Leaving the Day Job

Barbara Custer included lots of zombies in When Blood Reigns.

Yesterday, I retired from my job as a respiratory therapist. I worked at the hospital for 34 years, and much of what happened provided grist for my fiction. A lot of mixed emotions went into my decision, not the least which involved my struggles with night vision. Pennsylvania’s wet climate means rain and snow most nights, making getting to work in the dark, early mornings difficult.

I worked with a fabulous group of people and was amazed by the outpouring of love and support I received. But the decision to stay or go is never simple in real life, any more than it should be for our characters. All the same, retiring will mean exciting things for Night to Dawn Magazine & Books and my writing.

For starters, overhauling my website. The website needs work which requires more time than I had after working during the day. I’ve already consolidated the spam and backup, saving money. I’m contemplating Yoast and a premium template.

I’ll be doing a promo with the October Frights blog hop in the coming days. I have two book submissions I’m reviewing, I have in mind to start looking for people to review the magazine and books. There are also short story submissions and work on the layout of Night to Dawn 35. That, and my writing. As for that night vision problem, I’m working from home with plenty of light. Unlike the computer at work, mine has a zoom feature to enlarge the print.

One of the books needs overhauling to meet Smashwords’ requirements. The merge between CreateSpace and Kindle seems to be going well but may affect royalties.

I’m going to miss working with my buddies at the hospital, but I won’t miss the long hours. And I look forward to this next chapter with Night to Dawn.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on quitting the day job and, if you’ve taken the plunge, what it meant for you and your writing.

Ode to Mike’s Backpack

Barbara Custer's backpack

At the outlets this week, I bought a new backpack. The battered black one I was using went into the trash. No big deal except that the tattered bag belonged to my late husband, Mike.

Mike got that backpack in 1996 before he got sick. At the same time, he got a briefcase for me. Both items were brand new, but Mike said he found them in the trash. Perhaps he was pulling my leg, but at the time, several couples near us were divorcing. You’d be surprised at what people throw away during a divorce.

That backpack served Mike well during our forays to the islands. It accompanied us on tours through Italy. After Parkinson’s Disease enforced its scorched earth policy with Mike, I used that backpack to go to my writers’ conferences. I toted the bag to Ocean City and everywhere else until this week.

Discarding the backpack felt like trashing a memory. How could I do this, I wondered? But funny thing, the new bag is black, too, and decorated with poppy, flowers. Mike once told me I reminded him of the poppy flower, so he called me Popple. So those memories will continue with the new bag.

When you get down to it, both items are plain backpacks, made of canvas or leather, and such items wear off after months, sometimes years of use. But the memories involved will live on forever.

Battle of the Covers

psychological horror written by Gerald Browning

The cover war started during Smashwords’ July promo. Because Smashwords had changed its formatting guidelines, two of the books that had been out awhile didn’t meet specs. I noted that Gerald Browning’s Demon in my Head had drawn attention, so I reformatted his book and ran a Facebook promo on it. During the process, I got to thinking, this is a darned good read. How come it doesn’t get more sales? That was when someone gave a vague criticism of the cover.

Designing covers are not my strong suit. The cover design is more straightforward for the Night to Dawn magazine because its cover has more real estate than the trade paperback books. I decided to apply the following maxim: if one person tells me I’m a balloon, I will ignore them. If two people call me a balloon, I’ll listen. If three people call me a balloon, I’d better get a ribbon and float.

I posted the cover image on the Facebook page for The Writers Coffeehouse. Many of my writer buddies belong to this group. Whenever I can, I go to their monthly meetings in Willow Grove. These folks recognize a good or bad cover, and I received a lot of constructive criticism with suggestions on what I could do to improve the cover. It was time to grab that ribbon and float.

After fortifying myself with a Mylar balloon purchase, I approached Gerald with the suggestions about his cover. He’d heard similar sentiments from people who read his book and was glad to get a new cover. Next an email to Teresa Jay, the cover artist for his book. She started with several ideas, and two of them looked good. Enthused, I took them back to my Writer’s Coffeehouse and got more helpful suggestions. One included using a filter to get rid of the cartoonish look on one of the images. Where I live, filters are for coffeepots or air conditioners, and I mentioned the same to Teresa. Thankfully, she has a great sense of humor. After going back another time, this is the final new cover for Demon in my Head.

I got four takeaways from this: first, if you read eBooks, you can get a great deal at Smashwords during July. Sometimes, the books are free. Second, Demon in my Head is a darned good tale, and folks who like psychological horror and the occult would find this a must-read.

Third, I want to thank Teresa Jay for her patience and good humor with making the changes. She does the back cover for my Night to Dawn magazines, and wraparounds for some of the books. I’m glad to have her. Finally, to the folks at the Writers Coffeehouse, I owe you guys a lot of thanks and balloons. I’ve proud to be a member, and I look forward to going to future meetings. To aspiring writers, I strongly recommend you go to some meetings. Initially established by Jonathan Maberry and other literary greats, the Writers Coffeehouse I attend meets the last Sunday of each month at the Willow Grove Barnes & Noble, from 12 to 2:00 p.m. Jonathan later established one at the Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego. There are meetings in Rosemont, PA, and other locations too. In any case, it’s about writers helping writers.

Barbara Custer loves Mylar balloonsand horror fiction.

A Good Reason and the Real Reason

science fiction tales by Barbara Custer

Yesterday, I headed to the supermarket to take advantage of the sales. Well, that was a handy excuse. The real reason I went was because I’ve contemplated the colorful Mylar balloons on their display shelves. Perhaps someone might cite ill health or better opportunity as a reason to quit a job, but deep down, they were simply unhappy working at their company. In both cases, we have our good reasons and our real reasons.

