500

[dr_phil_physics]

But I would walk five hundred miles
And I would walk five hundred more
Just to be the man
who walked a thousand miles
To fall down at your door

-- "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)"
-- The Proclaimers
On 29 November 2014 I posted about reaching 400 pages (DW) in the Word 2010 file for my Lost Kingdom YA trilogy. Well, we've hit 501 pages today. Not that this is a milestone other than we see omens and portents in numbers everywhere.

As an author, you toil and toil and write and edit. And someday, if you think it's ready, you let some of free and let it out into the wild. This week I gave my first real sneak peek into The Lost Kingdom, even to Mrs. Dr. Phil, when on Monday I released part of the current Chapter 9 of Book 1 as my annual Christmas short story: "A Christmas in the Lost Kingdom" (DW). Published on Dreamwidth, crossposted to LiveJournal and Facebook, it's Christmas, Hanukkah, holidays, break, End of the Year -- you never know when or if people are going to read these things. Or whether you'll get any feedback. (cue-anxious-sigh) But right now I am getting tons of updates from people on Facebook, which means people are at least on Facebook. Whether they have room for a 2300-word Christmas short story, that's another tale.

But I can make things easier for people.

Today I released a PDF version of "A Christmas in the Lost Kingdom". It's in A5 page format and displays very nicely in the Adobe Reader on my Kindle Fire HD. Should work on other e-Readers as well. If you want to print it out, I'd recommend finding your printer option for printing 2-ups, two pages on a single sheet of paper.

Over the years I have created hundreds of PDFs for my classes and writings, all using the Adobe printer driver that comes with Adobe Acrobat Pro 5/7/9. But ZEPPELIN, Wendy's Windows 7 laptop, doesn't have the full version of Acrobat and I don't have any installs left of my versions. However, Microsoft Word 2010 does have a Save As... PDF option, so I tried that. It's acceptable. i worry that given how Word writes bloated HTML files that it's overwrought coding, but that can't be helped. Maybe I'll make a copy in Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 and see if there's a difference in size or appearance.

And if you forget about my story -- don't worry, I'll flog it a few more times during the holidays. Also let you know that a second story will come out on New Year's Eve. (cue-even-more-anxious-author-angst)

As for the writing, well, it's coming along amazingly well. I've been filling in and editing a great deal, while still forging ahead on three books of the trilogy. So far I am very happy with what I have, which to some extent is all that really matters. Everything else is going to be gravy on my own satisfaction. (grin)

Also with the start of Version 1.06 of the trilogy, I also started sections in the file for The Pitch and The Synopsis. Both of these are going to be tough, short and shorter, so I might as well start thinking about them now. Whenever I've had to write a synopsis after I've finished a story, it's been like pulling thorns through your body. (evil-grin)

New researches started with a problem: Trying to find Catholic high schools on the north side of Chicago. Several of the ones that I remember from my Northwestern days in Evanston/Wilmette have been closed. From there we investigated... NU Wildcat basketball player numbers for centers. The Three Crowns emblems and origins for Scandinavian countries, including Sweden, Denmark and the Trekroner Søfort (Three Crowns Sea Fortress) guarding the entrance to Copenhagen harbor. The Typ 17 and Typ 1G Volkswagen Golf. "Glade jul, dejlige jul" -- the old Danish lyrics to "Silent Night" -- versus the newer lyrics, "Stille nat, hellige nat". Also "ram tam", the same Christmas carol translated into Klingon. Prostitution in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Workers rights and satisfaction in Denmark -- and I mean the regular workforce, not the prostitutes -- the happiest workplaces in the world. And I probably need to research something about the CIA headquarters in Foggy Bottom, which of course leads one to remind everyone never try to understand an author's browser history. (oh-my-gosh-grin)

The shiny counters now stand at:

The Lost Kingdom Project YA Trilogy Version 1.06


Book 1


Book 2


Book 3


The Lost Kingdom Fourth Novel Version 1.03


*** Note: the numbers for Books 1-3 don’t add up, because there is text which is in a section which hasn’t been assigned to a Book and Chapter yet.

And we continue...

Dr. Phil