DAVID BRUCE COLLINS: AUTHOR, ACTIVIST, UBERISTA
  • Index
  • Blog
  • Biography
  • Writing
    • Novels in Print
    • Eastern Daylight (1997) >
      • Eastern Daylight: April
      • Eastern Daylight: May
      • Eastern Daylight: June
      • Eastern Daylight: July
      • Eastern Daylight: August
      • Eastern Daylight: September
      • Eastern Daylight: October
    • Bite-Size Hungarian
    • Latin for the End of the World
  • Politics
    • Life As a Green
    • Ten Key Values of GPUS (English)
    • Issues for 2020
  • Web Links

DBC Sez...

It's True! You Really Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover!

5/6/2015

 
Today I received the message below from a longtime church friend. This friend and her family switched from the church I still attend to the other large UU church in Houston during "The Troubles" that served as the initial inspiration for Earthworm.
Hi David,  

I got what I thought was your book.  It has the correct cover that says by David Bruce Collins, but inside the cover the book is Eastside by Caleb Alexander.  I noticed it when I was reading the Acknowledgements and the author mentions his wife Jennifer and his sons Curtis and Caleb.  He also thanks the Almighty Creator.  The setting is the eastside of San Antonio and he starts out mentioning 1,262 drive-by shootings in 1993.  Perhaps you should contact someone.  This book was published by Strebor Books in 2007.
She ordered the book directly from iUniverse, not from one of the big online vendors. It seems that iUniverse and Strebor have a deal with the same printing company. This news makes me wonder (and another friend has expressed the same thought) whether it's a sign that I should reach out to Caleb Alexander. Networking is usually a good thing. Also, his novel takes place, at least in part, less than two hours' drive from my fictitious college town of Santa Cecilia.

My other impression is that this right-cover-wrong-text foul-up will not happen to very many buyers of either Mr. Alexander's book or mine. iUniverse's model is on-demand printing, so it does not print and cover large numbers of copies of a book at one time—unless somebody orders a lot of copies. I'd be really surprised if the 20 copies I ordered for next week will have the same problem, but you'd better believe I'm going to check them before I try to sell them.

Approved!

15/5/2015

 
Did it, done it, waiting for release date.

I have signed off on the interior, cover, and pricing for The Earthworm That Blows No Trumpet. iUniverse says it's usually 15 to 20 days between approval and availability.

You should be able to purchase the hard copy or e-book around the first week of June. It won't be in your neighborhood bookstore, but you can order it through iuniverse.com, amazon.com, or barnesandnoble.com. If you search by author's name, I recommend using the whole name David Bruce Collins, because searching by just David Collins gets 224 hits, and I'm not responsible for all those books.

The one book currently on Barnes & Noble that I did actually write still has one review from 2001, and it's a five-star review. No, I didn't write the review, but I give it five stars too. ;-)

Proofing Sheets Sent Again

12/5/2015

 
My Publishing Services Assistant at iUniverse sent back the correct book block last Thursday, and they fixed almost all of the errors that I had found. Fortunately or otherwise, I this the opportunity to read through the entire block again, and I found almost as many errors that I missed the first time.

As a rule, it's difficult to proofread one's own work reliably: Having a second pair of eyes on the job is always helpful. Sometimes it's even more difficult to find that second pair of eyes, unless one is willing and able to pay. I'll be paying extra for the second set of corrections, but not enough to break the bank.

iUniverse has plenty of ways to break one's bank. The company does many things I like, and a few I genuinely don't like. Yesterday one of their marketeers called from the noisy call center in the Philippines, inviting me to take advantage of a service that would get my novel reviewed in Kirkus Reviews and two other publications. Sure, a good Kirkus review can provide an invaluable boost to a book's sales. Sure, it also costs $3,499. Does that money guarantee a positive review in Kirkus? I do have scruples about such things.

Proofing Sheets Sent

5/5/2015

 
I just sent iUniverse the proof forms for the book block and cover. In my proofreading, I found a couple dozen things I wanted to fix or change in the interior text, ranging from a missing close-single-quote to entire subordinate clauses. I also substantially revised the sloppy back-cover copy that I had originally submitted.

So that's yet another small step for Earthworm in the direction of becoming an actual book you can hold in your actual hands. If you're lacking actual hands, maybe the electronic version will work better.

Soft-cover: $19.95
E-book: $3.99
A novel in which an assortment of UU's get to be heroes: Priceless?

I also still plan to re-publish A Small Town for Its Size, as I'm sure I have stated previously on this blog, with a few dozen errors fixed.

Photo Haggling

11/3/2015

 
So it's been almost two weeks since my last blog activity. Some writer, eh?

