Spacing Speedbumps

 This is a BTS post.

(not the band but behind the scenes).

 I've been told that some of the spacing on the stories is a bit hard to read.  I've gone to various sites to try and unravel the problem.  I'm good at technical stuff and can do all of the steps mentioned.  The difficulties continue though.  The theme I have for the blog doesn't have the CSS coding referring to the line spacing. It can be added to other sections with some results. It's not universal.  No matter, there's an option to add it in another section of settings.

 The trouble with both of those solutions is that the line spacing, like everything else, is based on a hierarchy of settings.  The one that has the primary influence (and does not get cancelled out) is the html of the individual post.  So, short of editing that, for each post, there is no way to get the spacing nice on every story.

 That said, if there is a particular story that is hard to read and would benefit from a quick spacing edit, let me know.  Otherwise you could copy the story into a word processor of your choice and adjust it that way.  Or just slog through them as-is where-is.

 I've grabbed a few myself, copy paste to word processor and changed spacing to 1.5 and copied back.  Not too slow but a bit of a pain for lots and lots of posts.  

Copy/Pasting the line breaks also turns them into nonfunctional lines.

Old Memories

She woke up with a start. The old woman had a vague impression of her age, but not much else to go on as the last clouds of sleepy disorientation left. A wave of panic set in as she had no idea who she was or where this was. Her eyes scanned the room looking for clues, but everything was blurry. She looked down and saw glasses hanging from a necklace. She struggled to put them on, crying out in frustration when her arms shook too much to make it safe to put them near her face.

A woman rushed in from a hallway and seemed almost thankful it was not something more urgent. She smiled broadly and helped with the glasses. The old woman looked around again, but saw nothing more helpful when things were in focus. The younger woman, ‘Terry’ on her large nametag, was still waiting, smiling.

“Where am...” the older lady began. “Park Meadow Retirement Home” said Terry, before the question was entirely out. “And...?” said the weak, seemly embarrassed voice. Terry pushed the old woman’s wheelchair to another corner of the room, startling the seated occupant as they had forgotten again about the chairs mobility.

“We’re not going far.” said Terry, stopping in front of a decorated mirror. Her reflection gazing back at her, wisps of memory finally coming back to her clouded mind. “Gladis” said the old woman, pointing at herself with unsteady arms. Terry flipped open the paper stuck to the mirror, showing her patient her name spelled out in large cutout letters. “Got it pretty quick today.” said the nurse, still smiling.

“Is there anything else Miss Gladis? Hungry?” “No, nothing” replied the old woman. Terry pushed Gladis back toward the middle of the room, smiling extra broadly as she waved goodbye.

Gladis looked around the room a third time, pieces of recollection slowly falling into place. She reached out toward a small table with a black remote on it. All of the buttons were taped over, minus the red glowing power circle. She stabbed at the only available option with sore bony fingers.

After a third painful press she realized that it wasn’t pointing toward the TV well enough and kicked her legs till she pivoted in the right direction. One more press and the small set roared to life, inane banter from an enthusiastic game-show filled the room.

Time Blocks

 

“Path Generator error 402. Target not found. Try again?”

Time travel was never meant to be mainstream, but eventually it was. It took a while for scientists and experimenters to standardize everything, making it safe and easy for just about everyone to travel.

The process had been distilled down to blocks. Start with Goal blocks, or rather targets. A certain person and a time. Get a few blocks for a Time Corridor to have an interaction window with the target, then a Cleanup block to wipe out the incursion.

She wasn’t sure what was wrong. Her help bot suggested that a Rescue block wasn’t valid as an end point. “You’re just a Gen 1 bot, you don’t do the non-standard blocks.” was her response. The trial had worked regardless and the actual mission was in que, almost. As soon as she put it in the Path generator it froze with the error message.

The bot might be right anyway, but when she tried to append a Cleanup block to the string it erred again.

“Path Generator error 850. Rescue missions should not need cleanup. Cleanup is already part of the original Time String.”

‘What?’ she thought. ‘He isn’t part of a Time String, he’s being Rescued’. Her bot prompted her again. The Rescue was supposed to be used as a part of another incursion. To rescue another time traveller.

A Kobo Experiment

 As you have hopefully already seen, I have a number of short stories on Kobo.  I am in the process of recording reading/performance for audiobook versions, but haven't quite got there yet.  Today though, I have uploaded another short story, and have done a few things differently.

 Firstly, I have started with a price.  Initially the first dozen stories were free, but some of the Kobo infrastructure doesn't kick in with that model.  It still hasn't kicked in for the now $0.99CN books.  Second, it is the first offering which is in the same series as something already up.  That should be another way to link stories on the same page - vs hoping people click the author name and search that way.

 Right now I'm just filling time till the words are checked against the guidelines (not hateful or pornographic).  A process that can take "up to 3 business days" but for me so far is usually done in 2-3 hours. 

