Squirrel Update

You might think I dropped the ball with Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels. I didn’t.

If you’re new here, you might not know that I posted a novel (with a notably weird title) in fits and starts as a serial on this blog. People liked it. I enjoyed writing it.

I got hung up figuring out the end (causing an understandable delay). Eventually my muse hit me with a tire iron and I came up with an ending that I really like. I typed the last 1/3 of the story off-line. That was almost exactly two years ago. I wanted to let it “rest” a bit and then do one final edit before selling a million copies so I can be rich and buy a solid gold house. (Actually, I harbor the fear I’ll only sell six copies. This is probably a fear all authors have? Regardless, I really did write it out of sheer joy in storytelling and if nobody buys it, I’ll nave no regrets. Well the first few weeks might require lots of whiskey, but I’ll have no regrets… eventually.)

I celebrated crossing the finish line by riding a dirt bike across Wyoming. I’d get back to it pronto. Except I didn’t and also the “finish line” turned out to be the start of a whole new race. I had no idea what was coming!

I had a year of medical bullshit and that delay is just life’s unavoidable bullshit. I lived. So that’s good. Then came several months of labyrinthine paperwork hell (I’m still in that phase). I didn’t know shepherding a story from hard drive to a dead tree novel was a whole new can of worms.

How deep does the rabbit hole go? I’ve no idea. I still haven’t seen the bottom.

I’ve spent most of the spring and summer manfully hacking and thrashing my way through the vast swamp a writer needs to cross to become an author. Every step forward unearths the next hoop through which I need to jump. I’m sure it’s no big deal once you’ve done it, but for a first time guy it’s a task Sisyphus would call thankless.

To sort my mind and get inspired again I’ll fill you in on what’s happening.

I wrote the book in Scrivener. Scrivener is a funky little word processor. It has a killer learning curve but it works better than other word processors when you’re writing something long; like a book. Unlike Word or LibreOffice or whatnot, it encourages you to  hammer out text and doesn’t hassle you with formatting on the fly. It formats everything all at once during a “compile” process. That’s key. In Word, some random font or tab on page 287 might blow up or propagate through to page 342 for no apparent reason. Scrivener eliminates that. It costs like $100 +/- for a license. I paid cash for it years ago and can’t complain.

As much as I like Scrivener, it has its limits. It’s awesome for jamming out drafts to my local printer (I do final edits using paper) or for cut and paste to my blog as a serial but then it hits the wall. I spent a long time (months!) trying to “compile” Scrivener into a flawless file for an Amazon e-book. It’s harder than it looks. I finally accepted it was impossible with the tools at hand and my skillset.

I accepted my fate and bought a copy of Vellum. That was several months ago. I use Scrivener to jam out a single “clean” file (ironically in MS Word file format). Then I use Vellum to digest that single “clean” file and spit out an e-book or manuscript. It handles a bunch of complex stuff like pagination, table of contents, etc… It runs only on iOS, which pisses me off. It cost a bit to buy, which also pissed me off. But in a single afternoon it did a task I’d tried and failed to do over most of the winter. Therefore, I humbly apologize to the software for my whining. Also I had to borrow Mrs. Curmudgeon’s Mac because I don’t own anything that runs iOS.

So the file’s ready. I’m done right? Nope. To get a book on paper, I created an account with a print on demand (POD) company. It’s a bit odd because everything is electronic. There’s no human I can call at the POD place. In fact, it feels like there are no humans in this entire sector of the economy. I bounced about their web-interface uploading a book draft and whatnot. It was confusing but I did it. Then I realized I’d just unearthed a whole new challenge.

Print on demand means “we print one book if and only if someone has already paid for one book”. I didn’t realize the second (and very important) part. The system is setup for “we will take an order for the book, print it, and mail it to whomever asked for it”. That makes absolute sense. How could I have not known? I guess I don’t get out much.

This means I needed to change my POD account. I changed it from “some weirdo writing a manifesto for his own amusement” to a “professional” POD account. I reluctantly created an LLC to interface with the POD. (Cursed are the acronyms!) That involved interaction with bureaucratic shit I’d have been happy to ignore. In “Wee Free Men” the Nac Mac Feegle have swords that glow blue in the presence of lawyers. I started glowing blue in frustration.

Eventually, I figured it out. I’m practically a dude bro with a business card now. Hoop jumped.

Then I found out that the POD company might interact with Amazon (with whom I hope to ship a Kindle version… at least until I’m canceled by woke Kommissars for political crimethink). Something about both using the same distribution channel? I’m getting dizzy at this point.

Also, I need, among other things, an ISBN number. I can do that via the POD company (in which case they own the ISBN) or Amazon (in which case they do) or I can “buy my own ISBN”. That’s weird but it’s one of those “freedom isn’t free” situations. I want my own ISBN. So, I started barking up that tree.

It turns out all ISBNs in America are administered by R.R. Bowker LLC. As far as I can tell Bowker is a private company (!) with a no-shit-for-real monopoly (!!) on the ISBN database. I’m sure they’re super nice guys and I want them to like me! They want about $150 +/- per ISBN. Fine, it’s a cost of doing business. I dug out my piggy bank and got ready to whine about the expense. But then I found out the LLC needs to buy the ISBN. (See how acronyms are caused by and a symptom of bureaucracy?) So I set out to do that. Then I realized my LLC, being a legitimate and fully legal but skeletal entity, doesn’t have a bank account.

So I made a bank account for my LLC. I hope the LLC sends me a card on my birthday. I also figured out that the POD company needs (or perhaps just prefers) a PayPal account. It needs this to accept customers for the book. I get it. Their request makes sense. My existing PayPal account isn’t quite right. So now I’m futzing about making a PayPal account for the LLC so the POD can print a book after I buy an ISBN. (Yes, that’s a sentence in English.)

In the meantime, Mrs. Curmudgeon has been working on the cover. Y’all should be thankful for this. If I made the cover it would look like a monkey with a crayon did it. (I know AI can do covers. I’d prefer a monkey with a crayon.) She took back the Mac I’d borrowed, bought Adobe Illustrator, and has been diligently at work while I fume about lawyers and acronyms.

I also hit the wall with my web hosting. It did ok with my blog but I’ve screwed around with WooCommerce plugins to WordPress and just can’t get it to function. I tried it as part of my “sawhorse stuff for Christmas initiative” and it faceplanted. I’m not a WordPress guru and don’t even play one on TV. Anyway the LLC has a Domain from which I could sell the book. The Domain has a host, which is different from my blog host. It isn’t functioning correctly.

When this happened I decided to ride away on my motorcycle. I went camping where cell phones don’t work.

In some complex and convoluted way, this interacts with the POD site and possibly Amazon. I’m a little bit confused about everything at this point. (I’m sure Amazon will have plenty of hoops of its own!)

Anyway, this is all to say that Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels is inching toward both a print and a dead tree copy. (I’m not sure about hardcover but maybe.) If things are slow it’s because I suck as a publishing agent.

A.C.