(6234,1,'2011-01-27 16:59:43','2011-01-27 16:59:43','It’s spring in Rome. Nic Costa is just back at work after the cataclysmic events of A Season for the Dead, with a new partner, Gianni Peroni, a disgraced vice inspector bounced down to the ranks. And on the edge of the city an American couple make a discovery that will rock the city. As the jacket says…\r\n\r\nThe Villa of Mysteries appropriates the beauty and savagery of classical Rome and sets it off against the corruption and sleaze of the present day.\r\n\r\nTeresa Lupo, a maverick pathologist, thinks she has the victim of an ancient pagan ritual on her hands. Inspector Leo Falcone, however, knows this case is recent history and one that desperately needs a solution. So begins an investigation that will take the police deep into the dark underworld of Rome’s most disturbing and sinister secrets.\r\n\r\nEmilio Neri, the local mafia boss, seems to be one of the keys to the mystery, and he can’t even trust his own wayward son. Retired US mobster Vergil Wallis is another key player who’s reluctant to talk. Meanwhile, someone is trying very hard to kill the pathologist. And now another beautiful young woman has gone missing in familiar circumstances.\r\n\r\nThe second book in any series is always important. It needs to lay the foundations for the stories, and the characters, that follow. Unlike A Season for the Dead, this book shifts the viewpoint from beyond Nic Costa alone, to those around him, men and women with more years in law enforcement, more than a touch of cynicism in some cases… and a habit of catching their breath when Costa, bright, young, incorruptible, comes on the case.\r\n\r\nReviews\r\n\r\nMargaret Cannon, Globe and Mail, Toronto writes…\r\n\r\nIf you missed A Season for the Dead, the first novel in this series set in modern Rome and featuring Inspector Leo Falcone, you’re in for a treat. This one’s even better and the cast of characters, some just touched on in the first book, is coming alive.\r\n\r\nHewson’s strong suit is his ability to blend ancient and modern Rome, a feat that happens naturally if you’re standing at the edge of the Janiculum, but is difficult otherwise. Hewson’s plot, woven with ancient lore, has just the right amount of information and deduction.Teresa Lupo is a pathologist longing for the big find. When a woman’s body is found in a peat bog near the Tiber, she thinks she has it. The body is recent, but there are signs pointing to an ancient ritual, a killing in a manner not seen for centuries. A hidden cult? Lupo is set on uncovering the secret. That determination is deadly, as Insp. Leo Falcone knows. He fears for Lupo’s life as the investigation takes the Rome police into the inner sanctums of criminals hidden not only by power but by history.Along the way, the story picks up the tales of detectives Costa and Peroni, mafioso Emilio Neri, and an American mobster on holiday. All that, and then another young woman is missing and presumed murdered. This is a terrific novel by a fine emerging British talent.\r\n\r\nStrand Magazine says…\r\n\r\nNo less intricate and atmospheric than the first novel in this series, A Season for the Dead, Hewson’s second police procedural set in today’s colorful, corrupt Rome… seethes with intrigue and depravity. This psychologically wrenching novel delves deep into the theme of Euripedes’ enigmatic classical tragedy Bacchae – that humanity ignores or tries to sublimate its unconscious drives at its own risk. Peroni sums it up succinctly: ‘One day when you’re least expecting it, the crazy gene wakes up and you know it’s pointless trying to fight.’ And that ‘crazy gene’ overcomes ethics, morals, even reason itself.\r\n\r\nIn the leading book website Bookreporter Joe Hartlaub writes…\r\n\r\nHewson is nothing less and never less than marvelous throughout. He does not even attempt to explain the labyrinthine and uneasy connections between the Italian police and organized crime and the always blurry line which is both a line of demarcation and commonality between the two, but illustrates it so sharply through anecdotal description that one comes away with an understanding which is difficult to articulate but easy to know.\r\n\r\nHewson does not wait until the end… to begin reigning in his numerous plot lines, choosing instead to introduce and resolve issues from beginning to end, so that by the end of this magnificent work, there is no sense of a rush to resolution, even as, unknown to the reader, there is much to be resolved.\r\n\r\nThe depth of what Hewson has accomplished, however, goes beyond his considerable plotting and narrative skills. For what Hewson has created… may arguably be one of the most strongly and subtly feminist novels of recent note. The women at the beginning of this work are all victims; by the end…things are…well, they are not the same. This is a work, and an author, of unforgettable stature.\r\n\r\nJay Strafford of the Richmond Times-Dispatch writes…\r\n\r\nOn the heels of his stunning first entry in the Nic Costa series, A Season for the Dead , British author David Hewson returns to modern-day Rome for a second book involving the police detective. As The Villa of Mysteries opens, Costa is back on the job after six months recupation from what befell him in the first book. He and his new partner, Gianni Peroni, are getting to know each other when a woman reports that her teenage daughter has been abducted… Among the nasty secrets uncovered are a Dionysian cult, a mob connection, and government corruption. As he did in A Season for the Dead, Hewson writes a compellingly complex novel, one with numerous twists. Near the end, one surprises-and a second stuns. A haunting portayal of evil-and damaged women- The Villa of Mysteries will leave readers eager for Costa’s third adventure.\r\n\r\nJennifer Baker of Booklist says…\r\n\r\nOnce again capturing the imagination of historical mystery lovers, the author of Lucifer’s Shadow brings an ancient Dionysian ritual to light as a clue in this riveting and fast-paced thriller… A complex and satisfying mystery from a master plot maker.\r\n\r\nFrom Mystery News\r\n\r\nThis is a richly layered crime novel. It takes the reader into a sometimes slow but always fascinating journey through the rituals of ancient Rome as well as the rites of the modern mob. Background is as important as is the back story of all the major characters. This makes them all more believable, more human, and much more interesting.The author’s sense of place is wonderful. The city of Rome lays before us as we sip coffee in one of the sunny piazzas, wander through a narrow back street half in shadow, stare at monuments to the powerful ancient empire. I can almost taste the chilled white wine or the ice cream in the Piazza Navona… An intriguing and thoughtfully complex story. Many things are not what they seem and the author delights in surprising the reader more than once in this finely done crime novel.\r\n\r\nBeth Cason, of the Anniston Star writes…\r\n\r\nAfter losing his partner, Luca Rossi, on his previous case, and after six months of recuperation, Italian detective Nic Costa rejoins the police force… his commanding officer pairs him with a veteran officer from vice, Gianni Peroni.On their first call they are sent to investigate the discovery of the body of a young girl found in a peat bog. At first it looks like a find for archaeologists instead of detectives. However, when the chief pathologist begins to examine the body, she quickly finds that the girl has been dead for only 16 years, not 1,600. The mystery becomes a puzzling mass of threads, becoming increasingly entangled as it moves along.While Nic and Gianni struggle to find a lead to the missing girl, their boss, Falcone, struggles with the anti-mafia unit and local mobster Emilio Neri. Whatever happened sixteen years ago, at the last celebration of the Liberalia, has twisted emotions and resulted in a storm of revenge. It’s enough to say that Congreve was right when he pronounced, “Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned”.Hewson’s gift lies in character creation.\r\n\r\nIn a previous book, A Season for the Dead, the author made Luca Rossi a perfect foil for Nic; the same is true here, as he substitutes Peroni for Rossi. Peroni, by any definition, is a crooked cop. Yet he carries an air of stability and decency about him, despite the shady company he keeps; recall Sipowicz in the early years of NYPD Blue. Here the well-worn plot angle of wily veteran mentoring less-experienced partner is carried off with fresh insight.While British writer Hewson’s books may seem too literary for some readers, they are well worth the effort for those willing to take the plunge. Characters as memorable as Nic and Gianni are hard to find in any genre.\r\n\r\nThe UK magazine Crime Time wrote…\r\n\r\nThese modern Roman cops are as richly disparate as in any longer-running series (this is Hewson’s second) and the atmosphere is as densely layered as cold lasagne, but I’m trivialising what is, in truth, a beautifully structured and absorbing thriller. The characters polish up as individuals, freshly drawn. The city of Rome, her cops, bureaucrats and criminals, shine hard and clear as sunlight bouncing off the Trevi fountain. But they’re a lot less pretty. And this is tasty stuff.\r\n\r\nA four-star review from Ink\r\n\r\n…a novel to savour – imagine the deceptively relaxed atmosphere of Donna Leon’s Brunetti novels mixed with the darkness of Ian Rankin’s Rebus sequence. Excellent.\r\n\r\nFrom The Good Book Guide…\r\n\r\nA riveting tale of revenge brought to life by sharp characterisation and powerful dynamics.','','','publish','open','open','','6234','','','2011-04-20 16:18:23','2011-04-20 15:18:23','',3302,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//?p=6234',9,'nav_menu_item','',0),(6235,1,'2011-01-27 16:59:45','2011-01-27 16:59:45','The first Thriller anthology, edited by James Patterson, was a phenomenal success for the then-fledgling ITW organisation and helped pay a lot of ITW’s bills in the early days.\r\n\r\nIt was seeing the success of Thriller that helped push ITW into taking a brave and unique decision — to drop all membership fees for eligible author members. As the board member who suggested this innovation I’m somewhat biased as to whether it’s a good idea or simply mad. But I do think the idea of a writers’ organisation that lives on its wits and creativity, not a tax on its members, is rather appealing. So here comes Thriller 2, this time edited by the redoubtable Clive Cussler, and published once again by the excellent Mira.\r\n\r\nThe list of authors on board with short stories for this edition includes Jeffery Deaver, Kathleen Antrim, Sean Chercover, Lisa Jackson, Tim Maleeny, Philip Margolin, Carla Neggers, RL Stine, Ridley Pearson… and lots more. Oh, and me.\r\n\r\nMy story is called The Circle and I can reveal that…\r\n\r\n	is not set in Rome\r\n	does not feature any of my regular characters\r\n	has absolutely no historical antecedents\r\n	is pretty much unlike anything else I’ve ever written (no, there are no vampires or aliens — it’s not that off the wall)\r\n\r\nIt was enormous fun to get the chance to write something different. Thanks to everyone in ITW, Tim Maleeny, in particular, for extending the opportunity to me.','','','publish','open','open','','6235','','','2011-04-20 16:18:26','2011-04-20 15:18:26','',3390,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//?p=6235',26,'nav_menu_item','',0),(6236,1,'2011-01-27 16:59:45','2011-01-27 16:59:45','Both The Chopin Manuscript and The Copper Bracelet were conceived as written as audio thrillers, designed to be heard more than read. But after they came out and hit the airwaves through Audible and iTunes we were inundated with people who wanted to buy them as a book.\r\n\r\nThere was, when we had just Chopin, a problem. These were designed for audio, and a little short for conventional publishing – 60,000 words or so. But then along came the sequel The Copper Bracelet and we had the makings of a book.\r\n\r\nThat’s what Watchlist is. A book version of the two stories, connected novellas mirroring the story we first told through Alfred Molina’s wonderful narration. The book was published by Vanguard Press in January 2010.','','','publish','open','open','','6236','','','2011-04-20 16:18:26','2011-04-20 15:18:26','',3390,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//?p=6236',27,'nav_menu_item','',0),(6237,1,'2011-01-27 16:59:43','2011-01-27 16:59:43','Nic Costa and team step outside Italy for the first time…\r\n\r\nIn the gorgeous grounds of Rome’s Villa Borghese park the glitterati of the movie world are gathered for a world premiere. A legendary Italian movie director has come out of retirement to create a blockbuster based on Dante’s Inferno. But, as Nic Costa and his colleagues attempt to guard the precious collection of historic artefacts attached to the event, the premiere is disrupted by tragedy and a horrific murder.\r\n\r\nIs a disgruntled admirer of Dante taking his revenge on the cast of the movie? Or are more mundane motives, the dubious financing of the film through criminal connections, to blame? Before Costa and crew have the chance to find out they are removed from the inquiry and find themselves sidelined by the Carabinieri.\r\n\r\nBut when the movie premiere shifts to California and the iconic surroundings of the Marina in San Francisco his inspector, Leo Falcone, manages to bring them along to work on the investigation from the sidelines. And as life begins to resemble art, Costa and his friends come to realise that the inspiration behind these crimes may be more recent than the Carabinieri suspect. Resonating between Dante’s famous classic and Hitchcock’s masterpiece movie Vertigo,Dante’s Numbers (The Dante Killings in the US) is an elegant, original thriller destined to break new ground — and has already won the praise of some of the most famous authors in the world.\r\n\r\nWhat some other authors think of Dante’s Numbers\r\n\r\nJeffery Deaver\r\n\r\nThe return of Nic Costa is a true cause for celebration! Dante’s Numbers is a literate, page-turning tale that finds our hero—one of the most appealing in crime fiction — zipping between two of the most iconic cities in the world: Rome and San Francisco. Hewson is a daunting talent — a writer who is a master stylist, who respects the audience’s intelligence and who effortlessly keeps the thrills coming a mile a minute.\r\n\r\nLinwood Barclay, author of No Time for Goodbye\r\n\r\nThis is a tour de force from one of the most original thriller writers around. With Dante-inspired villainy, Hitchcock obsessives, and an abundance of imaginative twists and turns David Hewson pulls out all the stops. Unmissable.\r\n\r\nDouglas Preston, author of The Monster of Florence and Blasphemy\r\n\r\nOne of my all-time favorite fictional detectives is David Hewson’s Nic Costa, and Dante’s Numbers brings Nic for the first time to American shores. From the opening scene of murder and mayhem at a movie premiere to the final, mind-blowing surprise, Dante’s Numbers is an elegant, clever, and terrifying tale of intrigue and murder involving Dante’s first circle of Hell and Hitchcock’s classic film Vertigo. An outstanding novel.\r\n\r\nSteve Berry, best-selling author of The Venetian Betrayal\r\n\r\nDavid Hewson is one of the finest thriller writers working today. A born stylist. Dante’s Numbersis politically wise, multi-dimensional, and psychologically intuitive. Action braids suspense on nearly every page, creating a reader’s delight from beginning to end. A superb effort by a master storyteller.\r\n\r\nDavid Morrell, author of First Blood and Creepers\r\n\r\nDante’s Numbers is action-packed suspense at its smartest and most gripping. Transplanting Nic Costa and his fellow Italian detectives to the dizzying world of Hitchcock’s Vertigo is a master stroke from a brilliant author. It’s impossible not to be swept up in the memorable, compelling world that is David Hewson’s specialty.\r\n\r\nDavid Corbett, Edgar-nominated author of Blood of Paradise\r\n\r\nDavid Hewson is a marvel, writing riveting suspense with a wistful grace. Dante’s Numbersmight very well be his best, a white-knuckle joy that’s smart, poignant, and acidly fun as Hollywood meets Dante via Italy’s notoriously over-the-top slasher films, known as the gialli. I got caught up in the story instantly, learning much, laughing too, all the way to the heart-pounding, heart-wrenching, heartbreaking end. If only all page-turners were this intelligent, witty and human.\r\n\r\nReviews\r\n\r\nPublishers Weekly\r\n\r\nHewson’s fine seventh crime novel to feature Nic Costa (after The Garden of Evil) takes the Italian police detective to San Francisco, where aging, ailing director Roberto Tonti is preparing for the premiere of his first major film in 20 years, Inferno. Based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, the $150-million blockbuster, which was filmed in Tonti’s native Italy, is to be the capstone of the director’s career.\r\n\r\nIn San Francisco, the Questura (Costa’s outfit) and the carabinieri—the former charged with security for Dante artefacts in a tie-in exhibit, the latter with security for the actors—pursue separate, often conflicting agendas after a series of bizarre incidents, including a priceless artifact’s theft, a movie star’s kidnapping and an attack on another star that results in death. The SFPD also gets into the act as more murders plague the film’s debut. A convoluted plot, eccentric characters and numerous sinister connections to Hitchcock’s Vertigo all contribute to the suspense.\r\n\r\nIn the Times Record News, Wichita, Amy Hawkins writes…\r\n\r\nIn the seventh in his series featuring the suave Italian detective Nic Costa, David Hewson takes his leading man to San Francisco to track down spectacularly crafted crimes set against the backdrop of a film premiere in Dante’s Numbers. Hitchcock-type intrigue fuses with modern crime investigation as Nic and his two colleagues track down the missing death mask of Dante, preclude the infiltration of a historical exhibit at Golden Gate Park, and deduce the killer’s MO and identity – all while dodging the San Francisco team and the Carabinieri, their Italian counterparts, also on the case.\r\n\r\nNot one to gloss over Costa’s romantic nature, Hewson slowly reveals a delicious subplot involving Nic and Maggie Flavier, the star of the murder-embroiled film. Hewson leads you on an exciting journey, tumbling back and forth from San Francisco to Rome, wrapping it up in a classic Hitchcock climax that literally made me gasp – out loud. Like a whitewater rafting trip, over the rapids one minute and cruising along calmer waters the next, you find yourself catching your breath after each chapter for the next rush. Flawless suspense is intertwined with Dante’s eternal intrigue.\r\n\r\nIn Bookreporter Joe Hartlaub hailed the book as ‘the author’s best to date’, writing….\r\n\r\nDante’s Numbers is arguably the most accessible of Hewson’s works, which is not to say that the plot is necessarily a simple one. Nor does Hewson fail to inform while entertaining. Indeed, the ins and outs of film financing, motion picture history, the differences between a producer and a director, and a little-known but centuries-old financial version of the game of “chicken” are all explored here, against the backdrop of one of the world’s most interesting cities and, of course, the dip and swirl of romantic relationships. All of this is done within the context of an elaborate murder mystery, and exquisitely so.\r\n\r\nIn Mystery News Harriet Stay gives the book five stars and writes….\r\n\r\nI always have a special feeling when I begin a new book by a familiar author, especially one like David Hewson, who has never disappointed and at times created unexpected surprises. This is no exception. Hewson propels the reader from page one through a twisted whodunit, unraveling cryptic clues, converging with potential suspects, enjoying a romp beyond the cable cars and Union Square, touching the technology world of overnight billionaires, all the while still maintaining himself as a magician with the English language. This is a top-notch, thrilling ride.\r\n\r\nBooklist\r\n\r\nHewson never loses the reader’s attention, and for fans of this outstanding series, the latest chapter in the interlocked lives of Costa and friends… is as delicious as ever.\r\n\r\nMargaret Cannon in the Toronto Globe & Mail\r\n\r\nThe seventh of Hewson’s series featuring Nic Costa of the Italian State Police is as smart and sophisticated as the other six. Hewson always uses some bit of Roman or Italian history or literature to focus his modern crime novels, and this is one of his best. Maybe that’s because the central theme is built around the work of Dante, or maybe it’s because Hewson moves the action, but not the mood, from Rome to Los Angeles, the centre of glitz and glamour. Dante and movies? If you think it won’t work, think again.\r\n\r\nWinston-Salem Journal\r\n\r\nWith his carefully prepared stories, larded with tasty historical tidbits and spread out across the series’ sumptuous Roman setting, David Hewson has created a growing clientele of satisfied readers. His handsome, slightly rumpled detective, Nic Costa, has led the reader through a feast of multilayered plot concoctions in the past six novels. The seventh in the series will be equally pleasing to his fans’ palates.\r\n\r\nWhen this series left Italy, it did not leave good writing behind; Hewson’s stories are simply well-done police procedurals in an exotic package.\r\n\r\nRichmond Times-Dispatch\r\n\r\nSending his cast to America is a masterful touch from Hewson, who works diligently to keep his series from becoming stale… As illusion fuses with reality and builds to a shattering climax, Hewson keeps his readers grounded in what’s real. Rich in characters, complex of plot, Dante’s Numbers is a worthy entry in an erudite, entertaining series.\r\n\r\nEdmonton Sun\r\n\r\nDavid Hewson’s Rome-based trio of Italian detectives, Nic Costa, Leo Falcone and Teresa Lupo, move their operations temporarily to America in this new novel. A multimillion dollar movie is being shot in Rome, based on Dante’s masterpiece, Inferno, with an international cast which includes two American movie stars, Allan Prime and Maggie Flavier. The Italian premiere is accompanied by an exhibit of the poet’s priceless death mask, but a macabre intervention showing Prime’s kidnapping and murder brings the detectives into the case. As the movie premiere moves to San Francisco, they are along to protect other artifacts. Eerie coincidences turn up involving Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Vertigo. Other murders and an obsessive killer heighten the suspense. Another Nic Costa winner.\r\n\r\nThe Mystery Gazette\r\n\r\nThe Dante connection in Italy is one of the best police procedural opening segues in years… fans of the series will enjoy Costa and his mates as they travel the mean streets of San Francisco.\r\n\r\nClaire Emsberger in the Sullivan County Democrat\r\n\r\nAllow me simply to announce this eighth of David Hewson’s Rome suspense novels—the third I’ve reported on in the last two years, again featuring the brilliant and soulful detective, Nic Costa. These are contemporary novels, but also steeped in the lore of different periods of the city’s history (which has plenty of history to draw on). In this one, for the first time in the series and in his life, he leaves Rome—for San Francisco. With an American movie star. But Costa remains gloomily philosophical, just the way we like him, and the story is just the way we like it.\r\n\r\nBookbag\r\n\r\nNic Costa is a breath of fresh air in detective fiction in general. The absence of clichéd police officers is to be highly commended. Although the pathologist is a light-hearted character, she doesn’t hang around making horrible jokes about sandwiches for black humour. All four police officers are thoroughly plausible human beings. I was really pleased with Dante’s Numbers. It’s played dead straight but contains just enough that is quirky and off the wall. The ending is over the top but utterly utterly brilliant, and even in the very few parts which are predictable it’s all a huge amount of fun. Hewson’s writing is solid and engaging, and he’s clearly at ease with his regular cast of characters.','Dante\'s Numbers','','publish','open','open','','dantes-numbers-3','','','2011-04-20 16:18:22','2011-04-20 15:18:22','',3302,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//?p=6237',4,'nav_menu_item','',0),(6238,1,'2011-01-27 16:57:54','2011-01-27 16:57:54','http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/wordpress.2011-01-27.xml_1.txt','wordpress.2011-01-27.xml_1.txt','','inherit','open','open','','wordpress-2011-01-27-xml_1-txt','','','2011-01-27 16:57:54','2011-01-27 16:57:54','',0,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/wordpress.2011-01-27.xml_1.txt',0,'attachment','',0),(6239,1,'2010-09-26 15:58:57','2010-09-26 14:58:57','','Alexander_III_and_Ollamh_Rígh','','inherit','open','open','','alexander_iii_and_ollamh_righ-4','','','2010-09-26 15:58:57','2010-09-26 14:58:57','',0,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/09/alexander_iii_and_ollamh_righ32.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6240,1,'2010-09-29 13:03:36','2010-09-29 12:03:36','I won\'t be buying it -- my Apple days are over -- but it\'s good to see Microsoft <em>finally</em> seem to have seen some sense over the Mac version of Word. At least judging by <a href=\"http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2010/092810-microsoft-word-for-mac.html\">this review from Network World </a>(the product won\'t be on general release till the end of October).\n\nWord 2008 for Mac is a stinker, especially those horrible bars that stick at the top of every page as you write (I do not ever wish to see the monstrous term \'Smartart\' again, thank you kindly).\n\nThey appear to be there in the new version -- but, sigh, you can hide them. Since moving to Windows 7 and <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Microsoft Office 2010\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010\">Office 2010</a> I\'ve come to realise the three core features of Word 2010 I will not be without. They are...\n<ul>\n	<li>The ability to turn off and turn on the contents of the ribbon -- and to hide the ribbon itself. I hated the ribbon when it came out but in 2010 it\'s actually very powerful provided you tailor it to your own uses.</li>\n	<li>A proper navigation sidebar that lets you drag and reorder chapters and scenes manually, and gives you a simple word count for sections without having to select them. On Windows you do this just by right-clicking the chapter/scene heading.</li>\n	<li>The ability to get rid of all the window junk and right full screen with an unobtrusive background (just pick the black colour scheme in Office 2010 and you have a variety of options).</li>\n</ul>\nFrom what I\'ve seen Mac users will get all of these things with this new release. At last...\n\nYou can <a href=\"http://blog.officeformac.com/office-for-mac-2011-available-october-26/\" target=\"_blank\">watch the full screen feature in a video here</a>, along with some odd \'layering\' technique which will presumably interest someone, though no one who works with words alone I imagine. If I were still actively writing on a Mac I think I\'d have placed an order for the upgrade already.