Paperbacks Available at CreateSpace

The first paperback edition of Come Bye is now available at CreateSpace.com.  Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell Books, and other online retailers will follow soon.  But if you JUST CAN'T WAIT, you can order your copy now by clicking here: GET MY Come Bye NOW.

COME BYE Ebooks and Hardbacks ready

PROGRESS!  Come Bye's ebook versions for Kindle, Nook, and other ereaders are now available for your purchase.  As is the hardbound version at Lulu.  Click on the PUCHASE COPY tab above for links to these sites.

Proofs Reviewed -- Publication Imminent

My second book is nearly ready to hit the streets. The girl is ready to leave home. She's been pampered and coddled for months. Now it's time for her to see how she can make it on her own.

So give her a go.  She'll make a great Holiday gift for yourself or your BFF.

Watch this space. As soon as she officially walks out the door, I'll let you know where you can get her to take home with you.

First Draft Complete -- Come Bye

I finished the first draft of my new novel, Come Bye. This one is set in Plainview, OK, and takes an in-depth look at three characters introduced at the end of Away to Me.

Finishing the draft leaves me feeling lost. I've been so entangled in the lives of Sally, Belle, and Bea that I feel like I've been relocated to a new neighborhood where I don't yet know anyone.

A birthing of sorts.

A real birthing, however, has diverted my attention from my empty desk.  Juliet, our young Cardigan Welsh corgi, delivered four beautiful babies on Monday.

Juliet, daughter of Shakespeare, debuts her little costars:  Puck, Brutus, Cleopatra, and Miranda

The Interview

By White Wagon's Maid to Order

Molly:     This is White Wagon’s Maid to Order, Molly to my friends. I have with me here today new author, Kathy Wagenknecht, who has just published her first novel, Away to Me.

              

               So tell me, Kathy, how does it feel to have written and published a book?

Kathy:    I’m still rather stunned. I didn’t think I could write fiction other than marketing materials and sales proposals, but —

Molly:     OK. So tell me, why did your name you book “Away to Me”?

Kathy:    I liked the word play of “away” and “a way” and what that could mean to someone looking for —

Molly:     So you didn’t intend for your reader to immediately run in a large counter-clockwise circle off to your right?

Kathy:     Um, no. I wanted to use herding terms as metaphors for the plot development. I broke the book into four parts, plus a prologue, and named each part with a herding term. I thought that —

Molly:     OK. So why was there only one border collie in the book?

Kathy:    Actually there was another one who —

Molly:     A puppy doesn’t count. And the dog in the story, Lulu, where did you get that name?

Kathy:    I don’t know. It just came to me when I needed a name for Buck’s dog. I was trying —

Molly:     That’s another thing. Why did Buck have the dog? I think Lulu would have been happier with Betty and Bitsy.

Kathy:    Um, I, um, was trying to show a softer side of —

Molly:     And why did Lulu never do anything but chase tennis balls? Was she developmentally challenged? Couldn’t she help at the farm?

Kathy:    Well, she, uh, did a natural outrun and —

Molly:     Big deal. Any border collie worth her salt can outrun until the cows come home, so to speak.

Kathy:     She tried to herd chickens but —

Molly:     That’s what I mean. Was something wrong with her?

Kathy:     No, she just didn’t have a very big role in the novel. Thematically, she tied —

Molly:     She should have been with Mary Nell, rounding up clues and gathering information. That’s a proper role for a border collie.

Kathy:     Um, yes. I suppose I can see your point. Could you please stop staring at me? And maybe stand up straight? Why are you crouched down like that? And if you would stop interrupting me I —

Molly:     Thank you, Kathy, for talking with me about your book.

Kathy:    Thank —

Molly:     If any of you want to read about a pathetic border collie who is only allowed to chase balls and be petted, read Kathy’s book, Away to Me. It’s available from Amazon and several other places in hardback, paperback and as an ebook. Go to her website (kathywagenknecht.com) for purchase information.

