Friday Wrap Up

I looked into some ideas around formatting this week. I came up with one that would help ensure consistency between my covers by taking advantage of layers within gimp and changing export file names. Basically, I could have all the visual elements in the same file with the same dimensions, and then hide or unhide the book specific elements. The exciting thing about this is it will make paperback covers, which are a pain involving a lot of trial and error, would become both easier to make and more consistent. The thought of having a shelf filled with my own books that actually line up and look like a real, professionally published series feels awesome to me.

I have A Dapper Deathwish editing pretty much done, I just need to format the manuscript. It was brought to my attention that I have been using align left in my books, while justified is the more common choice. I'm suprised I never realized this before, but my theory is I'm just so used to seeing left aligned text in my code that I never gave it another thought. I plan on updating all my manuscripts to use all of these new formatting standards, though I would be surprised if I get around to it this weekend. What I will probably do is just apply all of this to one book, probably Deathwish while creating it, and then order a proof copy to make sure everything looks good before starting the full rollout.

Metastasis is done up to halfway through chapter 9. I'm already liking how the story is turning out, and I'm hoping I can properly display the full extent of how time travel works within the Gatekeeper universe. It isn't the wibbly wobbly rules used in Doctor Who, nor is it alternate universe type stuff used in Dragon Ball. It is single timeline, and paradoxes are... well, I'm getting ahead of myself. I might write a full handbook on all the rules I've already planned out and why Meta do things the way they do, but I think writing such exposition into a natural story is far more interesting for the average reader.

But overall, I really need to start getting enough sleep. I think my writing would improve, as would my ability to catch these weird formatting oddities earlier on.