Blog: Lit Just Got Real

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You find me today giggling coquettishly with excitement, like a medieval monarch with a new serfdom to dominate, for LO! there has been progress on THE NOVEL.

For the past couple of weeks I have been talking to the BRILLIANT comics artist Rachael Smith, who has been designing a COVER for me. I first saw her stuff when she did the poster for All In The Same Boat with Lost City Writers, which was ACE, so I was VERY pleased when she agreed to do the cover for 'Storm House'. It has been a LOT of fun working with her - I say "working" but, as with when Mr John Allison did the artwork for Dinosaur Planet, it was mostly a case of me trying not to AUDIBLY SQUEAL when she emailed me drafts and occasionally asking for something to be a slightly different colour. The finished work is GORGEOUS, I'll show you it soon I promise!

Once the image was sorted I added the LOGO and suddenly it looked like an Actual Real Book. It was really strange - out of nowhere, after more than a year of working on it, there it was, MY NOVEL! I sat and just STARED at it for ages, ASTONISHED that it could actually have happened.

Yesterday I started the process of uploading it to the Kindle Select Program, which is where it'll be hosted. When you upload it they have a VIRTUAL KINDLE which you can read it on and, again, I was AMAZED by the FACT that it looked JUST like a real book! The cover, the acknowledgements and even the CONTENTS PAGE looked like an Actual Book On The Kindle. It seems weird to be saying it because OF COURSE it does, but it suddenly struck me that this was a proper actual thing I was doing. I realise now that this is EXACTLY the same sensation I had 300 million years ago when The Masters Of Nothing recorded a cassette one afternoon and I made sleeve for it using a piece of lined paper and some coloured pencils. It felt REAL, the same as it did years later with Say It With Words or the Hey Hey 16K DVD, and it was EXTREMELY exciting!

Things are PROCESSING as we speak, but I think we're all on track for the OFFICIAL LAUNCH over Indietracks weekend. Last night I met with The Author Charles Flowers to get some HOT TIPS on publicising it (also, beer) and I have many IDEAS. The initial plan is to make the book available for FREE for a few days so that hopefully I can get it off to a good start with the mighty Amazon Algorithm, and I shall be using every opportunity to remind you about THAT when we get nearer to the time. For now though: ZOINKS! It looks REAL!!

posted 12/7/2017 by MJ Hibbett

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