Working on a Novel

No, no, silly. I'm not working on a novel. My attention span is nowhere long enough for that. Haven't we met? I used the title as a way to grab your attention.


I have been working on a book this summer with GQ though.  Her second novel, FanGirl! Her second one! It hasn't even been a year since she put her first one out. She's quite prolific.

Ever since GQ came up with the idea for FanGirl! she has wanted to get me involved.  The first idea she came up with was to have  scenes from the graphic novel that is a main part of the story mixed in with the chapter titles.


GQ asked me if I thought that I could do these illustrations.  I thought about this, and decided that yes, I could do this.  I love comics. I love drawing, but I don't do it very often. This will give me something to focus on and what a great opportunity.


We talked about the fact that I would have to really be focused (I may have some focusing issues I have focusing issues) and stay on schedule.  She had a timeline for getting the book out by a certain date.  


After thinking about what the drawings I wanted to were I started thinking about the fact that although I love drawing, I'm not the greatest artist.  I have problems with perspective and things looking very flat and 2D. I decided that I was not going to take the responsibility of giving her crappy looking drawings to go with her story. 


I told her this, and she tried to convince me otherwise, but I stuck to my guns. We agreed that we would look around and ask some of the artist friends we have if they'd be willing. No one had time, and several people just told GQ or me that they thought I should do it.  I was very flattered, a little disappointed in myself, but still no closer to having a solution.

Flash forward to illustration issues being solved. See above for pics from the book.  For whatever reason GQ still wanted me to be involved.  I was very willing to help, but not sure what I could do.  

We agreed that I could do some of the "fixing" of the document after her editors had finished their jobs.  I can do that.  I did that. Then we go to the point of needing to converting the format from a Word file to what is needed to upload for an ebook.  

I downloaded a couple of books from Amazon about this. I read up on it, and it seemed like something that would be pretty easy. I was going to learn to use HTML (a computer code that makes the words on a Site look like actual words instead of lots of symbols with words interspersed between them. I was going to learn to use new programs to make all this flow seamlessly from one format to another. 

Well, it wasn't hard, but there were definitely more steps involved than what I gathered from reading those books.

Not to be thwarted I continued and was successful! Now the easy part - inserting the images into the document. Wait. Did I say easy? I meant the part that made the converting the document seem like child's play.

The steps in the books that talked about adding images were easy enough, but making that transfer from page to my fingers was not so easy.  Time and time I would try and think that it would be successful. Time and time again I would go to preview the page and be greeted with this - 

I HATED seeing that, but I saw it again and again and again.

Luckily, GQ has a computer genius(AG) bff and she was able to step in and make it work. On her computer. ARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

This goes on for a couple of days.  Back and forth with AG.  Now I know a good bit about computers. I can do all kinds of things that a good number of people can't do.  However, there's a wall that I come up against, and I was staring at that wall.  That. Damn. Wall.

I am staying up late trying to get this done. I had more than 20 files saved with some sort of variation of the word "fangirl" in my download folder.  I was not going to give up, but I was frustrated to say the least. We have Comic Con coming up in a few days and GQ wanted it DONE before we left.  (insert angsty "arrgh" from above here X 3)

One morning I woke up and GQ told me that AG had it fixed. For real. For good. Come to find out that we needed an Adobe program, InDesign, to get it done, and when AG put it in there it literally took 8 seconds.  Big sigh of relief.

So it got done on GQ's schedule.  She kept her faith in me and was very understanding the whole time most of the time of the limits of my technical know-how. I am very grateful to her for including me in this process.  Her writing is a HUGE part of her, and for a while I had a hard time understanding that, but I do now, and for her to include me means a whole bunch.

Now the novel is out in both Kindle format as well as paperback. Links to both sites are up above at the beginning of this entry.  If you're a Nook user you'll have to wait a couple more months to get it on that reader, but it will be worth the wait. FanGirl! is a good, fun read.  Of course I have a huge bias toward the author, but I think I would enjoy the story even if it wasn't written by my best girl.

Do yourself a favor and go get it. Well, I suppose you'd be doing GQ (and me) a favor, but it will be worth your time, money and effort.  And if you want to do another favor you could write a review on either the Amazon page or the CreateSpace page of the book.  When books have reviews more people are willing to take a chance on it. 