\n\nThe question is... what do Apple plan to do in return? Their offering is iWork and Pages, which is so very nearly excellent but not quite. These new features from Microsoft leave Pages -- which is very poor at outlining and offers no sectional word counts -- very much in the shade. But is Steve Jobs really interested in boring office apps any more? I wonder...','Word 2011 for Mac - looks a lot better','','publish','open','open','','word-2011-for-mac-looks-a-lot-better','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=5892',0,'post','',0),(6241,1,'2010-10-01 08:54:01','2010-10-01 07:54:01','Here\'s a curious little story that came out last night. Jonathan Franzen\'s <em>Freedom</em>, modestly touted as \'the book of the century so far\', is about to be pulped and reissued in the UK. Why? Because, according to Franzen, the publisher, HarperCollins, mistakenly used an old draft of his computer file for printing, not his finished, revised one.\n\nHow the hell can things like this happen? Good question. <!--more-->I can only speak from my own experience. Here it is. I have two different publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. Both tend to edit and revise separately. This means that the versions of my books you see will differ. Usually this is slight -- to do with spelling and language issues. Occasionally it goes further.\n\n<em>The Blue Demon</em>, for example, is known as <em>City of Fear</em> in the US, for example. <em>The Seventh Sacrament</em> has a different sequence of the same opening scenes in the US, because my editor over there thought US readers needed something different. The historical sections of that book and <em>Lucifer\'s Shadow </em>(which is now <em>The Cemetery of Secrets </em>in the UK) are also printed entirely in italics in the US (which I hate, not that it made any difference).\n\nLeaving all the contextual stuff to one side what these slight differences mean is this: authors, to be on the safe side, have to proof read the final galleys of both editions, even though they\'re in the same language.\n\nI didn\'t know this. No one told me. I discovered it the hard way when something crept into an edition I simply didn\'t recognise. After that I\'ve always asked to see all English language galleys before publication (obviously I can\'t make any meaningful comment on foreign editions).\n\nWhy would an author not wish to do this? Because it\'s additional work, lots of it, time-consuming and tedious. By this stage I\'ve probably read, word by word, line by line, this damned thing six or seven times. I am blind to its faults. I often cannot see even the most obvious of errors. But I do know what I was trying to do, and if the typesetting is based on an earlier revise I surely would have spotted it.\n\nWhat happened with Franzen? I\'ve no idea. But I can see how slips like this get through. Readers simply do not appreciate the amount of post-delivery work that goes into getting a book into print. All those self-published authors out there who simply upload a file to Lulu or Smashwords or wherever don\'t either. Conventional publishing is a drawn-out process, involving several different steps and a number of different people, most of whom you will know only by email if at all.\n\nIt only takes one of those steps to fail for the most horrendous of consequences to follow.\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\" style=\"font-size:1em;\">Related Articles</h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul\">\n	<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http://r.zemanta.com/?u=http%3A//www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/01/jonathan-franzen-book-pulped&amp;a=25546853&amp;rid=000000e6-251e-000F-0000-000000001706&amp;e=4d8a7877107b882846d5c6d61dc22fdc\">Jonathan Franzen\'s \'book of the century\' pulped over print error</a> (guardian.co.uk)</li>\n</ul>','Proof-reading - there is no substitute','','publish','open','open','','proof-reading-there-is-no-substitute','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=5894',0,'post','',0),(6242,1,'2010-10-01 09:59:09','2010-10-01 08:59:09','I know. The readers and budding writers out there think – you pop the champagne and wait for the money to roll in. Er, not exactly. There’s a protracted process after the delivery of a first manuscript, whether the book is pre-sold or not. Sometimes it goes wrong, as the Franzen story below demonstrates.\n\nFor the record let me outline how the process goes – for me anyway. Technophiles out there please note: in reality it hasn’t changed much in all the sixteen years I’ve been a novelist.\n\n<!--more-->\n<ol>\n	<li>Deliver first version of manuscript. <em>This has errors and omissions.</em></li>\n	<li>Receive editorial notes from top level editor on what’s good, what’s bad, what could be cut, what might be added in. And usually some excellent advice from your agent too (if not, find another agent).</li>\n	<li>Deliver revised manuscript. <em>This has errors and omissions.</em></li>\n	<li>Discuss revised manuscript with top level editor. Deliver another rewrite if necessary, and keep on rewriting until we’re happy with it. <em>Once this phase is over all the subsequent edits (with my present publishers) happen on paper or pdf. I no longer own a Word file so there is no possibility of two or more versions being edited simultaneously. </em></li>\n	<li>Receive manuscript with queries from line editor (a different editor there to check the fine detail of language, continuity and sense).</li>\n	<li>Send back new version of manuscript to meet the line editor’s queries.</li>\n	<li>Read new version of manuscript encompassing your changes and OK any recommended ones from line editor.</li>\n	<li>Deal with any interim issues.</li>\n	<li>Read typeset galley of book, start to finish, checking for all manner of errors, yours, editors and the typesetters. <em>This has errors and omissions.</em></li>\n	<li>Return marked up copy of galley with corrections.</li>\n	<li>(Optional). If the galley turned out to need a substantial amount of work check a second galley for mistakes. <em>This has errors and omissions.</em></li>\n	<li>(Optional). If the publisher produces a bound proof (sometimes known as an ‘arc’ in the US or a ‘superproof’ in the UK) go through that for problems because this really is the last chance you’ll have.</li>\n	<li>See finished book in print. <em>Try to not look too closely because you’ll only see something you want to change anyway.</em></li>\n</ol>\nAt least some and possibly all of these steps may be needed if you are published in English by two different imprints in UK and US English. In case you haven’t got the message: this is all a lot of work. By the time the book’s out, usually two years or more after you started it, you’re sick to the death of the sight of the thing. And invariably a lot of this donkey work will turn up when you’re head down in a newer project, one that has a much tighter grip on your imagination.\n\nMoral: publishing is a complex and imperfect business. However clever computers become, however streamlined the delivery process, the simple fact remains: the more skilled eyes run across a work in progress, the better the final book should be.\n\nSteel yourself. This isn’t changing soon.','What happens after you deliver a book?','','publish','open','open','','what-happens-after-you-deliver-a-book','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'https://davidhewson.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/what-happens-after-you-deliver-a-book/',0,'post','',0),(6243,1,'2010-10-05 13:13:51','2010-10-05 12:13:51','Yikes... <a href=\"http://www.bcon2010.com/welcome.php\" target=\"_blank\">Bouchercon </a>is almost upon us. I\'ll be in and out during the whole of the convention in San Francisco next week -- do say hello if you\'re there.\n\nMy panels are...\n\n<strong>Friday 3pm-4pm</strong>\n\n<strong><span style=\"font-weight:normal;\">TEN DOLLAR MURDER </span><span style=\"font-weight:normal;\"><strong> </strong></span></strong>\n\n<strong><strong> </strong></strong>\n\n<strong><strong>\n<p style=\"display:inline!important;\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal;\">e-books</span></p>\n\n</strong>\n\n<span style=\"font-weight:normal;\">C.J. West(M), Lee Goldberg, Bill Fitzhugh, Gary Phillips, David Hewson, Wendy Hornsby, </span><span style=\"font-weight:normal;\"><strong> </strong></span>\n\n<strong> </strong>\n\n<strong>\n<p style=\"display:inline!important;\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal;\">Boyd Morrison</span></p>\n\n</strong>\n\n<span style=\"font-weight:normal;\">Room: Bayview A</span>\n\n</strong>\n\n<strong>Saturday 4.30pm-5.30pm</strong>\n\nTIMELOCK\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">Creating suspense/sense of urgency</div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">Oline Cogdill(M), Sara Gran, David Hewson, Michael Robertson, Sara Paretsky, Emily Winslow.</div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">Room: Seacliff A</div>','Where I&#039;ll be at Bouchercon','','publish','open','open','','where-ill-be-at-bouchercon','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=5905',0,'post','',0),(6244,1,'2010-10-08 08:30:25','2010-10-08 07:30:25','http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/web-header-2010.jpg','web-header-2010.jpg','','inherit','open','open','','web-header-2010-jpg','','','2010-10-08 08:30:25','2010-10-08 07:30:25','',0,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/10/web-header-20103.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6245,1,'2010-10-08 08:30:48','2010-10-08 07:30:48','http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/salvage.gif','salvage.gif','','inherit','open','open','','salvage-gif','','','2010-10-08 08:30:48','2010-10-08 07:30:48','',0,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/10/salvage2.gif',0,'attachment','image/gif',0),(6246,1,'2010-10-08 08:31:59','2010-10-08 07:31:59','','Blog','','publish','open','open','','blog','','','2011-02-01 08:12:30','2011-02-01 08:12:30','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/',0,'page','',0),(6254,1,'2010-10-08 09:27:23','2010-10-08 08:27:23','Phew... just a few days before I fly off for Bouchercon. San Francisco\'s a beautiful city, one I\'ve been visiting for more than twenty years. And it features in two of my books, <em>Dante\'s Numbers</em> and <em>Epiphany. </em>That last one was written in 1996 and is now out of print, though Dante (which is <em>The Dante Killings </em>in the US now... sigh) is still very current.\n\nHere are some photos I took while researching it. Great places to visit if you have a spare moment at Bouchercon -- Mission Dolores, the Legion of Honor and, since all these are connected to Hitchock\'s <em>Vertigo</em>, Scotty\'s apartment from that movie, which really isn\'t hard to find.\n\n[gallery]','A few photos of San Francisco','','publish','open','open','','a-few-photos-of-san-francisco','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=5924',0,'post','',0),(6255,1,'2010-10-08 09:49:13','2010-10-08 08:49:13','http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/web-header-20101.jpg','web-header-20101.jpg','','inherit','open','open','','web-header-20101-jpg','','','2010-10-08 09:49:13','2010-10-08 08:49:13','',0,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/10/web-header-201012.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6256,1,'2010-10-08 13:24:39','2010-10-08 12:24:39','With a bit of luck those thirty three miners trapped deep in the earth in Chile since August 5 will soon be back above ground.\n\nI have to be honest. I try not to think about their plight too closely. I\'m not fond of enclosed spaces. I wouldn\'t go down a mine easily in the first place. The idea that they might be trapped there in some dreadful accident, spend days fearing the outside world had given up on them, be detected alive... then told it could be Christmas before they might be rescued...\n\nThe whole thing beggars belief. I doubt many people can appreciate the dreadful rollercoaster ride of emotions those men have been through, along with their loved ones on the surface. It\'s a miracle they were found, and a miracle their release seems to be happening before schedule.\n\n<!--more-->An amazing media circus is already assembling to witness the event. The BBC alone are reported to <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318790/BBC-sends-team-25-cover-Chilean-rescue-escape-shaft-expected-break-Saturday.html\" target=\"_blank\">have sent no fewer than twenty five staff</a> to cover it (which seems a bit excessive to me frankly).\n\nNow let me make a prediction. When these brave chaps finally do reach the surface you won\'t be able to move for the word \'hero\'. Don\'t be offended but here\'s a worthwhile question: is it used accurately in this context? No one doubts these men have shown extraordinary courage and fortitude during an ordeal that would break many others (me among them). But are they really heroes?\n\nWell, a lot more than many of those who get the tag. I\'ve seen minor celebs described as heroes for winning talent contests, footballers labelled heroes for nothing more than scoring an important goal. Yet the more we misuse words the less meaning they carry. So what does \'hero\' actually mean?\n\nIn a sense, like any other word, precisely what people believe it to mean. If you feel a pop singer who triumphs against adversity really is a hero, then he or she probably is, to you anyway.\n\nBut I feel a bit old-fashioned here. Consider a couple of definitions from Dictionary.com\n<blockquote>a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.\n\na person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child.</blockquote>\nThey seem pretty sound to me. Being brave, being decent, being exceptional are not enough. Heroes do heroic things. They save kids. They jump into rivers to rescue a drowning dog even though, sometimes, they can\'t swim themselves.\n\nThat word \'deed\' is important. There\'s something active about being a hero. They may be dashing -- a knight in shining armour. They may be ordinary -- the guy from round the corner who finds something special inside him. It doesn\'t matter. What matters is they don\'t sit still. They <em>act.</em>\n\nHeroism comes from choice, from some determination a man or woman finds inside them, sometimes to their surprise, sometimes to their displeasure. Heroes elect to be what they are, and that\'s important. They make themselves out of the circumstances around them.\n\nI\'ll never forget a friend of mine who had a serious medical condition -- now happily cured, but very bad for a while -- grumping about how many people patted him on the back for his bravery in putting up with all the operations and nasty tests that came his way.\n\n\'I\'m not a hero,\' he moaned to me once. \'It\'s not as if I have a choice.\'\n\nIf I\'m being picky I\'d say those miners fit the same description. Incredibly brave, they deserve all the admiration and praise that\'s going to come their way. And I suspect too academics and all kinds of researchers will be quietly talking to them for years to find out how they managed their ordeal so well.\n\nBut \'heroes\'? This takes nothing from them, but if I\'m being pedantic the answer\'s probably... no.','Words with uncertain meanings: hero','','publish','open','open','','words-with-uncertain-meanings-hero','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=5938',0,'post','',0),(6258,1,'2010-10-08 18:38:08','2010-10-08 17:38:08','<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/bcon_logo.gif\"><img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-5961\" title=\"bcon_logo\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/bcon_logo.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"246\" height=\"250\" /></a>Doing anything next weekend? Find yourself in San Francisco? Lucky soul. It\'s <a href=\"http://www.bcon2010.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Bouchercon </a>time, and the world divides between two sets of people when you say that. Those who say \'yippee\' and those who ask, \'What the...?\'\n\nWhat is Bouchercon? I suppose you\'d say it was a convention for fans of crime and thriller fiction. You can read about the history and the origin of the name <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouchercon\" target=\"_blank\">here at the Wikipedia entry</a>.\n\nFor the uninitiated let me try to spell out what makes Bouchercon unique...\n<ul>\n	<li>It changes location every year, depending on who has pitched to host it. Next year it\'s in St Louis.</li>\n	<li>It\'s organised entirely by volunteer fans.</li>\n	<li>While it\'s a fan event writers and readers are very much on the same level. Authors pay to go and register just like everyone else. It is a very open and friendly event.</li>\n</ul>\nThe other big event in the US for someone like me is <a href=\"http://www.thrillerfest.com\" target=\"_blank\">Thrillerfest</a>. This happens in New York in July every year and is organised by International Thrillerwriters. It\'s much more business-oriented and a different kind of fun. For me Thrillerfest is essential -- it\'s great to meet with the publishing business based in New York. Bouchercon is fun when I can make it, which isn\'t every year.\n\nBut San Francisco? How can this be anything less than a blast? So to all my Bouchercon friends... see you shortly and put the Anchor Steam on ice.','So what&#039;s this Bouchercon thing, anyway?','','publish','open','open','','so-whats-this-bouchercon-thing-anyway','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=5960',0,'post','',0),(6259,1,'2010-10-09 11:37:03','2010-10-09 10:37:03','Usually I can tell people what I\'m working on: a new book, often one set in Italy. Right now I can\'t. There are contracts agreed but yet to be signed, announcements to make, press releases to be written. It won\'t be long, I promise, and frankly I can barely wait to get this thing off my chest. But here\'s another reason I can\'t just blurt it all out.\n\nIt\'s a collaboration. Yes. The c-word. One that sends shivers down so many writers spines.\n<!--more-->\n\nI\'ve never collaborated on anything before. No, before you ask <em>The Chopin Manuscript</em> and <em>The Copper Bracelet</em> weren\'t collaborations in the truest sense. We just wrote what we wanted and some clever editing by Jeffery Deaver and Jim Fusilli made it all work afterwards. Real collaboration means you talk to your co-writer through the entire process and produce the whole thing together.\n\nThat\'s what I\'m doing though with whom... sorry. Later.\n\nHere\'s the thing that\'s amazed me. It\'s gone incredibly well. We\'ve got a first draft, bar a closing scene, ahead of schedule. It looks good I think though will benefit from some revises. We didn\'t fight. We didn\'t fall out. We discovered we looked at the thing the same way as it developed (not that we knew that to begin with).\n\nAll in all it\'s been a very interesting experience and one I think I\'ll write about later from the practical writing point of view. As anyone who lurks around here knows I\'m big on what management consultants call \'workflow\'. I like the processes to be right because if they are life is an awful lot easier.\n\nLargely by accident I think we fell into the right processes very quickly with this one. Give me a few weeks and I plan to expand on that quite a lot more.','Life gets weirder','','publish','open','open','','life-gets-weirder','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=5966',0,'post','',0),(6260,1,'2010-10-11 08:01:43','2010-10-11 07:01:43','The Work In Progress (sorry, still can\'t say) is now pretty much there in first draft. All it needs is a closing scene of around 1,200 words and then the whole story is there, start to finish.\n\nI\'m not going to write that now. Instead I\'m going to go back to the beginning, read and revise everything (which may take a couple of weeks since I\'ll be on the road) and <em>then</em> produce those 1,200 words.\n\nWhy?<!--more-->\n\nHere are the main reasons that come to mind.\n<ul>\n	<li>This final scene is going to be quite melancholy and resonant. There may be something I can hark back to in it that\'s escaped me at the moment. Doing the revise first could prompt its recall.</li>\n	<li>The revision work is more important.</li>\n	<li>There\'s no real reason to work on scene now, unless there\'s time pressure and there isn\'t. I know in broad outline what it\'s going to do. I can write it at leisure. Probably half a day at most whenever I need to do it.</li>\n</ul>\nWriting a book is about more than putting down words in a manuscript. It concerns tinkering and tweaking and reading. Reading the rough draft you\'re not happy with, and whatever second draft comes to replace it. Beginning writers often think of completion as writing that last chapter. After which you open the champagne and shout, \'Yay! We\'re there.\'\n\nI haven\'t seen things that way in a very long time. Usually close to the end of the book I know what I want to say when I close the narrative. The challenge is to find the best way of saying it, not to get words down on \'paper\'. Reading the story as a whole first, before attempting that, helps me clarify what I want to achieve there.\n\nThe other way to approach this is to write that final scene earlier, when you\'ve still got chapters to complete before it. I\'ve done that before, too, though nothing like as often as leaving the thing till after a full revise. And racing ahead that way invariably means something, sometimes something substantial, will have to change from the first stab too.\n\nNot that rewriting is a big deal. This isn\'t a hunk of marble, ruined forever by one clumsy stab with a chisel, or a movie hamstrung by a single naff scene we can\'t, for whatever reason, manage to reshoot. Writers are lucky that we build worlds with nothing more than words, which come free of any cost except our time and intellect. It makes sense to me to use that luck as much as possible. Dodging the linear constricts of the narrative process can often make for a better story.','A different way to write an ending','','publish','open','open','','a-different-way-to-write-an-ending','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=5996',0,'post','',0),(6261,1,'2010-10-11 14:26:13','2010-10-11 13:26:13','Susan Hill is a hell of an author (<em>The Woman in Black</em> et al), but also a hell of a tweeter (@<a href=\"http://twitter.com/susanhillwriter\">susanhillwriter</a>) and blogger too. Readers out there who wonder why authors are sometimes not necessarily in the best of moods at public events should read her insight <a href=\"http://www.spectator.co.uk/susanhill/6363748/not-signing.thtml\" target=\"_blank\">into a possible cause at the Spectator here</a>. I\'m so glad Susan turned round and said no to people trying to make money out of her, and add nothing to the event concerned.\n\nThe sale of used books is something authors have to accept. We always have though these days, through Amazon and eBay and the very aggressive tactics of Oxfam, it seems an industry in itself, one based upon the fact that these sales return not a penny to the authors whose names are on the books being sold or their publishers.\n\n<!--more-->But if you are in this rather grubby practice do at least try to give something back to the people who are making it possible, by going to the event itself and -- who knows? -- buying a book now and again. It\'s only polite.\n\nMy two worst episodes in this field have been in America, at Bouchercon and Book Expo. At the first I had a paperback proof in the goodie bag and the longest signing line I\'ve ever seen. Two days later scores of them were on eBay at inflated prices as \'signed special editions\'. So many I suspect the value was somewhat reduced.\n\nBook Expo is quite extraordinary. As far as I could work out it hands out tickets to people who can then queue up and get brand new hardbacks and have them signed by authors all for free. You sit there signing away until the stock runs out. And it doesn\'t really matter who you are for the most part. The punters are principally there for free books they can then sell on for a fat profit.\n\nWhy does the US book industry do this? I have no idea though some US writer friends of mine now insist on personalising all copies at such events which makes their sale more awkward. By the way the anxious plea \'Don\'t put my name on it!\' does shout \'eBay\' very loudly.\n\nAnyway -- congratulations to Susan Hill for having the guts to stand up and do the right thing. Authors are used to the idea that people like to make money out of us -- and recognise they\'ve a right to do so. But we all have limits. Signing second hand books for resale is like writing a cheque for a stranger. Not much fun. And public book events do need to be fun for all concerned, especially authors who are frequently doing them for no good reason and precious little reward.','When authors won&#039;t sign books','','publish','open','open','','when-authors-wont-sign-books','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6021',0,'post','',0),(6262,1,'2010-10-18 14:33:00','2010-10-18 13:33:00','There are so many ways authors make money for other people these days – piracy, for example, and, as Susan Hill wrote last week, adding value to old books by getting authors to sign masses of them at public events. Let me introduce you to another one I see more and more– the rip-off of promotional copies meant for reviewers but <a href=\"http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/DAVID-HEWSON-DEATH-SEVILLE-PRESS-RELEASE-/170552248341#ht_500wt_1156\" target=\"_blank\">diverted straight away to eBay</a> for a quick buck.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/capture1.png\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6035\" title=\"Capture\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/capture1.png?w=300\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"137\" /></a>Here’s a less-than-shining example that’s just popped up. You will see the charming gentleman responsible boasts that the item is unread and also gives the wrong publication date (November 5). Quite why the press release accompanying the book is supposed to add value to it I’ve no idea. But just for the record you will save yourself just 25p by buying this ripped-off copy from him instead of Amazon, and I guess the price difference will be pretty much the same elsewhere.\n\nThe gentleman concerned gives his name, address and email in the eBay listing so I don’t feel bad about giving it here either. He is a Mr David Howard of Banstead, Surrey, a stranger to me. I have just penned him this email…\n\n<!--more-->Dear Mr Howard\n\nI am the author whose book, <em>Death in Seville</em>, you are selling on ebay. A promotional copy, provided for review supposedly to someone who reviews books for some legitimate media source, not for resale, and released on Nov 5 by the way, not Nov 12 as you claim.\n\nWhy are you trying to make money in this way? How did you get hold of this copy? Do you not realise that by trying to make pin money out of promotional material you\'re depriving a publisher and an author of legitimate income? It\'s not stealing, not quite, and it\'s just one sale. But some people do this habitually so it does add up all round. More than anything though it\'s a shabby, unethical practice. I was a journalist once and got free books. I simply passed on the ones I didn\'t want to friends. It never occurred to me to try to make money out of books given in good faith for another purpose.