If WATERLOO Had Gone the Other Way

The Battle of Waterloo was won by the Allies- Britain, Prussia, Russia, Austria and other smaller countries like Belgium- against Napoleon's Grand Armee 195 years ago today. It was a defining moment in history, yet from so long in the past, it's hard today to see how it changed the world- or how things might have been if the French had won. It's just really hard for people in today's world to grasp the battle, what led up to it, just how long Europe had been engaged in this enormous struggle, and why in the world Britain had to get involved at all.

I'm not going to get into all of that- history is easy to find all over the internet if you're curious about it. And if you really want resources, just ask me and I'll give them to you. But I will tell you what Britain's stake was and how their loss would have made everything different. This is just my opinion of what would have happened, and of course nobody really knows. And a lot of people disagree, but here's how I see it.

Throughout the entirety of Napoleon's hold on the Continent, Britain remained the thorn in Napoleon's side. Britain held supremacy on the seas, and Britain controlled a large part of the world- or at least controlled most of the trade. Napoleon might control all of Europe, but the world eluded him as long as Britain lay outside his grasp. He had made attempts at Britain and in 1805 it had looked like he might succeed. He had massed a huge flotilla of flat-bottomed boats to ferry his massed army of over 200,000 across the English Channel. Then suddenly he abandoned the entire project and dashed off across the Continent to answer a newer threat. The truth was, his flotilla had little chance of success and his craft were not suited for a Channel crossing.

And before this, there had been Trafalgar, when the British soundly defeated the French and Spanish fleets. Late in 1806, Napoleon issued the Continental System to counter the British Embargo and to try to isolate Britain from all European trade. Although effective, Britain still had the rest of the world for trade, and France did not.

So Napoleon had to conquer Britain or his Empire was doomed. But in 1815, he was cornered. He had recently escaped Elba and swept through France, gathering supporters in an amazing blitz. The frightened Allies once more prepared for battle, knowing it would take all of them jointly cooperating to keep what they had regained and finally defeat the Corsican Monster. At Waterloo, Mt. St. Jean to be more exact, Wellington was still without most of his Allies when Napoleon attacked. Blucher's Prussians were close but still dangerously separated, and the Austrians and Russians too far away yet to make it in time. But the ferocity of the fighting British Allies kept the day going until the amazing old man, Blucher, finally managed to battle his way to the field of contest, catching the French off guard from their right, and trapped in the pincers. The day was done, and Napoleon fleeing back toward Paris.

What if Blucher had not succeeded in his fierce flurry to reach Wellington? Napoleon was very good at catching his enemy divided, and he had done this once more, so it could have succeeded. What if Wellington had made a few more errors, in site, perhaps (no, he would never have made THAT mistake- he was a genius in picking battle sites). Or what if his troops in the little chateau of Hougoumont had failed in their desperate daylong battle to hold Wellington's right? It would have all been over, and French flags would have flown on the ridge at Mt. St. Jean.

Austria, Russia, Prussia would not have mattered. They would have crumbled as they always had in the past. Although Wellington had wisely made his retreat plan along with his battle plan, the French would have followed them across the Channel in every ship that could be commandeered, and with a good part of the British Army still at sea trying to get to Belgium, the defense of Britain would have been meager. Pitchforks and cudgels just don't do much against muskets and cannons.

When France captured Britain, they would get with it all the navy, the merchant vessels, the trade routes, the colonies- literally the wealth of the world uncontested. Whether they could have held it is another question, since everything they had held had been a precarious balance all along. But the new United States of America wouldn't have contested. All the Spanish and Portuguese world was not strong enough.

In short, France would have become the great world empire, instead of Britain. Not only would we all speak French, but we would be operating under the Napoleonic Code of Law. The French Revolution had in truth been dead in France from the beginning of Napoleon's Empire. Independence as we have known it would have been different, if not dead. And in Napoleon's Empire, people who disagreed or failed to live up to his demands didn't last long. His demands were not always rational, and always any failure had to have its scapegoat. Not to say that doesn't happen now to at least some degree, but it was a way of life in France's domain then.

