Many of you followed along with Karen and my US road trip last year in my road trip thread. For the last four months I have been writing up the experience as a book expanding on the short posts I made each day..
The book is called "Murphy in the back" and is subtitled "2 Kiwis, 7434 miles, 15 States, 37 days". Murphy is that mad Irishman, the famous writer of Murphy's Law "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong when you least expect it". I swear I heard him laughing at us when things didn't "quite go right" in our trip. Like the day we "misplaced" our car in San Antonio, drove through a New Mexico mud pit or got caught in a rain whiteout at 70 mph on the Mississippi Interstate. He was also there for some other more minor incidents.
I finished up the manuscript a few weeks ago. Since then I have done some editing and over the past week spent more than one 10 hour day getting the book published on Amazon in both e-book and paperback formats, although the paperback version is still awaiting final release.
I will admit the publishing exercise was not as easy as simply uploading a manuscript and pushing the "publish" button. I did that and found the format I used to write the book did not transfer well to either publishing format. I had to go back and redo the format a few times, hence why the paperback version is still awaiting final review today.
I am 98% satisfied with the paperback version and 90%+ with the e-book. There are still few formatting issues that I just cannot resolve. and I had to cut out some photos I wanted to include originally.
I will admit that the book waffles a bit, especially the first three chapters which outline the circumstances of the trip and how we (I) went about organising things, and the last few which deal with events after we got home. But it all was relevant to me in the writing of the main story, driving and exploring the US.
The e-book is available in KDP Select for those who subscribe to Amazon's Lending Library and for a free download for 5 days, starting midnight tonight and ending midnight Sunday, for those who feel like a copy on Amazon. Just search the title or send me a PM for the link.
The book is called "Murphy in the back" and is subtitled "2 Kiwis, 7434 miles, 15 States, 37 days". Murphy is that mad Irishman, the famous writer of Murphy's Law "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong when you least expect it". I swear I heard him laughing at us when things didn't "quite go right" in our trip. Like the day we "misplaced" our car in San Antonio, drove through a New Mexico mud pit or got caught in a rain whiteout at 70 mph on the Mississippi Interstate. He was also there for some other more minor incidents.
I finished up the manuscript a few weeks ago. Since then I have done some editing and over the past week spent more than one 10 hour day getting the book published on Amazon in both e-book and paperback formats, although the paperback version is still awaiting final release.
I will admit the publishing exercise was not as easy as simply uploading a manuscript and pushing the "publish" button. I did that and found the format I used to write the book did not transfer well to either publishing format. I had to go back and redo the format a few times, hence why the paperback version is still awaiting final review today.
I am 98% satisfied with the paperback version and 90%+ with the e-book. There are still few formatting issues that I just cannot resolve. and I had to cut out some photos I wanted to include originally.
I will admit that the book waffles a bit, especially the first three chapters which outline the circumstances of the trip and how we (I) went about organising things, and the last few which deal with events after we got home. But it all was relevant to me in the writing of the main story, driving and exploring the US.
The e-book is available in KDP Select for those who subscribe to Amazon's Lending Library and for a free download for 5 days, starting midnight tonight and ending midnight Sunday, for those who feel like a copy on Amazon. Just search the title or send me a PM for the link.
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