               It’s very good. (She made me say that.) Come Buy a copy.

What about the Cover Painting?

I've had several folks ask where they might buy a print of Pat White's wonderful painting, "Herding 5",  that is on the cover of Away to Me.

If you are interested, click here. 

FineArtAmerica does a great job of reproducing prints on paper, greeting cards, unstretched canvas, or wrapped gallery frames.

Come Buy

“Come Bye” is a traditional herding term for sending the dog around the sheep in a clockwise direction

The day it arrived in the mail was hot for early April. I had watered everything in both greenhouses and waited on several customers before I drove the few miles into town to the bank. It held my personal stash of ones and zeros that translate into a monetary balance on a teller’s computer screen.

When I got back, the mail truck pulled into the driveway just behind me.  He tossed me a package and drove off.  I caught it without thinking and tore into it while discussing Japanese maples with a customer.

As I pulled off the final wrapping, I felt a little thrill run down my leg (to quote Chris Matthews over Obama’s campaign rhetoric) as I saw for the first time my novel – the word made flesh.

I ran my hand over the cover, trying to feel the brush strokes on the reproduction of Pat’s painting.  I lifted the book to feel its weight.  I turned the pages, looking at the title page, the copyright information, the dedication.  I randomly opened it to Chapter 14 and saw a formatting error!

Oh, my child, my child! You are not perfect!

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that there’s a reason to get a proof copy.  It’s meant for proof reading.  And I would do so diligently – the next copy would be perfect.

For four days, I read and re-read every word of my novel. I found typos, formatting errors, missing or extraneous punctuation, and textual inconsistencies. It was hard to believe that I had edited and proof-read this piece at least ten times before I submitted it to CreateSpace for publication.

God, was I going blind?  Could I simply not see the “or” where “of” belonged, the comma splice, the house that changed from white in Chapter 3 to yellow in Chapter 11?

I submitted a revised version of my updated Microsoft Word DOC file only to have it rejected.  I had forgotten to convert it to Adobe PDF format first.

Another submission and eventual acceptance were followed by waiting for the next proof copy to arrive in the mail in five to seven days.

In the meantime, I decided to start exploring the non-transubstantiated versions – ebooks.  “E” is for ephemeral, I think.

I knew that both Amazon and Barnes & Noble had book publishing platforms for their proprietary e-readers:  the Kindle and the Nook, respectively.  I hoped that I could reformat my previously submitted file according to their ebook recommendations and submit the same file to both.

Vain hope. 

I discovered that both warned of submitting Microsoft Word DOC files and instead suggested using a generic format adopted by many e-readers (though not Kindle):  EPUB.

Fine.  I would research EPUB.

That effort took hours, days.  Finally I found a website that described EPUB files and recommended software to format and edit this esoteric pseudo-standard.  I obtained two pieces of software – one to convert and another to edit EPUB files. 

I used both on the Word DOC file I had submitted for printing, then downloaded a third software package to verify that the first two steps had worked correctly.

They hadn’t.  The formats were a mess.  Page numbers appeared to be randomly assigned.  The Table of Contents skipped chapters.  Obviously, this would require more sleuthing through the search engines than I had anticipated.

Another session of “Googling” turned up another ebook publisher, Smashwords.  Not relying on a big bookstore name, the folks at Smashwords had created truly helpful information on formatting, style guides, and publishing tips.

Using this new site, I stripped all the formatting from my DOC file and added back only the minimum.  The resulting version was ready for Smashwords’ “Meat Grinder” or format converter/checker, a twenty-four hour process.

While my meat was being ground, I used the DOC file I had created for Smashwords to create new EPUB files for Barnes & Noble and Amazon. I uploaded both of the files to their respective sites and resigned myself to wait for this process to complete in one to three days.

I had found a few more errors in the DOC file while I was massaging it for Smashwords and resolved to fix them.  Only now I had four versions to fix: every edit required redoubled scrutiny.