\n\nI have passed on your details to my publisher and asked them to investigate. Selling promo copies in this way is pretty sad and disgusting. Publishers and authors send out these copies trusting they will be used for a legitimate purpose, not simply resold immediately (you boast it is unread) to make someone who\'s no right to have them a quick buck. I will also be blogging about this and mentioning you by name, since you put this very clearly on your eBay sale.\n\nAre you really this desperate for an illicit £2.99 at someone else\'s expense?\n\nDavid Hewson','Please don&#039;t buy my book (not this one anyway)','','publish','open','open','','please-dont-buy-my-book-not-this-one-anyway','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'https://davidhewson.wordpress.com/?p=6034',0,'post','',0),(6263,1,'2010-10-18 14:45:30','2010-10-18 13:45:30','','Capture.png','','inherit','open','open','','capture-png','','','2010-10-18 14:45:30','2010-10-18 13:45:30','',6262,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/10/capture3.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6264,1,'2010-10-18 14:45:32','2010-10-18 13:45:32','','Capture_thumb.png','','inherit','open','open','','capture_thumb-png','','','2010-10-18 14:45:32','2010-10-18 13:45:32','',6262,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/10/capture_thumb2.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6265,1,'2010-10-18 14:48:10','2010-10-18 13:48:10','','Capture','','inherit','open','open','','capture','','','2010-10-18 14:48:10','2010-10-18 13:48:10','',6262,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/10/capture12.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6266,1,'2010-10-18 16:09:51','2010-10-18 15:09:51','<p>I have to get this off my chest. Having relentlessly taken the mickey out of everyone I know who’s fallen for Apple’s stupid iPad thing I just went down to the Stockton Street store here in San Francisco, Apple Mecca, full of scary fanbois and girls, and bought one of the bloody things. The cheapest one. Sigh…</p>  <p>I could lie and say I was marched there at gunpoint. But the truth is so many people at Bouchercon had the sodding things and seemed so happy with them I had to find out what the hell was making them so pleased with themselves.</p>  <p>First impressions: it’s fun and nice to use. Pages is a complete waste of money, and coming from Android I’m shocked you can’t immediately return an app once you buy it and discover it’s utter tosh. I have a book-length manuscript I’d like to read and comment on it. My lovely agent, who seems a bit smug about me giving in frankly, has persuaded me to buy iAnnotate which seems Ok if a little fussy – why so many buttons and toolbars? All other iPad software writing suggestions will be welcomed.</p>  <p>What I’d really like is to be able to read and comment a manuscript in draft view, without headers and footers. Not a lot to ask but Pages can’t do that and apparently won’t open an rtf file which would manage that anyway. Deep suckage on the word processing front so far. Oh and Kindle may be able to do the job if I can find a way to get my imported document from the Kindle 3 to the iPad. Kindle looks great on this thing by the way…</p>  <p>PS. All crowing comments will be assessed for crow quotient, and any that crow too much may not make it. So there.</p>','Damn, I just bought an iPad','','publish','open','open','','damn-i-just-bought-an-ipad','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'https://davidhewson.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/damn-i-just-bought-an-ipad/',0,'post','',0),(6267,1,'2010-10-20 11:16:02','2010-10-20 10:16:02','After my moan about review copies going up for sale on eBay the other day I have heard back from the seller. He says...\n<blockquote>I take your points very seriously and have removed the book from sale and refunded the customer\'s payment in full. Our books come from numerous charity shops, boot sales, jumble sales etc and among these we very occasionally find copies with Press Release details. Owing to the legitimate points you have made we will not be listing these for sale in the future.</blockquote>\nNice to know... I do hope the \'reviewer\' responsible is discovered though, and taken off promo copy lists. Perhaps every promo book should be very visibly stamped with something saying, \'If you buy this book you\'re ripping off the publisher and author\'.\n\n&nbsp;','No more review copies for sale (in one place anyway)','','publish','open','open','','no-more-review-copies-for-sale-in-one-place-anyway','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6040',0,'post','',0),(6268,1,'2010-10-20 15:00:52','2010-10-20 14:00:52','Given the interest in  freebies and review copies being used to generate free money for \'reviewers\' I really should direct people to this post from earlier this year. It includes an interesting example of the kind of scams authors are now starting to face....\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/03/31/no-free-books-around-here/\" target=\"_blank\">No free books around here...</a>','On the subject of freebies...','','publish','open','open','','on-the-subject-of-freebies','','','2011-01-27 22:47:01','2011-01-27 22:47:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6042',0,'post','',0),(6269,1,'2010-10-22 08:52:57','2010-10-22 07:52:57','So after a few days enjoying my iPad as a handy net-connected toy – and it’s very good at that, honest – I decide to try and do some work on it. Nothing fancy. Just reading a manuscript and marking it up with some annotations and scribbles.\n\nLet me emphasise. I don’t see the iPad as a writing tool. Even hooked up to the Apple Bluetooth keyboard I still have hanging around here from my Mac days. It’s too clunky and simple for me. I don’t want a lot of a word processor. But I do want more than the very basic features I\'ve seen on this thing so far.\n\nNo, just a nice reading environment and the ability to make some notes on a manuscript. Not a lot to ask, is it? Well actually, as it turns out…. yes.\n\n<!--more-->\n\nThe obvious way to try to do this would be through something that can open the Word file directly and insert a few comments. Documents to Go on my Android phone can do that. I forked out £9.99 for DTG on the iPad -- and it can\'t do comments. Nor can Apple\'s Pages app (£5.99 thank you very much, and a pretty poor piece of work that is). With Android you get to return apps that don\'t do what you want and get your money back within 24 hours. With the iPad you fork out -- and that\'s it. No wonder so many apps are a bit short on information about what they can actually do.\n\nSo, dealing directly with a Word file is out of the question as far as I can see. How about we read and annotate in a book reader file instead? If you own Kindle hardware you can upload a doc file to the Amazon site, have it converted then sent back to you. That way you can annotate it on the Kindle itself, or through the Kindle app on Windows, Mac, Android...\n\nThere\'s a Kindle app for the iPad. Can you annotate your own documents on that? No. In order to do so you need to be able to place the Kindle file manually, and iPad won\'t let you see inside its file system to do that. I forked out £5.99 for something called Air Sharing HD that said it would let you copy files to and from the iPad. It will, but only to a documents folder, and iPad won\'t open Kindle files automatically. Another waste of money. Another avenue closed.\n\nHow about iBooks, Apple\'s own book reader? Yes, you can get your own documents on there. First you save them as html. Then you import them into the free app <a href=\"http://calibre-ebook.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Calibre</a>. Then you drag them into iTunes. Then you sync. After all that hassle iBooks is a very neat app, and lets you enter typed notes easily. Unfortunately it doesn\'t appear to sync the changed iBooks file back to the Mac when you sync again. You can\'t see where the file is stored on the iPad of course. To do this you have to buy another piece of software just to transfer your epub book back to your computer.\n\nAnd when you do you\'ll find your annotations have disappeared. Lord knows where Apple stores them but it doesn\'t seem to be inside the book itself.\n\nOK -- let\'s try a pdf file. That works, after a fashion. Apps like iAnnotate and Notify let you read a pdf file and add notes to it. It\'s clunky. You don\'t see just your text you see headers and footers on every page. There\'s that file problem again. I can\'t quite believe how difficult it is to get files off and onto the iPad. Are Apple serious? Lots of things don\'t work too -- in iTunes or using services that came with the apps. I found it easier to upload and download through Dropbox which can take forever.\n\nNotify seemed the slickest. But when you export out of Notify back to pdf it turns the whole document into a single, gigantic image. So my pdf file went from 4mb to 45mb, became incredibly unwieldy, and utterly uneditable as a pdf. Massive fail (and I wish I could get my money back for that one).\n\nSo after half a day and a fair bit of wasted cash I\'m out of options really. Yes, you can read your work very nicely on the iPad. I suspect my preferred option, given that Kindle won\'t work, would be to read it in iBooks, make notes, and then have the iPad next to me while I did the revision on the PC in Word. But what a lot of messing. Why do Apple have to make things so hard? Why can\'t you see your files? Do they realise how primitive this will  look when Android tablets come along and make everything so much easier? You could do it all easily with DTG on an Android tablet -- and just transfer files by having your tablet plugged in as an external drive, as I can with my phone now.\n\nWant to know how reading a manuscript on a tablet should look? Like this...\n\n[wpvideo xd95wKGH]\n\nI really haven\'t used this thing in this way before so I\'ve a lot to learn. But as you can see from this you can...\n<ul>\n	<li>View the document in draft view, without headers or footers</li>\n	<li>Change the actual text if need be with a virtual keyboard</li>\n	<li>Scribble and highlight with a pen</li>\n</ul>\nNone of which is very easy on the iPad as far as I can work out. What is this? My laptop, an 11.6 inch Packard Bell Butterfly Touch, running standard Microsoft Word. It\'s a Windows 7 tablet. You simply turn round the screen to get rid of the keyboard. Normally it looks like this.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/125642-packard-bell-easynote-butterfly-touch-ev-006uk-7012.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6050\" title=\"125642-packard-bell-easynote-butterfly-touch-ev-006uk-7012\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/125642-packard-bell-easynote-butterfly-touch-ev-006uk-7012.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"257\" /></a>\n\nSo I can both write <em>and</em> revise using this. It\'s actually a very nice keyboard. Since I sync my work files using the free Windows Live Sync service it means I can work on the original from my desktop and have all changes synced back automatically to it. No conversions. No extra software. It just works (isn\'t Apple supposed to be like that?)\n\nCost? You can pick this up for around £499 or a touch more. About the price of the cheapest iPad.\n\nDon\'t get me wrong. As a handy coffee table toy the iPad is very nice -- though somewhat overpriced it seems to me. As a book revision tool... nah. At least not for this writer. I\'ll stick to the laptop, thank you.','The iPad for book revision: a definite fail','','publish','open','open','','the-ipad-for-book-revision-a-definite-fail','','','2011-01-27 22:47:00','2011-01-27 22:47:00','',0,'https://davidhewson.wordpress.com/?p=6047',0,'post','',0),(6270,1,'2010-10-22 09:48:28','2010-10-22 08:48:28','','125642-packard-bell-easynote-butterfly-touch-ev-006uk-7012','','inherit','open','open','','125642-packard-bell-easynote-butterfly-touch-ev-006uk-7012','','','2010-10-22 09:48:28','2010-10-22 08:48:28','',6269,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/10/125642-packard-bell-easynote-butterfly-touch-ev-006uk-70122.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6272,1,'2010-10-23 08:40:43','2010-10-23 07:40:43','I see that Tesco are leaping on the tablet bandwagon and promising Samsung\'s new Galaxy Tab for £529 from November 1. As I said yesterday, I think Android tablets are going to be excellent candidates for book revision devices. Unlike the iPad they are very easy when it comes to transferring files -- you just plug them in to a PC or Mac and they turn into external drives.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/tesco-tab.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6060\" title=\"Tesco Tab\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/tesco-tab.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"317\" /></a>\n\nThe software is more varied in quality, but Documents to Go on Android does let you read and make comments, unlike the iPad version (so my HTC Desire phone can revise manuscripts more effectively than an iPad believe it or not).\n\n<!--more-->I still wouldn\'t buy this thing right now. Unless you\'re absolutely desperate wait until after Christmas. There will be a lot more competitors in the market then. Prices will fall. There will be some ten-inch screens around -- the Tab is only seven and for book revision I\'m not convinced that\'s big enough really (though I haven\'t seen one so I could be wrong).\n\nBut the clincher for me is that the other tablet makers are waiting for a new release of Android called Gingerbread which is specifically designed for tablets, not phones. Most manufacturers are waiting for Gingerbread before releasing their products. If they\'re hanging on it makes sense to join them.\n\nI will be working and revising a manuscript when I go to the Helsinki Book Fair next week. I\'ll be taking along the iPad for carrying around with me -- it\'s great for making notes and the like. But my little Windows tablet laptop will be in the room for the heavy lifting.','Hold fire on that Android tablet','','publish','open','open','','hold-fire-on-that-android-tablet','','','2011-01-27 22:47:00','2011-01-27 22:47:00','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6059',0,'post','',0),(6273,1,'2010-10-25 09:24:07','2010-10-25 08:24:07','In 1986 I left <em>The Times</em> to work on the launch of the <em>Independent. </em>I was gone by the following December, leaving to try to forge a writing career (it took another eight years before that really got off the ground).\n\nThe nine months or so I spent working on the launch of the <em>Indie</em> were fascinating and exhausting. Seven day weeks, fourteen hour days, mind-boggling changes of direction among those above, some of whom clearly knew even less about what they were doing than I did. Wouldn\'t have missed it for all the world but to be honest I was glad to get out. Launching a paper was a lot more fun than running the thing when it finally appeared.<!--more-->\n\nTomorrow the long-running saga of the <em>Independent</em> takes another turn. This was, remember, the first paper to be run by journalists, a bastion of free speech and independence in a media world dominated by evil conglomerates. Not that it lasted long like that. The thing struggled to be profitable, and what good fortune it had was soon scuppered by the ridiculous launch of a Sunday edition that has never really found its feet. Very soon both papers came to rely on a succession of owners to pay the bills. The latest is a former KGB agent. I wonder what people would have said if you\'d mooted that as a possibility in 1986.\n\nAnd tomorrow the Lebedev-run <em>Indie</em> launches a new venture -- <em>i. </em>Yes, that\'s all it\'s called. The ever-excellent Roy Greenslade gives us all a lowdown on what to expect <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2010/oct/25/independent-i-simon-kelner\" target=\"_blank\">in the <em>Guardian</em> today</a>.\n\nHere are a few tasters...\n<ul>\n	<li>It will be composed of all the stories that feature in the Independent, but heavily subbed down. In the so-called \"news matrix\", no story will be longer than 400 words, and most will be news-in-brief-style paragraphs.</li>\n	<li>There will be just one comment article in the \"opinion matrix\", again taken from the main paper.</li>\n	<li>There will be a news feature, some lifestyle content, a page of puzzles, a \"business matrix\" digest and a fair degree of sport.</li>\n	<li>Ten new staff, including subs, have been hired to work on the paper.</li>\n</ul>\nWow. A new newspaper and all it takes is ten new staff to rewrite existing copy from the <em>Independent</em> itself, now selling at full price around 88,000 copies. Some reports suggest that the company is expecting a sale of 400,000 for its new baby at 20p a shot. Yet it gets no TV advertising and the launch slogan -- \'i is, are you?\' -- draws on the original launch line for the <em>Indie </em>itself. Yes, from 24 years ago. How many people outside luvvie media circles will understand that one?\n\nIn these difficult times you can only wish any media venture well. It must be horribly difficult being a journalist today, when budgets are continually squeezed and most reporters seem to be expected to do their jobs without ever leaving the office.\n\nDoes it stand a chance? I can\'t see it frankly. If I want a simple news digest I just turn on my phone. It\'s there in Google news, on the BBC, all over the place frankly. Bang up to date and free. Some observers think that the <em>Indie</em> <a href=\"http://www.newspaperinnovation.com/index.php/2010/10/19/independent-plans-well-copies-lite-version/\" target=\"_blank\">got its idea from a similar Portuguese startup also called </a><em><a href=\"http://www.newspaperinnovation.com/index.php/2010/10/19/independent-plans-well-copies-lite-version/\" target=\"_blank\">i</a>. </em>That now seems to be in big trouble, with a sale down to 15,000 against an initial forecast of 400,000.\n\nThe real question, though, is surely this: what does <em>i</em> mean for the <em>Independent</em> itself? If the little thing is simply a cannibalised digest of the big paper will some of the <em>Indie\'s</em> dwindling readership give up on that too? Isn\'t the real problem here the level of the <em>Indie\'s </em>sales? At one point after launch the paper had a circulation of around 400,000. Now it\'s down to disastrous levels.\n\nHas Lebedev given up on turning round that catastrophic decline? If so what happens next if <em>i </em>bites the dust? The whole thing seems distinctly bizarre frankly. But then I\'ve been out of newspapers for quite a while now. Perhaps I simply don\'t get it. And I may not be alone in that.\n\nPS. On the subject of newspapers I\'d be tempted to suggest that Lebedev would be better off apping up the existing <em>Indie</em> and turning it into a wonderful digital paper available for paid-for delivery to iPads, iPhones, Android devices, PCs and Macs. The <em>Times</em> app for the iPad looks wonderful in principle. I can\'t wait to read my edition on the train to London I\'m about to catch.\n\nOh wait... Just tried to download it and it says...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/rimg0085.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6073\" title=\"Exif_JPEG_PICTURE\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/rimg0085.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"367\" /></a>\n\nPS. It now works...','The newspaper world gets ever stranger','','publish','open','open','','the-newspaper-world-gets-ever-stranger','','','2011-01-27 22:47:00','2011-01-27 22:47:00','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6062',0,'post','',0),(6274,1,'2010-10-25 09:30:25','2010-10-25 08:30:25','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-53','','','2010-10-25 09:30:25','2010-10-25 08:30:25','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/10/rimg00852.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6276,1,'2010-10-27 08:41:57','2010-10-27 07:41:57','<a href=\"http://www.moreenikustannus.fi/Products.asp?document_id=536\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6077\" title=\"kuolemanvuodenaika_pieni\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/kuolemanvuodenaika_pieni.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"284\" /></a>I\'ll be flying out to Finland later today for this weekend\'s Helsinki Book Fair, courtesy of my publisher there, <a href=\"http://www.moreenikustannus.fi/Products.asp?document_id=536\" target=\"_blank\">Moreeni</a>. Here\'s the cover for the first in the Costa series due out there around now.\n\nIt\'s always exciting to be coming out in a new market so you can imagine I\'m looking forward to the trip. If you are around for the book fair you\'ll find me on the Suomalainen kirjakauppa stage for an interview at 10.45 on Saturday, then again at 3pm on the crime theme stage. I\'ll be signing at the Moreeni stand at 5pm.\n\nOn Sunday I\'ll be on the Akateeminen kirjakauppa stage at 11 am. Then back home briefly before a research trip for the 2013 book...','Helsinki on the horizon...','','publish','open','open','','helsinki-on-the-horizon','','','2011-01-27 22:47:00','2011-01-27 22:47:00','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6076',0,'post','',0),(6277,1,'2010-11-02 08:13:21','2010-11-02 08:13:21','Scrivener 2.0 for Mac <a href=\"http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php\" target=\"_blank\">is now out </a>and Scrivener for Windows <a href=\"http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/\" target=\"_blank\">is available in beta</a>. They\'re both free trial downloads and well worth checking them out.\n\nScrivener 2.0 is a very substantial advance on the first version, with a cleaner interface and some neat new features (but not too many I\'m pleased to say). If you use a Mac and write fiction you really should take a look. And don\'t worry about the stability either. The last three books I\'ve written were produced in the 2.0 beta (now I can finally say it). Even when it was a beta version I never hit a single problem.\n\nI\'m now using Windows, of course, so good as 2.0 is it\'s of intellectual interest rather than a working priority. The Scrivener Windows beta is an early version -- no line spacing for example, and there are problems with spell checking. These will be fixed later with a final release planned for early next year. I\'ll doubtless get around to writing about it at a later date. For the moment if you want to understand what I think about Scrivener just <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/tag/scrivener/\" target=\"_blank\">browse the articles here</a>.\n\nThis <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2009/09/09/the-best-scrivener-tip-ever-maybe/\" target=\"_blank\">tip on unplaced scenes </a>and <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2009/10/08/scrivener-and-the-mosaic-of-writing/\" target=\"_blank\">this one on the general principle of writing as a mosaic </a>are two of the most popular ones.','Great news on the Scrivener front','','publish','open','open','','great-news-on-the-scrivener-front','','','2011-01-27 22:47:00','2011-01-27 22:47:00','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6083',0,'post','',0),(6278,1,'2010-11-03 08:41:19','2010-11-03 08:41:19','http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/web2.jpg','web2.jpg','','inherit','open','open','','web2-jpg','','','2010-11-03 08:41:19','2010-11-03 08:41:19','',0,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/web22.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6280,1,'2010-11-03 09:22:16','2010-11-03 09:22:16','I pulled out the MacBook Pro for the first time in months yesterday and downloaded the new Scrivener 2.0. I can\'t pretend this is in any way a review. Scrivener is a substantial piece of software and deserves that from someone who\'s going to spend a lot of time doing serious work inside it. That won\'t be me -- my Mac days are past.\n\nBut here are a few initial observations. I ought to be more familiar with Scrivener 2 than I am in truth because I started using the beta as a tester something like two years ago if I recall (which is why some of the Scrivener screenshots here puzzled people a bit).\n\n<!--more-->Frankly it\'s so long since I used Scrivener 1 (which wasn\'t even 1.5 then) that I really don\'t remember what that was like. The release Scrivener 2 is a bit of a stranger too and doesn\'t bear a very close resemblance to the beta I worked with either. It\'s cleaner, smarter, nicer to look at.\n\nFiring up Scrivener for the first time in six months or so reminded me why I like this software so much. It really does work the way I think about writing, allowing me to see the <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2009/10/08/scrivener-and-the-mosaic-of-writing/\" target=\"_blank\">story mosaic</a>, move around scenes and parts, label them and <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2009/09/09/the-best-scrivener-tip-ever-maybe/\" target=\"_blank\">think about them outside the actual narrative. </a>Nothing I\'ve ever seen comes close to Scrivener in this respect.\n\nDoes Version 2 add much to these fundamental features? In a way, not that they needed much expansion. For me it\'s basically a much cleaner, better organised and more easily understood introduction to the software. A fair number of people I\'ve pointed towards Scrivener 1 have come back to me and said, \'I just don\'t get it.\' It does look a bit daunting at first sight. Lots of options, boxes, labels things to tick if you allow everything to be on show (which you don\'t have to).\n\nVersion 2.0 looks a lot more friendly. Here\'s how next year\'s book,  <em>The Fallen Angel, </em>looks (it was written entirely in the beta).\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-08-58-53.png\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-6090 alignnone\" title=\"Scrivener 2\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-08-58-53.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"327\" /></a>\n\nThere are some wonderfully subtle additions. I love the new comments feature which is both powerful yet does not intrude on the text. There\'s a fantastic manual (though parts seem unfinished) to introduce you to the concepts of Scrivener\'s various parts. The outliner and corkboard make a lot more sense. Scrivener 1 was a clever piece of one-man shareware. This looks like the product of a sophisticated software company with a firm direction of where it\'s headed (though in truth it\'s still a small software company).\n\nThere are still things in there I would never use. I don\'t really understand how I\'d need the new collections feature, the scriptwriting tools or the roundabout way you can get Scrivener documents onto an iPad to see them in Simplenote. The latter would worry me frankly. I am version-averse. I hate the idea of different copies of the same document floating around (cf the recent Franzen experience).\n\n(<em>Update -- </em>Scrivener can also export to .mobi which can with a tweak be read by Kindle too -- so the caveats here aren\'t really accurate). The ability to export in epub format for an ereader sounded very exciting when I first heard about it in confidence ages ago. But that was when epub-based readers such as the Sony seemed fashionable. Now Kindle seems to rule the roost and that epub file really only makes sense if you have an iPad (iBooks will read it, though you won\'t be able to export any comments you make there). The coming field of Android tablets will be epub friendly though so perhaps that will make this feature look a little more useful. I wish I could say there was a good way of revising manuscripts on a tablet -- marking them up with notes and changes -- but for the life of me I still haven\'t found it.