New Dimensions in Novel Covers

 But not intentionally.

I just spent two delightful days going around the bushes with tech support when my corrected book cover wouldn't upload properly. Over and over I checked; the template was 3208 pixels wide. My document was 3208 pixels wide. The cover that worked was 3208 pixels wide. Why is it displaying at the wrong size?

Tech support -- and the forum, when I eventually got into it -- were no help. "Did you use a template? Did you remember to erase the template? Did you account for bleed and trim?" Over and over "check the size," they say. "I checked the size," I say.

Until I finally figured it out. I found it through experiment, actually. And confirmed it through experiment. Unlike all the other graphics work I've done in the past, where pixels rule, the cover importer is entirely set by whatever inches the document claims it is set to.

But depressingly, I can't even upload the final revised covers. Because I am in editing and the page count might change.

And the editing? I have two beta readers who will get back to me "soon."

***

So I'm basically stuck on finishing Hounds. And that's making it really hard to clear that book from my head and focus on Wedding.

I really need the sit-down time to read my research. I have Gender Gymnastics: Performing and Consuming Japan's Takarazuka Revue and Come and Sleep: The Folklore of the Japanese Fox. There is, I just realized today, some weird intersections between Takarazuka and Kitsune. I also want to go back and review Astronauts of Ancient Japan, a beautifully stupid book in the von Daniken mode. 

I am still amused that the speech-to-text on my phone can handle "Hideyoshi" and "Kusanagi" but "Ohayo Gozaimasu" confuses it and it still doesn't know what to do with "scene" and "beat." And I've pretty much given up on dissuading it from thinking "I've seen a fox."

After a week of work (well, mostly a week of being sick and playing Fallout 4) my only process insight is that I spent a lot of days during the last book where I wasn't ready to write a scene and thus, didn't write.

So I'm going to try to outline tighter. We'll see how it goes. I'm not unhappy with the results at the moment. I think my discovery writing stumbled upon some good stories to tell in the London setting and I didn't, in the end, waste that much time in backing and filling. But I have so many stories I'd like to try to tell and I would be so happy if I could work even a little faster.