For the Thrill of it All

My next writing project is set in the 1930’s and I thought that it might be worthwhile reading a book from that period, not some literary masterpiece but something more popularist and so I happened on Edgar Wallace. In his time Wallace was a prolific writer with an estimated 50 million copies of his work in existence at one time, though sadly most of his books are now out of print. He specialised in thrillers and colonial adventures, the latter of a dubious character in the light of these more enlightened times. He should perhaps be famous for his largest creation, King Kong¸ he wrote 110 pages of the first draft of the screenplay before dying of a heart attack aged only 56!

The reason why I wanted to read someone like Edgar Wallace is because he wrote for the public and not for critical acclaim. He claimed himself to find no literary value in his own books but clearly he was able to represent a life that many English people of the period recognised and made it more exciting with the addition of murder and mystery. This is what I was looking for, the kind of thing that other authors of the time might not be so interested in.

I picked up ‘Green Rust’, a book that might be termed a ‘techno-thriller’ today. It concerns a not quite so mad genius who believes that he has discovered a means to raise Germany from the dust following the imposition of reparations imposed upon it by the allies after the end of World War I. His weapon is masterful, a bacteriological poison that will devastate the world’s wheat crops, and he has a network of agents ready to act in all the great arable areas of the globe. Only one man, the American agent Stanford Beale, has an inkling of the diabolical plans of Dr Van Heerden and sets out to stop him as the good doctor hatches his plans in an unsuspecting England.

The actual story does not concern me too much, although Wallace’s vision of a Germany rising from the dust was spot on and his prediction concerning the danger inherent in biological warfare is chilling, even more so for the times in which he wrote. I was more interested in how a popular author might represent the social customs and mores of the period in which he wrote. The differences are subtle but important I think. Class consciousness is far more prevalent than I expected but not in an overbearing fashion, as it is often represented in retrospective pieces on the early 20^th century. Etiquette also matters more, along with appropriate dress, occupation and residence.

I can’t say that reading ‘Green Rust’ led to me making and great discoveries in terms of how British society between the wars functioned but that was not my aim. By far the most important element is the ‘feel’ of the times. People spoke, acted, worked and relaxed a little differently. They lacked many of the material comforts that we take for granted and also seemed to aspire to a lot less. There is little reliance on technology simply because it has yet to make the inroads that enjoy. The telegraph is the email of the day, telephones are common but not as quick or as far reaching as you might expect. The same applies to cars and aeroplanes are still exotic toys of the future for the majority of the population.

These are the kind of elements that I am looking to capture. I believe that it is in the small detail of the ephemeral that adds realistic substance to the weave of a historical fiction text. It is difficult to say if reading Edgar Wallace will give me a true feel for the period but doing so takes me closer to my objective. If I have time then I will look to read some of his contemporaries work as well but I think that I have gained a useful insight into a period that is different to our own today in far more subtle ways.

Formatting from Word 'doc' to EPUB

I have finished formatting the manuscript of ‘For Rapture of Ravens’. As e-readers use the ‘EPUB’ file format I decided to invest some time in using the ‘Sigil’ program. Previously I had simply loaded a Word copy of my manuscript but after I revised the original draft and loaded up a new version I was alerted to a significant number of errors and formatting problems appearing in the finished text. It seems that in crossing from .doc to EPUB some convertors are capable of giving rise to such problems.

The obvious answer is to do the conversion yourself, hence the investment in ‘Sigil’. Although it takes more time it also gives me another chance to review the manuscript and make one or two last minute changes and, if I am honest, corrections.

Using ‘Sigil’ turned out to be a lot less work than I had expected so now that the second instalment of ‘The Sorrow Song Trilogy’ has been submitted I have turned my attention to carrying out the same exercise for the first book; ‘The War Wolf’. There’s a part of me that really chafes at the knowledge that the e-reader version is not as good as it should be so for that fact alone this is a worthwhile undertaking. Also, I want to submit this book to other platforms such as i-Tunes and I want it to be right. I don’t want readers to think that I do not care; I do!

