Just doodlin' ...

 

For no reason at all ...

"Colonies of Kobol - Collection: Special Edition" - DOWNLOAD NOW

 

Visit the sixteen Colonies of Kobol in a single volume ...

Two thousand years before the Cylons destroyed the Twelve Colonies and the Battlestar Galactica led a ragtag fleet to Earth, the Lords of Kobol fell and mankind fled for the Colonies.

See the settling of the first colony on Gemenon.  Behold the destruction of Earth and the flight of the Final Five.  Witness the rise of empires on Virgon and Leonis and the thousand-year-war waged across the plains of Tauron, the seas of Picon, and the mountains of Sagittaron.  Visit the jungles of Libran and Scorpia, the mines of Canceron, the farms of Aerilon, and the volcanoes of Aquaria.  Read the continuation of the short-lived TV series Caprica and watch the horrors of the Cylon War and the creation of The Colony.  Revisit New Caprica and then, on our own world, go on one last journey with Bill Adama and Saul Tigh, and get a look into our own future as the Messengers of The One True God work to free mankind of the cycle.

This is the definitive special edition collection of these books in chronological order, complete with additional chapters, behind-the-scenes information, art, pics, and author's commentary.  Learn all about the writing of these tales, connections to the Battlestar Galactica and Caprica TV shows, and much more.

There is a Plan and questions will be answered.

Available for FREE from:

Smashwords
Apple
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
Everand

Please rate and review it where you got it!  Spread the word!

Writing the Special Editions Part XI: Finally, "Lords of Kobol - Special Edition" available for download everywhere!

It took a month-plus, but Lords of Kobol - Collection: Special Edition is now available for download from multiple retailers.  The links are below; a needlessly detailed recounting of what happened immediately follows.

So LoK SE was published on Smashwords on Dec. 8.  Smashwords is the free site through which I publish my books.  Because I can't charge for my BSG-related work and Smashwords lets me make books free to download, it makes sense.  And, Smashwords has what they call the "premium catalog," which means they distribute it to other online retailers (Apple, B&N, etc. ... not Amazon; they won't let me charge $0.00)  Typically, it takes about four-ish days for a book to be uploaded and then get distributed elsewhere.

Not this time.

When I publish through Smashwords, I upload a Microsoft Word "doc" file which then gets converted into everything else.  LoK SE is a large book with a LARGE amount of hyperlinking inside.  The Word file is 1,314 pages long and 13.8 MB.  There are over 400 chapters, plus commentary on about 85% of those chapters.  Fifty images.  It's big.  The problem, as it turns out, was the table of contents.  Not the one I made; the one that was automatically generated.  

If you've read the book, you know there's a table of contents that links to all the chapters, the maps, etc.  At the end of most chapters, there's a link to the author's commentary on that chapter.  Each of these links require two things: a bookmark and a hyperlink.  For example, for chapter one of Book One, I select the heading for that chapter, click "insert bookmark," and give it a name ("I1" - for Book One, chapter one).  Then, in the table of contents, I highlight "I - PYTHIA," click "insert link," select "place in this document," and then the "I1" bookmark.  So I had to insert bookmarks and hyperlinks for all 420-ish chapters, plus the maps, prefaces, the acknowledgements at the end, the list of other books, etc.  That's 430 pairs of bookmarks and links.  This doesn't include the commentary.  I'm guesstimating that there are about 350 "author's commentary" sections, which means that's another 350 pairs of bookmarks and links.  Because the automatically generated table of contents looks for these bookmarks, that's a whole mess of stuff that could end up in the ToC that shouldn't be there.

(This does not include the "hidden bookmarks" that Word creates for some godsdamned reason every time you open the file, make a change, or look at the screen funny.  By the time I was ready to upload the finished doc file, there were literally thousands of these bastards.  I had to create a macro in Word to delete them all because doing so by hand would have been impossible.)

So, when I uploaded the LoK SE doc file, the system struggled to reconcile the ToC as I had it (just the chapters, maps, etc.) against the massive number of other bookmarks not in that ToC.  The epub file generated by Smashwords, when downloaded and its ToC opened, included scores of oddball links at the end, plus missing legitimate links.

After conversation with Smashwords support (shoutout to Matt T.), I learned that there is a special way to create bookmarks you don't want in that auto-generated ToC.  Prefixing a bookmark with "ref_" means the auto-generator will ignore it and it won't end up in the epub's ToC.  That means every "author's commentary" bookmark would need to be edited to add "ref_" at the start and every link pointing to those bookmarks would need to be redone, too.  