\n\nSome of the things Scrivener can do seem to me to be bordering on the obsessive. I\'m sure there are writers who need to cross reference different parts of their manuscript to other chapters and scenes and websites. But I doubt most of us do. The temptation for newcomers with all software is to try to learn it all in one go. I\'d strongly advise against this with Scrivener. It\'s a very comprehensive writer\'s toolbox. Few of us will need every gadget beneath the lid.\n\nSo pick the things you like, master them, and forget the others. This is writing software. Clever as it is -- and it\'s very smart indeed -- it\'s the writing that matters.\n\nAnother reminder -- you can browse my earlier Scrivener articles t<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/tag/scrivener/\" target=\"_blank\">hrough this link. </a>\n\nOh, and as I write the Scrivener site is unfortunately down due to the demand interest in Scrivener 2 has placed on its servers. A kind of compliment to Scrivener\'s developer Keith, not that I imagine he sees it that way at the moment. When it\'s back you will find Scrivener 2.0, and a free 30-day trial, <a href=\"http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php\" target=\"_blank\">here.</a>\n\nI really like the look of it. But, before you ask, not enough to go back to the Mac. If Microsoft had included a version of OneNote in its new Mac Office though... but they didn\'t.\n\n<em>Update. </em>Dammit! I\'ve just worked out how that Collections thing could be used and it\'s brilliant. Double dammit! The logical way to replace OneNote is to have a separate Scrivener document for research.','Some brief thoughts on Scrivener 2.0','','publish','open','open','','some-brief-thoughts-on-scrivener-2-0','','','2011-01-27 22:47:00','2011-01-27 22:47:00','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6089',0,'post','',0),(6287,1,'2010-11-03 15:40:00','2010-11-03 15:40:00','<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-18-33.png\"><img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6102\" title=\"Binder\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-18-33.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"226\" height=\"451\" /></a>Pulling out the Mac to take a look at Scrivener 2 proved an interesting way to spend a few hours. First, Scrivener for Windows. No, you won\'t be reading anything from me here on that right now. It is clearly a very early beta and I don\'t have anything to say about it that you won\'t find in the earlier articles about Scrivener for Mac here. Just hit the Scrivener tag on the right.\n\nBut Scriv 2 is a very new beast in some respects, not that I noticed this at first glance. I\'ll put up a few things I\'ve noticed as they come. I am, I should say, in between gigs as it were, waiting on going to Italy for some research. That\'s my excuse anyway. So, on to characters and locations... which get beefed up greatly.\n\nSeveral writing apps have special parts of the program for characters and locations. They\'ve never grabbed me much. Scrivener has now joined the club. If you look down the Binder you can see the templates for them (this is based on the standard novel template that ships with the app).\n\nPiece of cake to use. You go into the Characters or Places folder and create a document based on the relevant template. The template sheets themselves are lower down and can be edited. Which means you can take out the bit in the character one which talk about conflicts and stuff (I prefer something simpler).\n\nHere\'s a character (can\'t think where I got that photo???)\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-10-55.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6104\" title=\"Character\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-10-55.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"280\" /></a>\n\nHere\'s a simple location entry.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-12-13.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6103\" title=\"Location\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-12-13.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"366\" /></a>\n\nFair enough. But Scrivener now lets you link things all over the place. So if you\'re thinking about your location and you want to link it to a character you just do this.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-12-37.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6105\" title=\"Link\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-12-37.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"318\" /></a>\n\nAnd now we have it on record that dear Harriet is connected to the location. Simple stuff, and I\'m not convinced I\'d be able to make use of it frankly. But if you were writing a big, many character tome maybe it would be useful. And you can link pretty much anything this way -- scenes, web pages, research.\n\nIt\'s pretty cool but the best thing of all is you can tailor this to the way you work. Let\'s add a new folder called Themes and give it an icon to make it stand out.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-29-58.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6107\" title=\"Icon\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-29-58.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"449\" height=\"639\" /></a>\n\nThen let\'s duplicate the location sheet and tailor it for tracking the themes in our story, and the scenes and research and other elements which will support them.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-35-43.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6108\" title=\"Themes\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-15-35-43.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"320\" /></a>\n\nNow <em>that</em> is quite something. At least it is for me.','A little bit of hidden Scrivener magic','','publish','open','open','','a-little-bit-of-hidden-scrivener-magic','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6101',0,'post','',0),(6291,1,'2010-11-03 18:34:25','2010-11-03 18:34:25','Right - this is my last word on Scrivener 2 today. I am <em>so</em> hacked off with this company. Word 2010 is great, Windows 7 is fine. I have nice laptops. I\'m a happy little author and the old MacBook Pro is sitting gathering dust.\r\n\r\nAnd then they release Scrivener 2. Rats. It has devoured most of today and I am absolutely gobsmacked by how wonderful it is (and how the hell I can avoid writing the next book in it, even though there\'s 18 megs of research sitting in OneNote which does <em>not</em> run on the Mac).\r\n\r\nOh well my problem. Here, for those of you who\'ve downloaded Scrivener 2, even for a trial, is a template for it reflecting my own working habits.\r\n\r\n<!--more-->It includes an example of how to use the Collections feature (which this morning I found utterly baffling) for monitoring different points of view and story elements set in different eras.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-18-16-49.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6115\" title=\"Collections\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-18-16-49.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"241\" height=\"167\" /></a>\r\n\r\nMy own invention, the <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2009/09/09/the-best-scrivener-tip-ever-maybe/\" target=\"_blank\">unplaced scenes folder</a>, of which I am mighty proud.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-18-17-03.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6116\" title=\"Unplaced scenes\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-18-17-03.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"186\" height=\"45\" /></a>\r\n\r\nSome custom folder for to-do, themes, characters and settings, some of which come with the basic novel template but have been slightly amended.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-18-17-13.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6117\" title=\"Custom folders\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-03-at-18-17-13.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"206\" height=\"225\" /></a>\r\n\r\nPlease don\'t think any of this is rocket science. It took about twenty minutes to create all this. You can do it to match your own working methods, honest. Or just tinker with what I\'ve done here.\r\n\r\nPlease note though... tech support is something for the Scrivener forum. I ain\'t doing it. I\'m too busy working out what to do with all that OneNote research for one thing.\r\n\r\nYou\'ll find the template for download below. There are brief instructions inside some of the entries. Read and play and I\'m sure you\'ll get the idea.\r\n\r\nIt works in Scrivener 2.0 only -- nothing earlier, and not the Windows beta. It\'s available here as an ordinary Scrivener file you can open. If you want to save it as a template go to File, Save Template with it open. Have fun!\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/David-Hewsons-template.zip\">David Hewson\'s novel template for Scrivener</a>\r\n\r\nAlternative download.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://dl.dropbox.com/u/105354/David%20Hewson%27s%20template.zip\" target=\"_blank\">David Hewson\'s Novel Template for Scrivener 2.0</a>','A novel template for Scrivener -- my way','','publish','open','open','','a-novel-template-for-scrivener-my-way','','','2011-04-16 08:29:28','2011-04-16 07:29:28','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6114',0,'post','',15),(6294,1,'2010-11-04 10:51:15','2010-11-04 10:51:15','<img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6426\" title=\"Dead Men\'s Socks\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/dead-mens-socks1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"176\" height=\"266\" />Gianni Peroni is feeling at a loose end. Mooching around with no boss at hand he wanders into the Questura morgue and sees Teresa’s deputy staring at two newly-arrived corpses. One is the body of a wealthy psychiatrist recovered from the river, apparently after committing suicide. The second is that of a young Roma petty criminal, seemingly beaten to death in a different part of the city, perhaps as some gang vendetta.\n\nPeroni watches the pathologist start to work with the corpses and notices something extraordinary. Both are wearing odd socks. <em>Identical</em> odd socks.\n\nSo begins <em><a title=\"Dead Men’s Socks — a Roman short story\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/books/the-nic-costa-series/dead-mens-socks-a-roman-short-story/\">Dead Men\'s Socks</a>, </em>a brand new 10,000-word Rome short story featuring one of the series\' most popular characters. Out now with instant download as part of the new Pan Macmillan Short Reads initiative.\n\n<strong>Get </strong><strong><em>Dead Men’s Socks </em>for 99p now</strong>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Mens-Socks-Short-Reads/dp/B004FV4RWC\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Kindle UK</strong></a> <a href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/dead-mens-socks-short-reads/id409366072?mt=11\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>iTunes</strong></a> <strong>Waterstones (link coming shortly) </strong><strong><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Mens-Socks-Short-Reads/dp/B004FV4RWC\" target=\"_blank\">Kindle non-UK </a>(including US sales)</strong>\n\n<strong> </strong>\n\n<img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6126\" title=\"Death in Seville\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/seville.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"170\" height=\"267\" />\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/books/standalones/death-in-seville/\" target=\"_self\"><em>Death in Seville</em></a>, now available in trade paperback from Pan, is a fully revised version of David\'s first novel, <em>Semana Santa, </em>a murder tale set against the background of Easter in Spain. It\'s Holy Week, with tourists pouring into the city for the religious festivities followed by a fiesta of bullfighting and street parties. It couldn\'t be a worse time for Detective Felipe Torrillo to be faced with what seems to be the work of a vicious serial killer.\n\nBut academic Maria Gutierrez can see more in this case than the cops around her. And soon she finds herself caught up in an investigation of corruption, revenge and twisted sexuality that reached back into the bloody history of Andalucia itself.\n\n<strong>The latest Costa on the shelves</strong>\n\n<strong> </strong>\n\n<strong> </strong>\n\n<img class=\"alignright\" title=\"Blue Demon\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/the-blue-demon-n7005b1005d-2.jpg?w=201\" alt=\"\" width=\"201\" height=\"299\" />The  eighth novel in the best-selling Nic Costa series takes a  thrilling  journey into the world of real-life international politics. <em>The Blue  Demon </em>(in the US <em>City of Fear) </em>is now available in the UK  from Pan Macmillan and in the US from Bantam  Dell.\n\nThe book tells the story of a terrorist attack on a Rome already  crippled by  a G8 summit. The Italian president, locked in a political battle with  his bitter enemy, the prime minister, enlists Costa and his colleagues  to get to the bottom of a mystery that has dogged the nation for a  quarter of a century.\n<blockquote>Hewson at the top of his form -- Yorkshire Evening Post\n\nWell-drawn characters, a brisk pace, and some unexpected plot twists provide a satisfying read -- Publishers Weekly\n\nAnother of Hewson\'s impeccably written thrillers with (once again)  perfect balance between the exigencies of the thriller plot and the  carefully conjured locales -- Good Book Guide\n\nIn past reviews, we’ve called  this series a “superb mix of history,   mystery, and humanity.” That  assessment is further reaffirmed with  each  new entry -- Booklist, Starred Review</blockquote>','A new Roman tale... and a Spanish classic','','draft','closed','closed','','the-return-of-two-classics','','','2011-01-27 17:46:33','2011-01-27 17:46:33','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/',-2,'page','',0),(6295,1,'2010-11-04 10:55:16','2010-11-04 10:55:16','','Epiphany','','inherit','open','open','','epiphany-4','','','2010-11-04 10:55:16','2010-11-04 10:55:16','',3338,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/epiphany5.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6297,1,'2010-11-04 16:45:59','2010-11-04 16:45:59','','optima','','inherit','open','open','','optima','','','2010-11-04 16:45:59','2010-11-04 16:45:59','',23,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/optima12.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6298,1,'2010-11-04 16:46:45','2010-11-04 16:46:46','','p22','','inherit','open','open','','p22','','','2010-11-04 16:46:45','2010-11-04 16:46:46','',23,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/p2212.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6299,1,'2010-11-04 16:47:24','2010-11-04 16:47:24','','Optima','','inherit','open','open','','optima-2','','','2010-11-04 16:47:24','2010-11-04 16:47:24','',23,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/optima12.pdf',0,'attachment','application/pdf',0),(6300,1,'2010-11-04 16:47:53','2010-11-04 16:47:53','','P22','','inherit','open','open','','p22-2','','','2010-11-04 16:47:53','2010-11-04 16:47:53','',23,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/p2212.pdf',0,'attachment','application/pdf',0),(6301,1,'2010-11-04 16:52:17','2010-11-04 16:52:17','I\'ve been a bit too busy to mess around with Scrivener 2 today. But I woke up with a nagging thought. Some time last year I planted a suggestion with Keith, Scrivener\'s creator, about a feature that might go down well with a select few: the ability to turn underlining into italics automatically on export.\n\nKeith is doubtless inundated with requests constantly and his first reaction was to ask, \'For pity\'s sake.... why?\'\n\nWell for a very good reason as it happens. As he soon saw -- and has now delivered on his promise. You can read why <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2009/03/30/picking-a-font-for-writing/\" target=\"_self\">in this article about choosing a font for writing. </a>Thanks Keith! And thanks again to <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Michael Marshall Smith\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://www.michaelmarshallsmith.com\">Michael Marshall Smith</a> for coming up with the inspiration in the first place.\n\nHere\'s what it looks like when you go to compile (in order words export your work from Scrivener out, in my case, to Word). A small thing, but small things matter.\n\n<img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6166\" title=\"Underline\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-04-at-16-20-05.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"258\" height=\"73\" />','Oh joy... I can now turn underline to italics...','','publish','open','open','','oh-joy-i-can-now-turn-underline-to-italics','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6160',0,'post','',0),(6302,1,'2010-11-04 16:58:35','2010-11-04 16:58:35','','Underline','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2010-11-04-at-16-20-05','','','2010-11-04 16:58:35','2010-11-04 16:58:35','',6301,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-04-at-16-20-052.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6303,1,'2010-11-05 08:40:55','2010-11-05 08:40:55','<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/books/standalones/death-in-seville/\" target=\"_self\"><em><img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6148\" title=\"death-in-seville\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/death-in-seville-pbb-r6.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"168\" height=\"258\" />Death in Seville</em> </a>is back in circulation today, sixteen years after I started work on it as my very first book, initially called <em>Semana Santa. </em>Many thanks to my colleagues at Pan Macmillan for bringing another title back from by backlist after last year\'s <em>The Cemetery of Secrets.</em>\n\nAuthors are always fond of their first book. I feel very proud of this one. I still remember writing it in secret all those years ago, not telling a soul for fear I\'d never finish it, or if I did it would be no good. The tale of its publication is worth retelling too for all of you out there wondering whether it\'s worth persevering after a string of rejections.<!--more-->\n\nI finished the book at the end of the summer of 1994. I then set about what it tells you to do in the <em>Writers &amp; Artists Yearbook. </em>A string of letters to agents followed, with a brief synopsis of the book (I was never good at those) and a bio.\n\nNot a soul wanted to read it. After running out of options in the UK I then desperately tried to interest a New York agent. No one wanted to read it there either. But one NY agent wondered whether her friend in London might not be interested. That friend -- who turned out to be my first, not my present, agent -- called out of the blue. She was from an agency that had already turned down the opportunity to read the manuscript.\n\nDid I mention this? Course not. She was the first person to read the manuscript. She took five pages. Then ten. Then fifty. Then the whole book. Two months later I had a three-book contract and not long after that a movie deal (which did eventually turn into a movie too).\n\nThe lesson being... never, ever give up. If you\'re the giving up type you\'re in the wrong business.\n\nAnyway that was a slightly different book from the one that\'s launched today. When I wrote <em>Semana Santa </em>I had no expectation it would be published, so many of the locations, names and cultural references were invented. In my head the book took place in Seville but I couldn\'t afford the time or money to go there and make it real. So it happened in an invented, unnamed place... which every reader assumed to be Seville.\n\nThis time round I was determined to be more careful. So <em>Death in Seville</em> is the same fundamental story as <em>Semana Santa</em> but with some substantial rewriting. It\'s now set in real-life Seville -- the bull ring, the Juderia, the little back streets. I\'ve cleaned up some rough points that got through the initial editing. It\'s a little leaner and, I hope, a lot better.\n\nIt\'s lovely to see this old friend back on the bookshelves again. If you fancy looking at more of my backlist and use Kindle you can also read my second book, <em>Epiphany, </em>again too, and at a bargain price. <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/books/epiphany/\" target=\"_self\">More on that here...</a>','Death in Seville... back on the shelf','','publish','open','open','','death-in-seville-back-on-the-shelf','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6147',0,'post','',0),(6304,1,'2010-11-05 10:28:40','2010-11-05 10:28:40','','Home','','publish','open','open','','home-3','','','2010-11-05 10:28:40','2010-11-05 10:28:40','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6169',1,'nav_menu_item','',0),(6305,1,'2010-11-05 16:46:31','2010-11-05 16:46:31','[archives]','','','publish','open','open','','6172','','','2010-11-05 16:46:31','2010-11-05 16:46:31','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6172',34,'nav_menu_item','',0),(6313,1,'2010-11-06 12:54:47','2010-11-06 12:54:47','The arrival of Scrivener 2 this week rather rattled my plans for the next book. It will no longer be written in the very excellent <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/05/05/word-2010-for-windows-wonds-well-hidden/\" target=\"_blank\">Word 2010 for Windows</a> as intended. Instead I\'m diverting back to the Mac and planning the whole project in Scrivener 2 (with a final revise in Word, the Windows one). This does <em>not</em> mean I think every project is destined for Scrivener. But this one is big and complicated and needs the extra features it brings.\n\nSo please -- don\'t rule out Word 2010 (Windows) especially if you have a simple, linear project. It\'s great for that -- and I try to explain why in the link above.\n\nBut Microsoft just released the companion Office package for the Mac. And boy is that a very different animal.<!--more-->\n<blockquote><em><strong>Quick update. You can turn off the dumb SmartArt box but only if you turn off the ribbon too. And the long-standing word count limitation -- the live count stops at 99,999 words is still there! Aiiieee!!! </strong></em></blockquote>\nI\'m not going to spend a lot of time in detail here. My simple advice is: if you have Office 2008, the earlier version, stick with it. There\'s nothing much worth moving for here and bizarrely Microsoft\'s Mac team seem to have ignored all the great work their Windows colleagues have done in creating a fine word processing package for writers.\n\nSome examples...\n\nWord for Windows has a wonderful navigation feature that puts headings into a sidebar, lets you drag them to new parts of the narrative, and gives you a word count for individual scenes and sections. What you get in Word for Mac 2011 is this...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/navigation.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6175\" title=\"navigation\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/navigation.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"337\" /></a>\n\nCan\'t drag things around. Can\'t word count on a scene. Can\'t do anything except look at it really. Rubbish.\n\nMac Word now boasts Windows Word\'s ribbon bar.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/ribbon.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6176\" title=\"ribbon\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/ribbon.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"98\" /></a>\n\nI hated this at first but now it seems fine. That\'s because you can hide it. Completely. But not on the Mac. You still get this stupid stub. God I hate the word \'SmartArt\'.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/stub.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6181\" title=\"stub\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/stub.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"34\" /></a>\n\nMore idiocy. On Windows Word if you view in print page format you see the page with headers and footers. I don\'t need to see headers and footers when you\'re writing. The Windows engineers clearly understand that’s a common condition. Just click in the space between pages and they close up and give you a continuous read, without headers and footers. Pretty much perfect.\n\nHere\'s the same thing with Mac Word.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/footer1.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6182\" title=\"footer1\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/footer1.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"213\" /></a>\n\nDouble click on the gap and you get this.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/footer2.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6183\" title=\"footer2\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/footer2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"175\" /></a>\n\nYes, the chance to edit the header or footer. Note: I did <em>not</em> click on the header or footer (which does the same thing). I clicked on the space between the pages. Work that one out. Oh and while you\'re at it... work this out. There is a new full screen view (copied from things like Scrivener you imagine). You know the idea. You get to focus on nothing but your writing.\n\nWell actually you don\'t because full screen view <em>includes headers and footers and all that wasted white space too. </em>Apple\'s Pages does the same thing it must be said. You wonder: do these people ever <em>talk</em> to those of us who write?\n\nNor is Word the only disaster in the Office release. Microsoft have made a big noise about junking the bug pile that was Entourage and replacing it with a version of its excellent Windows email and organiser package Outlook.\n\nHere\'s the truth. It\'s Outlook with all the bad and none of the good.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/outlook-inbox.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6185\" title=\"outlook inbox\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/outlook-inbox.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"240\" /></a>\n\nSimple example. In the <em>real</em> Outlook you can make the mail folders you use a lot favourites so they come and sit at the top of the sidebar where they\'re easy to see. You can drag folders in Mac Outlook too. They just bounce back to where they were in the first place. Oh, and every email I have is now marked unread by Outlook, though they\'re definitely read and read well. Great.\n\nHere though is the really astonishing thing about Mac Outlook. The calendar. Which looks very nice I must say and has a little agenda gadget called My Day which can float around for reminders. You will see my calendar here is empty as is My Day. That\'s because I\'ve no useful way of taking advantage of this thing.