ALTERING YOUR E-BOOK AFTER PUBLICATION: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Here are some thoughts on this...

*

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

*

With provision, altering a published work is acceptable. But see the preceding paragraph.

*

Let's set up a few provisions. Take from the pile as needed. Wouldn't want any of you going hungry.

*

I've been working on Neon Gods. It's important that all the sub-plots match. I daren't have anything in book two or book three contradicting material in book one - unless I'm being deliberately devious in order to reveal stunning plot-twists later.
   The work had not been going well. Large cast of characters. Many cults and conspiracies to wade through. And a sticking-point that I only recently ditched.
   For a long time, I stuck to the view that each book in the series would be about the same length. I didn't want to ramble too far from the main path on every new adventure.
   The more I tried to stick to the arbitrary limit of roughly 180,000 words, the more I became a prisoner of the format. I had to break out of a convention that would automatically limit the nature and amount of action in each story.
   Having now ditched the limit, I'll just write the stories I am meant to write. No need to worry about squeezing in so many cast-members.

*

Bearing that in mind, I started writing fresh material for Neon Gods. The scene? A rather plush house in the big city. Our anti-hero arrives by cab.
   In the first book I made it clear that cabbies were all government snitches. Cabmen couldn't be trusted. This new scene involved a tame cabbie, pressured into silence.
   I had to refresh the memory.
   Were these people cabbies, cabmen, or cab-men? Possibly a combination. I searched the original file and found my cabbies easily enough.
   Of the seven uses of cabmen, one was hyphenated. Inconsistency must go. I've updated Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords. Which brings me to this blog post.

*

Just because we have the capacity to constantly update e-books, doesn't mean that we should. I'm on record as saying this...
   If you really want to go back in and make massive changes to the story, write a new story and call it something else. Make sure you are absolutely straight with your readers when you do so.
   You can, and should, alter your e-book with the following in mind...

One. Correct mistakes, formatting glitches, and other typographical inconsistencies.

Two. If you made a potentially defamatory statement in your e-book, go back in and remove it.

Three. Make mechanical changes to improve the reading experience. For example, a Table of Contents with a better layout. Areas in the front matter of an e-book deserve to be clutter-free.
   In the back-matter of an e-book, you might be forced to update also available entries or biographical notes.
   You may still live in Wisconsin with a husband, but if he's your second husband you might want to mention him by name to avoid confusion and dagger-stares. And a second divorce.

Four. Adding bonus material that was unavailable for various reasons. This is okay. Best to leave it in the back matter.

Five. You spot material that needs tidying on the following grounds...the material as written makes a nonsense of the plot and you realise this late in the day...
   New material adds clarity to the work...
   Legal reasons prevent use of the material as written and something must take its place.

*

Time to look at those points. How am I doing?

One. Yes, I spent the better part of a year wrestling with one of Amazon's "known issues" before I found a fix. No one noticed, all the products were updated, and I continued as before.
   Fixing formatting glitches and killing gremlins is inevitable.

Two. No. Haven't defamed anyone yet. Misattributed a contributor, but I managed to put that right.

Three. Yes, I've streamlined Tables of Contents. Periodically, I update the back matter.

Four. I'm considering this, but haven't done it as I blog unto ye. Better, perhaps, to gather additional material in a new collection. Depends on the nature and size of the bonus goodies.

Five. The tricky one, with its three categories. And some of those can be subdivided into other areas. Okay, first part. My plots are all nonsensical anyway, so I have no reason to alter them once published.
   Second part. Adding clarity to the work. I am considering doing this for one story that is already out there. Two areas concern me, both are technical, and, after studying many a YouTube video, I've concluded that a few extra sentences here or there would help the readers out.
   That's not rewriting the story, changing the plot, altering the setting, revamping the characters or anything major. After having published more than a million words, I feel two rough spots could do with flattening. I call that good going.
   If I go ahead with the additional material, providing clarity, I'll talk about that in a blog post. I have no desire to alter the plots of any of my stories.
   The third part. Legal reasons. Haven't faced those yet.

*

So what do you need to know about changing your e-book after publication? For the Kindle, you must inform Amazon. Go into the bookshelf, and use the contact us section. Provide as much information as possible. Amazon conducts a review.
   If changes to the work are critical, Amazon will e-mail the people who bought your book. Those readers are entitled to update to the latest version by managing their Kindle.

*

What do you really need to know about altering your e-book after publication? My advice is to resist temptation. You write the story you write, and you throw it out there. Let it stay that way.
   If you want to write a better version or take a second stab at it, go for a sequel and show yourself that your writing improved since the Olden Times.
   Don't rewrite your plots. Reach a point at which you cut loose of your story, and let it go. Write another story. Keep going.

*

Update on this topic. HERE'S A BLOG POST ABOUT THAT.

OFTEN, READERS JUST HAVE TO LUMP IT. NARNIA RAISED THIS POINT: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

In an earlier blog post, I wrote of posts that never make it to the blog. They are unfinished or unfinishable. I wasn't planning on using this material. Plans change.

