More Kvetching about Kindle

I've been trying to figure out how to put an intent into the first line of paragraphs for Kindle. If I use a tab, then in some paragraphs, when Amazon reformats it, they put in two tabs. Or a tab and a space.

But if I try doing it with five spaces, then when Amazon reformats it, the process jerks out the spaces so the line is all the way to the left.

So, why not put in a double carriage-return between paragraphs, you might ask? Sort of like what you see here?

Ah, but then what happens is that most of the paragraphs will have double-carriage return, but some of them won't. And there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when that happens.

I think I need to drink more. But then I've downloaded a few professional-grade books and even they have formatting errors.

Definitely need to drink more.

Kindle and Formatting

I'm trying to get smarter on formatting stuff for the Kindle. My test vehicle is Aluminum Rain.

But it's not much fun. I used to play with HTML a very long time ago, but it's far more complicated than it was back in the day. "Self-publishing", at least electronically, seems to be also a matter of book-binding and all of that.

No complaints, at least some folks have read them.

Sam Hawkins vs. Lena Smirnova

Besides the obvious, writing the two characters has different challenges.

Sam is more of a traditional hard-boiled PI. He takes a job and he does it. He dishes out lumps and takes them as necessary. He's by no means a gorilla, but he keeps what's private out of the story that he is narrating. What you see is what he wants you to see. Essentially, his tale is a long version of his eventual report to his clients.

Lena's character is more complex, in part because she is not the narrator. You never see the narrator (like Chorus). Because Lena does not control the narration, you see a lot more of her life.

I read a lot of the old school detective novels when I was a teenager: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross MacDonald, John D. MacDonald and Mickey Spillane. Of the lot, it's a bit of a shame that Ross MacDonald's work seems to have drifted into obscurity the fastest, though some of them have been reissued in the last few years.

For me, Lena's character is harder to write because of the level of detail and complexity of her life. She has a large multi-generational extended family (I maintain a growing genealogical chart), she does other things besides detective work, and, in the one that I am now working on, she has a love life (such as it is). She is involved in her community. Because Lena lives in a fictional American state, I have had to create maps as I go and imagine a bit of history.

Though, in true hard-boiled tradition, both Lena and Sam are somewhat alike. They are both comfortable in their own skins and in being on their own.

The two characters will meet eventually.

Project the Next^2

I am also working on another Sam Hawkins story. This one does not have a working title.
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Chapter 1

I was hired to do a background check on a possible candidate for a political-appointee job.  They’re not terribly unusual in this area. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t bother to ask why.  If the person hiring me has a good reason for hiring me to investigate someone, asking why will often result in my learning a lot more than I care to know.  I’m not a shrink, I don’t get paid for listening to other people’s problems.  If someone has a not-too-good reason for wanting to hire me, they’ll just lie about it.

Sometimes I know they’re lying, sometimes I don’t.  I check to see if there is a restraining order out with the person I’m supposed to check’s name on it.  I’ll check to see if the person is a witness in the kind of cases where witnesses couldn’t afford to buy life insurance.  But mostly, I’ll check to make sure that the checks that I’m given don’t bounce.

My name is Sam Hawkins.  I’m a private detective.

Project the Next

While Aluminum Rain is offline for a few hours (Amazon's processing a corrected copy), this is the first chapter in the next work.
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Chapter 1

Lena Smirnova didn’t wake up in a cold sweat during the night. That was a good thing.  The counselor that she saw had mentioned something about her suffering from “post traumatic stress”.  She had thought that the word “disorder” was part of it, but he had explained that for a lot of things that people had experienced, post traumatic stress was a normal reaction. They were more worried about the people who didn’t have a reaction to it than those that did. Or so they told her.

Aluminum Rain and Apple Pie

Aluminum Rain is now available for purchase in the Amazon Kindle store. It's only a buck, less than a cup of coffee from almost anywhere (except here).

If you're a fan of the TV show Justified, you probably remember Mags Bennett and her apple pie moonshine. I had a taste of that last night, but not the stuff that Mags poisoned. It did indeed taste like apple pie and it was about the smoothest booze that I've ever had. I could see where someone could put away several shots of it and end up being drunk on their ass without knowing what hit them.

Gloria Barfed on the Subway

I forgot to mention that Blood on the Snow made a brief appearance on the Amazon best-seller's list. I didn't think of capturing a screen-shot until it was almost too late.

Almost.

Wuffo Aluminum Rain?

As you may have noticed, I have taken down most of Aluminum Rain.

First, that's the title that I've chosen.

Second, what I had posted was the first draft. The story has changed a bit since then. I've revised it a few times and now I have it out to some "beta readers".

After they've read it, I'll offer it for sale in the Kindle store for a buck. I think that's a fair price for a novella of about 22,000 words. It's almost a "flash fiction" novella, as the first draft took a little over two weeks to write.

I have to take another look at the draft of Blood on the Range, as there is something about it that just doesn't feel right.

(And I have to gear up for court today.)

Aluminum Rain, Pt. II

My client was an elderly gent named James Bell.  He was related to Alexander Graham Bell, his father had been either a cousin or grand-nephew of the inventor.  James Bell was wealthy, not just rich.  He had money managers who looked after his investments.  This Bell was a patron of the musical arts and, in his youth, had been both a musician of some note and had helped jazz cross over into a higher level of society.  More to my concern, he was a great-uncle of Loftus.  I went to see him the day after I talked to Dr. Durden.

Aluminum Rain; Sam Hawkins Returns

I am working on a new Sam Hawkins story.  This one will be set around 1992.  I don't know if it'll work out to be a novel, a novella, or a short, but here is the first chapter:
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It didn’t look like much of an airplane, just bits of twisted and blackened metal.  The fragments had been laid out inside the outline of an airplane.  There probably had been an odor at one time, but the wreckage was old enough for any smell to have faded away.