My short story, “Snares of Satan,” is now on this site in German.
“Reconstructing the original German” of the story was an interesting exercise, since my German is far from fluent. It’s a manual translation, but I made heavy use of these online tools:
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My first article on the Online Library of Liberty has been published!
Fidelio: Beethoven’s Hymn to Freedom
Monica Cellio has posted a review of Spells of War.
Spells of War tells an interesting story with characters I cared about. In both books, the author made me care about, and understand the inner struggles of, people who are on the “other side” — the inquisitor in the first book and Petros and his peers in the second. Spells of War shows the devastation that war causes on all involved.
As she notes, Monica was a beta reader and got a free copy in return for her useful advice. There was no quid pro quo beyond that.
Here’s the information on ordering Spells of War.
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.
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.
On Tuesday, April 5, barring unexpected events, Spells of War will be available on Smashwords and Kindle! Since the events of The Magic Battery, Thomas Lorenz has enjoyed success and happiness in Heidelberg, but now the Turks have acquired his secret of creating magical devices and are using it to create weapons of war. While he is off in Vienna aiding his Emperor’s cause, Frieda makes an important discovery about magic. The future of Europe and magic are at stake.
A short-lived discount code will be available when the book comes out, so be sure to check back then. Meanwhile, be sure to bookmark https://garymcgath.com/SOW. Please tell your friends, so they can get the book too. That’s what the sharing buttons are for.
This week I’m participating in Smashwords’ Read an Ebook Week Sale, with 50% off the price of The Magic Battery. Many Smashwords authors are participating in this sale, so you’ll be able to stock up on other interesting books while you’re they’re. The sale runs from March 6 through 12, ending at 11:59 PM Pacific time. The discount applies only if you buy through Smashwords. While Smashwords isn’t as well-known as Kindle, it treats its authors and customers well, and it’s been my preferred publishing gateway for years.
You don’t need any coupons. You should be able to go there and get the $1.49 price. If you run into any problems, please let me know in the comments.
Here’s the cover for Spells of War. I hope you like it. I hope lots of readers like it.
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You can find author pages for me on LibraryThing and Goodreads. If you’re inclined to follow me on either or both of those sites, please do.
Goodreads displays a popup demanding that you log in or get an account, but it’s a bluff. Click the close box and you can view my page. Of course, you’ll have to log in to follow me.
I’ve started copying some of my existing book reviews to Goodreads, and you’ll find links to them on my page.
This post will automatically be copied to my Goodreads blog, though it’s a bit redundant there.
Several readers have received the beta draft of Spells of War. Now I can ignore it for a while. My purpose wasn’t to do trope-busting, but just to follow up on the implications of The Magic Battery. Even so, it has some unusual features.
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