New edit pass on Faerie Blood and Bone Walker

I haven't released anything new in a while, for assorted reasons. One of the more pertinent ones is one that'll hopefully resonate with fellow indie authors: i.e., I've got to do new print editions of the first two books of the Free Court of Seattle series, Faerie Blood and Bone Walker.

The reason for this is that up until now, I've been producing my print copies via an espresso book machine, which has been available at the indie bookstore down the hill from my house. This has been great for convenience, because it's meant that I've been able to go down the hill, order a small print run of either book when I need one, and then go pick them up when they're ready!

It's not been so great though for discoverability of my books. So I'd been thinking anyway of transitioning to CreateSpace--or rather, KDP Print, CreateSpace's replacement. But the bookstore near my house forced the matter by deciding they were going to no longer have the espresso book machine available.

So now, given that I'm flat out of personal copies of Faerie Blood and have only two left of Bone Walker, I'm having to do new edit passes.

As of this writing, I'm about halfway through the new edit pass on Faerie Blood. So for purposes of this post, here are some items of interest!

1. When I did the second edition of this book, I hadn't gotten Scrivener yet. So as part of this whole effort, I've ported the last shipping master version of the book into Scrivener, and am doing my edit pass there now.

2. Scrivener's ability to do labels and statuses is proving super useful. I've been able to label the chapters from the second edition as "Second Edition", and roll them over to "Third Edition" when I'm ready to work on them. I have also been using "To Do", "In Progress" and "Done" statuses on them. Which winds up looking like this:

What My Scrivener Project Looks Like

3. I've been keeping a thorough change log of all the changes I'm making. This is for my wife, who does the layout for the print editions of the Free Court books. And it'll be easier for her to apply all the changes to her existing master PDF than to try to whip up a brand new one. This change log, accordingly, is pretty long. Fortunately, a lot of those changes are very similar. See item 4!

4. Faerie Blood's first edition was released in 2009, and the second edition in 2012. Since releasing that book, I've also done Bone Walker as well as the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy. And after working with my editor on the Rebels books, I've had my writing style tighten up considerably. In particular, I'm looking back at Faerie Blood and going GOOD LORD WOMAN, SEMICOLONS MUCH? Not to mention throwing exclamation marks into dialogue all over the damn place. A lot of what I'm doing in this editing pass is backing off on using those two punctuation marks.

5. Faerie Blood's second edition had its timeline bumped a bit to set its "present day" as of when it was released, i.e., more or less 2012. For the third edition, I will not be changing that. It is nonetheless kind of funny to see how I wrote it with the assumptions of someone who'd started her career in tech in the 90's, whereas Kendis? Not so much. Like, I'd envisioned Kendis' job as still having offices. Anybody who works in Seattle in tech now, and who therefore knows that you only get an office if you're a manager and everybody else sits on an open floor plan, will know why this makes me snicker now. I'm not changing it, though; I'm declaring Kendis' workplace as canonically retro enough that they still did give their testers actual offices.

6. I have been asked by one of my local readers if I'd consider putting in a punctuation guide in the new editions of the Free Court books. As this is an excellent idea, I will in fact be doing so.

And that's that for now. If I get ambitious I should be able to finish this edit pass by the end of this year. I'd like to have the third edition of Faerie Blood ready to ship by this coming spring, ideally by the time Norwescon 2019 rolls around so I'll have copies to sell there. Then I'll swing around and do this again for Bone Walker.

And hey, if anybody wants my one of my last two espresso book machine copies of Bone Walker, you can have 'em for ten bucks plus shipping!

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Angela is frustrated with her ongoing writing block, but hey, new print editions means she can release SOMETHING. Come cheer her on on Facebook or Twitter, or on her site at angelahighland.com!

What is it like writing on a shiny new iPad Pro?

Angela's iPad Pro

One of the nicest things about surviving the December holidays—aside from the general relief of the holidays being over—is the fresh slate of a new year. A lot of folks take this as an opportunity to do their New Year’s resolutions. I am certainly among them! And as a writer, there’s certainly a lot I could say about writer-based resolutions in general, or about my particular writing plans for 2018. But it’s a bit late in the month for New Year’s Resolutions posts, and I’ve actually already written the “my writing plan for 2018” post over on my own site.

