It's that time of the year; National Novel Writing Month. I couldn't finish my WIP last NaNo, but it turned out nice, slowy becoming a proper novel work-in-progress rather than just an experiment at writing each day. If nothing else, that November got me into the habit of writing every day.

I'll doing NaNo this month again mostly to celebrate that fact and also because I'm curious what kind of ideas will come out.

Yup, I had a proper WTF moment the other day while watching a documentary about primates. There was this scene where a monkey was peeling a banana like a boss at the edge of the screen. Which made me think, what the hell I've been doing all those years? Then I remembered the quote -I think it was by Einstein, about how everyone could be geniuses in their fields, and not judging a fish by its ability (or the lack of it ) to fly. Which made me feel slightly better, but it still stings a little.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a sample video of the scene, but here's Youtube video someone demonstrating how to do it properly, hoping that I'm not the only one to be flabbergasted by this.

In a few words, my experience with Smashwords was pretty smooth. If you read the official Style Guide and follow it as suggested, the process is very straight forward and easy to follow. Editing and preparing a short story takes about 10 or 15 minutes at best if you follow the rules laid out in the document. And the result is often very good. Preparing a cover is probably the hardest part if you aren't good at image processing etc. The results can be... well, a bit amateurish.

After you go through the process, your book or story is added to Smashwords’ listing and it goes under review for distribution to Apple Store, Kindle etc. I’m not sure about the usual waiting time for premium distribution but as of today, my story Wraiths of Caledonia has been waiting to be reviewed for about 7 days.

Now, a bit more about the story; Wraiths of Caledonia has been trunked for a while. I decided it was a really good candidate for trying out e-publishing. It’s free and you can find it here at Smashwords. Feel free to leave a review or comment if you take time to read it.