As far as 'sales' go, it depends which dashboard I look at.  It's either 20 or 26 - all of which from the 'free' era.  Minus the fact that I've downloaded all of my own so minus 14 from that.  So far scifi and detective genres seem to be doing the best. 

45 minutes later:  Well, it looks like the story has passed the check, and it's only showing the series link, but at least that bit works.  It might be an idea to link all my short stories into an umbrella 'One off' or something.  Unfortunately the preview is only showing the title graphic, and the length estimate is still not showing.  And now since it's not free, I have to run around a different way if I want to get it on my own ereader...

 Phuture Pharaohs

 

Is Cheap Better than Free?

 Who wouldn't want something for free? Well, as it turns out - a lot of people.  There are a rather large number of free ebooks, free videos on YouTube, free brushes on art sites and so on.  From what I can see, if it's 'too free' then people don't seem to want it.  Free usually means no advertisements for it - because that would be a money sink - and hard to get in front of the right eyes.

Sometimes people collect free things, and don't use them.  Websites may collect free things, but don't necessarily highlight them.  They cost money to keep around, but don't add to the profit when the are consumed.  

There is a certain expectation of quality.  People wonder, 'Is it free because you can't sell it?' If people don't pay for something, they may not try to extract any value from it.  Millions of people will gladly pay a subscription fee and complain about the programming, crying foul when the prices go up.  If one hasn't invested in a product, there's sometimes no motivation to pay attention or re-consume it. If I'm not poorer for getting it, how can I be richer with it?  Have I bothered to do a valuation of something that only costs time? 

Free, or mostly free content is available on the internet if you know where to look, and with a bit of sifting, you can find better quality than stuff you paid for.

Or not.  So many AI projects are churning out stuff, filling the internet with, well, filler.  Stories that go nowhere, art that is 'by the numbers' and uninspired.  Functional but not fulfilling.  Most content sites have a filter on things that are sold, making sure you are clearly stating if things are AI.  Maybe that's the reason people would rather pay.   Again equating effort in to price out?

I don't know.  For a while I'll put my ebooks at the lowest price for some comparison to free.  The Kobo staff have already said that "Other works by this Author" isn't shown if the books are free.  Who knows what else 'free' disqualifies you from?  I notice that very few 'free' books have a length summary for them, and perhaps those that do have it from a time when there was a price attached.

Maybe a cost is good too because people want a tangible way to say 'Thank you for your effort' and 'Here's something so you can keep doing this'.  If something is free, and no obvious way to support them, there's a question as to how they can afford the use of time.  How frequent is an update or new material going to be?  Is it worth me investing in this series if the author hasn't committed to relying on it for an income?

Download from Kobo!

I have uploaded a number of short stories over to Kobo (14 at time of this post).  To keep results for Author grouped together, I put them all under the name "James Utharian".

For the covers I have gone with (mostly) AI, but touched up in Photoshop.  A lot of extra tiny font and 'sameness' seems to edited out.  In the original version of the cover below, all the moons were the same size and surface feature orientation. 

Right now, they are free ebooks, but I am looking at getting audio versions for a small price, or perhaps a bundle - not sure if Kobo sells bundles but we will see.

 

Tourist Cube 

 

Denosha Station

 

Denosha Station was at the far end of the high density zone. That meant that it still had the full range of docks and amenities of a core station. Shipping was both high and low – most of the goods were on their way out of the zone, with little directed to or suitable for Denosha itself. General traffic was relatively high, as it marked the farthest point you could reach without a higher rated jump vessel. It was also a great spot to watch the larger deep space vessels get ready for their journeys.

 

Despite being relatively luxurious compared to the Deep Stations, it was still considered Frontier for a lot of softer people. That probably boiled down to the food. Most of the markets didn’t bother with RealSense protein and nutrients, preferring to serve the bulk paste with the full range of dried spices and herbs. RS packs were still available, but at a premium – there just wasn’t a large enough demand to warrant a full cargo run, or the expense of a setting up a GrowStudio. Besides, proper food would make it like every other station, and take away the ‘frontier’ uniqueness of Denosha.

People who lived here were work oriented, not that other places weren’t but, there was little else to do here once the initial thrill had worn off. Most shifts were done quickly and quietly, drama on the station was fairly low, outside of the tourists. News of anything that happened was disseminated fairly rapidly via VidPads and rarely discussed. Crews were often ‘overseen’ by visitors, who didn’t want politics and small talk interrupting their vacation.

Board Games

 

“Board Acorn, C3-delta to F7-alpha” They put out the pulse from the earliest Time Node and it propagated up the line. With all of time to explore, they needed something to keep track of all the moves from everyone to stay in sync.

Each board was an era of time and a set of people. The positions on the board were the level of experiment, exact target and Time Node in charge.

