gʹiliχon

Backstory:
I currently have two works that have been self-published. One, Roast, is a short story - or rather a collection of short stories as I tacked three shorter ones to the end - that I put out last year. The other, Hymn, is the first novel I've successfully completed, and is currently in the final stages of drafts and edits and approving and all the rest that goes into the final piece. Both were put out on Lulu.com.
Prior to these two works, I had used Lulu as a sort of a sounding board; viewing projects in various page sizes and formats, testing the waters on layouts, and utilizing the sleekness of the "perfect bound" binding option to amass final projects for a few classes.

Roast was originally written as an attempt to get back to short story writing, something I had moved away from while working consistently on Hymn. It also enabled me to free my mind from the onslaught of working on the longer piece for long enough to approach the novel with fresh eyes. The story itself evolves around three characters in a mid-Florida town, just outside of Orlando: Michael Mason (yeah, I have a thing for alliteration) who is working his first major case since making detective; Sarah Clarke, a slightly-off amusement park actress with a penchant for exotic foods; and Pippin Parson, a mad-at-the-world amusement park actress with achondroplasia.

Excerpt:
Detective Michael Mason

So I’m waiting in line at the supermarket at three in the morning. It’s that time when they don’t want to actually pay people to man the store so they only got those self-checkout things open. And at three am, no matter how few people there are in the store stocking up on microwave dinners and pints of ice cream, no matter how few people there are in the store, there’s always a long fucking line at those self-checkouts. Because everyone is too goddamn lazy to go to them during the day when they got clerks in green smocks staring off into space as they bag your groceries. Everyone is too goddamn lazy to use these things unless they have to so no one knows how to fucking use them when they have to.
And the whole time I’m waiting in line, the whole time I’m waiting and wiping my hand on my pants to get the sticky from the dripping pint of pistachio ice cream I’m holding, the whole entire time I’m looking at these people. I’m wondering if any of them are my perp. If that lady with the family-sized pack of Twinkies is loading up little kids from the soccer game and jack-knifing their teeth out. If that weasel-y looking guy, the guy with the greasy black hair that’s thinning so much the comb over looks more like a street map on his scalp, the guy with the wiry facial hair that can’t really decide on a growth pattern, the only employee here this late at night, if he decided his power as the security for the graveyard shift was going unnoticed and decided to take it out on all the kids he could lure with pistachio ice cream. The ice cream that’s coating my hands.
And this guy is nodding at me like the badge clipped to my waste and the bubblegum machine tin star he’s got pinned to his green smock, like the two of them bond the two of us in some sort of camaraderie.
And that lady at the front of the line still can’t figure out how to bag her Twinkies. Where the hell to swipe her credit card.

My phone rings and I know it’s my wife wondering what time I’m going to get home. Except it’s not my wife. It’s Miles down at the station. It’s Miles telling me he knows I just got off shift but I may want to come back in. Telling me there’s something at the campgrounds off the Four-oh-Eight I might be interested in seeing.

A Good Samaritan would put the ice cream back in the cooler. A good customer would do that. I toss the pint on top of the store brand soda display and head toward the automatic doors.
I wonder if Twinkie lady could figure out a fucking door handle if the motion sensor didn’t alakazaam her out of the store in a whir of radiation.
I wonder if my bitch ass child-molesting murderer works cleaning detail here in his spare time. If he’ll have to wipe up crusty green ice cream from stacks of strawberry and orange flavored pop.

What I learned:
Publishing Roast taught me a lot - mostly about patience. I wanted to get something out there so badly, I overlooked quite a bit. Typos permeate the text. All the rules I read online about self-publishing formatting were pretty much skewed to the point of absurdity. I worked solely in Microsoft Word and that brought about its own limitations in form and layout.
But I was so excited! I'd bought my ISBN and everything!

In the end, I'm not unhappy with the book, but I'm not exactly pleased with it either. In my rush to approve the draft and get the piece into production, I didn't spend as much time going through it as I should have. I didn't have other people go through it for mistakes I may have missed. It's easy to get too close to a piece and that definitely happened with this one.
Also, as it turns out, the sizing I chose for the book is no longer available for outside-of-Lulu distribution, so I get a second chance at it. In reformatting the book size, I will be going back in to fix errors and really get a feel for laying out the book as a whole. I won't be relying on what I've read from websites about kerning and fonts and space between the lines. In the end, what I took from this experience, is that rules are there for a reason, but once you understand them, it's okay to break them to create something you find visually exciting and interesting. A lot of times, this is just as important as the writing itself.


Hymn:
Hymn has been a much slowly process for me. Almost excruciatingly so. I began writing the text for the novel before I began school here at SAIC. I went through several titles. I played with varying formats. Even as I was working on the actual manuscript, I utilized my time in considering the finished package for the project. While this did not necessarily influence the writing of the piece, it really enabled the piece to influence the printed form. I chose a font that isn't really recommended for novels because it related to the story. I played around with chapter starts. I went through hundreds of cover designs before settling on the final version, and even now have just finalized the back cover and inside flaps. I really paid attention to breaking convention where it was appropriate and keeping it intact where it helped with flow - where it helped with retaining ease of readability.
I guess for this one, I took what I learned from Roast and really applied it. I produced a "junk" draft first, one that I knew I could mark up and really play with. I let this serve as a playground for dealing with layout as well as a printed copy to really go in and edit. Even though I mostly write on my laptop now, I still find it much easier to edit on the page - unfortunately for the trees. From this draft came two others in which I pushed boundaries with layout. My final draft, which is arriving in the mail soon, is a bit more subdued in its boundary pushing, but overall, it is the one I'm happiest with. I'm sure it'll drive me crazy in a month or two, but that's what the paperback edition is for, right?

You can read an excerpt of Hymn by clicking on the cover photo to the right, so I won't place it here.

Bringing it on back - or at least to class:
While Hymn has currently got the hatchet, I'm looking forward to utilizing what I learn in class to help reformat Roast. Mostly though, I am really looking toward producing new work for this course, either in the form of shorter complete works or excerpts and fragments from the two novels I'm currently working on (Taste and Daredevil Amphibians). I'm also looking forward to learning the programs so I can really help the design aspects of these works pop. I can see it all so clearly in my head, but completely lack the technical skill to pull it off.
It will also be great to move outside of the POD world some and actually get some hands-on experience with the making.