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/calendar.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6186\" title=\"calendar\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/calendar.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"475\" /></a>\n\nI use Google Apps for mail, calendar and contacts for davidhewson.com. Works very well. Thanks to a bit of Google software you can sync all of this into Windows Outlook. Google haven\'t done that for the Mac (boo). But even so... what can you sync this calendar with? If you work for a company with Microsoft Exchange then your network calendar (and contacts).\n\nBut most of us little people don\'t have that option. We use Google or Mobile me. Or even Microsoft\'s Windows Live. And the calendar doesn\'t sync with them, even Microsoft\'s own services as far as I can see (and if I\'m wrong please correct me).\n\nGo to sync services and all this dumb piece of junk offers to do is sync with the Mac Address Book. So it\'s actually <em>less</em> powerful than Entourage 2008 which it replaces.\n\nAmazing.\n\nIf anyone in the Mac Business Unit happens this way here\'s a piece of advice: walk down the corridor and ask those people in the Windows Office department how things are done. They clearly know. Why don\'t you?\n\nPS. If you want the Google stuff Mac Outlook should deliver but, unlike its Windows brother, doesn\'t I suggest you take a look at <a href=\"http://mailplaneapp.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Mailplane.</a>','Thank you Microsoft for the worst word processor ever','','publish','open','open','','thank-you-microsoft-for-the-worst-word-processor-ever','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6173',0,'post','',0),(6314,1,'2010-11-07 22:20:48','2010-11-07 22:20:48','','reading-time','','inherit','open','open','','reading-time','','','2010-11-07 22:20:48','2010-11-07 22:20:48','',6194,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/reading-time2.jpeg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6315,1,'2010-11-08 07:41:28','2010-11-08 07:41:28','','Focus2','','inherit','open','open','','focus2','','','2010-11-08 07:41:28','2010-11-08 07:41:28','',6194,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/focus22.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6325,1,'2010-11-08 10:54:24','2010-11-08 10:54:24','[gallery]\n\nYou can see so much in books and on the internet. Look up the Brancacci Chapel in Florence\'s church of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_del_Carmine_di_Firenze\" target=\"_blank\">Santa Maria del Carmine</a> and you\'ll think: that seems an interesting place. I\'ve been reading about the place for a few weeks because I have a professional interest in it (the book for 2013 in case you\'re interested).  I thought I had a reasonable idea of what to expect.\n\nThen I drag myself through the chilly Florence rain and find something quite unlike anything the books or web prepares you to see. The church itself is a touch overblown and uninteresting. The chapel is to one side to the right with a rope to keep people back. I asked a priest how to get in and he just waved a hand and said, \'Fuori.\'\n\n<!--more-->So I went outside, found the entrance, discovered you were supposed to book, smiled at the lady behind the counter, paid my four euros and got in straight away. And it\'s amazing. A kind of miniature Sistine Chapel, full of colour and life and extraordinary paintings, all crammed into little more than a large alcove.\n\nQuite amazing. Michelangelo used to come here and was keen on copying Masaccio\'s expulsion of Adam and Eve. He got into an argument one time (Italian artists seemed to do this a lot) and a stroppy sculptor punched him so hard on the nose it turned into the broken, bashed up proboscis you see in the all the sculptured images of him. That odd aside apart, it\'s an extraordinarily peaceful and beautiful spot in a back street of Oltrarno. As compelling as any of the bigger sights across the river in my book.','Some photos of the wondrous Brancacci Chapel, Florence','','publish','open','open','','some-photos-of-the-wondrous-brancacci-chapel-florence','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6208',0,'post','',0),(6326,1,'2010-11-08 12:18:08','2010-11-08 12:18:08','Oh come on. Of course you can\'t. At least I couldn\'t. I\'d go mad. No proper editing, no change tracking, no <em>oomph. </em>My books come in at around 125K words a pop. You think I can write all that lot on a coffee table toy?\n\nMind you, that\'s not to say you can\'t write <em>parts</em> of a book on an iPad. Chunks jotted down here and there. That I can buy. I just did it on a 90 minute flight to Florence. Here\'s how.\n\n<!--more-->First things first. The iPad has lots of writing apps (I\'ve bought a few myself). Most stink. Not through any great fault of their own but because the iPad stinks when it comes to serious writing. It\'s the keyboard. It\'s made for children. You have to switch to the numeric keyboard to find the apostrophe/quote marks/brackets. Clearly someone on Apple\'s dev team doesn\'t read or write much. If they did they\'d have noticed how often these small typographical things come up. I would have to have switched seven times for this paragraph alone and that\'s (oops make that eight -- no ten now with the brackets) and that\'s (eleven/thirteen) plain ridiculous.\n\nApostrophes, quotes and brackets aren\'t bizarre characters or phonemes from some exotic language. They\'re part of plain everyday prose. You shouldn\'t have to switch to an entirely new keyboard to type them (please fix, Apple, or at least offer an option. If a small developer in Japan can do that you can surely).\n\nThe awkwardness of that puts me off writing at length outside a paragraph or two. Or it did until I found IAWriter, a cheap little minimalist app that does not a lot more except type text but comes with an extended keyboard. You can see it below.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/reading-time.jpeg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6198\" title=\"reading-time\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/reading-time.jpeg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>\n\nImportant punctuation marks! Cursor keys (even if left and right only)! Someone noticed!\n\nGood for <a href=\"http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/writer-for-ipad/\" target=\"_blank\">Information Architects</a> who produced this software. All it does is write really, in a single font, without formatting or choice of layout. Words and words alone which can then be emailed or sent to Dropbox so you can import them into something else.\n\nHow much did I write on the plane? About five hundred words or so. And note: these were words that were in my head already. I used IAWriter to set them down. In that sense this thing is a handy notepad, not a writing tool in its own right. I like it for jotting down quick notes and first draft short scenes in situations where I can\'t pull out a laptop. And that\'s it. Whatever IAWriter claim about this way of writing cleansing your mind... well it doesn\'t work like that for me. I\'d go mad if  anything of length was in this thing. No undo, no up and down cursor keys, no... well, it\'s that word oomph again. I write full-length books. I need some horsepower. The rather odd focus mode, below, which allows you to pull up the last three lines you wrote and focus on them and nothing else doesn\'t ring any bells here at all I\'m afraid.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/focus2.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6203\" title=\"Focus2\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/focus2.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"298\" /></a>\n\nThere\'s also the distinctly holier than thou attitude of the designers (sorry -- but I get annoyed when software engineers tell people how they should write). Alongside some basic instructions they then go on to advise you to forget about (yuk dude!) Microsoft Word as a final revise application and use something like Adobe InDesign instead. They clearly know absolutely nothing about book publishing. If I sent an editor or agent an InDesign file they\'d come straight back and say, \'What the hell is this?\'\n\nAnd quite right too. Word is the lingua franca of text publishing. Live with it.\n\nBut IAWriter is pretty good for getting things down straight on the iPad screen keyboard. I did try it with my Apple Bluetooth physical keyboard too but that felt to odd for me. I mean -- it was just a dismembered laptop then, wasn\'t it? And not a very good one.\n\nSo I wrote my 500 words or so and then discovered that I was sitting next to a very interesting designer from a famous shoe company in New York. Since we took off from Heathrow she\'d sketched something like fifteen different shoe designs with nothing more than a drawing pen and paper. That\'s the way to do things really (and she\'d just got off the plane from the US). Me with an expensive electronic toy, she with a pen and a notepad. Her productivity beat mine hands down.\n\nWord sketching... that about sums it up. And really, watching the woman in the seat next to me happily dash off design after design for shoes, all with nothing but a pen and paper, I wish, I <em>wish </em>I could do it that way. But after all these years I can barely read my own writing. So I can\'t and if a tablet with a little writing app -- iPad, Android, Windows, whatever -- helps me manage a little of that instead, then great. I\'ll tap out a few words in odd moments when I feel like it then  transfer the results onto my laptop to be polished in a proper piece of writing software.','Can you write a book on an iPad?','','publish','open','open','','can-you-write-a-book-on-an-ipad','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6194',0,'post','',0),(6327,1,'2010-11-08 12:56:47','2010-11-08 12:56:47','','Ribollita','','inherit','open','open','','imag0001','','','2010-11-08 12:56:47','2010-11-08 12:56:47','',6227,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/imag00012.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6328,1,'2010-11-08 13:18:25','2010-11-08 13:18:25','','cotechino','','inherit','open','open','','cotechino','','','2010-11-08 13:18:25','2010-11-08 13:18:25','',6227,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/cotechino2.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6329,1,'2010-11-08 14:00:47','2010-11-08 14:00:47','This is it. A steaming great bowlful of one of the great Tuscan local specialities. None of that fancy restaurant stuff. This is peasant food, just the thing to warm you up on a freezing winter day. Stale bread, cavolo nero, beans, onion, garlic, any other vegetables you happen to have lying around, and maybe some ham. All slowly boiled for hours (<a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Ribollita\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribollita\">ribollita</a> means \'reboiled\' in case you were wondering).\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/imag0001.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6228\" title=\"Ribollita\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/imag0001.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"383\" /></a>\n\nYes, I know it looks like something the dog sicked up (that liquid bit is virgin olive oil by the way, so stop shaking). But this is real Italian food, not the tarted-up, artsy fartsy fancy rubbish you see touted on the telly by blokes waving their arms around too much. Blokes who describe something as Tuscan just because they\'ve shoved some beans in it.\n\nRibollita also has a certain connection for me, one of those Proustian prompts for an <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Involuntary memory\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory\">involuntary memory</a> I get each time I see it. Let me tell you the story...\n\n<!--more-->Eight years ago I found myself in a small Tuscan town <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/01/08/porchetta-and-people-where-characters-come-from/\" target=\"_blank\">trying to hunt down the character who became Gianni Peroni</a>, an important fellow in the Costa books. It was very much a last-minute journey, one that involved booking a small apartment for a week in what turned out to be a vast and slightly rundown mansion. The only other occupant was a charming elderly Tuscan lady who was obviously renting out bits of her family home to make ends meet.\n\nAt the time I didn\'t know Italy much beyond Rome and Venice, two very international cities. I assumed the rest of the country was pretty cosmopolitan. How wrong could I be? My caring new landlady was puzzled from the moment I arrived. Why, she wanted to know, was I a man travelling alone? How could I possibly cope when it came to matters such as food and washing?\n\nI assured her that for a week the washing wouldn\'t be a problem, and as for food... Englishmen could handle that, honestly.\n\nThe next day I found outside my door a very ancient cooking utensil much like a bucket. It contained about two pints of home-made ribollita. Pranzo, lunch, the landlady explained.\n\nI thanked her profusely, ate some of it gratefully and disposed of the rest. Later that day I bumped into her -- she had a habit of always being in the corridor when I came and went -- and she asked how the ribollita was. Delicious, I said, giving her back the now empty bucket. But I begged her please not to go out of her way to provide  any more food. I was capable of coping (and this was Tuscany, really I was).\n\nThe next morning there was another bucket of ribollita outside the door. I ate a bit of that one and begged her again: please, no more soup.\n\nTo no avail. The following day there was the bloody bucket again with the selfsame bloody soup.\n\nNow I\'m not picky about food honest. But I\'ve rarely found myself thinking, \'I know, I fancy something <em>boiled</em> right now.\' Let alone, \'God I could murder a bowl of something that\'s been boiled twice over.\'\n\nBut by this stage the woman was watching me like a hawk and she was such a sweetie at heart I really didn\'t want to offend her. I snuck in my own food so that she didn\'t think I was being unfaithful to her daily bucket of ribollita. That I drained carefully in the kitchen, separating bread and vegetables from stock, then patted the solid stuff dry into a lump and smuggled it out in plastic carriers  hidden inside my shoulder bag, and, when I was sure she wasn\'t following me, dumping the contents into the nearest rubbish bin I could find.\n\nI still think she knew though. In fact at times I was convinced she\'d sometimes followed me from the house to check what it was I kept dumping in the rubbish bins, not the mansion dustbin I was supposed to use (where she would have checked and found it -- no doubt about that). Before I left she was giving me that look from time to time. The one all males know. The one that says... <em>men...</em>\n\nGod knows how much unwanted ribollita I smuggled out of that place. It must have been a gallon or more. And after a little while the stuff began to haunt me. I could sense it a mile off in a restaurant, that smell, that sloppy consistency. It always made me shudder. I haven\'t eaten it since, honest.\n\nAt least not until now, in Florence, where you\'ll find it everywhere (this was in a very busy Oltrarno restaurant called Casalinga). Eight years on I finally found the courage to try it again (the fact I was cold, wet and hungry probably helped).\n\nAnd... it\'s fine. Rather as you\'d expect stale bread, stock, ham and vegetables to taste really. If I have to wait another eight years for a second bowl I won\'t feel cheated, honestly.\n\nJust to punish myself I followed it up with one of those Italian offal meat concoctions which the Florentines in particular love. Here I give you the delicacy known as <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotechino_Modena\" target=\"_blank\">cotechino</a> with pureed potato.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/cotechino.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6234\" title=\"cotechino\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/cotechino.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"382\" /></a>\n\nWhat was that like? Beautifully prepared and served, exactly as it should be. I found it quite disgusting. Sorry.','Meet ribollita, the soup from hell','','publish','open','open','','meet-ribollita-the-soup-from-hell','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6227',0,'post','',0),(6330,1,'2010-11-08 15:34:16','2010-11-08 15:34:16','','Muji Notebook','','inherit','open','open','','mzl-yhxypikw-480x480-75-1','','','2010-11-08 15:34:16','2010-11-08 15:34:16','',6244,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/mzl-yhxypikw-480x480-75-12.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6331,1,'2010-11-08 15:40:23','2010-11-08 15:40:23','','Evernote','','inherit','open','open','','ipad-landscape-notebooks3','','','2010-11-08 15:40:23','2010-11-08 15:40:23','',6244,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ipad-landscape-notebooks32.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6332,1,'2010-11-08 15:47:38','2010-11-08 15:47:38','','Evernote rich text','','inherit','open','open','','ipad','','','2010-11-08 15:47:38','2010-11-08 15:47:38','',6244,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ipad2.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6333,1,'2010-11-09 12:23:53','2010-11-09 12:23:53','I sat in the Brancacci Chapel here in Florence yesterday typing up some notes on my iPad. Nothing fancy, just a few useful paragraphs. Boy is the thing good for note-taking. Quick, easy, quiet. Even typing on the notebook screen is fine.\n\nClearly I\'m not the only one who thinks the iPad is a great note-taker. There seem to be hundreds of apps for doing notes on the thing. Macintouch gave notice of six new iPad/iPhone apps yesterday -- half of them to do with note-taking.\n\nSo what actually works? For me anyway, I can\'t tell you what will work for you.<!--more-->\n\nI\'ve been messing round with several options to try to find out. <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Simplenote\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://www.simplenoteapp.com/\">SimpleNote</a> is free and, well, simple as the name suggests. It stores notes online and syncs them through a variety of apps for PCs, Macs, iPhones, iPads or Android. Scrivener will sync to SimpleNote too, though not in a way that I find particularly useful frankly (you just see Scrivener text files with a header). If all you want is simple text this seems a pretty useful way to go. Bit rudimentary for dealing with lots of information. I\'m undisciplined. I need order.\n\nThere are a lot of fancier alternatives. I tried (i.e. bought -- what other option is there?) something called <a href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/muji-notebook/id397351449?mt=8\" target=\"_blank\">Muji Notebook</a> from a Japanese company. Beautifully designed and dead clever when it comes to writing <em>and</em> drawing things like this...\n\n<img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6247\" title=\"Muji Notebook\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/mzl-yhxypikw-480x480-75-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"480\" />\n\nYou can also annotate existing images and pdfs and export things by email. The handwriting recognition is laughable but it is Japanese I guess. But the gimmickry wore off I\'m afraid. Once I had five or six notes they started to get a bit lost.\n\nI also tried something similar called <a href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/noterize/id364906681?mt=8\" target=\"_blank\">Noterize</a> which was good and without the gimmicks. But you still get back to that pile of notes trapped on the iPad and shared as individual files. Which isn\'t so great if you\'re trying to create a store of notes for use on a Mac or PC, as you can with SimpleNote.\n\nIn the end I decided to stick with something I already knew: <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Evernote\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://www.evernote.com\">Evernote</a>. This is a service I\'ve been using for a couple of years. It stores text, images and pdfs on the web and then shares them out through a variety of apps, on PCs, Macs, iPhones and Android phones. The interface for Mac and Windows is a bit clunky but the thing works. Keeping notes there means I get to see those I\'ve collected for the project as a whole too -- not just things I\'ve created on the iPad. You can do that with SimpleNote of course, but only for text. With Evernote you get more as this screenshot shows...\n\n<img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6248\" title=\"Evernote\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/ipad-landscape-notebooks3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"341\" />\n\nYou can do fancy stuff, such as putting in your location. But I don\'t need that frankly. Just words and pictures. And there is one huge gotcha which applies to the iPad as a whole. You can read all your Evernote entries easily but if you try to edit one that has text formatting you get this message (I had to email that screenshot to myself -- can you believe that?)\n\n<img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6249\" title=\"Evernote rich text\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/ipad.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"253\" />\n\nAt least Evernote have a workaround. But this loathing of the iPad for rich text is a bit ridiculous frankly. Apple seem to enable it for their own apps like the hopeless word processor Pages. But they don\'t allow anyone else into the club easily. I hope that gets fixed.\n\nStill Evernote works, very well indeed, so I\'ll be placing my notes in there and syncing them back to the web when I get back to the apartment at the end of the day. It makes the iPad a very neat information collection tool. Not the toy it seemed at first at all. I still can\'t revise on it or write more than chunks. But at least it\'s got some uses beyond the frivolous.\n\nPS. I just came back from the Pitti Palace where it was impossible to sit down with the iPad and make notes. So I did it on the Evernote app on my Android phone instead -- which has the added benefit of having a camera which works with the app. So did some scribbles, took some photos, came back to the apartment and they uploaded straight away, appearing in Evernote on my laptop in seconds.\n\nSome more good news... I was instantly alerted to the fact there was a new Android Evernote app waiting for -- version two. Which is a lot better than version one. Definitely my chosen note regime from now on, iPad or phone.','Taking notes on the iPad: some hints','','publish','open','open','','taking-notes-on-the-ipad-some-hints','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6244',0,'post','',0),(6339,1,'2010-11-11 11:26:23','2010-11-11 11:26:23','Here\'s a sign by the door of Florence\'s great national library. You\'ll find similar signs all over the city if you look carefully. They mark an event that\'s etched in the memories of Florentines of a certain age, but largely forgotten by the world at large: the dreadful flood of November 4, 1966.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6264\" title=\"Sign\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/sign.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"222\" />The line marks the level of the flood waters. How high was this? Take a look below.\n\n<!--more-->Here is the sign next to a side door in the entrance.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/door.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-6265\" title=\"Door\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/door.jpg?w=225\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" /></a>And here is the full view of the library. The door above is on the right, inside the portico. As you can see raised quite a bit already. This was an astonishing flood, one that turned the centre of Florence into a lake nine or ten feet high in places.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/bibiloteca.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6266\" title=\"Library\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/bibiloteca.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>\n\nIf people think about natural disasters in Italy at all from 1966 they will probably remember the disastrous floods in Venice. These caused enormous damage and happened at the same time as the Florence flood. But in human terms the Venice catastrophe was insignificant. No one died there; thirty three people lost their lives in Florence, and thousands were left homeless.\n\nThe Venice floods led to the start of the Venice in Peril appeal to safeguard the city against future damage by the sea. The breaking of the banks of the Arno generated a more rapid and real response. Volunteers descended on the city from all over the world to help, many wading through mud and filth to rescue the many precious documents and works of art that were floating in the waters of the river. The Florentines dubbed these people \'mud angels\' and still talk about them fondly today.\n\nYou can still see black and white photographs of the flood in restaurants and cafes: floating cars, streets turned into rushing rivers. The Arno\'s a powerful, broad river. Here it is pictured yesterday, racing over a weir upstream from the Ponte Vecchio.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/flood.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6260\" title=\"Arno\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/flood.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>\n\nYou can see some extraordinary pictures of that terrible time on the <a href=\"http://www.aboutflorence.com/photos-flood-in-florence.html\" target=\"_blank\">About Florence web site</a>, <a href=\"http://www.florin.ms/1966flood.html\" target=\"_blank\">on this site</a> (look out for the submerged tram), and <a href=\"http://www.florence-flood.com/\" target=\"_blank\">read some background on a site dedicated to the flood</a>.\n\nThis is what the Arno looks like today near the Ponte Vecchio, forty four years and a few days on. The authorities assure everyone a flood on such a scale could never happen again. One can only pray they\'re right.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/ponte.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6258\" title=\"Ponte Vecchio\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/ponte.