How much we would have evolved from that, it's hard to say. Modern France is not an example for this because it is based as much on Napoleon's defeat as his successes. But it's pretty clear our world today would be far different. Nor can we even be sure whether we'd like it or not.

So tell me, what's your take on it?

Now for my Bookmarks...

Now that I've got a cover for LADY WICKED, my coming-soon release from The Wild Rose Press, I just had to do a bookmark. A little re-positioning, fine-tuning, and some blurbs and addresses. And a new design on the backside. Add a subtle color gradient for spice. (Oh yeah, I put a dress on her. Just because I could.)

For those of you who have a thing for RT cover models, and you know Jimmy Thomas, you may recognize him in the embrace silhouette. He's got some fabulous photos I'd love to use on covers, and they're not all that expensive- and pretty cheap for the e-book or bookmark size- $5. For the full size, $15. Not bad. Yes, I can get images at Fotolia, Dreamstime and iStock for only a few dollars, and that's where the ones on the cover of LADY WICKED came from. But they're not Jimmy Thomas! Go check his site out at http://www.romancenovelcovers.com/index.htm

Now off to VistaPrint for cheap printing. Yes, I'm cheap. I know that. I think there's some kind of elitist trailer trash blood in me because I take great pride in either doing the work myself or getting it done cheap, yet well. VistaPrint has its drawbacks but if you learn to work with them, free is a great price. I design bookmarks to fit as a pair on the standard post card. Then I use my very precise Fiskars trimmer to cut them. 100 post cards are free if you wait for the sales, and that gives me 200 bookmarks.

The above designs show the front and back. When I have them printed, I put two to a card- fronts on one side and backs on the other. The tricky part is getting the center perfect on both sides, and making sure there is a bleed area (extra color that doesn't have anything vital like type on it). Not all of VP's printing materials come out in quite the right colors, but their post cards have never failed me. The back side isn't glossy, but I like it in color anyway. That's usually an extra $9.99, but this time was $7.49. Uploading two photos usually costs $5 each but is 50% off right now, and sometimes is free.

I HAVE A COVER!

At last! My cover for LADY WICKED! The wonderful artist is Tina Lynn, who I was so pleased allowed me a lot of input into the design, even to picking the background and cover hero and heroine. This can never be perfect, of course, especially for historicals, because artists these days are limited to what royalty-free photos they can purchase and alter to fit. Adding costume details is something very few artists are willing or able to do, which is probably why you see so many semi-nude people on ebook historical covers. And the lipstick? Sorry, no self-respecting model these days would be willing to be photographed without it. I've painted out eye shadow before, but lipstick is just a nightmare to even try.

I don't have a pub date yet but that will be coming soon, and I hope will be before the end of the year.

So did you ever wonder what goes into a cover design? Well, I'll show you a few of the elements. I don't happen to have purchased but one of these in this photo, though, so I'll show you a different couple, who we couldn't use for other contractual reasons (but the photo is royalty-free and paid for, so don't worry).

In this cover design, the man and woman came from different photos, and had to be matched together, the woman flipped horizontally so they both were lit from the same side. She had on a very modern gorgeous red low cut strapless, which of course had to go. His lighting was much too bright for hers, so he had to be darkened. And shadows had to be added all around. Her photo was much like this one of the couple, so dark it was hard to tell her hair from the background. Of course, all that background in the portrait photos had to be removed, carefully so the poor heroine's hair didn't go with it.

