Actually, I have come full circle. I hope that doesn't mean anything significant.

The latest? Page creep. I have downloaded a template from CreateSpace and used it to set up my book in a 6x9 trim size. I review my Word document to make sure the formatting and pagination are correct, and then I upload it to CreateSpace. After conversion, I review what will be the file used to generate printed books. And the pagination is off.

A chapter whose final, two paragraphs appear on page 144 in my Word document pushes itself onto page 145 in CreateSpace. This means the next chapter begins on page 146.

Obviously, I cannot have this.

Oh, it's not obvious? Permit me to explain. In my world, chapters must all start on odd-numbered pages.

Aislinn suggests I need to let it go. This would be the same Aislinn who will rip up a perfectly good drawing if she is unsatisfied with the third eyelash on the left eye. Uh-huh. Let it go, indeed.

So, back to the user forum I will go. It's not easy being me.

Obviously, I am going to complain about something. Something that is a wonderful service that will make my life better. Something that will allow me to publish my books in the privacy of my own mind. I get it. But I'm going to complain anyway.

A few weeks back, you may recall that I was beating my head against the wall because Nook's e-publishing utility was vomiting up an error message that was completely inaccurate.

Today, the villain in my personal narrative is Amazon's print-on-demand service, CreateSpace. It keeps telling me that my cover image is not 300 DPI. But it is. It is 300 DPI. I may not know a lot about graphics, or what's really in peanut butter, or the infield fly rule; but I do know how to do one thing very well. And that is READ.

So I know my image is 300 DPI. I know it because that is what the appropriate field in the dialog box for the image properties indicates at every turn. And don't think you can trip me up by talking about PPI versus DPI, because I'm good with that, too. The problem is not with me. The problem is with CreateSpace.

I checked the user forum for CreateSpace, and the consensus is that everyone gets told their resolution is too low. The cynic in me suspects this is done in the hopes that people will give up and pay for someone at Amazon to design a cover.

But not me. Take that, you smug little code-crankers.

Evidently people who read Erin K. Rice are concerned with the global economy and culture. Who knew?

The question now is...do my books show up as recommendations for these titles? That would be ever-so cool.

We all are. That's kind of the point. And I think the reason I wanted to write about it is that we never know when we're on that journey. We don't know when it started or when it ends, usually.

Sometimes it's pretty apparent--a big event that forces a change. But most often, I believe we are unaware of the decision we make to set off on the journey. I think that's because, as humans, we tend to roll with the events in our lives without necessarily realizing that they have shifted our course.

Maybe as we get older we can recognize these "life-vectoring events," as my father-in-law calls them. And maybe once we learn to recognize them, we are eventually able to take thoughtful instead of reactive action.

But I think it's harder than it seems, on paper.

I am of course referring to the other Gutenberg. The one who invented moveable type. Which has now been largely dislodged by digital printing. And thus, the crux of today's message.

I have found a new source for print-on-demand (POD) publishing and will release a POD version of On the Way to Someplace Else forthwith. Well, as forthwith-ly as I can, once I overcome the usual obstacles of interior formatting and cover art.

But this is so much better than my last go-round! No need to calculate spine width; no need to know exactly how many pages I will have. It's cheaper, too.

Watch this space, then. I will have an update soon.

The Fisher Effect
A Novel by Erin K. Rice

Bank auditor Jordan Clarey believes her flirtation with enigmatic currency trader Luke Fisher is a harmless indulgence. But just as the stakes of their relationship are raised, Luke leaves for a business trip and severs all communication with her. Puzzled and disappointed, Jordan immerses herself in work and soon becomes entangled, along with Luke, in a plot to manipulate the international currency markets. At the root of it all is a scandal that would upend the global economy—and the United States government—if the true source were ever revealed. Spanning 10 days and the entire globe, The Fisher Effect spins a tale of international intrigue, dangerous romance and government conspiracies.

Oh. Sorry. Funny thing is, I don't even like Limp Bizkit. Their guitarist scares the living hell out of me. On second thought, he might play bass. I'd look it up, but Wikipedia is down and the band's website is awful. Oh, no! It's happening, just like they said it would!

Anyhoo....