This principle applies to writing, too, so I have a confession to make. A while back, I blogged about The Forgotten People, citing my reasons for rewriting and publishing the stories. My post didn’t ring true. The reasons I gave were valid—the stories feature timid, bullied people who didn’t fit into society. I started working on spinoffs of these tales after the Termite Invasion of 2017. Along the way, I stumbled and needed the help of a good editor.

My real motive kept me going through the tough edits: our unstable political climate.

In particular, healthcare. The two last stories in The Forgotten People anthology, “The Forgotten Ward,” and “Good Samaritan” take place in 2050. Medicaid no longer exists, and due to the high costs, hospitals will not treat you without insurance or cash card. When your insurance runs out, better hope you have money. You can’t barter with real estate or other valuables unless you can find a buyer fast. Without money, all treatment stops. The protagonists in these tales find a way to smuggle life-saving medicine to indigent patients, but they pay dearly for their efforts.

I got to thinking about Trump’s proposed 2019 cuts to Medicare, SNAP, and Medicaid. His pending changes include Medicare enrollees paying the same copay on every doctor visit, whether it be routine or a specialist. This could shortchange specialists who may in turn refuse to treat Medicare patients (shades of “Forgotten Ward”). If I met Mr. Trump, I’d ask, “Since when did age and money define someone’s right to life and medical care?”

Granted, I took plenty of artistic license. In “The Forgotten Ward,” the sickest patients are warehoused into a dirty ward where they’re left to die. In reality, if we continue on this slippery slope, the hospitals of the future may simply discharge patients who run out of funds. But there you have it, folks: my real reason for publishing this book.

My Mylar balloons, who have an opinion on everything, from politics to writing, suggested that focusing on the real reason for telling a story may result in better writing. Methinks they have it right; it did, after all, motivate me to complete the book. Your thoughts?

Tale of Two Word Programs

Some of y’all might have read my post on Facebook about having Word 2007 and Word 2016 on one computer. Dat’s wight, wabbits, two different Word programs, one computer, and no, my quest for good PDF software hasn’t caused me to lose it. On Word 2016, I’m finding a better quality of photo when I save. According to a coworker, it has a “PDF maker,” and what’s more, if I need to make small changes on the PDF, I can do so. I plan to use 2016 for the books I send to CreateSpace and Lulu.

So then, you may wonder, why am I hanging onto to Word 2007? Well, because I process my eBooks through Smashwords. Its Meatgrinder software requires Doc files, the kind produced by Word 2003 and 2007. Now Word 2016 is capable of producing a Doc file, but you have to keep remembering to save as Doc, and according to some folks, it may cause changes to your file. At first, I felt like the Biblical person trying to serve two masters. After a discussion with my Mylar balloons, I decided to keep Word 2007, but get 2016. My computer repair person cheerfully installed the new software without overriding the old.

If my Mike were alive, he’d be smiling and nodding, then say, “Yep. That’s my Barbara.”

This blog is my first go at Word 2016. I’ve been nosing around the ribbon and found a lot of cool gadgets, but not the Adobe add-in (PDF maker). However, I found that I can set my dpi to 330 when I’m working with files that have images. I think I can reset the dpi with Publisher 2016, which I love. It gives you some nice ways to highlight and shadow your pictures. I’m really grateful for the generous dpi allowed, as Adobe wasn’t user-friendly. The other PDF programs hand trouble handling files my size.
When I get my Night to Dawn proofs, I know full well there will be tweaks needed, and if I’m right, I’ll make those tweaks with Word 2016 on board. However, I’m redoing two books for Smashwords, which necessitates Word 2007.

Do you work with more than one Word program? How has this worked for you? I’d love to hear about your experiences. 🙂

The Quest Has Begun

 

Mylar balloons are the Night to Dawn mascotSince my last blog, I’ve been trying out and testing PDF software. Night to Dawn 33 never got published through Lulu; I usually use Lulu and CreateSpace for NTD issues. My difficulties with image compression were the reason I didn’t use Lulu, where CreateSpace seems to handle the files better. Per the Mylar balloons’ advice, I looked into PDF software programs.

Three of them made it past the “let’s leave this one alone” stage: PDF Pro (online), Adobe and Nitro Pro. I abandoned Adobe after a three-hour trial period – had no clue how to go about working it. PDF Pro was user-friendly, but could not handle the NTD uploads. I’ve had Nitro Pro five days and am sitting on the fence with this one. I haven’t been able to upload my Night to Dawn file for conversion. NTD 34 has 51 MB, and I had in mind to use the PDF software expressly for the NTD magazines and book manuscripts. Nitro Pro encountered errors with NTD upload attempts. However, I was able to upload one of the book files and convert it to a PDF. My sense is a lot of programs don’t handle files over 50 MB well. I spoke about this with my computer guy, and he suggested printing to PDF through Windows 10. I thought that printing to PDF and saving was cute and doable. Unfortunately, the folks at Lulu didn’t agree. I got a one-line message: contact support.

When the Mylar balloons said I had a problem, they weren’t kidding. I also believe that every issue has a solution.

I’m seriously considering updating my Word software. I currently use 2007, which is an excellent software for most users, but I may need to go with Word 2016 because you get more options with PDF saving. If I do go with Word 2016, this will preclude Nitro since the expense for both would be more than I’m ready to handle. I also believe Nitro can work, but there is a learning curve. So, it’s onto the fence, with my Mylar balloons to hold me upright.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

  • Subscribe to Blog via Email

    Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 452 other subscribers