Board Acorn was slightly before the Collapse, and a set of people that had the most Temporal potential.

C3 delta was a mapping experiment done by a time node somewhat distant, but still within a thousand years of alpha.

Alpha was the gateway time, and things had to go through them to go back farther.

They got forwarded all the information from the mapping. They became F7, which was a move that had to be approved from further up the line. It allowed them to do a bit more involved experiment than simply monitoring.

C was Common, and for the Acorn set of people, that was Time related work, though for that era mostly theoretical or semi-fictional. 3 was cubed. That meant all reasonable possibilities were covered. That was up to and including subconscious memory of previous pulls thought erased.

The mapping made sure that any insights that might be gained from any natural interaction were done, documented and reset. It was as if everyone in the target group was cloned, put into a million identical rooms, and run through different stimuli to see what would happen.

That made for a cloud of information that was a backup, in case their normal path through events was interrupted. They could still be steered back to any particular discovery or insight.

F7 was a functional experiment. One that could upset things if not already backed up.

For the moment though, the approval had opened a lot of doors. They looked at the map of possibilities and tried to steer toward one.

But first, something small. They used the Narration Field to nudge the cat toward the window.

Observations

 

The sound stopped. It was unusual, but not impossible. Any number of things could have happened but he felt like it was more than nothing.

The song was still playing. The tab wasn’t muted. He clicked along the music till it began to play again.

Was it related to the other post? The bubbles within bubbles? Had he shifted from one state to another?

He set to save things a bit more externally, as per the previous story. Things seemed different there too, “First archives” of things that had already been saved. “Stanley Apartment” “Lighthouse” “Jade” were ‘new’ but not “Ending” or “Media Room”

There was a request to change the music, from Sherlock’s waking up to the Sherlock and Doctor combined.

Things were still the same superficially. Supper at six. Why would that change? Different variations on time were more than just someone playing with variables. They had to be related.

He tried to make sure his own feedback was constructive and not destructive.

There were new things. Supper out the night before. A hand harp. A person no longer on a Thursday shift.

He felt closer and farther to certain stories. Not in time, but in state of mind.

He realized that the future would be working blind as well if the latest theory was closer to the truth.

The new dates were interesting. March 2017, May 2018.

Regulations

 

“We can’t do that.” “Of course we can, we just have to put the gain up to 145.5” “No I mean it’s against regulations”

Dan felt like he’d had this argument before, and it wasn’t impossible to think it might be a time loop. They had found the most likely candidate for a non-linear incursion, but background radiation at the site implied a certain maximum to the interference.

The trouble was, it was a self fulfilling prophecy. As Dan increased the gain, or focused the effect, the new local maximums spiked. That was expected, or should have been. Too many people were still limited in 4d thinking.

The target was 238 years ago, but with all the technology it may as well be the next room over. At the power levels they were using, it was almost 1:1 for procedure and result. Still, too many in the experiment put unnecessary weight on ‘old’ readings.

“We can’t make direct contact with that power level” “But records say...” “How do you think the current records got there?”

It was a circular argument. There would be no record of them doing it, till they did it. It was like time was being written in two places at once, and a tangent in the past could lead them to a new future. It would be like having the rug taken out from under you. It would jump things from a passive study to actively living the consequences.

Would they live the altered time again, or would they just jump to the new track and have to catch up on the changes? That depended on how well they could isolate themselves from the ripple effect.

It took a while to realize they were already cocooned, as they were already deep into the mystery.

First Date

 

She sat opposite him at a small neighbourhood pizza restaurant, their friends a table or two over to give them some privacy, but not too much.

“I’ve seen your future” she said, testing the waters. Her friends didn’t seem to be able hear her and he didn’t look surprised.

She waited for the response. It didn’t arrive. “You’re supposed to say you’ve seen mine too” she muttered under her breath. She reached for a piece of jewellery around her neck.

He didn’t know what it was for, but he made a quick guess. “No, wait. I’m still me. I’m not a broken echo or a false jump.”

She looked puzzled. “But, I saw how this was supposed to go. You were supposed to say you’ve seen my future, we trade stories and just walk through the dating process for appearances.”

“Oh really?” he said “I suppose I agreed to this at some point?”

She continued to look confused. “Yes, well, not directly, but I saw the diagram. You gave me access to your computer files.”

He paused. He didn’t want to say yes, or no – he could tell she was on a knife’s edge of reacting badly.

“But I haven’t seen you.” he said finally.

“Yes you have” she started, “but just out of order.”

“That’s your perspective of events,” he said plainly. “I’m sure if you scan me you’ll see there’s no jumps from my end.”

“But that’s impossible, you were there. It was you and you did jump then.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t, but there’s got to be a particular start for my jumps, and I don’t think this is the right one.”

She sat back, deflated, her world flipping upside down. “But your machine...”

“....went to you.” he answered.