I had fallen in love with this stone staircase a long time before, even though it is probably from a cathedral on the European Continent. I love the light, airy look, the subtle colors. But that wouldn't work for a dark medieval hall. You would never find such intricate and elegant stonework in the fairly simple, pragmatic medieval hall in my book- I know that. But by hiding a lot of the architectural detail but keeping the curved stairs leading to that mysterious door, it incorporates the same spirit as the bell tower in my story. In darkening, it lost the subtle coloring I love, so we added this radial gradient color glaze. It's not opaque, as it is here, and can be faded out, erased in places, or extra darkening shadows in others as needed. Tina is more conservative than I am-- I am just plain flagrant when it comes to color. She kept just the hint of color.

The fonts make up an entirely new layer. I don't have Tina's work on this, but I'm showing you a sample in a similar font with a simpler but similar effect. She and I don't have the same font adjusting software. I put it against a mottled green background so you can see how the shadowing gives it dimension.

So when you finally have all these elements just the way you want them, the layers are all merged into one design. You always keep a copy of the separate layers, though, because chances are excellent that when it's all assembled, suddenly something will pop out at you and say, "Lookee here! Glaring ERROR!" No, I don't think I ever did any cover that I didn't have to back up and fix something.

So, you just thought covers were just painted? Not anymore! These are just the basics. There are eyes to be painted green, sometimes hair to be changed. There could be a sword to add, perhaps a swath of tartan- but not this time. Making a book cover is an intriguing art.

Kindle and the New Self-EPublishing

Most successful authors have previously published works for which the publishing rights have reverted to the author. They'd like to see their books re-printed, but finding a traditional publisher to pick them up is pretty difficult. Re-printing a paper book is an expensive proposition for a book with a limited market.

Enter Kindle.

Kindle is widely regarded as the most significant forward-moving force. Probably true. But I think it's not so much Kindle as it is the Kindle Bookstore, which arguably holds more ebooks than any other source on the internet. People buy Kindles because of the enormous inventory of titles. And the reason for this is that Kindle opened itself up to the Independent Publisher. Essentially, this means ANYBODY.

This is the perfect opportunity for re-issues. The investment is tiny, and the author receives 35% royalties. Sales aren't huge, but they are growing, and supposedly Amazon will be hiking the royalties to independent publishers to 70% beginning this month. I'm not sure of the details, but since Kindle is the biggest market for ebooks, this would be nice. Many authors feel they can afford to set a more attractive price since they don't have to share with a publisher or agent.

WHAT YOU NEED TO PUBLISH A KINDLE BOOK:
Where: on Amazon.com, Kindle Store>In Sidebar, Publish on Kindle> On top line under Kindle Books, Small publishers and Authors... Digital Text Platform, DTP link>Sign In by following directions.

I suggest reading through FAQs and other information before starting. Some of it won't make sense at first, but when you reach that point in your process, you'll have an idea where to look for your answer.

Here's a list of the information you'll need to assemble for uploading your ebook. I suggest you get it all together before you start and save yourself a lot of back-tracking.

CHECKLIST:

#1 Enter Product Details
ISBN: You don't actually need an ISBN for your own Kindle upload. But if you already have one, or are planning on other ebook releases, get one. Don't use the same ISBN for print and electronic books.
Title:
Description: 4000 characters max
Publisher: That's you
Language:
Pub Date: I suggest about 5-7 days from current date. They may get faster in the future
Categories: e.g. Historical Romance
Authors:
search key words: look for as many appropriate words as you can think of
Product Image: min 1200 pix on smallest side I used 300 dpi, 6x9"
Edition Number: (optional)
Series Title: (optional)
Series Volume: (optional)

#2 Confirm Content Rights
Worldwide or Individual Territories
You'll later be asked to confirm or verify this. I sent the email letter granting release of rights.

#3 Upload & Preview Book
formats: Word, HTML, PRC, PDF (poor)
Preview- not easy if you don't know HTML but go through the whole thing anyway. Sometimes it looks fuzzy- I'm not sure if it would be fuzzy in the finished book. I did it over just in case it would improve and it did. You could be surprised at the things that show up in the preview, or don't show up. If all else fails, cancel (trash can) and start over. Before you do, though, make sure you have copies of all the info you put into the blanks and boxes.