What I want to talk about in this post is actually why I like January: because it’s when I have my birthday! This year, thanks to a nice bonus from my day job, I’ve treated myself to a birthday present. I’ve gotten me an iPad Pro. I’m not going to review the device in full here; plenty of tech sites have done that in depth already. But I do want to talk about its probable uses for me as a writer!

First and foremost: one of the accessories you can buy for it is a Smart Keyboard. If you follow Apple tech news you may already know about this, a cover similar to the smart covers that older iPads have, which magnetically snap shut over the screen when you don’t want to use the thing, and which can fold in useful ways when you do. The Smart Keyboard takes that same idea and expands upon it. Now, in addition to the ability to close over your screen magnetically and fold in a couple of interesting ways depending on how you want to arrange the device, there’s a built-in keyboard.

As a techie myself, I’m interested in how the keyboard functions. If you’ve used mobile devices before, iOS or Android, you are likely already familiar with Bluetooth. This new keyboard is not actually a Bluetooth device. Instead, as I understand it, it makes a direct connection to the tablet via three little dimples along the side. And it’s not battery driven, which is handy on the general grounds of not having to remember to charge it.

There are three possible downsides for the casual user for this thing:

1. It comes in only one color, gray, so if you care about that you may find it kind of boring looking. I would not be surprised at all if Apple starts shipping the thing in different colors later, given how the smart covers are in a variety of shades. But for now, your option is just ‘gray’.
2. It adds a bit of extra bulk when you close it over the screen. I still find it slim and light enough to make it worth carrying around with me, but it’s something to consider nonetheless. Even with the extra thickness from the keyboard, the tablet still fits in the previous sleeve I was using for my older iPad, an iPad Air 2, so it’s all good for me!
3. I have a long history of writing on my laptop while flopped over on the couch, with the laptop propped against my legs. With my older iPad, I have a hard shell for it made by HP that has a built-in Bluetooth keyboard, and I can do that sort of maneuver with it, too. But with this new iPad and the Smart Keyboard, I can’t, quite. The reason for this is the way that the keyboard folds up against the device, and how the device attaches magnetically to it. It’s very stable on a flat surface, like a desk or a table. But it would not be quite so stable propped against your legs when you’re lying on a couch.

None of these issues are particularly huge for me, though. And so I wouldn’t hold any of them up as reasons for a fellow writer to not get one of these things.

“That’s all very well and good, Angela,” you may be saying now, “but you’re a writer. How’s it handle for actual writing?”

Good question! I can tell you that I wrote the first draft of this post on said keyboard. I find it very easy to type on, though the various keys are a bit squishy compared to a larger keyboard—such as the one on my MacBook, or even the Bluetooth keyboards I’ve used before. But unlike with the laptop keyboard, there’s no openings under the keys on this thing that would allow for dust getting in under them, which I feel is a strong win. The really interesting question for me will be how it holds up to extensive use, though. I’m a fast typist, and I can give a keyboard a lot of work in the course of long-term usage!

For now, though, I’m finding it a pleasant enough experience that I’ve not only written this post on it, but some work on my actual work in progress, too.

Which brings me to the next thing to talk about: what apps to use when you’re doing actual writing on such a device.

I’ve written here before about being blown away by Scrivener. I continue to love, love, love me some Scrivener, and as an iOS user, I’m particularly happy that the program—essential for my writing—has been ported to that platform. I’ve got mine set up to save projects to my Dropbox, so I can easily work on the iPad, save, and jump over to the laptop as necessary. Or vice versa.

This post, however, I wrote in something called DocsToGo. This was an app I picked up in the early days of my iOS usage, back before Microsoft Office existed in app form, and even before cloud services like Dropbox became a thing. DocsToGo set itself up as an app you could use to sync documents back and forth between your computer and your mobile device, and, most importantly, included compability with Microsoft Office files.

Now, of course, we have official Microsoft Office apps that exist on iOS, as well as Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, and other cloud services. But for now, I’m hanging onto DocsToGo just because it’s an easy way to write up a short thing like a blog post without having to fire up Scrivener. I’m not a hundred percent happy with this as a writing experience, just because it seems to have some screen redraw problems when I select text and delete it. I’m also seeing a bit of flakiness with the app taking a few seconds to acknowledge the keyboard’s presence when I bring the device out of sleep.

