Your clothing is still downloading... now available in Kindle format

Today, I converted my latest novel, 'Your clothing is still downloading', to ebook format via Smashwords.  It is available in all major ebook formats, including ePub and Kindle.

For a limited period, the smashwords ebooks for this title will be free.  I'm going to be increasing the cost to $0.99 at some point over the next few weeks to co-ordinate with the ebooks I'll be creating and selling via Amazon ($0.99 is the lowest price you can set for a book at Amazon, I've discovered today).  So, if you're an ebook reader, grab your copy ASAP!

Head over to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125651 to get your copy.  You'll need to connect your Kindle to your computer in order to transfer the book (fiddly, I know; hence my decision to sort out distribution via Amazon).  Whilst you're there, check out my other titles, all of which are priced $0.99 (except for 'AFK', which is free).

Your clothing is still downloading... Chapter 11 reading

I've re-recorded and uploaded to YouTube the reading I did last night of chapter 11 of my new novel, 'Your clothing is still downloading', so if you missed it you can catch up here.  Why chapter 11?  It's a self-contained story in which Gerry, the main character in the novel, recalls the first time he met an SL lover in RL.  Enjoy!

Your clothing is still downloading (2012) by Huckleberry Hax

Did the internet, I asked myself, really expose hidden, but pre-existing identity?  Or did it create brand new identity that would never have happened without it?  Or was its ultimate function just to take whatever identity you'd managed to build and to tear it into tiny, unexaminable pieces?  Was Benjamin Burton just an evolution of his younger self – the guy I'd met at university who'd once told me he regarded marital fidelity as one of the most important pillars to the meaning of life – or was that man no longer in existence, replaced by a new human being who only happened to share a few of his memories?

What's a guy to do when his best friend asks him to impersonate him for an evening in Second Life?  What if the person he wants fooling is his wife?  And what if the impersonator has fallen in love with her before the week is over?

Your Clothing is Still Downloading is a Second Life novel from the author of AFK.

Available formats:

Print:	Paperback (231 Pages): £8.99
Online:	Issuu: Free	PDF: Free
ePub:	Smashwords: $0.99	Barnes & Noble: $0.99
	Kobo: $0.99	Sony: $0.99

Amazon Kindle: $0.99

Due to the way that Amazon operates in different countries, it's best if you obtain your copy of 'Your Clothing is Still Downloading' from your 'local' Amazon website.

UK: amazon.co.uk	USA: amazon.com	France: amazon.fr	Spain: amazon.es
Canada: amazon.ca	Germany: amazon.de	Italy: amazon.it	Japan: amazon.co.jp

Listen to Huck read chapter 11 here.

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Your Clothing is Still Downloading: Launch event

This Friday (20 Jan), I'll be making the PDF and Issu versions of 'Your Clothing is Still Downloading' available for free, and the paperback version available for purchase from lulu.com.  A Kindle version will follow.

To celebrate this, the launch of my sixth novel under the name Huckleberry Hax (and the fourth to be set in SL), I'll be holding an event at my venue, the Nancy Redgrave Building.  If you're free at 4pm SLT and fancy finding out about the novel, I'll be reading an excerpt from the book, a self contained chapter in which the protagonist recalls a real life meeting with his Second Life lover.

The Nancy Redgrave Building can be found here.

UPDATE

Thank you to all who came, listened to the end and gave such lovely feedback.  The novel is now online and can be found here.  I've also re-recorded the reading and posted it on YouTube.  Picture below by Taralyn Gravois.

Your clothing is still downloading... final proof on the way

Look at this shiny cover!  The edits have been made, the final text uploaded, the cover designed and the 'OK' button clicked.  Along the way I learned that when paragraphs jump themselves completely onto the next page rather than leave a line all by itself at the bottom of the previous one, this is called 'orphan control'.  Yes.

The cheery email from lulu announcing the final proof paperback's postage arrived today... so I can probably expect the package within the next three weeks, what with it being seasonal and everything.

Once I'm satisfied everything's in good order, I'll probably throw a launch event: read a few extracts, flip the switch on the web page which will let you download the PDF for free, and so on.  It'll probably be some time in January, so keep an eye for notices if this in any way attracts the tendrils of your interest.