#4 Enter Suggested Retail Price
I decided to price low. I can always raise it later.

wait 48-72 Hours while it's being reviewed.
You might not see your product description right away- up to a week.
Be sure to read the Amazon DTP Quick Start Guide, under Getting Started Guide

SETTING UP YOUR BOOK FOR EASY READING:

You can publish your book on Kindle in just about any layout you want. You don't even have to check for spelling errors. But if you don't want to irritate your readers, it's a good idea to make sure you understand what works well for reading on the Kindle.

Your book might already be in proper book layout for a print book. But this isn't necessarily the best layout for an ereader, especially Kindle. Kindle has no page numbers because the content is so adjustable. Depending on font size and other adjustments, the number of words per line, number of lines on the screen, and therefore the number of pages changes. So you want your content to flow easily for the reader.

The first thing you want to do is remove all headers, footers and page numbers. They take up screen space and irritate the reader, who just wants to get on with your story. And besides, remember, Kindle books have no pages, so headers, footers and page numbers mean nothing.

I suggest eliminating all page breaks between chapters. And since it's an irritation for readers to keep thumbing down through blank page after blank page, which is what you get if you have a lot of lines left before the beginning of the next chapter, substitute about 5 or 6 line returns for the page break. It won't seem like enough for you, the author. But those same 5-8 or so lines can take up a lot of space on the ereader. Do 2,3,4, or whatever you choose, but I suggest doing just enough to make it clear there's a new chapter coming up. I want the first lines of the new chapter to show on the same screen as the last words of the previous chapter.

Because I use Word Perfect, I've found it best to use the Reveal Codes feature to strip out all those little codes that don't seem to be there-until I change font, format or programs. But in Word, you can often get rid of such codes by highlighting the entire manuscript, then putting in the formatting that you want all through the manuscript. For instance, you might have some oddball font codes you think are gone, but will pop up sometimes if you do a backspace in the wrong place, or other such nonsense. Select and choose ALL. Then change the font to the one you want consistently, such as Times New Roman.

It's quite possible to scan a print book if you don't have an electronic copy. Most scanners have OCR (Optical Character Recognition) ability now and can convert to text document. But they're ‟sloppy", meaning they don't always get it right- ‟cl" often becomes ‟d", for example. The best way to do this is to take the book apart and scan each page flat so you don't get a ditch or gutter distortion. I haven't tried this, but I hear it's a bit of a pain. Still, better than re-typing!

If you work from a manuscript, you probably double-spaced, and used a five-space wide paragraph indent. Not good for e-reading. Select All and change to single spacing. Set your tab at .200" or .300". You'll even like the look better yourself.

Some people don't center chapter headings, but I prefer them. And I close down the spaces between scenes, separating them only with ***. Keep remembering, ereader screens are small.

WHAT ABOUT COVERS?
A good cover is very helpful for selling ebooks, although I rate it less important than a reduced price and known author name. You probably can't use a cover from a previous edition unless it's your own creation. Even then I'd suggest you use a different cover to separate yourself and your book from the previous edition under other publishers.

Covers can be simple or elaborate. You can pay an artist- we cover artists tend to work very cheap, but not all do. You can do it yourself, too. If you're not artistic, you can buy royalty-free photos from a number of sites online, and add your own lettering. You will need some sot of program to manage your graphic tasks. Often simple programs are shareware. Photoshop Elements is pretty good for basic work. You can have your 6 year-old kid color with crayons if you want. It's your book. You do want something that gets attention and makes a reader want to buy.

(I do cover art, in case you're interested. I can do simple for around $20-25 or complex, up to around $150. Sorry but I don't have time for anything more complex.)

Don't use copyrighted material without permission! Use your own photos or maybe a friend's but even with the friend, ask him to sign a release giving you permission to use it. If you buy art or photos from royalty-free sites, check the usage agreement. They are all a bit different.