Needless to say, this took a while.*

Reupload.  Better, but still had bad, "stray" links in the ToC and missing links, too.  Edited and reuploaded again.  No change.

At this point, I decided to the back-and-forth navigation was just too complex.  Support said a well-crafted epub file would likely be the solution (and Smashwords allows those uploads, too).  I started down that path with the program Calibre.  Days later, the epub file was finished and I uploaded it.  I downloaded the epub from Smashwords and it looked OK ... but would it pass review and get in the premium catalog?  Nearly a week later, the answer was "yes."  

TL;DR: here are the links:

Smashwords (in all file formats)
Apple
Barnes & Noble
Everand
Gardners
Kobo
Odilo

Please, download the book from your online service of choice.  But, most importantly, be sure you give it a rating and leave reviews wherever you can.  This helps spread the word and get more readers on board.  I really appreciate it and hope you enjoy it.

* - Holy shit.  Colonies of Kobol - Special Edition is going to take forever.  That's well over 500 chapters and author's commentary sections.  It'll take weeks to get it in shape, but at least I knew I would be starting with an epub file thanks to the 15MB Wall.  I better get started now if I want it to be ready to go for March 15.

Thanks for reading.

"Lords of Kobol - Collection: Special Edition" - DOWNLOAD NOW!

 

All five acclaimed Lords of Kobol books collected in a single volume ...

Thousands of years before the Cylons destroyed the Twelve Colonies and the Battlestar Galactica led a ragtag fleet to Earth, the Lords of Kobol lived among mankind in peace and harmony. Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Athena, Ares ... the gods provided and the people worshipped. But who or what were they? In Book One: Apotheosis, see Kobol in its golden age, with gods and humanity working together, and witness the creation and exodus of the Thirteenth Tribe. In Book Two: Descent, learn the origins of the Olympians and the tale of their coming to Kobol, as well as their war against non-believers. In Book Three: The Final Exodus, watch the end of the Pantheon's reign as Cylons revolt and mankind flees for the Twelve Colonies. In Prelude: Of Gods and Titans, spend more time with Zeus and the gods, and meet their parents, the Titans, and observe the beginning of the cycle. And in the background of it all, The One True God and its Messengers seek to preserve humanity in the face of doom. Finally, in Alternate: Tales from Ancient Days, read a different take on the end of the world and how the gods played their parts.

This is the definitive special edition collection of these five works, complete with deleted chapters, behind-the-scenes information, art, pics, and author's commentary. Learn all about the writing of these tales, connections to the Battlestar Galactica and Caprica TV shows, and much more.

There is a Plan and questions will be answered.

Available for free from:

Smashwords (in all file formats)
Apple
Barnes & Noble
Everand
Gardners
Kobo
Odilo

Please rate and review where you got it!  Spread the word!

Writing the Special Editions Part X: LoK is Locked!

I've finished another read-through of the Lords of Kobol - Collection: Special Edition.  Didn't change much at all, so I believe I'm at the "walk away" point.  I'm locking it and eagerly anticipating publishing it on Friday, December 8.  Two weeks from today and right on schedule.

For kicks, I created this graphic showing the various covers I used over the last twelve years:

Click to embiggen

(Doesn't include the "marble edition" covers since those were never actually published.)

I'll make another post in a week or so detailing the timing of it but if you're following me on social media, it'll be hard for you to miss it.  (Here's my Linktree page so you can get a quick look at my social accounts and choose whichever one floats your boat.)

Thanks for reading.

Writing the Special Editions Part IX: ONE MONTH AWAY

Just finishing up my last readthrough ... Thankfully, I'm not having to change much.  Just dotting "i"s and the like.

It's almost done.

Writing the Special Editions Part VIII: One More Time!

A brief update to let everyone know that I've begun the second complete (cover-to-cover) readthrough of the Lords of Kobol Collection.  

I'll be making sure all the links are correct, checking for errors, mistakes, and so on, ... stuff like that.  I'll also be evaluating the commentary I wrote a few months back to ensure that it's still what I want to be out there, inextricably tied to the "definitive version" of these novels.  

I'm also keeping an eye on that 15MB wall, but that wasn't a major issue with the LoK Special Edition.  

Everything is still on track for it to be released on the twentieth anniversary of the BSG miniseries ...

December 8.

Thanks for reading.