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>','The forgotten flood of Florence','','publish','open','open','','the-forgotten-flood-of-florence','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6257',0,'post','',0),(6340,1,'2010-11-12 10:53:08','2010-11-12 10:53:08','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-68','','','2010-11-12 10:53:08','2010-11-12 10:53:08','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104162.jpg',14,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6341,1,'2010-11-12 10:53:14','2010-11-12 10:53:14','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-69','','','2010-11-12 10:53:14','2010-11-12 10:53:14','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104172.jpg',13,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6342,1,'2010-11-12 10:53:23','2010-11-12 10:53:23','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-70','','','2010-11-12 10:53:23','2010-11-12 10:53:23','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104192.jpg',12,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6343,1,'2010-11-12 10:53:32','2010-11-12 10:53:32','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-71','','','2010-11-12 10:53:32','2010-11-12 10:53:32','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104202.jpg',11,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6344,1,'2010-11-12 10:53:39','2010-11-12 10:53:39','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-72','','','2010-11-12 10:53:39','2010-11-12 10:53:39','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104212.jpg',10,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6345,1,'2010-11-12 10:53:45','2010-11-12 10:53:45','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-73','','','2010-11-12 10:53:45','2010-11-12 10:53:45','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104232.jpg',9,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6346,1,'2010-11-12 10:53:54','2010-11-12 10:53:54','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-74','','','2010-11-12 10:53:54','2010-11-12 10:53:54','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104242.jpg',8,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6347,1,'2010-11-12 10:54:03','2010-11-12 10:54:03','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-75','','','2010-11-12 10:54:03','2010-11-12 10:54:03','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104252.jpg',7,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6348,1,'2010-11-12 10:54:11','2010-11-12 10:54:11','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-76','','','2010-11-12 10:54:11','2010-11-12 10:54:11','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104282.jpg',1,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6349,1,'2010-11-12 10:54:20','2010-11-12 10:54:20','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-77','','','2010-11-12 10:54:20','2010-11-12 10:54:20','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104292.jpg',6,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6350,1,'2010-11-12 10:54:33','2010-11-12 10:54:33','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-78','','','2010-11-12 10:54:33','2010-11-12 10:54:33','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104302.jpg',5,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6351,1,'2010-11-12 10:54:44','2010-11-12 10:54:44','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-79','','','2010-11-12 10:54:44','2010-11-12 10:54:44','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104312.jpg',4,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6352,1,'2010-11-12 10:54:56','2010-11-12 10:54:56','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-80','','','2010-11-12 10:54:56','2010-11-12 10:54:56','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104322.jpg',3,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6353,1,'2010-11-12 10:55:05','2010-11-12 10:55:05','','Exif_JPEG_PICTURE','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-81','','','2010-11-12 10:55:05','2010-11-12 10:55:05','',6273,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/r00104332.jpg',2,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6354,1,'2010-11-12 10:57:43','2010-11-12 10:57:43','My approach to photography is simple: use a half decent camera and take a lot of shots. I know I\'m no good at this. I don\'t understand half the things that go on with cameras. I need help and luck. And also I need to switch some information off too.\n\nThe reason I\'m taking these photographs is so that I can remember the look, feel and tone of a place when I\'m back in England, writing. Colour is very nice for travel photography. It doesn\'t always help for my purposes.\n\nHere are a few shots that may help explain what I\'m trying to say. They\'re mostly black and white, taken around Florence this morning. The camera I use is a fixed focus Ricoh GR III. Dead simple at a basic level. And it lets me set up the monochrome shots so that they can carry a light sepia or blue or other tint if I feel like it. See what you think.<!--more-->[gallery]','Florence without colours','','publish','open','open','','florence-without-colours','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6273',0,'post','',0),(6355,1,'2010-11-16 08:41:42','2010-11-16 08:41:42','','Screen shot 2010-11-16 at 08.37.29','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2010-11-16-at-08-37-29','','','2010-11-16 08:41:42','2010-11-16 08:41:42','',6302,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-16-at-08-37-292.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6356,1,'2010-11-16 08:42:36','2010-11-16 08:42:36','','Screen shot 2010-11-16 at 08.38.16','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2010-11-16-at-08-38-16','','','2010-11-16 08:42:36','2010-11-16 08:42:36','',6302,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-16-at-08-38-162.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6357,1,'2010-11-16 08:45:48','2010-11-16 08:45:48','The new project is now taking life in the arms of Scrivener 2. I\'m more focussed on writing a book than learning software. So there are still many new features in this version I don\'t understand or haven\'t tried. But sometimes you come across things through serendipity...\n\nOne of the drawbacks of Scrivener 1 was trying to deal with different windows of information. You could split the page between two parts of the book (which I never found comfortable). But not much more than that. With Scrivener 2 though we now have QuickRef screens which are utterly wonderful. Watch...\n\n<!--more-->Select a document in the Binder on the left.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-16-at-08-37-29.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6303\" title=\"Screen shot 2010-11-16 at 08.37.29\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-16-at-08-37-29.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" height=\"51\" /></a>Then hit the space bar -- nothing more. You get a quick look, much as you do in Finder. Like this...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-16-at-08-38-16.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6304\" title=\"Screen shot 2010-11-16 at 08.38.16\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/screen-shot-2010-11-16-at-08-38-16.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" /></a>The window floats above your main document. If it\'s text you can edit it, label it, see a word count, do pretty much anything you could if it was in the normal big window. If it\'s a pdf or an image you have a quick reference to your research. You can add notes and comments and read ones you\'ve made earlier. The window can be dragged around anywhere and is visible in full screen view if you want it.\n\nScrivener 1 had an annoying habit (for me anyway) of forcing you to flip around from document to document trying to discover what you wanted. With this you can keep notes and other linked scenes easily available for instant reference. Magic... But before you ask this is a Scrivener 2 feature, Mac only -- don\'t look for it in the Windows beta.','A half-hidden Scrivener gem','','publish','open','open','','a-half-hidden-scrivener-gem','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6302',0,'post','',0),(6360,1,'2010-11-26 15:27:22','2010-11-26 15:27:22','After all the usual shilly-shallying, excuses, work avoidance routines and pathetic bleating, I\'ve finally got down to writing the new book, the one which should be with you in 2013. It has a title, a couple of characters, a \'canvas\' by which I mean the world which will enclose it, and a thematic thread that is supposed to kick the narrative into action.\n\nThis will, I should say here, be a standalone novel, not an episode in the Costa series. I need to break the rhythm now and again and this seems a good time to do so. But it will mainly be set in Italy, though most of the protagonists are not Italian. Thus far I can go...\n\nNow to some practicalities...\n\n<!--more-->I first set pen to paper (can we really say that any more?) ten days or so ago. I began this week with 5,488 words in the pot. I end it with 15,428. Ten thousand words in a week is pretty solid going. It doesn\'t mean this project will be plain sailing throughout. I very much doubt that will be the case. It rarely is. But it shows the project\'s caught my imagination.\n\nPart of the writing process is uncovering the story hidden in your own head (for me anyway). Progress on this scale so early on seems to indicate there\'s something there to be excavated. As usual at this stage I have a few ideas...\n<ul>\n	<li>Some scenes that lie ahead</li>\n	<li>Some threads to be expanded</li>\n	<li>A possible resolution</li>\n	<li>Some characters to come</li>\n	<li>A few twisty bits</li>\n</ul>\nAll will, of course, change in the telling. It makes for extra work but I\'d be very disappointed if they didn\'t. I\'m the first traveller on this journey. I want to be engaged in it because if I\'m not you won\'t be either.\n\nThe other major change is the \'workflow\'. I started off thinking I\'d write this book in Scrivener 2 on the Mac. I\'ve now gone back to Windows and it\'s going a lot more smoothly. Why? It\'s nothing to do with Scriv 2 which is a tremendous piece of software. But I suspect my mindset was already attuned to the idea of writing this book in Word 2010 with <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Microsoft OneNote\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/\">OneNote</a> alongside for a book diary and reference material. I\'d no idea Scrivener 2 would be out around the same time and look so great it would shout, \'Use me instead!\'\n\nDamned nearly did too. Scrivener is fantastic for developing and writing a narrative. But it has so many possibilities that I found myself being distracted from what is, in this case, a pretty linear story. If I was writing a complex book covering a lot of different points of view and eras it might be different. But this story feels more comfortable in Word for writing, on my main screen, and with OneNote on a separate left hand screen for research, notes and that essential book diary for jotting down thoughts and ideas.\n\nI have to say: the more I use OneNote the more I enjoy it. The thing has a bit of a learning curve to begin with. It either looks too simplistic or too complex depending on how you approach matters. But once you have the hang of its working methods you realise how wonderfully simply and powerful it is: diary, research database, outliner, ideas pad all in one.\n\nHere\'s a little look at one page from the thirty or so in my project notebook, a very early book diary.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/capture.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6319\" title=\"OneNote\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/capture.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"466\" /></a>\n\nIt\'s just one page in a notebook devoted to the project (which as you can see I\'ve been prevaricating over since last May). Other pages cover characters, locations, research and a few rather arcane subjects that will be special to this book. Those yellow stars are things I think are important. You just hit Ctrl-2 and the star appears. It\'s simple enough to get a list of all such tags in the sidebar, covering the entire project. Oh -- and to put a date on an entry you just hit Alt-shift-D.\n\nOneNote is such a practical piece of software. It saves automatically and my notebooks sync through the free <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Windows Live Sync\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://sync.live.com/\">Windows Live Sync</a> services so they, and the Word manuscript, are backed up and kept up to date across my desktop and laptops.\n\nThis way of working really appeals to me. I like being able to split left brain practical stuff from right brain creativity. I found myself trying to compress both into one Scrivener document and it didn\'t fit so well. Doubtless Scrivener fans will find some way of managing that for themselves. But we all work differently. There are no universal right or wrong ways to create a book. Only the way that works for you.\n\nAnd for now this definitely does seem to be working. I\'ll let you know if it continues to do so.','The book for 2013 -- an update','','publish','open','open','','the-book-for-2013-an-update','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6316',0,'post','',0),(6362,1,'2010-11-30 09:53:34','2010-11-30 09:53:34','<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/capture1.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6337\" title=\"Capture\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/capture1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"301\" height=\"641\" /></a>Here\'s the handy little properties box from Word for the book I\'m now writing. It tells me a few useful things.\n<ul>\n	<li>I\'m over 18,000 words into a book that will probably come out around the 120K mark (in other words almost a sixth done)</li>\n	<li>I\'ve been working on this book for 6059 minutes. Which means about 100 hours, or four days solid (note you will lose that statistic if you save your work under another name)</li>\n	<li>Something has driven me to look at the Properties box instead of writing some more words this morning.</li>\n</ul>\nPeople often ask about the \'workflow\' of writing a book. Do you know the story from beginning to end? Do you blast ahead regardless of any doubts you may have about what you\'ve written, planning to fix the issues later?\n\nThe honest answer for me is: it depends. No two books are the same. I tend to adapt my working method to the story itself. Very linear projects are easier to manage. Those that flit between different points of views, locations and say time slots demand more planning.\n\n<!--more-->What I realised about this project is that I\'m now moving from the first act into the second. In other words I have what sets off the narrative; now I need to set down its future direction.  This is a dangerous point in the evolution of any story. You need to be sure of the way ahead. Otherwise you run the danger of heading off down an unwanted byroad, and wasting a lot of time and effort on a dead end.\n\nHow do I try to guard against this? Simple. I go back to the beginning of the 18.5K words I\'ve got here and read them again very carefully, making sure they fit and point me in the right direction. I\'m not obsessed with word counts. I won\'t care if I come out of this process with fewer words. Sometimes fewer words mean progress. But I need to know my launchpad for the book is in the kind of shape I want before taking the story any further.\n\nI always end up doing this with a book somewhere between 15K and 30K. I often end up doing it again around the 70-90K mark too. For me it\'s good discipline. Writing is only partly about words. It\'s also about focus and control. That\'s what I\'m looking for now.','Defining the progress in &#039;work in progress&#039;','','publish','open','open','','defining-the-progress-in-work-in-progress','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6336',0,'post','',0),(6363,1,'2010-12-07 08:37:55','2010-12-07 08:37:55','<a href=\"http://www.peroozal.com\"><img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6308\" title=\"WatchlistsMM.cover\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/watchlistsmm-cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"278\" height=\"448\" /></a>Here\'s a Christmas freebie, courtesy of the US publisher Vanguard and <a href=\"http://www.peroozal.com\" target=\"_blank\">Peroozal</a>, a fascinating new site for bringing readers and authors together. Register for free at Peroozal and between December 7 and December 21 you\'ll be able to download an ebook of <em>Watchlist </em>for free.\n\nAudiobook lovers will know <em>Watchlist</em> by other names. It\'s a compendium of <em>The Chopin Manuscript</em> and <em>The Copper Bracelet, </em>two stories put together under the leadership of Jeffery Deaver to raise funds for the authors\' organisation ITW. <em></em>\n\n<em>Chopin</em>, I\'m proud to say, won audiobook of the year after being narrated with enormous skill by Alfred Molina. I wrote chapter two of the first instalment and chapter three of the second. My co-conspirators were many (too many to name individually) but as well as Jeff included Lee Child, Lisa Scottoline, Joseph Finder, David Corbett, David Liss... quite a team.\n\n<em>USA Today </em>said: \'Entertaining and intriguing....the action is full-boil.”\' <em>Publishers Weekly </em>gave it a starred review and said \'A suspenseful, action-packed international thriller filled with plenty of twists and turns.\'\n\nSo I\'m happy to invite you to grab the book for free though at the moment the download only seems to be working for US readers (we\'re looking into this). If you\'re in the US sign up and the ebook should be there for download for you. Peroozal looks pretty interesting too -- you\'ll find a couple of my own recommended reading titles there too and I\'ll be adding more in the months to come.','Get the award-winning Watchlist for free','','publish','open','open','','get-the-award-winning-watchlist-for-free','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6307',0,'post','',0),(6364,1,'2010-12-07 13:23:30','2010-12-07 13:23:30','Some spamming scumbags on Twitter keep dumping ridiculous tweets on anyone connected with writing at the moment. They say something like \'Get paid for writing\' then redirect you to a dubious site that makes out most of the world is panting at the idea of handing out money to anyone who can string a few words together.\n\nI label them spam as soon as they come in, naturally, but I did muse on Twitter about who on earth would fall for such an obvious come-on. My knowledgeable American mate Jenni Holbrook, who\'s so much more worldly than little me in these matters, immediately replied, \'unfortunately a lot of desperate ppl fall 4 that crap -- I\'m real tired of it, 2 the point i tend 2 stay away from twttr\'.\n\n<!--more-->I was being naive. There seem to be tens of thousands of gullible individuals out there who think an easy living is just round the corner. If only, some way or another, they could become \'writers\'.\n\nWhile I was mulling this the always-excellent Jane Smith of the blog (<a href=\"http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/\" target=\"_blank\">How Publishing Really Works</a>) published a post on something I\'d never heard of called the <a href=\"http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/?p=3682\" target=\"_blank\">Brit Writers\' Awards</a>. I get the heebie-jeebies about most awards. They seem wonderful when you win them but the whole process tends to be riddled with vile infighting, occasionally dodgy decision and outbursts of vitriol and spite that frankly bore me rigid. Honestly dears... I\'d really rather be writing.\n\nBut the BWA really is something else. Jane has gone out of her way to be fair to the whole thing. Very decent in the circumstances because one of the things she reveals is that the winner, a self-published writer who picked up a tidy £10,000 prize, was also told on the night that her book had actually been published as part of the competition. Which she didn\'t know. It seems all finalists were asked to sign a boilerplate publishing contract for publication if they won.\n\nTo say this is odd doesn\'t do it justice. Oh and  Jane also points out...\n<blockquote>the first round of BWA competitions, held this year, apparently attracted <a href=\"http://www.britwriters.co.uk/latest_news.html\">21,000 entries</a> which would have earned the organisers £229,950.00 at <a href=\"http://www.britwriters.co.uk/rules.html\">this year’s entry fee of £10.95</a></blockquote>\nCough, cough.\n\nI go back to Jenni\'s point: in the present grim economic times there seem to be an awful lot of people out there who think writing will get them out of a financial hole. I mean, it did it for JK Rowling, didn\'t it? Why not you?\n\nWell probably because writing is a business, one that\'s pretty poorly paid even for those who do get published commercially (and less well paid by the year as book margins get squeezed more and more). There are no short cuts or easy options. Just realism, patience and an acceptance that you\'ll be doing very well indeed if you manage to make enough from your writing to work at it full-time.\n\nI\'m in that lucky position now but I only gave up the day job five years ago. And frankly there are no guarantees in this business; I could be looking for another day job five years down the line for all I know, by which time it will be the fruit and veg counter down at Asda (I\'ll be the one saying, \'No, the f^&amp;^&amp;ing tomatoes are over there. The red things...\')\n\nGet-published-quick sites touted by spammers on Twitter won\'t get you there. Questionable literary prizes may, in this case, get one person there -- the jury\'s out on that. And to be honest self-publishing will, for most of those who go down that route as first-time writers, be a dead-end too, because I don\'t see how one individual has the financial and marketing clout to stand out from the teeming crowd of self-pubbed people out there right now.\n\nSomeone will prove me wrong, of course. But this is publishing. There are always one-offs, unpredictable hits that come out of nowhere and make a fortune.\n\nIs that likely to be you? Here\'s how to tell. Go down the newsagent and buy yourself a lottery scratchcard. If you win a million pounds the answer\'s probably yes.\n\nBut if you win a million pounds do you still want to write?\n\nThat\'s the real question. Success in writing comes from hard work, talent, good luck, market knowledge, determination and possession of a very thick skin. If you can deal with uncertainty, doubtful cash flows, rejection, the aberrations of others and the idea your name will still be unknown even if you\'re in the bestseller lists it could be just up your street.\n\nPublishing was like that when Dickens and Poe were doing the rounds. It will still be like that when printed books are viewed as objects for an antique shop.','Fancy the writing life? Get real...','','publish','open','open','','fancy-the-writing-life-get-real','','','2011-01-27 22:46:52','2011-01-27 22:46:52','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6341',0,'post','',0),(6365,1,'2010-12-08 09:08:45','2010-12-08 09:08:45','Jane Smith\'s cracking post about the \'Brit Writers Awards\' yesterday certainly opened up an interesting can of worms. I <a href=\"http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/?p=3682\" target=\"_blank\">suggest you trawl the comments here and enlighten yourself</a>. They\'re full of lots of pithy responses, and a couple of nasties from people who think she stepped out of line by raising a few questions about how this curious award is organised.\n\nI always find it enlightening when a few people try to bludgeon a blogger into silence simply for expressing an opinion they happen not to share. I don\'t get the impression Jane is the sort to be cowed by that. And nor should she be. She didn\'t cast any aspersions about the BWA. Just asked some very worthwhile questions.\n\n<!--more-->If you think this is just a little local tiff in the British writing community, think again. It\'s more than that. As I tried to say yesterday it\'s an illustration of the way \'writing advice\' is becoming big business. At least for the people who are selling it. BWA, as far as I can gather<a href=\"http://www.claire-king.com/2010/12/03/too-good-to-be-true/comment-page-1/#comment-535\" target=\"_blank\"> from a bizarre message from one of its executives here,</a> sees itself as much as a training organisation as a literary prize, not that I\'ve seen this made clear elsewhere.\n\nFair enough. But let\'s not mince words here. What we\'re talking about is charging wannabe writers for their dreams, taking money off them in the belief -- their belief -- they will one day get it back through being published.\n\nIs this even remotely realistic? Let\'s <a href=\"http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/?p=1533\" target=\"_blank\">look at a few statistics</a>. Only about a fifth of the people who are published commercially in the UK work at writing full time. Their average earnings are lower than electricians and between 2000 and 2005 actually fell. No one has any up-to-date figures but I\'d guess they\'ve fallen even further. After all retail book prices now are actually lower than they were ten years ago, and royalties today are charged on selling price, not RRP, so authors take a big hit on those discounts in Waterstones and Amazon.\n\nIn self-publishing things look even worse. Yes, there are some highly-publicised exceptions of people doing well with self-pubbed books. But <a href=\"http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/pod/\" target=\"_blank\">most are dismal failures, selling fewer than 200 copies, principally to the author</a> and their family.\n\nHow much are you expected to fork out to \'train\' for this brave new economic world? BWA is currently offering this...\n<blockquote>We are looking to work with 15 unpublished authors over the next 12 months on an intensive one-to-one basis, who we <strong>guarantee</strong> will be published with a top publisher before Christmas 2011 …[All this]  <strong><em>for a one off fee of £1,795. This is fully guaranteed and fully refundable if you are not published within 12 months.</em></strong></blockquote>\nBargain, eh? You fork out £1795, get one-to-one training and end up with a guaranteed published book at the end of it. The problem is this. No publisher I know will guarantee to publish an unwritten book from an unknown author who\'s never published a thing before. It takes a while for established writers to get that kind of trust usually. So what\'s going on here? BWA is very vague. It says these books will be...\n<blockquote>...published by a traditional publisher, but not necessarily via the traditional route and that’s where the difference lies.</blockquote>\nOK. And we also get this exceedingly vague statement.\n<blockquote>...we’re creating a new model here which we believe will revolutionise the way people get published in the future. What everyone knows for sure is that the current system is not working – as a result, the publishing industry is overly complicated, elitist and inaccessible and even the ‘top’ publishing houses are having to resort to publishing trashy celebrity novels to make ends meat (sic), rather than find those gems THAT WE KNOW EXIST OUT THERE.\n\nWe know that the ‘one-stop-shop’ model that we’re developing here is difficult to come to terms with for an industry that is so set in its ways and we will have to be forgiven if we don’t answer all questions as we do not want to give it all away at this early stage – but over the next few months, we are going to unveil lots of new ideas as part of this programme.</blockquote>\nIt may just be me but I hate talk about \'new models\' and \'one-stop-shops\'. The world is changing as publishing goes digital. But the essential model -- writers write, agents agent, publishers publish, retailers sell -- is not going to alter greatly over the coming years. Yes the names doing those jobs may change, but the basic roles won\'t. Nor should they. I don\'t want to be a writer-agent-publisher-marketeer thank you very much. I don\'t have the skills and I\'m too busy doing what I love, namely inventing stories.