Aside from the keyboard, I note for reference that I chose to get the smaller iPad Pro, since I felt that the larger one was too bulky for my tastes. If you are a fellow writer who might want to write on an iPad Pro, screen size will be a matter of your personal preference. I find that the smaller device gives me plenty of screen space, enough that for any given bit of something I’m working on, there’s enough context that I can do any necessary edits.

I will be posting more general details about the iPad Pro over on my own site, including my playing with the Apple Pencil that I bought with it! I invite Here Be Magic visitors to come on over to angelahighland.com and look for my posts there.

Here, though, I’d like to open it up to the floor for my fellow writers who write on mobile devices! What do you use? Do you write on a tablet or a phone? Do you use an additional keyboard? What apps do you like, either iOS or Android? Share your recommendations in the comments!

Editing to add: Changed the post to reflect that the Smart Keyboard does not actually come with the iPad Pro; you do have to buy that separately.

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In addition to being a writer of urban and epic fantasy, Angela is also a giant tech nerd, as you probably guessed. Come geek out with her about your favorite apps at angelahighland.com, and oh yeah, check out her books while you're over there! Or, find her on Facebook or Twitter.

Scrivener is in fact as awesome as everybody says

Let me say this straight up: I'm very grateful for the Kickstarter I was able to run in 2012, for the contract with my trilogy with Carina Press, and for having a technically challenging and rewarding day job.

But I'm here to tell y'all, all of these things converging together on me over the last few years, particularly in conjunction with assorted medical challenges, has meant that my ability to produce words has been a lot less, well, productive than I would like. My mental well has been pretty dry since the release of Victory of the Hawk this past April. I've released two short stories since then, "The Blood of the Land" and "The Disenchanting of Princess Cerridwen", sure. But these were also both previously existing works, and not brand new material.

What's kept me from working? Creative weariness, pretty much. Some of that's coming off the urgency of getting that last Rebels of Adalonia book off into the world. Some of it's also how having a day job like mine often means that I come home from work in the evenings too mentally worn out to be able to also produce however many hundreds of words I need to write.

Still, though, I'm a writer. I want to write. And part of me has been a little frustrated at myself for not actually continuing to write through this year's summer and fall. That part of me has also finally gotten loud enough that I'm looking for new ways to do something about that.

My current plan: I've finally bought Scrivener. I know a lot of writers who swear by this program, and so far I have to say, I'm deeply impressed. I really like having access to individual scene files as well as my notes on its sidebar, and the corkboard and outline views seem like they're going to be supremely useful in some upcoming project planning I need to do.

Plus, I simply like having a new environment to use to write in, something that doesn't look like Word. Yet at the same time, I'm looking forward to playing with Scrivener's ability to compile projects, into Word docs for anything I need to send out manuscripts for, into PDFs for archivable copies, and into EPUB for forthcoming ebooks I'll want to ship.

There's a dialog box to show you your project targets, too, both for the project as a whole and for your daily sessions. I've set mine for the latter to 500, since 500 words a day is what I want to achieve when I'm on top of my game. Having that progress meter right there in front of me, alongside the words I'm working on, has been amazingly motivating the last few days!

With my aforementioned day job hat on, I also need to give props to the tutorial that comes with the program. It's amazingly well written, and I found it very clear and informative as I worked my way through it and got an overview of the program and what it's capable of.

As to what I'm actually writing in Scrivener--I've got a post up today on my own site about that! C'mon over and check that out, especially if you've read the Free Court of Seattle books, because I'm pleased to announce there are more stories on the way in that universe. Give it up for Scrivener, everybody, for helping me wake those stories up again!

How about the rest of you out there? Are you using Scrivener, and if so, what do you like about it? And what other tools do you find helpful to keep your writing on track?

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Angela is the author of the Free Court of Seattle urban fantasy series as Angela Korra'ti, and of the Rebels of Adalonia epic fantasy series as Angela Highland. You can find her at angelahighland.com, or on Facebook or Twitter. Come say hi!