Month: April 2014

The Flash Fiction Vote is on!

Vote!It’s time once again to make your choice for the flash fiction challenge. Who will win? You get to decide! No pressure or anything, but the winning entries will all be included in the next edition of the IU Flash Fiction Anthology.

Go ahead and take a look at this week’s entries here. Make your decision, then use those share buttons at the bottom of the post to spread the word.

Voting polls close Thursday at 5 PM Pacific time.

Which author penned your favorite entry this week?

  • Ed Drury (38%, 58 Votes)
  • AV Carden (28%, 42 Votes)
  • Dominique Goodall (23%, 35 Votes)
  • Kenny (6%, 9 Votes)
  • Jon Jefferson (5%, 7 Votes)
  • MathoSka Cikala (1%, 1 Votes)
  • Kae Bender (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 152

Loading ... Loading ...

NOTE: Entrants whose submissions exceed the 250 word limit are eliminated from the poll.

Getting it Right: Recognising a Crisis Part 1

minMeet Minnie. She ruled my household for the last three years of her life and here’s how she adopted me.

I had a part-time job back then, teaching people how to use Lifeline’s emergency call buttons. You might have seen the ads, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!!” Yes, those things. It was a nice job as jobs go; you helped people a lot but you also walked into many a family meltdown — as the reality of someone’s increasing vulnerability hit home.

This particular day, I’d walked into a displacement activity. Mum had just been told she was officially palliative, which came as news to the adult kids. They’d had no idea she was ill. Everyone was struggling to take in the news and they coped by worrying about the cat. Continue reading “Getting it Right: Recognising a Crisis Part 1”

Mr. Pish Birthday Fest!

Mr PishToday is Mr. Pish’s birthday. The “Traveling Terrier” was a champion of childhood literacy and outdoor awareness. He was also the mascot of Indies Unlimited.

Though he passed away at the ripe old age of 16, his legacy lives on through his many books and even a fun companion app.

His long-time human companion and dedicated biographer/transcriptionist is our co-administrator, K.S. Brooks. Mr. Pish left her a wealth of material with which to carry on with his work in helping children love reading, nature, history, and geography.

We celebrate his life and achievements today. If you’d like to drop by any of Mr. Pish’s social media channels and wish him a happy birthday, follow, like, or even buy a book, your gesture would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.MrPish.com
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Pinterest
Socl
Paper.li (The Mr. Pish Post)
DogChannel
Dogster

Pish Covers

eBook Formatting 101

Formatting frustration!Formatting a book for publication as an eBook can be easy, but it can also be frustrating. eBooks are much simpler than print books, simpler in that they allow fewer frills and so have more rigorous constraints. Here is a nuts-and-bolts review of the basics for eBook formatting.

Size/Margins

If you’d previously prepared your book for print publication, you can pretty much undo all that. eBooks do not need headers or footers or page numbers, so get rid of all of those. If you had sized your print book to 6”x9” or 5.5”x8.5” with a ¼” gutter, toss out all of that. Format your book to 8-1/2”x11”, normal margins (as opposed to mirror margins) with a 0 gutter.

Justification

Again, if you’d formatted for print and had your text fully justified (lined up on both the left and right side of the paragraph), now make it all left justified with a ragged right edge. eReaders are a completely different animal than print pages, and because your text will flow from one screen to another based on the size of the text chosen by the reader, right justification will only cause you (and your reader) grief. Continue reading “eBook Formatting 101”