Your clothing is still downloading... draft print version arrives

Lulu.com have excelled themselves.  Just three days after the final words of 'Your clothing is still downloading' were written, the paperback version of the first draft has plopped through my letterbox.  Time, now, to get editing with my pen.  I also - as you can see - need to start thinking about a cover design...

Your clothing is still downloading... done.

This morning, 'Your clothing is still downloading' crossed the NaNoWriMo finish line with over three thousand words to spare.  I've managed to put down 53,500 words over the last month and I'm pleased with the result.

I'll be aiming to add this title to my free downloads by Christmas, with Lulu print and Smashwords ebook versions soon after.  I'll be doing a speedy readthrough later today and then getting myself done a personal print version so I can proof-read it properly (I always do this better when reading from paper).  Once that's done, I'll be updating the book into a second draft and getting it up online for anyone who's interested to read.

Here are the last two paragraphs of the novel.  There are no major spoilers in them, but you might want to skip them if you plan on reading the full novel when it becomes available.

It occurred to me in those first few months that the story of me and Cath was always about me wanting something I had no entitlement to. Is love ever actually any different? To want a person in that way is to want them in a way that just isn't possible; however connected two people can be – whatever metaphors we concoct – they are still two people, two minds, two realities, two separate visions of the world and its meaning. You cannot ever take a person completely from their reality. But that's just the overview. On a moment-by-moment basis, the connectedness it is possible to feel is extraordinary, astonishing, unfathomable. In these moments, the impossible becomes possible; it is life's greatest illusion that they are experienced only as the exception to the rule. 

Douglas Adams once wrote about a whole world parallel to our own, accessible by turning your head through the billionth part of a billionth part of a degree. Very few things are actually impossible. In most cases, it's just a question of how you're looking at them at the time.

Your clothing is still downloading... 90% update

This is it, folks; the final stretch.  Today, 'Your clothing is still downloading' passed the 90% mark of 45,000 words.  Whilst I'm still well ahead of schedule (I'm expecting to pass the 50,000 word mark by Monday at the latest), there's still a fair bit of story to be told and I'm anticipating writing all the way up to the 30th and possibly a little beyond.  This might well end up a 60k novel.  In any case, here's the paragraph that moved me into the last 5,000 words to the NaNoWriMo goalpost.

Lying. More lying. It occurred to me that in all probability I'd just stumbled across the very plan that Ben himself was forming. “I've told her,” he would say, perhaps in a telephone call. “And I told her you didn't know who she was when I introduced you. So she thinks you have no idea. I thought it through last night and decided this would be the best way. It's obvious, really. Think about it: the key deception involved her not knowing it was you, and that's now out. You don't have to pretend you don't know her any more. You're free to explore each other however you want. That's all that really matters. There's no reason to own up to having known before today: that would satisfy only your conscience, Gerry; that would be about meeting your needs and not hers.” Yes. A white lie to the benefit of all, easily justifiable in the name of discovered happiness. In the months that followed, these three days would come to appear a tiny misdirection, he would reason. A minuscule absence of truth of negligible actual consequence. Your clothing is still downloading. Others can see you normally.

Your clothing is still downloading... 75% update

Still two days ahead of schedule, 'Your Clothing is still downloading' passed last night the 75% completion mark of 37,500 words.  This year's NaNoWriMo attempt, I will now reveal, concerns an SL/RL love triangle.  Here is the section that put the novel into the final quarter of its writing.

The couple I was watching appeared to have said absolutely nothing to each other for the entire duration of my brief interchange with Sarah. The woman had her back to me. The guy seemed to be looking at some vague point over her right shoulder. Sarah's bra disappeared. She wrote about throwing it in my direction and, dutifully, I entered a few words in reply. What does one do with a bra thrown at you that's witty, intelligent and slightly insecure (but not in a sexually unattractive way)? I wondered. I wrote that I contemplated putting it on my head as makeshift neko ears then thought better of it because I thought nekos looked ridiculous. Somewhere in the world, Sarah's driver typed in a laugh and told me she was making a mental note never to put her tail on when I was nearby and in a tipping mood. The guy on the table I was watching said something that looked like it contained about seven words. The woman opposite him nodded.

