Hi everyone! And welcome to Day 6 of the Backyard Beasts & Curious Capers (BBCC for short) blog tour! I didn’t really know what I was going to write for this blog post when I first sat down, but now it’s longer than I thought it would be. Sorry! I hope I don’t send you all to sleep…
Anyway, I’m Kate (AKA Katharine R. Pepper) and, as well as writing my four stories for BBCC, I also formatted the book and put it together. Lucky me!
Every book, of course, starts with a story, or, in our case, stories. So, one day, at one of our monthly Ten Penners’ meetings, we decided we wanted to put together another anthology. Woohoo! That was the easy part. Next came the hard part – writing the actual stories! Aaaaggghhh!
Many, many, many months went by, during which we went through the process of creating, reading, editing and finalising our stories. There were lots of laughs along the way – which was just as well, because, even though it’s fun, writing is also hard work. You have to actually make up people and situations just out of your own brain! Crazy, right?
Anyway, we finally had our 20 stories. But that wasn’t the end, oh no. There was a lot more to come before our book baby was ready to face the world! And that’s where the fun really began – for me.
Although the stories start off as plain old Word documents, you can’t just whack them all together and then publish them. They have to be in the correct format for printing as an actual book. Fortunately, KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) provides Word templates for this, setting out the correct front and back matter, section breaks etc., and you can download the template and use it as your base document. This does make things easier, but you still have to know what you’re doing (because Word can be a tricky beast…). The template is quite plain, but you can, of course, change the fonts and anything else to make the book look just how you want it.
Once the stories were all in, I then added Jennifer’s wonderful illustrations, and some other bits and pieces, and the interior of the book was done.
But a book also needs a cover, so that was the next part of the process. The cover is in three parts – front, back and spine. Once your interior file is complete, and you know how many pages your book will be, you can download a cover template from KDP to ensure everything fits together properly when the book is printed. Jennifer had already created a beautiful front cover, so I then matched the colours and the fonts to create the back and spine, using Canva and PhotoScape X on my MacBook.
The interior file and cover were then uploaded to KDP, and, once they were approved, we ordered our first proof copy! This bit is awesome because, for the first time, you get to hold the book in your hands… After a couple of tweaks and further proof, we were ready to hit publish! And here we are – BBCC is out in the wild! Tada!
If you’ve got this far, and you’re not bored with me yet, here’s a little more!
As well as writing children’s stories with The Ten Penners, I’ve also self-published a couple of novels – Shadow of a Soldier (first published in
2013 and republished with a new cover in 2021) and The Players (2021).
Shadow of a Soldier was written during NaNoWriMo 2012, and although I’d attempted a novel before, I’d never finished one. NaNoWriMo showed me I could it! The idea for the story came to me in a dream – the first (and only) time that’s ever happened! If you haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo, it stands for “National Novel Writing Month” and takes place in November every year. The challenge is to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November (that’s 1,667 words per day). It sounds impossible, but it isn’t. I know because I’ve done it several times! Of course, you don’t end up with a finished, polished novel – the aim is to just get the words down and go back and edit later.
Blurb:
After Jennifer Bowen inherits her Great Aunt Roberta’s house in the small country town of Littletown, she hopes it will be her chance to start her life over after a recent, bitter divorce. However, she soon discovers that the cottage is already occupied and that her great-aunt was keeping a secret that will change Jennifer’s life forever.
When Jennifer’s ex-husband, Mark, turns up unexpectedly on her doorstep, Jennifer meets the other occupant of the cottage: the very handsome, and very dead, Corporal Jim Brown. Jennifer’s family history intertwines with that of Corporal Brown, and only she can uncover the truth that will allow him to find the peace he craves.
Jennifer’s search leads her to family secrets long forgotten, and as the mystery slowly unravels, Jennifer will not only find a new romance but also danger: someone in Littleton wants the past to remain buried.
The Players was my 2013 NaNoWriMo novel, and it took me several years to get the story right. The first draft was just a big mess, and of that initial 50,000 or so words, I think I eventually culled around half! But I loved my two main characters, and I knew they had a story to tell. We got there in the end, anyway! The cover photo is actually of my maternal grandmother, Violet, taken by my grandfather, Fred, a keen photographer. My grandmother died long before I was born, but I’ve always loved this gorgeous photo, and I was so pleased when Mum agreed that I could use it for my cover.
Blurb:
In 1920s Australia, the silent movie industry is thriving.
Amelia Malone, obsessed with acting and the “flicks” from a young age, has her life forever changed when she is discovered at her local theatre and thrust into the exciting world of moving pictures.
Sam Collins, despite being the son of two famous vaudevillians, has never given acting a second thought. But fate, in the form of Henry Johnson, a movie producer, has other plans.
Together, Amelia and Sam light up the silver screen, and Australians can’t get enough of them. Their lives, onscreen and off, appear to be perfect.
Behind the scenes, however, things are not so black and white. And Amelia and Sam soon discover that life, just like the movies, is filled with both tragedy and comedy.
Welcome to the world of “The Players”.
In between 2013 and 2021, I completed six more draft novels, all written or edited during NaNoWriMo or Camp NaNoWriMo (which takes place in April and July each year). Those works in progress are three YA novels about a teenage witch, two mystery novels for adults about a crime scene cleaner, and one standalone YA fantasy novel. I’m hoping that my first YA novel, Kylie Cooper and the Misplaced Bushranger, will be published late this year or early 2024, so watch out for that one! Kylie was a character I created for a novelette in the first Ten Penners’ anthology I was involved in, Fan-Tas-Tic-Al Tales, waaaaay back in 2009, and I loved her so much I thought she deserved a novel or three!
Well, I think that’s enough about me. Enjoy the rest of the blog tour, and don’t forget to come and see us at our launch if you can!
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For more information, please contact us:
Email: thetenpenners@gmail.com
My website: https://katharinerpepper-author.weebly.com
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