Very soon I should receive a new set of cover mockups for the upcoming novel. I imagine that they will include assembled bits of the photos that I sent to iUniverse, rather than an assemblage of stock photos. I took a picture of some Texas prairie land back on 28 February, while my HAUSmates (1) and I were holding our Annual General Meeting (2) at Sky Farm (3). I also took a photo of a UU flaming chalice, which in this case is actually the heavily patinaed oil lamp used at First UU Church, Houston.

I took both photos with my phone, a Samsung Galaxy S4. The photos are blurry, especially at 300 dpi, but there's an artistic blurriness about them. I didn't get the sunset that I wanted, because there was no sun that day, and hardly for a week in either direction.

Once the cover design is set, I imagine that the next step is galley proofs, but I don't know for sure, and I don't currently have access to the material that iUniverse sent to outline the whole process. When they send the galley, I'll have some time to look it over & probably catch some errors that I've managed to miss over the past two years.

Footnotes (getting my Infinite Jest on):

(1) HAUS stands for Houston Access to Urban Sustainability, which is Houston's only housing cooperative, as far as I know. We have two houses inside Loop 610, within fairly easy reach of the MetroRail Red Line. It is not a student co-op, but some of our residents are students, some are working in the service industry, and some have office jobs.

(2) Annual General Meeting is what it sounds like: a meeting of the general membership of HAUS that occurs every year. We managed to get 20 of our 25 current resident members, plus several HAUS alums, to this year's AGM. I got to give a presentation on taking public transit as sustainable transportation, including how the new Metro route structure will change (for the better, I earnestly hope) the whole public transit picture in our beloved H-Town.

(3) Sky Farm is the rural Austin County outpost of the Crossley family, the leading lights of Houston Tomorrow. Its postal address is in New Ulm, Texas, but it is closer to the town of Industry. The house at Sky Farm, where we had our unspeakably wonderful meals, is a marvel of contemporary architecture (oddly, no photos on the Facebook page). The meeting portion of the AGM took place in the Conference Center, a repurposed temporary classroom structure with composting toilets.

    Blogging Sporadically since 2014

    Here you will find political campaign-related entries, as well as some about my literature, Houston underground arts, peace & justice, urban cycling, soccer, alt-religion, and other topics.