I'll leave you with this.  I am currently looking into getting InDesign so that I will be able to continue to help GQ on her author's journey.  She's well into a new story that she got inspiration from earlier this summer when we were on a boat ride, as well as a continuation of an earlier novel.  She amazes me.

Two Books Not Reviewed

I just finished reading two books, How To Be Good by Nick Hornby and The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. After reading so many books on my Kindle, well my Kindle app on the iPad it's kind of nice to hold a real book. 


Similarly to how I did not review The Avengers because there were already so many great reviews of it, I am not going to review these books.  I'm just going to give my thoughts on them.  I was going to review them, but I have a problem being too wordy, and this would have been too long, and blah blah blah.

How To Be Good  

For those of you not familiar with the name Nick Hornby, he is the author of About a Boy and High Fidelity.  Both of these have been turned into movies starring Hugh Grant and John Cusak, respectively.  Hornby is a British author and his books are very British. I totally love this, but then again I love many British things; although not the food.  Anyway.

I like the book, but the ending is a bit of a downer, and that caught me off guard. Overall I'd give it a B-. If you really liked the two I just mentioned and are looking for a similar book you're not really going to find it here. If you've never read Hornby before this might not be a bad starting point and then go to his others.  Here are some real reviews of it, if you're interested. 

British review from The Guardian

The New York Times On The Web review

The main thing I took from this story is that wanting people to do more to make the world a better place is all good and fine, but there's only so much you can do to change people.  I know GQ lives with this problem living with me and my recycling habits obsession. Reading this story has made me realize that I can do all the recycling I want, and encourage The Girls to do it, too, but trying to make someone do what I think is best doesn't really work.  Same thing with the character David in this book.

He wants the world to be a better place and begins to impose his desire on his family, regardless of how this makes their life more difficult than it already is.

I can see how this is similar to how people feel when others are wanting them to give more money or time, recycle more and waste less, etc.  Of course these are things that everyone should  do, and most are things everyone  could  do, but forcing people to do those things typically only makes you feel better.  A lot of the time it will make the others feel hostile toward you or whoever is doing the forcing.

The Fault In Our Stars

I love John Green's books.  I think John Green is an entertaining, funny and original author. He has a Tumblr that has some good stuff on it. Plus he and his brother have a very funny video blog. 

Again, not going to review it because you don't have that much time to read all my words. I give it a solid A. Here are some real reviews.

Really Ravishing Review

Good Reads

Here's what I love about John Green, and all of my favorite authors really: The characters.  I am able to connect to them immediately.  I may not always like them, although I did very much so in this story, but I can always find something with them that I can relate to.  

The main characters in this story, Hazel and Augustus, are great.  The side characters are as well. Isaac, their friend is one of my favorite minor characters I've read in a long time.

This story deals with cancer and cancer victims. This includes their family and friends.  Because John Green writes YA and juvenile fiction the characters are of course young. All three suffer from one form of cancer or another.  

Since the story is from Hazel's point of view you don't necessarily get a great point of view of the parents, but you the hopelessness they feel because of what their children are suffering is pretty evident.

I can't even begin to imagine how devastating it would be to have a child with cancer.  My mom is a breast cancer survivor. She was diagnosed with it when I was 12, I think, and I was not told a lot about what was going on.  I used to be bitter about that, but now I understand that it would have freaked me out completely and just given my parents one more thing to worry about.  

Having a parent with cancer is one thing. Having a child with it, or any other disease is another, and I am amazed at the strength parents have to deal with it, and hope and pray it is something that GQ and I never have to deal with.

I'll be honest. I cried a little reading this book. Luckily I was at the pool sweating in the crazy heat so the few tears that escaped were probably just another salty liquid streaming down my face.  Wearing sunglasses helped too, I'm sure.  Actually, it's not too unusual for me to shed some tears if a book is really good.  If you know me you know I'm a pretty sensitive guy.  Medication helps me not be a quivering mess of a sensitive guy.  

So, there you go. Two books. One just okay and one really great one.  If you're looking for something to read you won't have wasted your time with either of them.

Happy Reading