Your clothing is still downloading... 50% update

Two days ahead of schedule, 'Your clothing is still downloading' passed the 50% mark of 25,000 words on its way to NaNoWriMo completion.  Here's the paragraph that took it across the halfway lime.

Did the internet, I asked myself, really expose hidden, but pre-existing identity? Or did it create brand new identity that would never have happened without it? Or was its ultimate function just to take whatever identity you'd managed to build and to tear it into tiny, unexaminable pieces? Was Benjamin Burton just an evolution of his younger self – the guy I'd met at university who'd once told me he regarded marital fidelity as one of the most important pillars to the meaning of life – or was that man no longer in existence, replaced by a new human being who only happened to share a few of his memories? It was hardly the case I disagreed that opinions should ever be revised; it was hardly the case I thought that before the internet no-one had ever come to change their mind about something – the psychological literature was replete with suggested explanations for that process long before the first email got sent. But the degree and the speed and the totality of the change was overwhelming. Were we built to absorb such change? Was it possible to sustain it indefinitely? Was there a limit to how far we could travel from ourselves before we looked back at the distant shore and realised we had no idea who we were any more?

Your clothing is still downloading... 25% update

'Your Clothing is Still Downloading', my 4th SL novel and National Novel Writing Month attempt, passed the 25% wordage mark today.  Yes, I measure my progress by quantity.  Here's the passage that pushed me into the second quarter - coincidentally, the first to mention the novel's title.

I rezzed as a floating purple cloud. “Your clothing is still downloading,” the message box told me. “Others can still see you normally”. 'Normally' is such a vague term. If 'normally' means 'not as a cloud' then presumably that could include naked. Since, realistically, naked's what most people are likely to be worried about when they see a message telling them their clothes haven't yet arrived, you'd think Linden would be at pains to put their mind at rest on the issue if nakedness is definitely not occurring. “Your clothing is still downloading, but don't worry - others don't see you naked” would seem a much more appropriate statement. But no. The absence of non-nudity assurance strikes me as distinctly suspicious. It's like a question answered with the reply to a different question. “Your clothing is still downloading.” “Jesus Christ, am I naked?” “What? Oh don't worry, others can see you normally.” It's like a subtle form of misdirection. Whenever I read it, I get that back-of-the-mind feeling that someone's just tried to pickpocket me.

NaNoWriMo 2011 kicks off

1 November sees the start of National Novel Writing Month 2011, the insane 30 day dash to write a 50,000 word novel.  My attempt this year will be my fourth Second Life novel and is called, "Your Clothing is Still Downloading".  Here is the opening paragraph:

I was sitting in Persky's with my sixth coffee of the day and the first two lines of an ad for a price comparison website scratched out across the back of a napkin, when Benjamin Fisher – aka Maximus Manchester – fell into the seat opposite me as though dropped through a trapdoor in the ceiling.  “I need you to log on as me tonight,” he said urgently.  “I can't talk now, I have a train to catch in five minutes.  Did you touch your coffee yet?  I've not drunk a thing since eight-thirty.”

That's all for now, folks.  If you fancy joining me in my writing quest, I'll be spending most of my time inworld this month in The Nancy Redgrave Building, my three year old building named last year in memory of the first person ever to read my first ever SL NaNo, AFK.  I've kitted out the building for the month to be a NaNo writers' hangout, which I have no doubt Nancy would have appreciated.  Here's the SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Varano/65/198/1000



Gearing up for NaNoWriMo 2011

For my 100th post, here's some information on my new novel project.  'Your clothing is still downloading' is the working title for my 2011 NaNoWriMo attempt, and will be a novel set in Second Life using a similar style to 'AFK.'  My NaNo attempt last year - after four successive 'wins' - didn't get past 5,000 words and my project earlier this year - 'Fatal Crosspost' - faltered at just past 20,000 words; I'm very motivated, therefore, to get a new SL novel done by the end of November!  More details will follow.