On the Way to Someplace Else is now officially available on Nook.

Someone asked me if I'm allowed to have it on both Kindle and Nook. I said I didn't really care. I'm a rebel that way. If I sell enough copies on either site to cause a problem, I will consider it one worth having.*

On that subject, book sales have jumped by an astonishing eight percent! I am ever so grateful.

* But seriously, I don't think it's an issue. What Happened on Smith Street has always been available from multiple retailers.

(Oh, you thought I was going to say "There is no write club," didn't you? And I thought you knew me better than that by now.)

I am reminded of Dory, the plucky little blue tang in "Finding Nemo," who counseled Marlon to "Just keep swimming."

I will keep writing. I'm totally frustrated right now, but I'll try to use it--instead of letting it use me.

What should I write about? That's tricky. Not so much the idea as how to tell the story. I recently read "The Art of Racing in the Rain." This would have been just another story, pretty average although beautifully written, if not for the fact that it was told by a dog.

Disclaimer: I did not read or see "Marley and Me." I'm an avowed dog lover, but I couldn't get past the nagging belief that the author was capitalizing on the death of his dog. Oh, spoiler alert. (My bad.)

My daughters refuse to see any movie with a horse in it, because they know the horse is going to die. You could probably say the same thing about almost any animal-centric story. I have never been so pissed off as when I read "Old Yeller" in the third grade. What a dirty trick.

But I digress.

The subject itself is almost inconsequential, compared to the way the author tells the story. "The Art of Racing in the Rain" combined two of my favorite things (dogs and fast cars) with incredible writing, but it was the perspective and the flow that kept me interested. I read it in one sitting, over about four hours. This is another reason I don't read much; if I get hooked, I will not put the book down.

Oh, to be able to write like that! To be able to combine all the elements so perfectly: story, perspective and style.

What should I write about next? What, indeed....

I spent a good chunk of time this week sending e-mail messages to the same groups I used to announce the publication of What Happened on Smith Street. My suspicions were confirmed: People with whom I am connected via Facebook did not know that I had published another book. How big a deal is this? Oh, I'll tell you. It will take only one name for me to drive home the severity of this failing on the part of our social media construct.

Rebecca.

That's right, Rebecca did not know that On the Way to Someplace Else was available on Kindle.

Stupid Facebook.

But enough of that. I have moved on. (Mostly.) I sent my e-mail and awaited the results. They came quickly.

Samantha, for one, happily forwarded my e-mail to her friends, one of whom wrote back: "Why is she hatin' on nook?"

I am nothing if not accommodating. I spent the next several minutes (I've gotten much better at the whole ePublishing process) formatting and uploading OWSE to the Nook site. I clicked "Put my book on sale."

Nook replied in due course:

And Nook has continued with this message for the last three days. Yeah, it's so super-sorry.

Whatever.

But now, three weeks into the experiment, with book sales totally stalled at 11 copies as of one week ago, I'm beginning to think that maybe I was right about the online process--and Facebook--all along.

It seemed so simple. Upload the e-book to Kindle and post it on Facebook. What I post shows up on my friends/fans news streams and the publicity takes care of itself.

Too simple.

Here's the problem: People actually have to look at their Facebook to see what's in their news streams. Turns out, a lot of people are like me and don't pay much attention to that. I really don't blame them. We are bombarded with automated feeds of data. At some point, it's too much. At some point, we are going to miss something that may actually be of interest. A couple of my closest friends (both for real and on fb) didn't even know I had published.

Eleven copies in three weeks. How many copies of Smith Street had I sold after three weeks, without Facebook?

Sixty-one. They all came as a direct result of the e-mail I sent to everyone in my contact list.

This is an interesting lesson, I think. Of course it's not scientific at all, but I think it demonstrates at least anecdotally that people prefer direct interaction. I'll qualify that by saying that people are more likely to respond to direct interaction than they are to a buckshot marketing approach.

Regardless of how fascinating I find the outcome, though, I'm bummed. At the risk of a little melodrama, I kind of think this may have been it for me. I don't have the time on my hands that I had with Smith Street. I don't have time for old-fashioned pavement-pounding.

If a book is published and nobody reads it...well, why bother?