I find it fascinating to watch politics unfold to the south of me. I don’t remember being as interested in US Politics as now. Of course, US politics hasn’t been as colourful. It is, in turn, unsettling,  hilarious and worrisome. Every time Trump tweets, he reveals another crack in the US education system.

My goodness, those are fighting words but the longer I watch the way things unfold the more I see how important it is to have an educated electorate. The citizen tax base should not be the primary funding source for education. A depressed area has a hard time providing adequate (and notice I say adequate) education for its youth. Poverty becomes a cycle if students have no skills when they finally leave the system, nor the capability to learn new ones.  An Adequate education, at the least,  should provide those skills and ensure that the electorate actually can think their way out of a wet paper bag.

But that all presumes that people want to think. It is so much easier to accept half backed ideas, out of context arguments and a narrow-minded view of the world if it meets your own beliefs.  We are all, in one way or another, plagued with that trait. The thing is that education is supposed to teach critical thinking. To teach that the world is a big place with room for more than one way of living and that we can meet on common ground.

It appears to me that the current US political climate is insisting that there can only be winners and losers and if you don’t get what you want, exactly as you want it, then you are a loser. And that the winner is right because they have won – might makes right and the winner writes the rules. Everyone else is wrong and that ‘fact’ means that because you ‘won’ then your way must be the only right way. No common ground there.

Compromise is not a word in the current use south of the border.  Compromise ensures that everyone comes away from the table with something that can help them move ahead. Compromise ensures that level headed discussions will take place. Compromise means that no one needs to feel disenfranchised. Compromise is collegial, not antagonistic. Compromise seeks the middle ground, not the high ground. And shouldn’t that be what a country is striving for? Inclusivity for all its citizens regardless of race, colour, religion or economic background.

Compromise means listening to the facts and not discounting those that don’t fit with what you want. Compromise does NOT sow seeds of discord and chaos because that is the only way you can get what you want.  And what we see happening south of the border are the seeds of discord and chaos. I fear, that one day, the American people will be reaping what has been sown and it will not be a pretty sight.

The book launch was a great success. Nina Munteanu gave a brief talk about the Hero’s Journey. For me, that is the most seminal concept for my writing. When she first introduced me to it, I realised that one of the reasons it resonates with me is that we are ALL living the hero’s journey.

I then read a passage from the book. That was a challenge. Sarah F W had chosen which passage so, being dutiful, that is the one I read. Except that I had forgotten all about having to do the reading. As a result, I hadn’t practiced.  I did get more confident as I read. Sarah streamed it live on Facebook and a couple who came late were listening to it as the arrived. Technology is a wonderful thing.

Now that the book is officially launched, the hard part starts. Marketing is not an easy thing and it takes time, lots of time. But no matter how good your book is, without it no one will know and all that writing, editing, and launching does you no good without it. So now I am on to the next part of the journey to being a writer – letting the world know that Beast Master is out there and should be read!

The launch date is just around the corner. I am scrambling now to put everything in place in time for it. I have updated my postcards with a QR code which will take the reader to a preview of Beast Master. I have uploaded the book to both Kobo and Amazon. Kobo was easy. Amazon not so much. I still don’t have an image there. I’ve sent them an email, but it takes 24 hours for them to get back to you so it might not be displayed by the 13th.  I need to update my marketing material and figure out how to add the book to various review sites like GoodReads.

So much to do, so little time.

I’ve bit the bullet. I am publishing Beast Master and May 13th is the date. I have eARCs out there. I have two ISBNs (one for MOBI format – Amazon and one for ePub – the rest of the world).  I am shivering in my shoes!

So I’ve converted my book successfully into an ePub which can be read by Kobo and Overdrive. It was a fairly straight forward process. Guido Henkel’s book, the Zen of eBook Publishing is easy to follow. I have a glancing knowledge of CSS (cascading style sheets) so I wasn’t terrified when he suggested strongly that I should convert my word document into an HTML document by copying and pasting it into an HTML editor. There were some steps to do before you paste it into the editor, principally so you can locate some of your stylistic flourishes like italics and chapter headings etc. but his instructions were very clear. So that worked really well.

The next step is to convert it to an amazon format – mobi.