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    2018
    Abby Martin
    Abortion Laws
    ACORN
    Affordable Care Act
    Ahmad Hassan
    Air Alliance Houston
    Ajamu Baraka
    Alabama
    Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
    Al Gore
    Amanda Palmer
    Amazon
    Angela Walker
    Angie Schmitt
    ANM 2020
    Annual Meeting
    Approval Voting
    Art Car Parade
    Astroworld
    Ballot Access
    Bernie Sanders
    Beto O'Rourke
    BikeHouston
    Binary Thinking
    Black Agenda Report
    #BlackLivesMatter
    Bloomsday
    B&N
    Book Review
    Borders
    Brains And Eggs
    Breast Cancer
    Brody Mulligan
    Burning Man
    Bylaws
    Caitlin Johnstone
    Caleb Alexander
    Campaign
    Campaign 2018
    Candidates' Forum
    Candidate Workshop
    Captcha
    Catastrophic Theatre
    Cenk Uygur
    Censorship
    Chelsea Manning
    Cheri Honkala
    Chicago
    Choir
    Chris Hedges
    Chris Tomlinson
    Chuck Kuffner
    City Council
    Climate Change
    Climate March
    Climate Strike
    CODEPINK
    Colin Kaepernick
    Convention
    Corporatocracy
    County Clerk
    County Convention
    County Judge
    Cover Design
    COVID 19
    COVID-19
    Cycling
    Dallas Morning News
    Dan Monahan
    Dario Hunter
    Darryl Cherney
    David Cobb
    David Rovics
    Death By Cop
    Death Penalty
    Debates
    Deep State
    Delilah For Texas
    #DemEnter
    #DemExit
    Demexit
    Democrat Primary
    Depression
    Detroit 2020
    Dichotomism
    Dick Dowling
    Disaffiliation
    District Conventions
    Donald Trump
    #DownticketGreens
    DSA
    Duopoly
    Dwight Boykins
    Early Voting
    Earth Day
    Earthworm
    Eastern Daylight
    Ecological Wisdom
    Economic Justice
    Ed Emmett
    Edie
    Egberto WIllies
    Eleanor Goldfield
    Election 2015
    Election 2016
    Election 2017
    Election 2018
    Election 2019
    Election 2020
    Election 2022
    Electoral College
    Elvis Costello
    Emancipation Park
    Emily Sanchez
    Emily Sanchez
    Endorsements
    Energy
    Environment
    Erika Martinez
    Extinction Rebellion
    Fascism
    Fauxcialism
    Fiction
    Film Review
    For The People Act
    Fourth Turning
    Francesca Fiorentini
    Fremont Solstice Parade
    Full Frontal
    Fundraising
    Gary Johnson
    Gary Stuard
    George Floyd
    George HW Bush
    George Lakoff
    George Reiter
    Georgia
    Gerrymandering
    Glenn Greenwald
    GPTX
    Gray Matters
    Green Convention
    #GreenEnter
    Green Maps
    Green New Deal
    Green Party
    Green Party Houston
    Greenwatch TV
    Gun Violence
    Hallucinogens
    Hal Ridley Jr.
    Harris County
    Harry Hamid
    HAUS
    HAUS Project
    HB 2504
    HCGP
    Higher Education
    Hillary Clinton
    HMS
    Homelessness
    Houston
    Houston Area Progressives
    Houston Astros
    Houston Chronicle
    Houston Dash
    Houston Dynamo
    Houston Fringe Festival
    Houston Press
    Howie Hawkins
    Hurricane Harvey
    Identity Politics
    Immigration
    Instant Runoff Voting
    Insurrection At The Capitol
    International Affairs
    Inverted Totalitarianism
    Iran
    Ireland
    IRV
    IUniverse
    James Joyce
    Janis RIchards
    Jennifer Mathieu
    Jesse Ventura
    Jill Stein
    Jimmy Dore
    Jonathan Franzen
    Jordan Chariton
    JosH Darr
    Julian Assange
    Juneteenth
    Justice
    Kenneth Kendrick
    Kenneth Mejia
    Kent Mesplay
    Keystone XL
    Key Values
    KPFT
    Krystal Ball
    Laredo
    Last Week Tonight
    Late Stage Capitalism
    Late-Stage Capitalism
    League Of Women Voters
    Lee Camp
    Legal Challenge
    Libertarian Party
    Lina Hidalgo
    Lisa Savage
    Local Democracy
    Mail-In Ballots
    Maine
    Maps Project
    #MarchForOurLives
    March For Science
    March On The Pentagon
    Marc Lamont Hill
    Margaret Flowers
    Marijuana
    Martina Salinas
    Mass Shootings
    Matching Funds
    Mayor
    MD Anderson Cancer Center
    Media
    Medicare For All
    Mental Health
    Metro
    Michael Moore
    Michael Pollan
    MJ Hegar
    Movement For A People's Party
    Mudslinging
    Music
    Naomi Klein
    NationBuilder
    Net Neutrality
    New Orleans
    New Zealand
    Nick Cooper
    NORML
    North Carolina
    Our Revolution
    Outlander
    Outreach
    Overdevelopment
    Pacifica
    Parkland FL
    Partisan Realignment
    Paul Ingmundson
    PDiddie
    Peace
    Pennsylvania
    People's Party Convention
    Platform
    Plutocracy
    PNC
    Police
    Police Brutality
    Politics Done Right
    Polls
    Poor People's Campaign
    Poverty
    Progressivism
    Proofreading
    ProPublica
    Puerto Rico
    Radicalism
    Ranked Choice Voting
    Ray Hill
    Recount 2016
    Remington Alessi
    #Resistance
    Rev. Barber
    Revolution
    Right-wing Terrorism
    Rosa Clemente
    Russiagate
    Samantha Bee
    San Antonio
    SB 2093
    School Shootings
    Scotland
    Scottish National Party
    Scott McLarty
    Sema Hernandez
    Sheila Jackson Lee
    Single Payer
    SKCM Curry
    Smart Growth
    Socialism
    Socialist Alternative
    Spoiler Effect
    Straight Party Voting
    Strauss & Howe
    Sunrise Movement
    Sylvester Turner
    Syria
    Tax Policy
    Ted Cruz
    Texas House
    Texas Leftist
    Texas Legislature
    Texas Progressive
    Texas Public Radio
    Texas Supreme Court
    Texoblogosphere
    Texpatriate
    The Intercept
    The North Star
    Third Parties
    Thom Hartmann
    Traffic
    Transit
    Transportation
    Trans Rights
    Travel
    Treason
    Trump Derangement Syndrome
    Tulsi Gabbard
    Turnout
    Ulysses
    Unitarian Universalism
    Urbanism
    US Senate
    UU
    Valarie Kaur
    Van Cliburn
    Vanessa Edwards Foster
    Vanessa Guillén
    Venezuela
    Vish
    Vision Zero
    War On Drugs
    Website
    Women's March On Pentagon
    World Beyond War
    World Cup
    World Naked Bike Ride
    Zeitgeist Movement
    Zendik

    Archives

    April 2023
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Index
  • Blog
  • Biography
  • Writing
    • Novels in Print
    • Eastern Daylight (1997) >
      • Eastern Daylight: April
      • Eastern Daylight: May
      • Eastern Daylight: June
      • Eastern Daylight: July
      • Eastern Daylight: August
      • Eastern Daylight: September
      • Eastern Daylight: October
    • Bite-Size Hungarian
    • Latin for the End of the World
  • Politics
    • Life As a Green
    • Ten Key Values of GPUS (English)
    • Issues for 2020
  • Web Links