Upload a good quality cover. This means a high resolution. If you swipe photos off the internet, chances are good they aren't good quality. So it's not even in your best interest to take them.

Who edits your book? Nobody but you, unless you arrange for it yourself. You are solely responsible for the quality of your book, so be patient with yourself and the process. Turn out a product you'd be happy to buy.

Now you're pleased with your accomplishment and the book is available on Kindle. Sales start trickling in. And new questions start trickling into your mind. How can I promote? How can I increase sales? And the newly intriguing question:

Is there more to this than just Kindle?

Sure, there is. But that's for another post. Coming up:
Smashwords Makes a Splash.
EPromo
And other things E.

The Day the Mountain Blew

In Southwest Washington State, most people who lived here thirty years ago are talking about what they were doing on May 18, 1980, the Day the Mountain Blew. It's etched in my memory too, but despite the fascination I've had for Mt. St. Helens long before that major eruption, the day I remember so poignantly was exactly one week before, May 11, 1980.

It was Mothers' Day that year, and the present I was given was a drive down from Olympia, Washington, where we lived then, to get up as close to the mountain as we could, and see what it looked like. Changes were happening. It was venting, rumbling, even bulging on one side. There were barriers up marking the Red Zone, and signs encouraging people not to go closer. But we saw no sign of the State Patrol.

There wasn't all that much we could see anyway, for it was a very typical Northwest spring day, rainy temperate, with thick, low clouds. Not until we were about to leave did we actually get a glimpse of the mountain, and I was shocked at how close it seemed. We should have been about ten miles away. Or was it really that big?

Disappointed in how little we saw, we fooled around in the stream beds and picked at unusual rocks in road cuts. I found one I've never identified for sure, with tiny, very pale bluish green crystals arranged in globules. My son, in an attempt to get a better glimpse of the mountain, climbed to the top of the nearest ridge, a good thousand or better feet above the stream bed where the rest of us foraged for agates. (It was everyone's ambition to see the mountain "blow", but few if any of the people there had any real comprehension of what that meant). He got his glimpse, but only barely, before the clouds closed in again.

So we didn't get everything we wanted, yet it had been one of those wonderful little adventures we cherished so much.

Exactly one week later, we heard the news. My husband was working overtime in Tacoma, and I had gone with him, just because, well, newlyweds do that kind of thing. At 8:32 a.m., Mt. St. Helens had erupted. Blown out almost the entire north side of the mountain. Ash billowed five miles into a bright blue sky, turning the world around the mountain dark as night, and carried eastward through the entire state and into Idaho . Super-heated pyroclastic flows rushed down the valley up over what is now named Johnstone Ridge after geologist Dr. David Johnstone who died there, down the far side, and up the next, blowing everyone and everything off the ridge where my son had been standing. In the valley below, the Toutle River became a rushing torrent of hot, deep, ashy mud, carrying huge boulders and chunks of ice from the mountain's flanks.

We'd been told the Red Zone was 10 miles from the volcano. At that location, it was barely more than 3 miles.

If we had taken our trip one week later, we would all have been wiped out. There is no out-running such an explosion. That isn't likely, really, although if we had not been able to go that Sunday, we would have gone the next. Nor is it really likely, with about a three hour drive from Olympia and up the Spirit Lake Highway, we would have reached the area before the eruption. Yet when we think of the mountain, we can't help but realize, when it comes to such forces of nature, just how helpless we human beings are.

It was five more years before we were allowed to return to the volcano, and then only from the east side, up a winding mountainous road that was only cleared wide enough for one lane of traffic. The ash in the air was choking, for the line of cars slowly snaking up the mountains to the lookout point seemed endless. And at the lookout on Mt. Margaret, we suddenly realized the devastation we had we had traveled through getting to the viewpoint, was beyond anything we had comprehended in all the time since the mountain blew. Even in future years, we couldn't identify where we had been before. What had been Elk Rock, where my son had stood, was swept bare. Nothing survived there.