\n\nI also wonder what the big-name publishers who have given words of support to BWA think of being pilloried in this way for \'trashy\' publishing to make ends meet. To me it\'s extraordinarily unprofessional for anyone in publishing to badmouth popular books in public simply because they\'re popular. These books may not be my kind of thing but I\'m glad they\'re there because the money they bring in helps keep publishers afloat. And as to \'elitist\'... er, how does that stack up with being trashy? Search me. This just sounds like a come-on to people who\'ve had multiple rejections and feel, justifiably, miffed even though rejection is an integral part of writing, something you should be able to live with and learn from, not mutter about darkly.\n\nSo what do you get for your £1,795, which is as much if not more than many first-time authors could expect as an advance for a first-time book from a mainstream publisher? I honestly have no idea, but it sounds like an expensive punt, and it\'s not the only one available to you.\n\nLook at some of the other advice people that BWA work with and you could see your bank balance going down too. The \'Writers Advice Centre\', for example, which has provided courses for BWA, <a href=\"http://www.writersadvice.co.uk/fees/fees-services\" target=\"_blank\">will charge you £75 for reading a thousand words</a>, £350 for evaluating a 60K book, £1,500 for mentoring, and even talk to you over the phone on a premium rate line at £1.20 a minute.\n\nI\'m not saying these services are no good. I\'ve no experience of them and some of the people who have used them clearly appreciate what they\'ve done. But get real. Your chances of earning back this kind of money from writing are slender in the extreme, especially if you\'re pinning your hopes on a \'new model of publishing\' (which I can pretty much guarantee will be one without sizeable advances and upfront payments of any other kind).\n\nAnd there is a bigger -- much bigger -- point to be made here. Writers shouldn\'t feel the need to pay for this kind of advice or frankly require it. If you want to know how books work read some. That’s what most professionals did. If you can’t get the hang of things that way, I very much doubt anyone will be able to instil it in you, however much you pay them.\n\nThere, I suspect, is the nub of the problem. Big conventions apart -- which I think are excellent events for would-be writers to attend -- I haven\'t done any teaching -- which I always did for free -- for a year or more now, and I don\'t intend to resume any time soon. Time is one reason, but another big one is that I was getting depressed by the calibre and motivation of some of the people who were turning up to classes.\n\nI remember asking one why he wanted to be a writer. He answered, miserably, \'Because my job is shit.\'\n\nThere you have it in a nutshell. The \'be-a-writer\' training boom seems to me to be a by-product of a miserable economy and a mistaken belief on the part of those suffering from it that writing is somehow a miracle cure for their ills. Give up the office, sit at home, tap out a few words at leisure and earn a tidy living.\n\nChances are it won\'t happen, and the only people making money out of this are the ones selling that impossible dream.','Reality about writing, part two','','publish','open','open','','reality-about-writing-part-two','','','2011-01-27 22:46:51','2011-01-27 22:46:51','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6352',0,'post','',0),(6368,1,'2010-12-08 12:11:38','2010-12-08 12:11:38','','Logitech Solar','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-82','','','2010-12-08 12:11:38','2010-12-08 12:11:38','',6367,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/logitech2.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6369,1,'2010-12-08 12:14:49','2010-12-08 12:14:49','','411fW4XYzQL._SL500_AA300_','','inherit','open','open','','411fw4xyzql-_sl500_aa300_','','','2010-12-08 12:14:49','2010-12-08 12:14:49','',6367,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/411fw4xyzql-_sl500_aa300_2.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6370,1,'2010-12-08 12:18:00','2010-12-08 12:18:00','','Capture','','inherit','open','open','','capture-4','','','2010-12-08 12:18:00','2010-12-08 12:18:00','',6367,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/capture2.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6367,1,'2010-12-08 12:20:37','2010-12-08 12:20:37','This has been a hell of a busy year. One book I can talk about, two I can\'t. That adds up to something like 300,000 words tapped out one way or another. Do I care about the keyboard I use? You bet. And finally I\'ve got the best I\'ve ever found. Just out, now in place for a day, and an absolute joy. Here it is...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/logitech.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6368\" title=\"Logitech Solar\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/logitech.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>\n\n<!--more-->What do I look for in a keyboard? An easy action, nothing clacky or noisy and a minimum of trouble. The keyboard that fitted this description best was Apple\'s with its \'chiclet\' keys and light action. I don\'t use a Mac any more so I\'ve been flitting around trying to find a replacement.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/411fw4xyzql-_sl500_aa300_.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6369\" title=\"411fW4XYzQL._SL500_AA300_\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/411fw4xyzql-_sl500_aa300_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"242\" height=\"242\" /></a>There is a very good wired <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Emprex-6310U-Chiclet-Desktop-Keyboard/dp/B002T9U7Y4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1291810425&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">one available on Amazon for a pittance</a>. This nice little thing is just £10 and a bit plus delivery and it\'s really a black clone of the Apple one, just a bit bigger in size. It\'s not clacky, because it\'s wired it causes no problems setting it up and, of course, the batteries never run out.\n\nBut in principle I am a wireless man if possible. So when Logitech came out with a new solar-powered model I felt I had to give it a try (it cost £55 with an online discount, £69 normally). You can read all about it <a href=\"http://www.logitech.com/en-us/keyboards/keyboard/devices/7454\" target=\"_blank\">on the Logitech website here</a>.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/capture.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6370\" title=\"Capture\" src=\"http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/capture.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"272\" height=\"613\" /></a>If I\'m honest the solar thing doesn\'t bother me that much. It does seem very clever. Two solar cells will keep the thing running for three months even in darkness, or so it says. And there\'s a clever little app for seeing how the solar power is doing, which you can see on the right. This is Windows only by the way right now.\n\nBut what really gets me is the action. It\'s the best keyboard I\'ve ever used, like the Apple one but with a touch more travel. It comes with Logitech\'s unifying receiver so my mouse from the same company uses the same dongle. Which means I only have one thing plugged in at the back of the monitor, cutting cables and clutter.\n\nBest. Keyboard. Ever.\n\nCan\'t say more than that.\n\n&nbsp;','The best writing keyboard ever','','publish','open','open','','the-best-writing-keyboard-ever','','','2011-01-27 22:46:51','2011-01-27 22:46:51','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6367',0,'post','',0),(6372,1,'2010-12-09 09:16:13','2010-12-09 09:16:13','I don’t intend to go on about the Brit Writers Awards any more after this. Thanks largely to <a href=\"http://howpublishingreallyworks.com\" target=\"_blank\">the indomitable Jane Smith</a> there’s enough information out there already for the informed to make up their own minds about this organisation.\n\nHowever, there’s one claim made by the BWA which really does need to be highlighted, since if it’s correct – and I’ve no reason to believe it isn’t – it does show how utterly bonkers the ‘everyone-can-be-a-writer’ bandwagon has become.\n\nIt’s this: <a href=\"http://www.britwriters.co.uk/schools.html\" target=\"_blank\">according to the BWA website</a> ‘over 400,000 children are now involved from Schools across the UK in the Brit Writers Creative Writing Programme for Schools.’\n\nPoor mites, deluded into thinking they could be the next Terry Pratchett. For pity’s sake… why?\n\n<!--more-->\n\nI’m all for education, so long as it’s grounded in the real world.\n\nAccording to that excellent organisation the National Literacy Trust <a href=\"http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/about\" target=\"_blank\">one in six adults in Britain struggles with reading and writing</a>. The NLT is a serious body, well-researched, with opinions based on sound statistics. As its director Jonathan Douglas says <a href=\"http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/policy/nlt_policy/2602_rising_to_the_literacy_challenge_the_conservative_party_conference\" target=\"_blank\">here, in a speech to a fringe debate at the recent Conservative Party conference</a>, standards in literacy have actually fallen over the past decade. At that same event was Miriam Gross, onetime literary editor of the <em>Daily Telegraph </em>and author of a paper on illiteracy for the Centre for Policy Studies. You can <a href=\"http://www.cps.org.uk/cps_catalog/why%20can\'t%20they%20read.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">find that illuminating document here</a>. It includes the shocking revelation that a million people in London cannot read. More than a third of children leaving London state primary schools still have reading difficulties <em>and five per cent can hardly read at all</em>.\n\nGreat, you might think. Let’s teach them words are fun by letting them make up stories. Let’s <em>encourage their creativity.</em>\n\nWell, no actually. Here’s something Miriam Gross said at that fringe event, a theme she develops at length and very convincingly in her paper: ‘poor literacy standards (were) a “direct result” of the prescription of a “child-led” approach to learning in schools, and a lack of focus when teaching the basics.’\n\nChild-led meaning ‘let’s have fun first and hope they pick up something along the way. Let’s be <em>creative.’</em>\n\nLanguage is a complex system for explaining and communicating complex ideas between complex beings. To master it you need to know its rules and conventions. The only way you can learn them is by being taught in a systematic and organised way, and crucially being told when you get things right and when you get them wrong.\n\nDoes inventing stories have a place in that?  Yes, but not much of a one. Storytelling is a by-product of a more fundamental process.  Human beings need to read and write because these are basic skills without which we stand little chance of getting decent jobs, proper health care, and enjoying our lives as much as we should. Being able to read fiction is a part of that but let me put up my hand here: it’s not a big part. And being able to <em>write</em> fiction is an even smaller subset of that.\n\nAh, you may object, but shouldn’t we encourage ‘creativity’? Well yes, I guess, but let’s not define it so disingenuously. It’s cruel and delusional to pretend that everyone has the talent for some creative art inside them. I can’t draw or sing and I used to play a couple of musical instruments rather badly. No amount of teaching was going to change that. Nor do I feel in any way cheated since I can focus on enjoying art and music instead of wondering why I can’t hope to emulate what I see and hear.\n\nMillions of people are creative every day and don’t even realise it. Doctors who diagnose an illness, nurses who see a worried patient and make them feel comfortable. I’ve watched a plumber scratch his head over our weird central heating system and come up with a highly creative solution to make it work. Police officers need their intelligence and imagination to go about their daily lives and politicians positively revel in creativity, good and bad, all the time. And what about a cab driver looking at the London traffic and wondering how to get from A to B?\n\nTrue, it’s not the same as the blank canvas creativity of an artist or writer. But it’s still a challenge to the human intellect. And not everyone can do what I do, any more than I could dream of being a physician or a plumber. Do they envy me? Possibly, but then they probably have a very fanciful view of what writers do. This is a job like any other, a precarious form of self-employment that suits only a few.\n\nThere\'s also the matter of social good. Artists are good for the world but we should have no illusions about the value of our skills when the going gets tough. How many times have you heard an announcement over the PA system, \'We have an emergency here -- is there a writer in the house?\'\n\nIndulging 400,000 kids by feeding them ‘creativity’ instead of real teaching seems to me just one more dreary, depressing example of today’s faux-celeb X-Factor culture, a demeaning frame of mind which attempts to divide the world into the successful – those with their fifteen minutes of fame next to Simon Cowell – and the dreary jobsworths who keep the wheels turning. Schoolchildren deserve better than that.\n\nAnd if one of them does turn into a ‘real’ writer at the end of it then I can guarantee this: they would have got there anyway, without such daft schemes. Writers really are born to some extent, like it or not. Yes, they require something to complete the transition along the way, but in the first instance it will come from inside.\n\nAs a matter of fact Miriam Gross does suggest at the end of the paper that some kind of prize could be a good idea. But one that awards literacy and results in a substantial cash award to be spent at the discretion of the head teacher of the winning school.\n\nGood idea that. My are we short of them right now.','Writing first, creativity second','','publish','open','open','','writing-first-creativity-second','','','2011-01-27 22:46:51','2011-01-27 22:46:51','',0,'https://davidhewson.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/writing-first-creativity-second/',0,'post','',0),(6375,1,'2010-12-10 10:39:24','2010-12-10 10:39:24','As I\'ve said many times before, I have reservations about literary prizes. They do seem to generate a lot of heat and controversy at times. And I\'ve never regarded writing as a race between different authors. It\'s the fact we <em>are</em> different that counts, and prizes, particularly those with a genre flavour, can have the effect of narrowing books in terms of style instead of celebrating their breadth.\n\nBut if you must have prizes it seems to me this is the way to organise them. Take a look at how the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/b?node=332264011\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon Breakthrough Novel award</a> works. There are two prizes, one for general fiction, one for young adult. <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_354610382_2?ie=UTF8&amp;docId=1000633821&amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=center-2&amp;pf_rd_r=10PZMSVAHZ7G9WAPWN5S&amp;pf_rd_t=101&amp;pf_rd_p=1282870802&amp;pf_rd_i=332264011\" target=\"_blank\">Peruse the full and well-organised rules of entry</a> and you will see that entry is open to writers from many countries around the world, even though the contest is US-organised. The two prizes are publishing contracts with Penguin that carry a $15,000 advance.\n\nNote that this contradicts the statement I gave recently that no large publisher will guarantee to publish an unseen book from a new writer. Obviously both Amazon and Penguin are happy they will get the quality they require -- and given the clarity of thought and organisation on show here I don\'t doubt they will either.\n\nEntry is open to both unpublished writers and those who have only self-published before. And those rules of entry really are superbly written and thought out, setting out the exact criteria which will be sought from entries, how the contest will work, and the judging dates for the different levels. Even if you\'re not thinking of entering I\'d take a look at them, since they show the way the publishing mind works when it comes to evaluating new manuscripts.\n\nIf we have to have prizes for unpublished writers this is the way to do it. Oh... and I nearly forgot. Guess what? <em>It costs absolutely nothing to enter.</em>\n\nAmazon take a lot of stick from the writing community at times. But this seems to be an exemplary way to run a prize.','How writing prizes should be handled','','publish','open','open','','how-writing-prizes-should-be-handled','','','2011-01-27 22:46:51','2011-01-27 22:46:51','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6375',0,'post','',0),(6421,1,'2011-01-27 17:11:55','2011-01-27 17:11:55','http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/wordpress.2011-01-27-1.xml_.txt','wordpress.2011-01-27-1.xml_.txt','','inherit','open','open','','wordpress-2011-01-27-1-xml_-txt','','','2011-01-27 17:11:55','2011-01-27 17:11:55','',0,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/wordpress.2011-01-27-1.xml_.txt',0,'attachment','',0),(6423,1,'2010-12-12 16:11:56','2010-12-12 16:11:56','','Angel, Ponte Sant&#039;Angelo','Angel, Ponte Sant\'Angelo','inherit','open','open','','angel','','','2010-12-12 16:11:56','2010-12-12 16:11:56','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/angel2.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6424,1,'2010-12-12 16:12:09','2010-12-12 16:12:09','','Monte Cenci, Ghetto','Monte Cenci, Ghetto','inherit','open','open','','area','','','2010-12-12 16:12:09','2010-12-12 16:12:09','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/area1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6425,1,'2010-12-12 16:12:22','2010-12-12 16:12:22','','Rome, police black museum','Rome, police black museum','inherit','open','open','','black-museum','','','2010-12-12 16:12:22','2010-12-12 16:12:22','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/black-museum1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6426,1,'2010-12-12 16:12:35','2010-12-12 16:12:35','','Ponte Sant&#039;Angelo','It was at the beginning of this bridge that Beatrice was executed','inherit','open','open','','bridge','','','2010-12-12 16:12:35','2010-12-12 16:12:35','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/bridge1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6427,1,'2010-12-12 16:12:49','2010-12-12 16:12:49','Caesar was assassinated close to this spot','Cat sanctuary, Largo Argentina','Cat sanctuary, Largo Argentina','inherit','open','open','','cat-sanctuary','','','2010-12-12 16:12:49','2010-12-12 16:12:49','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/cat-sanctuary1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6428,1,'2010-12-12 16:13:03','2010-12-12 16:13:03','','Cenci church','Cenci church','inherit','open','open','','cenci-church','','','2010-12-12 16:13:03','2010-12-12 16:13:03','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/cenci-church1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6429,1,'2010-12-12 16:13:14','2010-12-12 16:13:14','','Cenci&#039;s death','Cenci\'s death','inherit','open','open','','cenci-draw-2','','','2010-12-12 16:13:14','2010-12-12 16:13:14','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/cenci-draw-21.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6430,1,'2010-12-12 16:13:25','2010-12-12 16:13:25','','Illustration of Cenci crime','Illustration of Cenci crime','inherit','open','open','','cenci-draw','','','2010-12-12 16:13:25','2010-12-12 16:13:25','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/cenci-draw1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6431,1,'2010-12-12 16:13:40','2010-12-12 16:13:40','','Cenci palace, minor entrance','Cenci palace, minor entrance','inherit','open','open','','cenci-palace','','','2010-12-12 16:13:40','2010-12-12 16:13:40','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/cenci-palace1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6432,1,'2010-12-12 16:14:17','2010-12-12 16:14:17','','Cenci road','','inherit','open','open','','cenci-road','','','2010-12-12 16:14:17','2010-12-12 16:14:17','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/cenci-road1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6433,1,'2010-12-12 16:14:30','2010-12-12 16:14:30','','Cenci church, ghetto','Cenci church, ghetto','inherit','open','open','','church','','','2010-12-12 16:14:30','2010-12-12 16:14:30','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/church1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6434,1,'2010-12-12 16:14:41','2010-12-12 16:14:41','','Executioner&#039;s robe, black museum','Executioner\'s robe, black museum','inherit','open','open','','executioner','','','2010-12-12 16:14:41','2010-12-12 16:14:41','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/executioner1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6435,1,'2010-12-12 16:14:53','2010-12-12 16:14:53','','The Forum','The Forum','inherit','open','open','','forum','','','2010-12-12 16:14:53','2010-12-12 16:14:53','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/forum1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6436,1,'2010-12-12 16:15:02','2010-12-12 16:15:02','','Montorio','Montorio, where Beatrice was buried','inherit','open','open','','6400','','','2010-12-12 16:15:02','2010-12-12 16:15:02','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/montorio1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6437,1,'2010-12-12 16:15:13','2010-12-12 16:15:13','','The Cenci Palace today','The Cenci Palace today','inherit','open','open','','palace','','','2010-12-12 16:15:13','2010-12-12 16:15:13','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/palace1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6438,1,'2010-12-12 16:15:23','2010-12-12 16:15:23','','Execution robes','Robe for the monks who accompanied victims to execution','inherit','open','open','','penitent','','','2010-12-12 16:15:23','2010-12-12 16:15:23','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/penitent1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6439,1,'2010-12-12 16:15:38','2010-12-12 16:15:38','','The &#039;marks&#039; of St Peter&#039;s knees','The \'marks\' of St Peter\'s knees','inherit','open','open','','peters-marks','','','2010-12-12 16:15:38','2010-12-12 16:15:38','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/peters-marks1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6440,1,'2010-12-12 16:15:47','2010-12-12 16:15:47','','Sora Margherita, restaurant in the ghetto','Sora Margherita, restaurant in the ghetto','inherit','open','open','','sora-margherita','','','2010-12-12 16:15:47','2010-12-12 16:15:47','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/sora-margherita1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6441,1,'2010-12-12 16:16:01','2010-12-12 16:16:01','','Waiting for Sora Margherita to open','Waiting for Sora Margherita to open','inherit','open','open','','sora-waiting','','','2010-12-12 16:16:01','2010-12-12 16:16:01','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/sora-waiting1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6442,1,'2010-12-12 16:16:11','2010-12-12 16:16:11','','Black museum, sword','Historians believe this sword was used for the execution','inherit','open','open','','sword','','','2010-12-12 16:16:11','2010-12-12 16:16:11','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/sword1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6443,1,'2010-12-12 16:16:28','2010-12-12 16:16:28','','Via Beatrice Cenci','Where the story starts','inherit','open','open','','via','','','2010-12-12 16:16:28','2010-12-12 16:16:28','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/via1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6444,1,'2010-12-12 16:16:39','2010-12-12 16:16:39','','View from Montorio','View from Montorio','inherit','open','open','','view-from-montorio','','','2010-12-12 16:16:39','2010-12-12 16:16:39','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/view-from-montorio1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6445,1,'2010-12-13 11:10:48','2010-12-13 11:10:48','','Books','','inherit','open','open','','books-21','','','2010-12-13 11:10:48','2010-12-13 11:10:48','',6446,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/books1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6446,1,'2010-12-13 11:12:40','2010-12-13 11:12:40','I\'m delighted to tell you that we finally have a full line-up for all my current in-print UK books as digital editions for the Kindle. <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D341689031&amp;field-keywords=David+Hewson&amp;x=0&amp;y=0\" target=\"_blank\">You can peruse the entire list here</a>, along with a little surprise (which I thought wasn\'t going to be out yet but there you are -- will add a little more about that later).\n\nApologies this has taken so long. The ebooks have been available for some time in the US. But due to paperwork and rights issues it\'s taken a little while to clear them for the UK (when I started writing this series, remember, no one knew what an ebook was).\n\nAnyway many thanks to the different hands at literary agencies and my superb publisher Pan Macmillan for making this happen. Here\'s what it looks like right now...\n\n<a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D341689031&amp;field-keywords=David+Hewson&amp;x=0&amp;y=0\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-6418 alignnone\" title=\"Books\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/books1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"476\" height=\"886\" /></a>','Kindle UK - finally a full house','','publish','open','open','','kindle-uk-finally-a-full-house','','','2010-12-13 11:12:40','2010-12-13 11:12:40','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6417',0,'post','',0),(6447,1,'2010-12-13 11:17:48','2010-12-13 11:17:48','','Dead Men&#039;s Socks','','inherit','open','open','','dead-mens-socks-2','','','2010-12-13 11:17:48','2010-12-13 11:17:48','',6448,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/dead-mens-socks1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6448,1,'2010-12-13 11:28:41','2010-12-13 11:28:41','<a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Mens-Socks-Short-Reads/dp/B004FV4RWC/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1292238291&amp;sr=1-12\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6426\" title=\"Dead Men\'s Socks\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/dead-mens-socks1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"218\" height=\"330\" /></a>It\'s a quiet day in the Rome Questura. Nic Costa is out on a job. Leo Falcone is on holiday. Teresa Lupo is in Venice on business.