I didn’t find this particularly useful in any way, but it amused me nevertheless.  It’s a spreadsheet – days go along the x-axis, characters along the y-axis.  Yellow blocks show when the characters appear, and red blocks show their death.

A wiser writer than I might be able to interpret (or correct) the fact that there’s so much death within a short amount of time.  But sometimes that’s how life goes.  And that’s the whole point of this story, right?

“You’re all dogs of the house” – One Inch Punch’s “Pretty Piece of Flesh”

Every How-To suggests meticulously checking over your file formatting before submitting anything for e-publishing, and yesterday I found one good example of why.  The Kindle Previewer allows you to check out a .mobi file in various formats before sending it off, but I wonder how many have noticed that the Kindle For iPad version appears to remove spaces between paragraphs.  Even using asterisks between sections within a chapter will look odd as there’s usually a space before and after the character or icon used to designate breaks.

To bypass the issue while maintaining a consistent look between the different devices, create a paragraph style where the After space is something more than blank or zero.  Smashwords suggests what I feel is a small number, but it all comes down to taste.  For Coincidence, I thought 12 pt would suffice at first since the rest of the text is Times New Roman 12.  I wasn’t happy with how that looked in the preview and set it to 18. 

Now go along and set every final paragraph in a section to that style.  It’s tedious but worth it.  Otherwise, readers may get confused as to why the action suddenly jumped from Protagonist A in Scene 3 to Antagonist B three days later in Setting 4.  Just make sure to remove the space originally set between the paragraphs.

“You don’t need to hide, my friend, for I am just like you” – Skrillex’s “Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites”

• The first draft of Coincidence: A Novel is complete.  90,041 words, 153 pages.
• The draft has been sent out to four people who volunteered as beta readers.
• Two versions have been formatted and are ready to be submitted:  The Amazon Kindle version (more on Kindle formatting in the next post) and the Smashwords format.

Should the beta readers come back with suggestions / errors that need to be addressed, I’ll adjust one of the formatted files with Track Changes on and repeat the same on the other file.  Or I’ll use Word’s Compare function.  Neither are the most efficient option, but the formatting (and reading the How To’s, site requirements, yada yada) kept me busy while waiting for the beta readers.

• Got a bit of feedback from the one beta reader I expect the harshest criticism from, saying he likes the dialogue so far.  Took it as sarcasm at first.  Does anyone really believe they’re good at dialogue? 
• The Facebook page is relatively setup and ready.

“The more you suck, the more you bleed.” – Puscifer’s “Telling Ghosts”

81,664 words.  Only ~8k to go.

Kikoo84 (9:13:28 PM): hey

Me (9:13:47 PM): hey. god, i’m bored. i wish someone would give me an IQ test to take.

Kikoo84 (9:13:58 PM): hey there whats up??

Me (9:14:12 PM): timmy fell down a well
Me (9:14:19 PM): lassie jumped down after him

Kikoo84 (9:14:23 PM): oh cooI! l just got done taking a bath l feeI soooo good. hey you bored?

Me (9:14:32 PM): we thought she’d drag him out
Me (9:14:38 PM): she just humped the shit outta him

Kikoo84 (9:14:42 PM): welI im thinking about getting on my webcam if you wanna watch? im reaI hornyyyyyy. IoI

Me (9:14:43 PM): shit was cash

Kikoo84 (9:14:54 PM): ok is Iinked through this site so l can make sure kids dont watch me cause l can get a lIttIe crazy IoI. k?

Me (9:15:21 PM): yeah? you ever put the cam under a glass table and squat on top of it?

Kikoo84 (9:15:32 PM): mk sweety here ~~> http://myprivateshow.net/jjo when the page loads click the accept invite picture/button thingy

Me (9:15:47 PM): or piss on a midget while shouting “you dirty, frenchman! you filthy worthless frenchman!”?

Kikoo84 (9:15:57 PM): its gonna ask for a credit crd but no worries its just to verify your age it dosent cost anything. ok?

Me (9:16:04 PM): or fist puppets?

Kikoo84 (9:16:14 PM): ok let me know when you get in and ill give you my username.

Me (9:16:24 PM): or kill a man?
Me (9:16:30 PM): just to watch him bleed?

Kikoo84 (9:16:35 PM): kk.

Me (9:16:35 PM): especially to watch him bleed…

Kikoo84 (9:16:46 PM): you in yet?

Me (9:16:55 PM): elbow deep into his sternum

Kikoo84 (9:17:05 PM): k when you are logged in search for angelnery then hit view cam. hurry up im waiting :-X

Me (9:17:17 PM): eww…he ate chicken nuggets before i cut him
Me (9:17:29 PM): this one’s not even digested

Me (9:17:39 PM): still tastes alright
Me (9:17:43 PM): you there?