I have some pictures from that trip, and one old Polaroid from the May 11 trip, but my scanner isn't working. Perhaps I'll post them another time. We've been up the New Spirit Lake Highway a number of times in the last twenty years, and always look forward to going again. We love to take visiting friends and family. The pictures here are the ones from our last trip. Spirit Lake has completely changed its shape, but it lies like a sapphire against a malachite background of tall firs, as if it had always been that way. It's hard to imagine now the immense devastation of thirty years ago, when the Toutle River ran so fast and hard, its bridges were washed away and buried in the flow of muddy ash and rock. But close to the volcano, the deeply slashed, vertical-walled trenches through barren gray ash can still be seen. From the volcano's mouth on the north slope, where for some reason no one had given the slightest thought the mountain would explode, a thick flow of mud, rock and ash protrudes like a giant lolling tongue.

Thirty years, and the mountain has found again new awesome beauty, yet is completely changed from what it had been. And for all that, the signs of the eruption are everywhere. In milennia to come, this eruption will still show its scars, just as past eruptions can still be seen.

MOTHERHOOD IS THE NECESSITY OF INVENTION

That was the title of a book I intended to write a number of years ago. The kids were small. Life was rough, and income scarce. So bad that we were on the regular cut-off list for the electric meter man. One day I saw him coming and ran out to meet him, paid receipt in hand. "Oh, sorry," he said. "I guess it just got to be a habit."

I was thinking about all the things I did to adapt, make ends meet. And I'll admit, the way I made things did have a lot of people amazed. I thought myself quite clever, clever enough to write them in a book. But it never got done. Being clever while raising five kids takes a lot of time, you see. And when I finally decided if I hoped to ever get out of the poverty cycle, I'd better get back to school and get my degree, book writing was set aside for some future time.

That was my "Blaze of Glory" period- as in, "Might as well go out in a Blaze of Glory." Because that's what going to college full-time while raising five kids, baby-sitting for other moms and selling home-baked bread to neighbors is.

Side-tracked, there. That's only tangential to my point. My point is, I see my daughters, as mothers, doing the same thing. When something can't be done, they find a way to do it. Does it mean sewing a garment you can't afford to buy? Getting a degree to get a better job while working and raising kids? Writing a book? Painting a watercolor? Building a gadget to do something better? Working a night shift or getting a tele-commute job, finding a way to help a step-child develop great study habits? Making grueling internet searches and bid to find the cheapest air tickets to Disney World for a mini-family reunion?

That's what moms do. They invent a way.

The book cover I'm posting here is a mock cover- the actual cover hasn't been designed yet. But more on LADY WICKED at the bottom of this post.

You might have noticed the new look. This design came about backwards, from a book cover design, which I then was told by a fairly large number of people was a book I should write. Yes I know, usually the book idea comes first, not the cover. But sometimes not so for me.

My original cover design was titled 10,000 YEARS, but my editor thinks 1,000 YEARS is better, and that then triggered improved plot thoughts. And then in the meantime, I needed a new website design, so I borrowed the elements from the cover design.

So now I'm in the process of remodeling both the blog and the website, and all that while in the middle of contest coordinating hell. The Royal Ascot is right at the point of assigning entries to the judges, which is the most annoyingly complex and confusing part of the entire contest. Later, when the entries return from the judges, it's pretty complex, but there's really nothing like getting them to the judges in the first place.

I should be through with this phase of the contest by Wednesday. I've got some interesting blogs coming up for you. But the website will take a bit more time because...

The exciting part! I've got my galleys for LADY WICKED and have only about 10 days left to complete them! We're moving so fast on this book, I think it just may get a release date before the end of the year! I don't think I've been so excited about a book release since the first one, FIRE DANCE, back in 2000. FD remained my favorite of all my books for years, but LADY WICKED has long since surpassed it.