My Anthology's Progress - Day 2

After no communication from GetCovers after a couple of days, I assumed they were busy with other orders, so no big deal. I'm not 100% sure my first anthology is ready to publish anyway. But today I received an email from them, telling me they need a bit more information in order to get started. I was provided with a link--great. I've been down this road before with Miblart, so I knew they'd be asking for title, author name, a bit about the story (or stories, in this case). Well, the link presented me with a blank text box. Um, what are you asking me for? Am I supposed to guess? So, I typed, "Please indicate what information you need in order to get started." This is aggravating, because it's going to delay things more. I'm quite good at following directions, but I need actual directions in order to do so. Since I'm not in a hurry to publish the first book, it's not a major setback, but I'm concerned that my interactions with the company are not going to be easy.

In other news, I felt confident that my paperback formatting was ready to go, except for indicating the page numbers in the table of contents. But then, when reviewing the doc, I noticed that every page had a header that read, "Book Title". After using Word for many years, I've learned a lot of shortcuts, but I had no idea how to change Book Title to the actual title. Luckily, Google pointed the way. How unprofessional my product would have looked, had I not noticed that. 

Then I got to thinking that perhaps I should include a "forward" giving a brief overview of each of the four stories in the book. The easiest way to do that would be to use each novella's Amazon blurb. However, doing so would require me to somehow insert a blank page into the template to paste the blurbs onto, and I'm leery about possibly messing up what is now a pretty clean format. I did add it to the ebook version, but that's a no-brainer with Kindle Create--nothing really to mess up.

So, titles...Apparently, having a title for the second book isn't yet crucial, considering how GetCovers operates, but I still wanted to settle the issue. Since Book 1 is "Touching Home", I've pretty much landed on "Leaving Home" for Book 2. It's not perfect. My final four novellas involve three main characters leaving home, but one doesn't fit that criteria. I don't think it really matters that much, though, in the end.

I've struggled with whether to include all four of those stories. Book 1 is comprised of the four I like best, which leaves me with one novella that never sold a single copy, one that received one two-star review (not a text review; just a star rating), another that is a reworking of my second novel, and the last one, which is pretty good. I was aware the my two-star rated novella, Find My Way Home, isn't my strongest work, but I was curious how bad it was, so I re-read it yesterday. I liked it! It actually made me cry. Maybe that reviewer is just a cold-hearted bitch. As a novella, it does suffer from a certain lack of detail, and it's definitely a quick read, and that did bother me somewhat. I, as a "new" reader of it, would have preferred the story to delve more deeply into some scenes. There were also a couple of questionable issues, such as the fourteen-year-old MC being quite foul-mouthed. Her use of obscenities was jarring (and I wrote it!). I have no idea where my headspace was when I wrote this one; I rarely use four-letter words in my manuscripts, and when I do, they tend to come out of a male character's mouth. I am almost certain I'm going to go back and revise this one. 

As for the novella that has failed to sell...at all...I don't know why that is, because it's good. As time went on and no sales were forthcoming, I pondered whether it was the title (Bad Blood) or the blurb or perhaps I'd mislabeled its genre. Well, the title remains, but I did rework the blurb and changed the genre to include "psychological thriller", but the book remains unsold. Nevertheless, I'm still proud of it.

Then there's my second novel that I reconstituted as a novella (Whispers in the Dark). I'm going to have to read this one, too. I don't recall ever reading it in its new formulation. Part of me has really negative feelings toward the story as a whole, due to its failure to snag an agent when it was a full-blown novel, but I won't know if it passes muster now until I read it.

The remaining novella is fine. It was the very first book that ever received a review--a positive one--and it was the first novella I wrote. New Kaitlyn is what led me down the novella path to begin with.  

I have to keep reminding myself that I'm doing this project for me, so that I will have a physical representation of my work, and that I'm not expecting any sales. Still, I want and expect a professional presentation. I do have standards.

I guess there should be a psychological aspect to which stories appear in which book. Ideally, perhaps the best ones should be combined with the "worst" ones, so there's a mix. But that's a double-edged sword. If a (hypothetical) reader liked the first story, then hated the second, she'd probably stop reading at that point, and never get to the 3rd or 4th. 

I know in my own mind how I rank these eight:

1. Shadow Song
2. Lies and Love
3. Inn Dreams
4. The Diner Girl
5. Bad Blood
6. New Kaitlyn
7. Find My Way Home
8. Whispers in the Dark (probably)

And that list is basically how I'm assembling the two books. Will that mean that Book 1 is pretty good and Book 2 sucks? Maybe. But what do I know?  

I never imagined I'd have to go back an re-read a couple of these. That wasn't in the cards when I started this project. But as much as I hate the proposition, I've gotta find out for myself if some of these stories are even worthy of inclusion. It'll kind of defeat the purpose to have stories on my shelf that embarrass me. It is nine years of work, though, which I do want to document.

As easy as I thought this project would be, it's definitely not. But I'm going to try to make it worthwhile in the end.