Hi everyone

Just testing the self-publishing waters a little. I am not quite ready to put this on Smashwords or anything---it's a draft and needs a bit of work yet. But I posted about it elsewhere and people said I might try things out here first, see how it goes etc. I may post it elsewhere, in a modified form, if I do decide it merits further updating.

Title: Hel's Angel

Genre: Mystery

Synopsis: Helena Snowden is a twenty-something hack journalist whose tame little word is thrown into disarray when her estranged father, a local literature professor, dies suddenly. As her long-underutilized reporter's sixth sense kicks in and she begins investigating, Helena finds herself competing with her arch-rival Alex Calvin for a hot local story, caring for the odd, orphaned half-brother she never knew she had and plundering her Riverside Shakespeare for messages from her father which may lead her to his killer and which will take her deeper into the troubled world he inhabited...

Notes: This is a draft and requires/will possibly undergo revision and re-issuing in an altered form. I reserve all rights to it. Apologies for any wonky formatting---the forum would not let me upload an RTF file greater than 1 mg so I had to export it as a PDF from Neo Office and then run it through Stanza to get an epub...

Comments and feedback are welcome and appreciated. I had fun with this novel and hope you enjoy it!

UPDATE: For those who can handle word docs, I have uploaded that version as well. You can save it as HTML or plain text and easily convert it to a format of your choosing. You'll get a much cleaner copy that way, I hope.

Thank you for sharing your book. I'm downloading it and will be glad to provide some feedback when I read it. I read a lot of mystery novels -- probably 50% of what I read every year -- so I'm excited to discover something new to read.

RTF --> NeoOffice --> PDF --> Stanza --> ePub

There's a better way. Try using Calibre; import RTF, export ePub (and Mobipocket and ...)

Thanks for sharing your work ficbot :thumbsup:, downloaded and on my 'to read' list - (feedback when I have)

Thanks for making this available to the members here on MobileRead!

I know you want some feedback and constructive criticism, so I'll try to get to it soon although I'm currently reading two other novels at this time. (When I was working on my Ph.D. in English Literature [not completed], I also taught writing to first year students, so I do have a little bit of training in this area.) :)

I look forward to reading your work.

Thanks,
Don

Thank you for the book.

Here is my first feedback.
Please understand, I do not want to look the gift horse into the mouth, I just want to help to improve the book, just as I have been asked ;-)

1. You have no metadata in the epub file. It means that when you import the file into the Sony Library, Calibre software or any reading device the title is "unknown", author is "unknown"

2. the format of the book is a mess.
2.a there are page numbers left in the text, like this
I have been
3
greeted with
2.b The paragraphs are run together
2.c The xhtml files that are inside epub archive contain utf8 characters for curly quotes, emdashes, ellipsis ... . Curly quotes and other fancy characters should be represented by Character entity references (http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/sgml/entities.html)
Point 2 complaint have been most probably caused by use of wrong tool for conversion or choosing wrong input format for conversion.

3. You have not provided more formats

I have made a conversion for my own use, so I can read the book (and provide further comments if you wish) because free book is free book and I have to reformat most of my reading material anyway. But few people have the time, the means, the expertise and the inclination to reformat a book that is not immediately readable on their device.

Kacir, I tried converting it in Calibre and Calibre kept giving me error messages. I tried uploading a plain text file and it was slightly bigger than the 1 mg the forum allows for RTF. Do you have any other suggestions for cleaning up the formatting a little?

Got it, looking forward to reading it. THANKS!

Kacir, I tried converting it in Calibre and Calibre kept giving me error messages. I tried uploading a plain text file and it was slightly bigger than the 1 mg the forum allows for RTF. Do you have any other suggestions for cleaning up the formatting a little?
I guess there is some problem with the source file you started with.

- The most obvious thing you can do is put the txt file inside zip archive.
- you can also divide the book into two text files and ask local experts for help with formatting
- you can upload the original document in MSWord, OpenOffice Writer or whatever format you use.
- you can try to download bookdesigner and try to convert.

I am on a Mac so I don't ave Book Designer. I am uploading the word doc and maybe that will be easier for some people. Thanks for the feedback so far! Hope you enjoy the content of the story.

I am on a Mac so I don't ave Book Designer. I am uploading the word doc and maybe that will be easier for some people. Thanks for the feedback so far! Hope you enjoy the content of the story.
Thank you very much. This is much better.
The book is at the moment being read on my Reader.

Kacir, I tried converting it in Calibre and Calibre kept giving me error messages. I tried uploading a plain text file and it was slightly bigger than the 1 mg the forum allows for RTF. Do you have any other suggestions for cleaning up the formatting a little?

If you would like to try, PDF optimized for ebook readers is quite good. You can have a try at a web app I made at http://www.majgaj.com/pdf

... I am not quite ready to put this on Smashwords or anything---it's a draft and needs a bit of work yet ...
Well, I have loaded it to my Reader and have read about 25% so far.

It is good. Surprisingly good.
The first few pages were a little bit unconvincing, but the book quickly picked up the pace.
I even got a new word for my vocabulary - finagle.
It has been literally years since I looked up a word from a fiction book in a dictionary ;-)

Thanks for the opportunity to test drive your book... I've downloaded it and put it on my eReader. If you don't hear from me in a few weeks time, give me a poke so I can offer you my feedback.

K

Looking forward to it, ficbot, and congratulations!

Thank you, ficbot, for putting this out there for us.

I downloaded and will get to it as soon as the first couple of weeks of the new school year settles down.

Hey, congrats Ficbot! This is great!

Well, I downloaded it but I am going to have to wait for Calibre to support Snow Leopard so I can convert it for my Kindle :(

I'm between meetings, and short on time. Maybe I'll be able to tweak these further. For now, here is a default conversion. I saved the word file as RTF and used calibre.

Hope you don't mind, Ficbot.

Haven't had time to read it yet. Will give feedback when I do.

Thanks for the early feedback and conversion help! I appreciate the interest and hope people like the story.

Here's the lrf copy I made with BookDesigner to put on my 505. I didn't take much time with the conversion, but I think it looks okay.

I'll let you know what I think, ficbot. Thanks for the book!

I made a quick cover, Ficbot. I don't know your pen name, so I just put An Author :)

Cool! I guess I need a pen name now :) That's so nice of you. Have you read the story yet?

Cool! I guess I need a pen name now :) That's so nice of you. Have you read the story yet?

Not had a chance to read anything but the opening. My ridiculously long to-read list is getting even more ridiculous by the day. I'll try to get around to it soon though :)

Hi Ficbot - A very nice read, I quite enjoyed it. I think I'd enjoy more about Hel&Kip. A few minor copy-edit misses didn't spoil it. BTW - have you heard of the Toronto Library's Writer in Residence program? Here: http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/pro_wir.jsp - hmm, cut&paste, not click - oh, well --- She could give better advice than I ever could. Anyway, from the distance of SciFi, a lot of mysteries look like romances :-)

Thanks so much, Pholy! I'm glad you liked it. Thanks for the link.

I do think I'm going to edit this. I think the dad should have died more recently (e.g. not weeks before) as I am wondering how realistic it is that the police would not have hit up Helena and Teresa sooner. Come to think of it, that might be a good idea to unhinge Teresa a little more, if the police are pestering her about this and not letting her move on with her life. Or if reporters are...I mean, she is a local fixture and he's a local professor, so if he's dead, that would be news, wouldn't it? :) Also, I am not sure the health inspector subplot works---what did you think about that aspect?

Certainly Helena shares her Dad's last name still, so you'd think the police would come knocking... Hmm, any more and I'd have to put in a spoiler alert.... off to PM-land now