Monthly Archives: April 2022

The misuse of “identity” 1

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged usage vocabulary writing on by

If you’ve followed this blog regularly, you know that the misappropriation of words is a favorite topic of mine. Today I’d like to discuss the misuse of “identity.” Some people misuse it deliberately, but writers can fall into accepting it as it’s misused. Hopefully this post will help in avoiding that pitfall.

“Identity” is a straightforward word. It means “who someone is.” We can talk about the identity of someone who committed a crime, a case of mistaken identity, a secret identity for a superhero, establishing your identity, and identity theft. Some people, though insist that your identity is your group membership: your skin color, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, etc. Interestingly, people on the “left” as well as white supremacists like to promote this view.
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Be kind to obscure novelists week

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged books on by

It’s safe to say I’m an obscure novelist. I know lots of other obscure novelists and even a few you’ve likely heard of. When they’re friends, I try to make them a little less obscure. It doesn’t take a lot of effort. Authors love reviews, but a full review isn’t necessary. Any mention helps if it isn’t too negative.

If you have a blog or use social media, mentioning the books you’ve read lately helps the authors. Dan Brown may not care, but it can make a significant difference to someone who’s hoping to hit a thousand sales. If you use sites like LibraryThing and Goodreads, follow the authors you know and rate their books. If they run a promotion, let your friends know about it.

You might even learn something about your friends’ interests and knowledge from the books they’ve written.

To put my keyboard where my mouth is, here are some novels by authors I know who are less than famous:
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Spotting fake videos 1

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged fact checking research video on by

Writing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine means taking arms against a sea of misinformation. The Russian government is lying on an astonishing scale, but we can’t always trust information from the Ukrainian side either. In war, there’s always a tendency to paint the enemy in the worst light possible, and sometimes that includes making up facts. In the modern era, it includes faking videos.

Distinguishing authentic videos, which present what they claim they do, from fakes isn’t easy. These are some of the fakers’ tricks:
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Working with the Smashwords Meatgrinder

This entry was posted in My writing Techniques and tagged books smashwords software on by

Smashwords was once a leading distributor of e-books. I still use it, since I don’t care to give Amazon an exclusive on my work and Smashwords offers a good deal. Smashwords lets me distribute to several other outlets. It’s become obvious, though, that it’s fallen behind technologically.

Compare the process of uploading books. When I uploaded Spells of War to Amazon KDP, I was asked for a DOCX file. There was little trouble exporting one from LibreOffice and uploading it. The one issue was that even though the file had its own table of contents, KDP wanted to generate its own. I deleted the existing table of contents and let the server generate one. It wasn’t immediately obvious how to position it after the title page (you drag it in the list of elements), but I figured it out pretty quickly.

Smashwords has an old piece of software, called “Meatgrinder,” to turn a DOC (not DOCX) file into various e-book formats. When I uploaded my file, it gave me several cryptic error messages. They all pertained to indented quotations in the book, and they all referred to the intermediate HTML which Meatgrinder created. Specifically, they told me that HTML tags, such as blockquote, weren’t properly nested. I didn’t create those tags; Meatgrinder did. It was telling me about its own errors and expecting me to fix them!

Something similar had happened with The Magic Battery, but I couldn’t remember how I solved the problem then. This time, I changed the style of all the quotes to Text Body and then applied styling to adjust their indentation. This is the wrong way to style a book robustly, but it got Meatgrinder to accept the file. Soon Smashwords should let me distribute the book to other channels. At the moment it’s pending review.

I’d like Smashwords to stay around so that Amazon has competition, but I can see problems like this discouraging self-publishing authors.

Update: I just came across an announcement that Draft2Digital is acquiring Smashwords. Mergers always raise questions and concerns, but the announcement says Smashwords authors and publishers will get access to “simpler publishing tools,” so there’s reason for optimism. I’ll try to keep up with the news on this development.

Spells of War — It’s here!

This entry was posted in My writing and tagged books magic battery Spells of War on by

It’s the big day! Spells of War is now available for online purchase from Smashwords and Amazon!

To get things going, I’m offering a special price of $1.25 each on The Magic Battery and Spells of War when you buy them on Smashwords through April 15. Each novel stands by itself, but naturally I’d like you to read them both. Enter the following coupon code on Smashwords: MH42X. Expires April 15, 2022. (Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t let me offer discounts unless I give them exclusive rights to distribute my book.)

You can help spread the word about Spells of War! You can list and review it on Goodreads and LibraryThing. You can mention it in your favorite social media or your blog. Everything helps.

I’ll post updates on it on the Magic Battery page on Facebook. Sharing or Liking those updates is another way to help.

A reading from the novel is up on YouTube. You can watch it directly on YouTube or on the Spells of War page on this site.