I Always Meant To…

Ever since my first NaNo, back when it was Lulu.com that gave free copies of your book, I’ve been wanting to do it. Not to self-publish–though I’m watching J.A. Konrath and pondering–but just to have it. In book form. To hold it in my hands and reaffirm to myself and to the universe that it was meant to be.

And also to necessitate my explaining to friend after friend the difference between really being published and having a copy of your book printed. 🙄

So, yeah. Finally did it. Started formatting, stopped it, told myself it was silly vanity and I should be working on editing, then decided to just go do it and spent all day and well into the night on it yesterday.

I ended up having a lot of fun.  ^_^   Tons of frustration, yes, because I was not happy with the cover choices and Createspace does not make it easy to figure out what to do if you want to make your own, but eventually I got it. Check out the cover I made!

Title and author name changed to protect the guilty. 😉 Yes, it’s small and low-res. I did that to make it easier to load. The proof I submitted is 11 x 8.5, and 300 DPI. And let me tell you, I was pulling my hair out when I figured out the first one, that I’d labored over for hours, was too low-res, and no, you can’t just change some numbers to fix that… Also, the green lines are just markers; they won’t be on the proof. The spine title, however, will, and so will a bar-code on the back. I couldn’t avoid that, though I was careful to select “not available for sale” in every way I could find.

Art by the marvelous Sambre (careful, she draws yaoi and that’s what she has on her front page), whom I commissioned to draw them ages ago. Taro and Rafe on the front, Eve and Ben on the back. I tried to keep her signatures in both pics, but it didn’t work out.

On the back is an edited version of my query blurb. Inside the front cover I put rave reviews. As this copy is just for me, it doesn’t matter the comments are from my friends. 😀

Here’s the dedication page:

Dedicated to my dear friends

who always encourage me.

To be better. To try harder.

To DOOOO IIIIIITTTT

whatever “IIIIIITTTT” may be.

But most especially this book is dedicated

to the brilliant and funny, the best teacher ever:

Mr. M. Eichholtz

Thank you, sir.

You taught me that poetry does not suck

and introduced me to Shakespeare and Stephen King.

Not even those masters

could properly express my gratitude.

I’m so excited!