Not content with this level of complexity, I decided that I really wanted a hard-bound edition of the book for Mother’s Day presents.  That led me to Lulu.com, a propitious choice I thought since the Border collie in Away to Me is named Lulu.

Once again I had underestimated the ease of moving from a 5.5” x 8” cut to a 6” x 9” one.  Most likely my original inelegant formatting solutions had exacerbated the problems of headers appearing and disappearing and pages breaking willy-nilly.

More hours passed.

I submitted my file. It was accepted on the second attempt.  Hard-bound copies could be delivered in time for Mother’s Day.

By that time, I had five versions of my book undergoing five different processes and creating five distinct sales points.  I moved into Monitor Mode, scanning each website to see where in its process my book was.  As processes completed, I downloaded the resultant e-reader-ready file and loaded it into the appropriate e-reader emulator software.  If I found errors, I propagated the edits to the other relevant versions and resubmitted the corrected file.  I made spreadsheets to track each process and its edits.  I fixed errors with the cover layout, the metadata, and the title in addition to the contents of the novel.

Late that night, eyes crusty from eyestrain, I looked up from monitoring to check my email.  As I watched, a new message came in from Smashwords:  “Congratulations!  You have just sold a copy of your book.”

Someone I didn’t know had just downloaded a copy of my book’s ones and zeros and had altered the total of the ones and zeros in my bank balance.  My hard work was justified.

But I can hardly wait for the hard-bound copies to arrive.

Most Words Count

The following was first posted on http://whitewagonfarm.wordpress.com on 12/7/10:

I flipped the cover of my Red n’ Black spiral notebook closed.  It was 2:14 a.m.  I had just written the final words of my novel.

Stunned, I looked around the empty room.  Whom could I tell?  The dogs were asleep in their crates.  Pat was out of town.  My friends in Asia would be awake, but I doubted if any of them would care.

Maybe I’d wait until it was typed before I said anything.  Then I’d know word count.  Then I could casually drop it into conversation:  “You know, I just finished my 47,000-word piece….”

The next day I spent hours keying and, yes, editing my handwritten and often indecipherable text into Word.  I really wanted to know the final word count – 46,607 – almost as much as I wanted to finish the process.  “Back when I wrote my first novel…” has a nice ring to it.

By the following day I wandered around not knowing what to do.  I had promised not to edit my manuscript for at least a month, preferably two.  Maybe I could print a clean copy.  But all my printers had run out of ink printing the draft copies I had been producing daily for the past couple of months.

I dithered.  I dilly-dallied.  I practiced piddling.  I picked up several of the books I’d set aside to read after I finished writing.  Every line I read reminded me of the utterly pedestrian prose I’d just written.  All 46,607 words of it.

(What an odd scorecard anyway.  Does a painter count brushstrokes?  Did Monet ever say, “Look at that top right corner.  It took me 364 strokes to get that color and texture.”?  Did Mozart count notes?  OK, OK.  I do tend to run away with myself when I’m searching.)

After fiddling with my mp3 player I did laundry.  I ate frozen pears.  I surfed the Overstock.com pages for something I couldn’t live without.  I ordered the Waterman pen I promised myself as a reward for finishing the novel.

Then I picked up my Black n’ Red notebook and my Pilot V-Ball pen.  I’m already up to 352 words.

E-Books Coming

Since it was too cold and rainy to spend much time outside at the nursery, I sat at the computer and reformatted files to fit the requirements of Amazon for the Kindle e-reader, Barnes and Noble for the Nook e-reader, and Smashbooks.com for every other e-reader imaginable.


I anticipate it will take about two weeks before all versions are available.

Then Come And Get 'Em!

Once more into the breach

I sent in the corrections and ordered another proof of Away to Me.  I hope the turnaround is quick.  I'm getting seriously eager to have it released for publication.

It Arrived!

The proof of Away to Me arrived today.  I hadn't anticipated how emotional it would be to hold it in my hands.  Of course, the first thing I saw was a formatting error, but that didn't diminish the pride and joy.


Wow!  I'm still in shock and awe.