"Conspiracy of Angels" is also uploaded for Kindle

Been spending another horrific day trying to format a novel for Kindle.  This time, "Conspiracy of Angels" for upload onto the Amazon Kindle site.  I HATE WORD!  Every time I use it I hate it more -- it is so ludicrously complex that there are far too many formatting options for the purpose of converting to .mobi format, as required for the Kindle.  They don't tell you which formats are OK for uploading, and which will simply be ignored or overriden.  You just have to do the whole job over and again, eliminating one glitsch after another by trial and error.  And possibly the most irritating WORD habit of all is that the wretched thing assumes to know better than you do what you actually want to do, so even if you try to modify formats it keeps on flipping back to the original ones all the time, eliminating in an instant maybe a couple of hours of hard work.

And the Pages route doesn't work either, although you are supposed to be able to save a long Pages document in ePub or HTML format, which in theory is acceptable for a .mobi upload.  But it just causes chaos -- and when you look at the final .mobi version you see that most of your formatting categories are all screwed up, so that you have to start again in Word anyway.

So beware, if you want to use several different categories of headings and some text in bold, italic or other formats.............

Strange that Amazon, which prides itself on the simplicity and sophistication of its interfaces etc, still uses something straight out of the Stone Age..... maybe they don't want it to be TOO easy, and use it as a deterrent so that only the most determined people actually succeed in getting their masterpieces uploaded onto the Kindle site.........

Anyway, thank goodness that all 8 novels are now uploaded.  May be a couple of days before they are available for purchase.

November -- a poem

NOVEMBER

Strange times.
November's complacent benediction
in blackness before dawn,
with just a hint of menace?
Silence.

Day after day
A grey shroud over our heads
draped from far horizons,
flat, heavy, damp
as a grimy sponge
drawing colour from the land.
A leaden sea.
Even the stream is low, slow, murmuring.

Night after night
no stars, no wind, no moon, no rain.
Unsettled, I listen.
Silence.
Then, in the far woods
A tawny owl,
right on the edge of hearing.

----------------------

(This came into my head at 5 am this morning, as I lay awake feeling thoroughly grotty and full of cold........  so I had a cup of tea and wrote it down.......)

Images from the OU East Greenland Expedition 1962

 The great peak which dominates this photo is Kolossen, in the Werner Mountains of East Greenland.  In 1962 we walked over the mountains via the Eastern Glacier, to the left of the peak.

Here are the expedition slides converted to digital images by Chris Sugden -- as used in his little file for YouTube, which has had many thousands of hits.......

This is one of Chris's Picasa albums:

https://plus.google.com/photos/103093434428263967453/albums/5948467890302036625?banner=pwa&authkey=CIL22t7JyoCyygE

Uploading today -- Sacrifice

I've been preparing the Kindle version of "Sacrifice", and it was uploaded last night -- so it should be available on Amazon -- in the Kindle version -- today.   It's by far the darkest of all the novels -- part mystery, part thriller, part Gothic melodrama with terrifying and violent events at the centre of the story..........  But because Martha and her angels are involved,  there is a love, humanity and compassion in there too.  And many people think this book has the most heart-rending final chapter of the whole Saga.

This is the back cover blurb:

In the Wild West of Wales, in the year 1808, a shepherd is ambushed and left in the roadway, more dead than alive, with three stripes carved across his chest. A note, written in his own blood, is pinned to his skin. It reads “For Rhiwallwn. From Gruddnei.” Four sinister men who call themselves surveyors are clearly responsible for this crime and others that follow. It emerges that there is a “campaign of retribution” against selected individuals. Mistress Martha Morgan, a young widow with five children, is at the top of the hit list. As the net tightens around the villains, more is discovered about their backgrounds, their motives and their grotesque methods of working. In a terrifying final confrontation Martha at last faces them, and finds depravity on a scale which she finds almost impossible to deal with.

In this fast-moving tale the key players will be familiar to fans of the Angel Mountain Saga, and other characters who march through the pages of the book include the eccentric Iolo Morgannwg, hot-tempered busybody Charles Hassall, two exotic prostitutes, and a charming and mysterious Irishman called Dominic Cunningham whose life was complicated enough even before he fell in love with Mistress Martha......

Last chance for free Rebecca......

Just today and tomorrow left for the Kindle freebie promotion re "Rebecca and the Angels."  It's the first time this book has been on a free promotion --  and I look forward to seeing whether the free promotion will have an impact on future sales.  That is, of course, the object of the exercise......

Carningli from the west

I took this photo yesterday around lunch time.  The summit seen from the west, from one of those little tors, in beautiful autumnal light........

Rebecca now free for Kindle

As from today, for 5 days, "Rebecca and the Angels" is free for Kindle, from the Amazon web site.  Feel free to download it, and tell your friends ....... and if you feel inclined to stick a review onto Amazon as well, all well and good.......