting the accounts and filling in the information they required.

I used a designer to create the cover and consider that money well spent as I don't have those skills, and I also had the book copy edited.  I believe, as Joe Konrath also says, an important part of publishing a book yourself means it has to be the very best it can be. 

I've had feedback from the writing group and from beta readers which has strengthened the story, and I think it will emotionally engage readers.  So having the copy edit and the cover designed was part of the process of making it as good as I could. 

Now it was time to press the enter key on the Smashwords site.  I've read about the length of time it takes for the manuscript to upload.  What can I say?  After pressing enter on the Smashwords site I was 10th in the queue and it went through so fast I really didn't see the numbers clicking down.  That must be one bonus of living in the Southern Hemisphere and therefore uploading files when much of the world is asleep.  Within minutes I had an email back from Smashwords saying ' Congratulations! There were no AutoVetter errors! Your book is now in the queue for review by our vetting team."  Yay I was on my way.  One down and Kindle to go.

Formatting an eBook

When I started writing Lives Interrupted I had no thoughts of Kindles or other reading devices, and so I formatted it with publishers and agents in mind.  And to look good for me as I spend considerable amounts of time looking at it, not gazing adoringly you understand, but working.  So it was in a print ready state, rather than an 'e-ready' state.

If you are intending to publish for electronic readers, you will need little more than the following for your manuscript:

• A simple style for the major part of your content.  For example first line indent paragraph style in a 12pt standard font.
• A style for your chapter headings.

I used Garamond 12pt first line indent for my content, and Garamond 14pt bold for the section headings.

This post goes into more details on that.

If you have an electronic reader you will already know there is no such thing as a page in an ebook, as the person reading controls how large the font is, and therefore how much shows on the screen at any time.  The document is basically one continuous page.

Smashwords advises not to use page breaks, and no more than four paragraph returns together (pressing the Enter key), or you could end up with blank pages on small screens.

I used one paragraph return after section headings, and two paragraph returns at the end of sections.

This is one area where the Smashwords Style Guide and the information on the KDP (Kindle) site differ.  The KDP formatting guidelines say to use a page break between chapters.  I guess it might depend on the style of your book and chapters.  The sections in Lives Interrupted are quite short and I tried it with page breaks, but when I previewed it on the Kindle Previewer it had some blank pages so I took out the page breaks and went with the paragraph returns as I've mentioned above.

Now we come to the front material.

I created two new styles: one called Book Title which was the same as my section title except it was centred, and a style based on the content style but with no first line indent and which was centred.

At the beginning of the manuscript I typed the name of the book using Book Title style (obvious really I suppose!) and my name and the copyright notice using the centred style.

For the copyright notice I looked at a few books from my bookshelf and Kindle and wrote what I thought was needed, some seemed excessively long.  You also need to add 'Smashwords edition' if you are going to publish on their site.

It was at this point I made another copy and called it my Kindle file.

That's pretty much it for the required front information. 

When I come to the end of a book I've enjoyed it's sometimes hard to let it go.  The characters stay with me for some time and I'm often interested to know if there are more books with those characters, or what else the author has written, especially if it's someone I'm not familiar with.

As an author the end of the book is a great place to do a little subtle advertising rather than just writing 'The End'.

I wrote a thank you for buying and reading the book, and put my website and blog addresses for any comments, and a little plea for a review if they felt so inclined.  I added a bit of information about me, and the book of short stories I'm working on at the moment, and added one of the short stories.  Hopefully after reading Lives Interrupted, and one of the short stories people will feel inclined to buy the book.

Kindle and Smashwords

When I made the decision to publish my manuscript as an ebook I started to find out as much about the process as I could.  I would certainly suggest downloading the Smashwords style guide, as it goes into a lot of detail on how to format your manuscript to successfully turn it into an ebook.

How difficult the process is depends mainly on two things.  The (formatting) state of your manuscript, and your skill level in Word.  Personally I don't think you need extreme Word skill levels to get your manuscript ready to upload to Smashwords or Kindle.

