My (free) mystery novel is here!

[ficbot]

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.

[Elsi]

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 ...)

[columbus]

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

[Dr. Drib]

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

[kacir]

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
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.

[ficbot]

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?

[DixieGal]

Got it, looking forward to reading it. THANKS!

[kacir]

Originally Posted by ficbot

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.

[ficbot]

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.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by ficbot

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.

[spaze]

Originally Posted by ficbot

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

[kacir]

Originally Posted by ficbot

... 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 ;-)

[Krapmeister]

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

[phenomshel]

Looking forward to it, ficbot, and congratulations!

[dreams]

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.