I also think that this is a good use of time while I wait for the second book to make its appearance. I have another writing project on the back burner at the moment, well actually the gas is a little higher than that, and I will be giving it my full attention once I have finished re-formatting ‘The War Wolf’. I wish I did this writing thing as a full time job, not just because I love it but because I have a serious shortage of time! I have so many ideas for so many different projects knocking about my head, all I need is a device that will allow me to write telepathically because as fast as I can type it still seems too slow!

I have finished the second part of the Sorrow song Trilogy!

Well, almost. The actual writing part is complete. I am now in the process of formatting the manuscript in Sigil, an epub file creator. I write using Microsoft’s Word, which I find to be an excellent word-processor, and as I use more than one computer to do this there are no compatibility issues. This did not seem to be a problem with regards to creating a digital version of the manuscript either. Certainly when I submitted my first novel, The War Wolf, it made its appearance on the Kindle in fine form.

A little later I received some comments from readers that suggested that I should include a who’s who of characters as there is rather a few of them, what with it being a historical fiction novel. I also decided to a do a bit of cleaning up of the text, just a few lines that I thought could have been better written. As a result I reviewed the manuscript in Word again and then submitted it to Kindle, exactly the same as I had done the first time around. The results were not the same, however.

Another reader commented in a review about the poor formatting so I decided to have a look for myself by downloading a copy onto my Nexus 7 tablet. Sure enough I encountered various annoying problems, missing words and some words substituted by meaningless characters.

I could understand how this would annoy a reader who had paid for the book but to be honest it really annoyed me as the author. Amazon keep 30% of my sales in payment and they also accept the responsibility for transferring my manuscript from Word into epub for the Kindle. Clearly they had not done a good job in this instance.

Now I could have gotten on my high horse and complained to Amazon, and maybe I should have, but other writers, when asked, offered a different point of view. Some were of the opinion that the manuscript is the writer’s sole responsibility and that it is just not good practice to rely on others to get the formatting right when transferring it to other mediums, such as the epub file format. I think that there is an element of truth in this. I would not go so far as some suggested in learning how to manipulate the code to ensure the cleanest possible transfer of the manuscript from one format to another simply because I do not have the time for it. Fine if you do, not to mention the capability to take on something that technical, but I have a full-time job, a wife, kids, and a football team to support. Time is my most precious commodity!

This is where a program like Sigil comes in. It allows the author to upload a word file, check the formatting, and then save it as an epub file. It does not take away the requirement to go through the text one line at a time to make sure that nothing has crept into the format or that anything has been changed, that labour intensive task remains. The key point is, however, that the interface is based on ‘what you see is what you get’. This makes spotting errors that much easier. Yes it is time consuming but at least this approach instils more confidence in the fact that the final product, the epub file of For Rapture of Ravens, will not only contain any formatting errors but also that when Amazon transfers it to their Kindle format they have less opportunity for introducing any of their own during the process.

My intention is to get this second instalment out by the end of this month. I really want to see this book out there as I think that it makes a worthwhile companion to the first, which I was ridiculously proud of when I first saw it available. That then leaves me with the third and final book to complete. It already exists in a skeleton form. I need to put a lot of flesh on those bones, however. I have learnt so much in writing the first two novels that I am keen to apply that new knowledge to the final of the series. There is a part of me that would like a little break from Saxon England, however. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing about 1066 and I will definitely be finishing the Sorrow Song Trilogy, but I have other literary interests as well. Recently I have begun work on an alternative history project. It is a very dark and disturbing subject within in British history based upon the premise of ‘what if things had gone this way instead of the way that they did?’ It also touches on a subject that is very important to me but that is all I am willing to say at the moment.

I do not want to end with For Rapture for Ravens pushed into the shadows as that would be a disservice to the book and to myself as its author. I am very proud to have completed it so if you are interested in learning what befalls Coenred, Mildryth, and the real historical characters of 1066 then please look out for the publication date, which should hopefully be much sooner than later.