At most it took me about two hours on my Smashwords version, and some of that time was spent messing around creating the additional material needed, such as copyright notice, author bio, and actually creating the account.

I would recommend creating your accounts in both Smashwords and Amazon before you actually want to format or upload your manuscript.

In the Smashwords style guide there is a 'nuclear' method and if you're worried about the formatting you may already have in your manuscript, then use this method.

Before doing anything else make a backup copy of your manuscript.

Hopefully you're already in the habit of making regular copies of your manuscript.  I do a 'Save As' on my manuscript most days when I begin work using the current date as the last part of the file name, so if my laptop decides to have a hissy fit and close down I haven't lost everything.

One part of my work as a technical writer is making things look good and having them print ready, so I found formatting for the e-book painful.  Not difficult, painful.  There is no point in making it look pretty.  In this case plain and simple is definitely best.  It doesn't really matter what font the author uses as the reader can choose the font type and size they want.

You may be wondering why I keep referring to Smashwords rather than Kindle.  It's for the simple reason that the Smashwords style guide is very detailed, and ultimately most of what you do is the same for Kindle.

Okay here we go - MAKE A BACKUP.

It helps to have a passing knowledge of Styles.  Word Styles as opposed to what's in fashion at the moment.  You don't need a huge amount of knowledge, but it helps to know how to apply a style to text, and how to modify a style.  If you're not sure about this there are plenty of helpful websites, here is a link to the Wordtips site, but you can find others by searching on 'Word Styles'.

There are just a few big no-no's in this formatting lark for ebooks, and one is tabs, as in don't use them.  Phew one thing I didn't have to worry about.  If you're now saying, 'What!  No tabs!  How does she start her paragraphs?'  The answer to that is first line indents.  If you're not sure about those you can find out using the link above to the Wordtips site.

My manuscript was relatively clean.  By this I mean I used first line indents rather than tabs, and Styles rather than direct formatting.  Direct formatting is selecting text and changing it by using the tools on the toolbar such as bold, italic, colour, font size and type etc.  But I had used a lot of styles while I was editing to colour different parts of the manuscript, and so I decided the quickest way was to use the nuclear method.

Basically (after making a backup copy of your file - have I mentioned this before!) you copy all your text and paste it into Windows Notepad.  This strips out all of your formatting.

Close and reopen Word so you have a fresh document.  Then copy the Notepad content and paste it back into Word.  I'll warn you now it doesn't look pretty.  The intention is not to make it look pretty, but to get it ready to upload.

Your entire manuscript should now be in Normal style. 

The Smashwords style guide says to choose either a block paragraph style for your ebook, or a first line indent for all your paragraphs.  If you look in a print novel you'll see that the first paragraph of a section is a block style and subsequent paragraphs are first line indents. 

The majority of books on my Kindle have first line indents on all their paragraphs, but there is one book that has the print layout using both paragraph types.  I tried, oh how I tried, but I couldn't figure out how they managed it.  So I gave up and used first line indents on all paragraphs.

Now we've formatted our paragraphs we can turn to headings.  A non-fiction book will usually have several levels of headings, but for a novel we can keep it fairly simple.

Lives Interrupted is split into sections.  I call them that rather than chapters as most are relatively short.  Each section has a heading, which happens to be the name of the POV character for that section.  So I had normal style for the paragraphs, and then created a section heading style.  They were the only two styles I used for the book content.

It's fairly pointless spending a lot of time selecting a font, as the reader can change it to whatever they like.  The Smashwords style guide recommends something like Times New Roman.  What is important is not to go too wild on the font sizes, or to be more specific the variance between the font size of your paragraphs and headings.  I used 12pt for my content and 14pt for the book title and headings.

The only other thing I did at this point was to go through my Smashwords and Kindle version files and apply italics to about five or six pieces of text that had previously been italicised and which had been stripped out during the nuclear method.

Yeeha the manuscript was done, but the book not quite finished.  Now it was time for the front and back content.