*

Writers make mistakes.
   I'm not talking about typos. No. (I tend to type thongs when I reach for the word things. That is a keyboard layout problem. Also, something to do with wildly flailing fingers.)
   Mistakes.
   If you send a woman into a scene with one name and she exits stage-left under another name, your reason for this had best be plot-driven.
   I was thinking about the second woman as I typed up the first woman's adventures. The scene itself involved a woman and a man. Luckily, I nailed the error.
   Yes, I find myself drawing diagrams to help me through the madness of steering characters across the vast plain that is the story.
   Stick-figures will ALWAYS be in fashion.

*

Clive Staples Lewis. Lewis calls police. Clive is arrested.
   Lewis wrote all sorts of stuff. He is best-remembered for his books about Narnia. Characters from one world journey to another, and have adventures.
   Perhaps this is what Lewis did, moving from Belfast to England. He journeyed to another world and had adventures, carrying scraps of the earlier world with him.
   That is neither here nor there.
   In telling tales of Narnia, he did something that many readers think of as a big mistake. Characters have access to Narnia. They don't reach the magical place by the same means each time. Also, there's a shifting roster of participants in the tales.
   If you haven't read the stories, I'll gloss over that ending.
   But I'll talk about a side-point that features in the story. One character, Susan, let's call her the sensible one, doesn't turn up in the last book.
   She is no longer a friend of Narnia. Her access to the place is gone. Susan became too sensible to believe in Narnia. It was all just a silly game of childhood pretence.

*

Writers make mistakes. Readers do so, too. To what extent?
   The writer creates a tale.
   Once that tale flies free into the world, it is open to interpretation. The writer has to lump it. However...
   There may be things in that tale the writer determines as fixed. Immovable. Beyond wild interpretation. Often, readers just have to lump it. Narnia raised this point.
   Readers thought Susan was somehow banished from Narnia. She'd fallen from grace, committed some crime, discovered nylons and lipstick and invitations...
   Lewis received letters. He did his best to answer the point about Susan. Was she sent to hell? No. Did she ever reach Narnia again? He hoped so.
   Lewis talked of having to write a different kind of book for a tale featuring a grown-up sensible Susan. The writer always has a treasure-store of other considerations when it comes to writing a story. Those considerations don't feature in every story. Not enough time.
   Sensible Susan. Well, going by the book she doesn't feature in, she's silly when no longer believing in Narnia - for she's turned to the sensible world of another reality.

*

I ran out of steam, stopped, and turned to another blog post. What was I trying to get at? In Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords, I gleefully murdered a few fantasy standards.
   Sword-wielding male mercenary teams up with female enemy to thwart greater threat. Does he end up in bed with her? No. Readers may bitch about that.
   They just have to lump it. I took that lesson from Narnia.
   And the sequel to Neon Gods...
   Is set at the same time. As is the sequel to that book. So the villain from part one is not brought to book in part two. Or part three.
   Sometimes readers just have to lump it. What appears to be a mistake is down to planning. The reader may feel this is mistaken planning.
   At which point, my advice to the reader is...write your own books. I encourage you to.
  
  
  

NEON GODS CHASTISED BY THIEVES: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Dust blew off shelves, and I considered a few sequels. I can't publish Neon Gods Chastised by Thieves right after I've written it. The story collides with Neon Gods Derailed by Claws.
   In turn that story rubs shoulders, and knees groins, with later books. Yes, they are arranged alphabetically. No, that does not mean they take place in some semblance of chronological order.
   The first book was labelled steampunk. A frothy alleyway of the sword and science flavour, this clockwork sewer tributary of a term is neither here nor there to me.
   Still, if the shoe fits, Cyberella...
   I've been writing this series in some strange mosaically-inspired fashion. Eventually, the tiles will fall into place and we'll all see the bigger picture.
   Weeding is helpful. I found two chronologies - which makes sense. There are snippets from the dim past, and those have a place in the mosaic.
   What I found unacceptable was the different time-frames I'd employed across the files. The ancient era ends with the death of a despot a century before...
   He's cut into chunks.
   The year 500-odd is remembered by characters who grew up in the shadows of relatives and their remembrances of times past.
   So far, so normal.
   With the Tyrant's death, a new broom swept in and life rebooted in the year 1. The main story kicks off with the death of a king in the year 99, and the conspiracy that unfolds in 100.
   So far, so normal.
   Events from the Tyrant's time spill a long stain over the stories that happen a century on.
   Everything seemed easy enough to work out. Except, in one file, I labelled the early events in negative numbers leading up to the Tyrant's fall.
   So I had three numbering systems going. Weeding is helpful. All that year -25 nonsense is gone. I created a list, year by year - with the old system and the new - showing who was born, who died, what happened...
   And I banished negativity. This happened in the year 500-odd. And then, after the Tyrant's fall, in the year 23...
   I have whole sections written and whole sections planned. They must flow in and out of competing stories - whole novels - and still make some kind of sense when viewed as a mosaic.
   Progress is glacial. But it is progress. Dozens of files contain notes. Gradually, they are absorbed into larger files. These characters go on that adventure...
   And those characters turn elsewhere.
   This character appears across volumes.
   I have been drawing maps and making charts. Spitting teeth. All to build this strange mosaic. Readers should get it when they see what happens in book two.
   Oh.
   Like that. Or...
   Oh fuck!
   That's more likely.
   I mean it in a good way. Though bad things must happen to much-loved characters. Not that you know who those much-loved characters are, yet. Leave that nonsense to me.