Inverarity is not a Scottish village

Reader participation time!

I've been spending many, many hours exploring layout software. Everyone says "Don't use Microsoft Word for print layout, it's a word processor, it sucks for layout." So I looked at Adobe InDesign ($252/year, seriously?), and Affinity Publisher, which is much, much cheaper but can still do professional-quality layouts.

I spent a lot of time with it, and can actually make some pretty nice mockups now.



But I still fight with it to do things I have already figured out how to do with Word.

Then, gods help me, I went down the LaTeX rabbit hole. There is something appealing about slinging markup, old-school style, like Donald Knuth intended. None of this newfangled WYSIWYG stuff!

LaTeX (built on TeX) was created in the 1970s and it's widely used in academia (most PhD dissertations are laid out with LaTeX). Some people swear by it for everything, and there are even extensions for designing books, including novels. It's pure and powerful and you can, in theory do anything because TeX is a goddamn Turing-complete language but it's as user-friendly as code written in the 1970s by a computer genius and while it's not hard to get a nice, clean, professional layout, it's not intended to imitate a specific design. I spent many, many hours experimenting with different front-ends and print engines (because LaTeX does not play nicely with modern fonts because who the fuck needs a font that didn't exist in 1978, right?) and I still couldn't get it to do things I had already figured out how to do in Word.

So, I looked at the reasons people say that Word sucks for layout, and most of them either don't apply to me (it's definitely terrible if you are doing original book designs, with fancy graphics and the like), or else the things people say are really hard and fiddly to do in Word... I have already figured out how to do.

So for now, I'm sticking with Word. When I get my POD copies back, we'll see how I did.

My original cover artist had to bail, but the new cover artist has already shown me a b&w sketch, and allowed me to make a few corrections, and wow, it's going to look nice.

I got some help from several people with my POD layout and aside from the cover, Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle is almost ready for printing. Except for one thing.

As you may recall, Alexandra's father sends her a letter at the end of AQATTC. And while the normal convention is to represent handwriting with italics, I am following the Harry Potter convention and using signature fonts for each character.

Finding the right font for Abraham Thorn's "broad, powerful strokes" has been vexing. I am not a designer. I have tried many, many fonts, and none look quite right.

So, here is a screenshot of the candidates I have narrowed down to (probably). And I am asking you, dear readers, to tell me me which one you think looks like Abe's handwriting.

I am not necessarily going to pick the one with the most votes. I'm still open to private input, and I may find yet another, better candidate. But I suspect most of you (or all of you put together) have a better sense of typographic aesthetics than I do.





[Poll #2102787]

An EMP wipes out civilization and turns teenagers into zombies.

It could happen tomorrow....

An electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, destroying every electronic device, wiping out every computerized system, and killing billions. Alex hiked into the woods to say good-bye to her dead parents and her personal demons. Now desperate to find out what happened after the pulse crushes her to the ground, Alex meets up with Tom, a young soldier, and Ellie, a girl whose grandfather was killed by the EMP. For this improvised family and the others who are spared, it's now a question of who can be trusted and who is no longer human.

Author Ilsa J. Bick crafts a terrifying and thrilling novel about a world that could be ours at any moment, where those left standing must learn what it means not just to survive, but to live amidst the devastation.

( A post-apocalyptic thriller about getting those damn kids off your lawn. )

Verdict: On the one hand, it's just another YA zombie book. On the other, it's not bad. While Ashes does not win any awards in my estimation for originality or spectacular writing, it's above average, and I actually liked the characters and the story pulled me along, so I'll give it the highest praise I can: I am sufficiently interested to read the next book in the series.

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My complete list of book reviews.

Nice fan composition by zephyranthia here. Thanks, zephyranthia!

Who are you people? Why are you here?

I have about 140 people who have friended me right now. I don't know most of you at all. This is fine — as I say in my user info, there is no need to ask permission to friend or defriend me, and I have yet to ever post anything f-locked. I usually check out the LJs of people who have friended me now and then, but I don't usually friend back unless I actually know you. (For some arbitrary Internet value of "know.")

But I do wonder who y'all are. I know some of the folks who have friended me have almost certainly abandoned LiveJournal long since. But I'd guess there are least a few dozen of you who are still reading my entries but have never commented here. You are not required to, of course. But if you would indulge my idle curiosity by answering this poll, I'd really appreciate it. (Yes, I did a similar poll some time back.)

The other questions are because now and then I think I might like to start blogging about more than writing and book reviews and fan stuff, but then I decide the time and mental energy it would take to mostly say stuff other people say better, and ban idiots, would aggravate me. One or two trolls can be enormously draining. Hence there is a trade-off between being quiet and unbothered or having a more active commentariat and periodic flamewars.

Lastly, LiveJournal seems to be in a death spiral. More and more people talk about abandoning it. I confess I am not entirely sure why, since it's still just as free and functional as every other blogging network out there, and I'm sorry but tumblr and twitter just confuse me. But who can fathom the ways of the Internet, which decides that Myspace shall become So Last Decade while Facebook shall prosper? So when I ponder the possibility of doing more "blogging," I also ponder the possibility of moving off of LiveJournal.

I probably won't do any of those things, because I'm lazy and it would be time I'm not spending on writing. But please answer my poll anyway!

[Poll #1887616]

Nine annoying wannabe-celebrity teens stow away on a trip to Mars. Things go wrong. Most of them rise to the occasion.

It is the year 2129 . . . and fame is all that matters

Susan and her friends are celebutantes. Their lives are powered by media awareness, fed by engineered meals, and underscored by cynicism. Everyone has a rating; the more viewers who ID you, the better. So Susan and her almost-boyfriend Derlock cook up a surefire plan: the nine of them will visit a Mars-bound spaceship and stow away. Their survival will be a media sensation, boosting their ratings across the globe.

There’s only one problem: Derlock is a sociopath.

Breakneck narrative, pointed cultural commentary, warm heart, accurate science, a kickass heroine, and a ticking clock . . . who could ask for more?

( YA that does not suck! YA that has teens behaving like realistic teens, including teh sex! YA that is... full of infodumps. )

Verdict: This is a fantastic book that would have been more fantastic without the author's only semi-successful attempt to lampshade the infodumps. Full of suspense, clever plot twists, humanity, and heartbreak, it is a great read in the spirit of the best Heinlein juveniles, and an example of YA SF occasionally gotten right.

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My complete list of book reviews.

A classic SF coming-of-age tale written by Heinlein's nemesis.

In 2198, 150 years after the desperate wars that destroyed an overpopulated Earth, Man lives precariously on 100 hastily-established colony worlds and in the 7 giant Ships that once ferried men to the stars. Mia Havero's Ship is a small closed society. It tests its children by casting them out to live or die in a month of Trial in the hostile wilds of a colony world. Mia Havero's Trial is fast approaching, and in the meantime she must learn not only the skills that will keep her alive, but the deeper courage to face herself and her world.

Published originally in 1968, Alexei Panshin's Nebula Award-winning classic has lost none of its relevance, with its keen exploration of societal stagnation and the resilience of youth.

( Another reason why I look at modern YA novels and mostly sigh. )

Verdict: Classic science fiction upholding the best traditions of the genre and with a protagonist who's more human and relatable and positive than most of what the YA genre offers today, Rite of Passage is spaceships-and-colonies sci-fi, bildungsroman, teen adventure, and moral philosophizing, all in a book that should appeal alike to those who love and to those who hate Robert A. Heinlein. It should also appeal to any YA or adult SF fan, even if you've never read Heinlein.

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My complete list of book reviews.

( This is why NaNoWriMo will never work for me. )

[Poll #1859716]

Polly poll.