The Necromancer... In Print!

My book is in my hands. I would say it’s my baby, but that would be silly. It’s a book about flying zombies and centenarians with God-like powers—it’s hardly the kind of thing you’d call your baby. (PS: it’s my baby.)

Anyway, I’ve got some photos for you to look at. They’re not very good (I’m a writer, after all) but I think they’ll do in a pinch.

I’m also going to give my humble opinion on the quality of Lulu’s printing.

But, the photos!

Mr Stargazer is a Very Bad Photographer (Yes, He’s Said that Already)

On Lulu’s Print Quality

On the whole, suprisingly good. The pages are’t too thin (a common complaint with ‘budget’ printing), the construction feels solid, and there are no misprints or washed out ink—a problem I regularly experience with mass-market paperbacks. It’s also surprisingly heavy: whether that’s a good thing, or not; I don’t know. Perhaps I shall ask Lulu support.

Is the Printer Finnicky?

Yes. All printers are finnicky to a degree (no printer wants to make thousands of books with critical flaws, even if it isn’t their fault) but Lulu’s seems particularly egregious. Here’s what happened: LibreOffice (my word processing/quasi-DTP program) can’t embed OpenType fonts as OpenType in a PDF; instead it embeds it in the format known as Type-1, which tend to be quite basic—and problematic. I’m not sure if they prevent good printing outright (I can get my home printer to do it) but it does tend to make printers nervous.

What’s faux pas about Lulu is that their printer only gives general "Font error" type error messages—it doesn’t tell you which specific font is making it complain. This was so problematic, in fact, that it took 3 days to eventually figure out why it wasn’t printing. Make no mistake: the self-publishing biz ain’t easy.

How Do You Feel Alex?

Authors often speak of how it feels to get their first physical book. Euphoria, excitement and giddiness are the most commonly cited emotions. I didn’t expect to feel that, and I don’t. My dreams are bigger than that. And anyway: the idea of trying to sell it en-masse is... pretty daunting.

That said, I do feel a certain... satisfaction? Closure? Something like that. I’ve reached the end of this road. But there’s still plenty more to go. Plenty more monsters to slay, magic to be casted, and dreams to be made.

This is just the beginning.

An Update Before the Second Exam Series

Hello dear readers:

Yours truly is going to be busy over the next two weeks or so: there will be exams. No, I haven’t done them all yet. Yes, some of them are important. (Indeed the school would like us to believe all of our exams are important, though of course, this is nonsense.)

My most pressing concern is for the wonderful math exams, where I shall be active in doing trigonometry, functions, and bullshit.

Anyway, since this is going to be the last (sort of) major update on this blog for the next two weeks or so, I’m going to give you guys a rundown of all the—reasonably—important stuff going on.

Twitter

It seems odd that I should pay attention to it. After all: it’s marketed at lazy, narcisisstic (boy that’s a hard word to spell) people who can’t write more than 140 characters at a time. However, I seem to be getting a fair number of views from it, so I figure it’s worth my time to do something on it.

What I shall be doing is tweeting a series of tweets in which I shall write small, inspirational snippets of text. (Or at least, I hope they will be inspirational.)

Some say that art is enhanced by boundaries; that boundaries create a precisely defined medium in which the reader can more easily connect with the words. Others claim that it is the difficulty of writing within a set series of rules—quite stringent rules, in the case of Twitter—that essentially forces writers to improve.

I used to think both were a load of rubbish. Now, I think it is only the former that is wishy washy gobbedygoop.

Anyway, I shall be tweeting a series of tweets. I’m not entirely certain what it’ll be about—probably some writing nonsense—but I do hope it will get me some more readers. Oh, and I’ll probably collect all those tweets over the two week period and stick on their own page here. Lucky, aren’t you?

And before I forget: my Twitter username (is that what it’s called?) is @AlexBujorianu. It’s my name in the non-cyber world. I might change it, in which case I shall update this.

EDIT: My username has been changed to AlexStargazerWE (WE being short for ‘Writer Extraordinaire’.)

Moving on…

I have been engaged in a little side project for my poems. Unfortunately, it’s been rather slow going; I shall, therefore, post a poem soon, in order to keep you happy. Stay cyber-tuned… (Ouch, I really should think of better marketing dingo for myself.)

I shall also be posting a Three Days’ Word, although I question its popularity. If you’re reading this: do you like my little showcase of obscure words? Do tell.

What About Your Exams?

They’ve gone rather well so far, surprisingly enough. The sciences, in particular, went very well. I also had a cracking shot at the history exam; and of course, at the English Lit exams.

I should explain: there are multiple exams per subject. My Wild West history exam went the best, though I don’t think I slouched on the Crime and Punishment one either. The English Lit exams are one for poetry, and one for the analysis of two texts. The latter went best, mainly because the former includes an ‘unknown poetry’ section in which the particular poem was rather short and difficult to write about. Still, I may just be paranoid.

Finally

I made a new friend at a party yesterday. I like making new friends; I find them in short supply, for the most part. More on that when I have the time.

I am also collaborating with a little writer friend of mine: Karen Gordon. Her blog is Joie De Mid Vivre. Check it out.

Okay, I’ve written enough. I shall be posting the Three Days’ Word soon enough, along with a poem. If you’ve read this far, you probably like my little blog, so feel free to subscribe via email (see the right hand column) or via RSS feeds (check your browser for ‘Subscribe via RSS’; this can be found in the Bookmarks menu in Firefox, for example).

Cheerio.