\n\nAnd Gianni Peroni is feeling at a loose end. Never a good sign. Mooching around with no boss at hand he wanders into the Questura morgue and sees Teresa\'s deputy staring at two newly-arrived corpses. One is the body of a wealthy psychiatrist recovered from the river, apparently after committing suicide. The second is that of a young Roma petty criminal, seemingly beaten to death in a different part of the city, perhaps as some gang vendetta.\n\nPeroni watches the pathologist start to work with the corpses and notices something extraordinary. Both are wearing odd socks. <em>Identical</em> odd socks.\n\nSo begins a single day in the life of this genial, inquisitive, unruly old cop as he comes up against managerial incompetence, petty bureaucracy and a touch of rampant ageism when he tries to get to the bottom of the riddle.\n\nRejected, Peroni sets out on his own to talk to the relatives of both dead men and try to solve, in a matter of hours, two strange deaths which the sharp young officers in suits he\'s left behind haven\'t begun to unravel.\n\n<em>Dead Men\'s Socks </em>is a 10,000-word short story written for Pan Macmillan\'s new <em>Short Reads</em> digital promotion and available for instant delivery through iBooks, Kindle and Waterstones for just 99p. This is the first short story I\'ve written about my little team in the Rome Questura. I hope you like it -- and that it won\'t be the last.\n\n<strong> Get </strong><strong><em>Dead Men\'s Socks </em>for 99p now</strong>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Mens-Socks-Short-Reads/dp/B004FV4RWC\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Kindle UK</strong></a>\n\n<a href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/dead-mens-socks-short-reads/id409366072?mt=11\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>iTunes link</strong></a>\n\n<strong>Waterstones (link coming shortly)</strong>\n\n<strong> </strong>\n\n<strong> </strong>\n\n<strong><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Mens-Socks-Short-Reads/dp/B004FV4RWC\" target=\"_blank\">Kindle non-UK </a>(US sales coming shortly)</strong>','Dead Men’s Socks','','publish','closed','closed','','dead-mens-socks-a-roman-short-story','','','2011-03-06 08:34:14','2011-03-06 08:34:14','',7670,'http://davidhewson.com/',0,'page','',2),(6449,1,'2010-12-13 11:29:53','2010-12-13 11:29:53','It’s a quiet day in the Rome Questura. Nic Costa is out on a job. Leo Falcone is on holiday. Teresa Lupo is in Venice on business.\nDownload Dead Men’s Socks for 99p now\nAnd Gianni Peroni is feeling at a loose end. Never a good sign. Mooching around with no boss at hand he wanders into the Questura morgue and sees Teresa’s deputy staring at two newly-arrived corpses. One is the body of a wealthy psychiatrist recovered from the river, apparently after committing suicide. The second is the corpse of a young Roma petty criminal, seemingly beaten to death in a different part of the city, perhaps as some gang vendetta.\n\nPeroni watched the pathologist start to work with the corpses and notices something extraordinary. Both are wearing odd socks. Identical odd socks. On two very different men.\n\nSo begins a single day in the life of this genial, inquisitive, unruly old cop as he comes up against managerial incompetence, petty bureaucracy and a touch of rampant ageism when he tries to get to the bottom of the riddle.\n\nRejected, Peroni sets out on his own to talk to the relatives of both dead men and try to solve, in a matter of hours, two strange deaths which the sharp young officers in suits he’s left behind haven’t begun to unravel.\n\nDead Men’s Socks is s a 9,000-word short story written for Amazon UK’s new Short Reads promotion and available for instant delivery through Kindle for just 99p. This is the first short story I’ve written about my little team in the Rome Questura. I hope you like it — and that it won’t be the last.','Dead Men&#039;s Socks','','publish','open','open','','dead-mens-socks','','','2010-12-13 11:29:53','2010-12-13 11:29:53','',3302,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6436',4,'nav_menu_item','',0),(6452,1,'2010-12-13 14:39:25','2010-12-13 14:39:25','<a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Mens-Socks-Short-Reads/dp/B004FV4RWC/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1292238291&amp;sr=1-12\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6426\" title=\"Dead Men\'s Socks\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/dead-mens-socks1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"218\" height=\"330\" /></a>It\'s a quiet day in the Rome Questura. Nic Costa is out on a job. Leo Falcone is on holiday. Teresa Lupo is in Venice on business.\n\nAnd Gianni Peroni is feeling at a loose end. Never a good sign. Mooching around with no boss at hand he wanders into the Questura morgue and sees Teresa\'s deputy staring at two newly-arrived corpses. One is the body of a wealthy psychiatrist recovered from the river, apparently after committing suicide. The second is that of a young Roma petty criminal, seemingly beaten to death in a different part of the city, perhaps as part of some gang vendetta.\n\nPeroni watches the pathologist start to work with the corpses and notices something extraordinary. Both are wearing odd socks. <em>Identical</em> odd socks.\n\nSo begins a single day in the life of this genial, inquisitive, unruly old cop as he comes up against managerial incompetence, petty bureaucracy and a touch of rampant ageism when he tries to get to the bottom of the riddle.\n\nRejected, Peroni sets out on his own to talk to the relatives of both dead men and try to solve, in a matter of hours, two strange deaths which the sharp young officers in suits he\'s left behind haven\'t begun to unravel.\n\n<em>Dead Men\'s Socks </em>is a 10,000-word short story written for Pan Macmillan\'s new <em>Short Reads</em> digital promotion and available for instant delivery through iBooks, Kindle and Waterstones for just 99p. This is the first short story I\'ve written about my little team in the Rome Questura. I hope you like it -- and that it won\'t be the last.\n\n<strong> Get </strong><strong><em>Dead Men\'s Socks </em>for 99p now</strong>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Mens-Socks-Short-Reads/dp/B004FV4RWC\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Kindle UK</strong></a>\n\n<a href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/dead-mens-socks-short-reads/id409366072?mt=11\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>iTunes link</strong></a>\n\n<strong>Waterstones (link coming shortly)</strong>\n\n<strong> </strong>\n\n<strong> </strong>\n\n<strong><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Mens-Socks-Short-Reads/dp/B004FV4RWC\" target=\"_blank\">Kindle non-UK </a>(including US sales)</strong>','Dead Men&#039;s Socks... a new story of Rome','','publish','open','open','','dead-mens-socks-a-new-story-of-rome','','','2010-12-13 14:39:25','2010-12-13 14:39:25','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6452',0,'post','',8),(6460,1,'2010-12-18 10:50:00','2010-12-18 10:50:00','One of my dafter dreams this year was that I’d streamline the revision process a step or so. At the moment it happens in three stages. I revise on screen. I print out a first copy. Then I print out a second copy. Then more if necessary, but to be honest two are usually enough.\n\nWith all the fuss going on about tablets like the iPad a year ago I was hoping I could cut out one of those printouts and save myself some time and trouble. Make no mistake: I don’t believe for a moment I will ever deliver a manuscript that’s never been revised on paper at some stage. But surely there’s a bit of an efficiency saving somewhere if only I could read an electronic manuscript at leisure on a tablet screen, mark up changes and comments, then read the results on my computer when I start the final edit?\n\n<!--more-->\n\nWell, no. I could lie to you and say this is because no one has yet invented the right technology. They haven’t but that’s not the point. The iPad in particular was a huge disappointment. Apple’s Pages app can’t handle comments or revision tracking. Nor can anything else for it that I’ve found elsewhere.\n\nThe closest to a digital revision device I found was my little Packard Bell Windows 7 tablet. It’s a lovely little notebook with a keyboard. Twist the screen around and you get a tablet which can be used for scribbling notes, changing the actual text and highlighting passages.\n\nIt’s a fantastic small laptop. As a paper replacement it’s marginally better than the iPad but still deeply unsatisfactory. Windows just isn’t tuned to work as a tablet-based editing system at the moment. You need a stylus that doesn\'t work so well. You run out of places to write. When you want to change a simple typo you have to faff around with a little keyboard. It may be closer than the iPad but it will still drive you nuts in short order.\n\nI messed with these things at great length. But you know what? I was racing up a dead-end alley. The most wonderful touchscreen in the world, coupled with software that’s yet to be invented, still won’t beat paper when it comes to revise editing a manuscript from an author\'s point of view. Yes, agents and editors may be able to make notes on manuscripts that way. But they\'re principally making annotations. I’m a writer. I need to do a lot more than scribble a note in the margin.\n\nThe revelation came to me when I printed out the latest project and started to sift through the pages with a pen. This is such a rich experience it\'s ridiculous to think it can be replaced by a single ten inch screen. When I work this way I normally lie on the bed, surrounded by scattered pages. It may sound simple but this is a complex process happening subtly across several dimensions.\n\nHere are a few…\n<ol>\n	<li>Correcting typos and poor writing.</li>\n	<li>Making notes in the margin about things to be checked and referenced with other parts of the book.</li>\n	<li>Highlighting or ringing passages that will, at some stage, need to be considered again, in general not specific terms.</li>\n	<li>Flicking forwards and backwards to other passages in a script that, in my case, may run to 120,000 words or more, checking continuity, looking for gaps in the narrative.</li>\n	<li>Setting aside passages that will need further work or rereading in the context of something that comes later.</li>\n	<li>Referring to other printed material such as notes and checking up the odd thing on a laptop on the other side of the bed.</li>\n	<li>Making piles of important pages requiring attention so that they don’t slip through the net.</li>\n</ol>\nWhat I end up with is a pile of pages requiring attention, and a pile that doesn\'t. Simple enough idea with physical paper. But how on earth do you manage that on a single screen?\n\nIt\'s that word physical that\'s the clincher. When I print out a manuscript it takes on another, more real nature, one it fails to possess when it\'s just a digital image. There is one trick you can do with these gizmos which is, I think, worthwhile. I sometimes like reading a manuscript in iBooks or Kindle and seeing how it looks as it might appear as a book. So I will occasionally print out a draft in book form, with single line spacing, two book pages to a single A4 page so that it looks just like a paperback. If you\'re uncertain about a project this gives you a whole new perspective on it.\n\nYou can do that digitally. Kindle is great if you have a full Kindle account (in other words you\'ve bought the Kindle hardware). You can <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/08/30/kindle-as-a-book-revision-tool/\">read more about that in the post here. </a>You can do the same with an iPad too. You need to export your manuscript as an epub file and import it into your iPad via iTunes -- <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/10/22/the-ipad-for-book-revision-a-definite-fail/\">I write about this here </a>and you\'ll find plenty of more detailed instructions if you hunt for them. Unfortunately you can\'t get your own Kindle file onto the Kindle app on the iPad (as far as I can see) because the iPad won\'t let you put the file in the right place. So an Android tablet might be a lot better if you want to use Kindle (it\'s a bit daft I can do this easily on my Android phone but not on the iPad).\n\nKindle or iBook, what you end up with is a manuscript that looks like any other ebook. You can\'t edit the text but you can make notes throughout. With Kindle you can export those notes as a simple text file and use them on your PC or Mac. With iBooks they seem trapped on the iPad so you\'d need to set up the screen next to your computer and use the notes as a reference mark.\n\nThis is actually a lot more usable than it sounds. You do the same with a marked paper page after all.\n\nBut that book-page revision process is as far as it goes. When you come to the full and rich experience of leaping in and trying to fix a rough draft you need to see the thing from so many different directions, highlighting, referring back to earlier pages, making complex annotations. It just isn\'t doable for a full-blown edit in my experience, and frankly I don\'t see this becoming feasible from an author\'s point of view for some time to come.\n\nAgents and editors who need only to make a simple entry in the margin may feel otherwise, and good luck to them. But for me the search for efficiency ends here. From now on it’s back to two physical printouts and a read-through with simple notes on the iPad if I feel I need it (and I don\'t with every project).\n\nGod bless paper. It’s the smartest, cheapest, most convenient writer’s medium we have. And it never crashes or runs out of power.','When it comes to revision, paper wins','','publish','open','open','','when-it-comes-to-revision-paper-wins','','','2010-12-18 10:50:00','2010-12-18 10:50:00','',0,'https://davidhewson.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/when-it-comes-to-revision-paper-wins/',0,'post','',3),(6474,1,'2010-12-19 16:39:14','2010-12-19 16:39:14','The draft I began five or six weeks ago hit 35,000 words on Friday. Around four in the morning today, sleepless and mulling it over, I decided to can the thing and start again.\n\nIt\'s possible I will go back on that decision and take another angled sweep at the same narrative. It\'s possible the new narrative, which is a spur of this one, not an entirely new story, won\'t work too. If you want certainties, writing is the wrong business for you.\n\nBut for the sake of openness (and for all you out there who think seasoned pros like me never make any false steps) here are the principal reasons I\'m screwing  up that draft and starting afresh from scratch...<!--more-->\n<ul>\n	<li>I wasn\'t convinced the principal characters had struck up a significant relationship in all that time, and a part of me was of the opinion that it would be artificial to go back and force it on them just through a rewrite.</li>\n	<li>The narrative was heading towards a multi-location story, one that took place in two different countries. I don\'t much feel like going in that direction right now. As I\'ve said before, I think authors divide into binocular writers, who scan distant horizons looking for something that moves them, and microscope ones, who look at a very small part of the world in great detail. I\'m in the latter camp.</li>\n	<li>It was showing signs of getting too complex, and my books are complex enough as it stands.</li>\n</ul>\nMore than anything though, I was moved by this thought... <em>I think I\'ve got a way to tell the same story more simply and more effectively.</em>\n\nI like simplicity. I\'m a low-budget writer. Small casts, limited locations. I like to see what drama comes out of throwing people together in confined spaces, not letting them loose to roam on an endless landscape. The first version was veering towards the big. This new approach to the same fundamental story -- the hunt for something important both culturally and of personal interest to those involved -- suits my style better and makes me feel more enthused about the project. Enthusiasm\'s a big thing when it comes to writing a book. If you\'re having a hard time, it will show through the words.\n\nHere\'s the real point though. Even if I end up throwing away all those 35,000 words -- and I doubt I will do that, since some of it makes sense for the new story approach -- <em>this would still be progress.</em>\n\nYou can\'t measure a book\'s growth simply with a word count. It\'s how it\'s developing in your head that matters too, sometimes more so. And then there\'s the \'how does it feel\' factor. Old writers don\'t find this strange profession gets easier. We just have a better nose for spotting the warning signs and killing a project before it withers on the vine. Better to put something to sleep at 35K than plough on regardless to twice that length. Or, heaven forbid, finish the damned thing and try to convince yourself and others that it must be good because of all the blood and sweat that\'s gone into it.\n\nOf course I may feel differently tomorrow. I doubt it, though, because I wrote out a new opening page for the second version today and it felt infinitely more comfortable than the previous stab.\n\nSo if you find yourself junking stuff when your own writing don\'t ever feel guilty, a failure or somehow incompetent. We all do it, and smart people learn a lot more from their mistakes than their successes.','Sometimes progress means starting again','','publish','open','open','','sometimes-progress-means-starting-again','','','2010-12-19 16:39:14','2010-12-19 16:39:14','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6474',0,'post','',6),(6484,1,'2010-12-19 20:51:40','2010-12-19 20:51:40','','Vittore Carpaccio. Life of St. Jerome Vision of St. Augustine','','inherit','open','open','','vittore-carpaccio-life-of-st-jerome-vision-of-st-augustine','','','2010-12-19 20:51:40','2010-12-19 20:51:40','',6483,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vittore-carpaccio-life-of-st-jerome-vision-of-st-augustine1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6505,1,'2010-12-19 21:56:18','2010-12-19 21:56:18','','0911','','inherit','open','open','','0911','','','2010-12-19 21:56:18','2010-12-19 21:56:18','',6483,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/09111.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6512,1,'2010-12-20 08:20:02','2010-12-20 08:20:02','','screen-shot-2009-12-31-at-10-09-43','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2009-12-31-at-10-09-43','','','2010-12-20 08:20:02','2010-12-20 08:20:02','',6483,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2009-12-31-at-10-09-431.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6516,1,'2010-12-20 08:27:48','2010-12-20 08:27:48','','5034378_454581b','','inherit','open','open','','5034378_454581b','','','2010-12-20 08:27:48','2010-12-20 08:27:48','',6483,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/5034378_454581b1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6517,1,'2010-12-20 08:28:49','2010-12-20 08:28:49','','St. Augustine 5','','inherit','open','open','','st-augustine-5','','','2010-12-20 08:28:49','2010-12-20 08:28:49','',6483,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/st-augustine-51.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6483,1,'2010-12-20 08:42:58','2010-12-20 08:42:58','I did<a title=\"Sometimes progress means starting again\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/12/19/sometimes-progress-means-starting-again/\"> a brief note yesterday</a> about how I\'d decided to abandon 35,000 words of book and start again, on the same story but from scratch. I wrote that post mainly for myself to get it down as fact. But judging by the number of people who\'ve responded one way or another it touched a chord.\n\nSo let me expand on this subject because I think it\'s an important one that goes a little to the heart of the curious process of writing. To summarise...\n<ul>\n	<li>On Friday I had a 35,000-manuscript.</li>\n	<li>Today it\'s back to fewer than 1,000 words.</li>\n	<li>I know absolutely this is good for the book and feel incredibly happy about this development.</li>\n</ul>\n<!--more-->I can understand why people who don\'t write must think I\'m bonkers. How can throwing away six weeks work, and a lot of words, possibly count as progress?\n\nEasily. Because I\'m not throwing it away. Some of it will be used again. Not much. But that\'s not the point. Writing is a learning process. And you need to understand that you should learn as much, if not more, from the stuff that doesn\'t work, as you do from the bits that make you puff up with pride.\n\nMuch of the struggle in producing a manuscript lies in working out what you want to write. What needs to be recognised more widely is that an integral element in that battle is defining what <em>not</em> to write. One way to find out is to write it. To put down words, look at them, screw up the virtual paper and think, \'Nah, let\'s start again.\'\n\nLet me try to spell this out more clearly. Nothing you produce, however bad, however crass, however misjudged, is wasted provided you recognise it for what it is: not good enough. Provided you\'re honest with yourself, learn from your mistakes and promise yourself, \'OK. Next time I can do better.\'\n\nNo. Still not there. How about this?\n<blockquote>One way to find out what you want to write is by writing what you don\'t.</blockquote>\nI do it all the time. I\'m a million grumpy Amazon critics rolled into one.\n\nHere (written in Apple Pages) is the revision tracking for just a handful of paragraphs from next year\'s book <em>The Fallen Angel.</em>\n\n<em><a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2009-12-31-at-10-09-431.png\"><img class=\"alignright size-large wp-image-6512\" title=\"screen-shot-2009-12-31-at-10-09-43\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2009-12-31-at-10-09-431.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"330\" /></a>\n</em>\n\nI don\'t find this degree of tinkering strange in the least. Artists in other fields have been behaving this way for centuries.\n\nWe know from X-rays that great painters often reworked their canvases many times before they ended up with the images we now think of as both finished -- and original -- versions. One of my favourite examples is Carpaccio\'s wonderful painting of Augustine\'s vision which you\'ll find in the lovely Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni in Venice.\n\nI should say I\'m particularly fond of this painting because it features in the book for 2012, <em>The Plague Doctor</em>, too. Everyone who\'s seen it remembers this work because of the little dog, the one that people ooh and aah at when they go into the scuola. Yet originally it was an ermine. A ferret with white fur. In fifteenth century Venice such a nasty little beast  happened to stand for purity and loyalty.\n\nHere\'s Carpaccio\'s original sketch which recently went on show at the British Museum.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/09111.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright size-large wp-image-6505\" title=\"0911\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/09111.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"429\" /></a>\n\nPraise the lord: he <em>changed his mind </em>and came up with something better. That wonderful, charming little dog that has now enchanted people for more than five centuries. An albino weasel wouldn\'t have had the same effect. Take a look at the actual painting. Just a small detail, one animal changed for another. The difference between something remarkable, with a single, defined point of focus, the saint, and a masterpiece in which the eye is constantly drawn between the quizzical little animal on the floor and the man staring out of the window, lost in thought. What <em>is</em> going on? Clue: I give you an inkling of my own opinion in <em>The Plague Doctor.</em>\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/st-augustine-51.jpg\"><img title=\"St. Augustine 5\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/st-augustine-51.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"423\" /></a>\n\nThe same goes for music. Umpteen different versions exist of many modern popular recordings. Lord knows how many different versions there might have been of various pieces of classical music. It\'s only natural, if you\'re of a curious, adventurous mind, to try to look at the same thing from different perspectives. If we were straightforward, predictable, normal human beings, we wouldn\'t be spending our time trying to invent fairy stories in our head.\n\nWriting is odd in the creative field because that attitude -- of experimentation, of openness -- is sometimes treated with outright suspicion. We occasionally like to fool ourselves every word is perfect, every comma in the right place, from the beginning.\n\nThis is nonsense. I\'d rewrite every book I\'ve ever produced if I could, including the one that\'s coming out in a few weeks time. In years to come, when books become digital and cease to be locked into the type and paper they were printed with, perhaps we\'ll start to have multiple editions of the same work. Imagine the same story written by the same writer, but thirty years apart, with the benefit of age and experience vying with the enthusiasm of youth.\n\nThe creative mindset should be chaotic, quixotic, incapable of being managed to some extent. We\'re writing dreams here, not business plans.\n\nIf that means you have to be prepared to throw everything away and start again when the words don\'t work, then fine. I\'ve always said this job should carry a notice above the door: <em>Lazy, sane people need not apply.</em>\n\nBut if you do follow my advice, keep a copy, won\'t you? Just in case.','Writing what you don&#039;t want','','publish','open','open','','writing-what-you-dont-want','','','2010-12-20 08:42:58','2010-12-20 08:42:58','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6483',0,'post','',5),(6528,1,'2010-12-21 08:13:59','2010-12-21 08:13:59','','scrollmenu','','inherit','open','open','','scrollmenu','','','2010-12-21 08:13:59','2010-12-21 08:13:59','',6527,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/scrollmenu1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6529,1,'2010-12-21 08:16:48','2010-12-21 08:16:48','','scrollpic','','inherit','open','open','','scrollpic','','','2010-12-21 08:16:48','2010-12-21 08:16:48','',6527,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/scrollpic1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6527,1,'2010-12-21 08:22:33','2010-12-21 08:22:33','Change tracking is one of those features in Word -- and other word processors -- that looks wonderful in principle but is often horrible in reality. Yes, it keeps track of all the edits you make in a document, but when you want to see them all you get is a screen full of red excisions. And if you\'re working on a collaborative document, as I am at the moment, there are other colours too, which makes it all the more confusing.\n\nHere is one way to make this feature enormously useful. Save two versions of the file your editing -- say Version 2 and Version 2.1. Open both in side by side windows on the screen. Keep the version you want to edit, 2.1, in normal view, with track changes hidden. Then turn on \'Final: show Markup\' in the original file.\n\nYou now have the same document (under two different names) side by side on the screen. On one side you can see the changes. On the other the result of them.\n\nNow find this useful little command on the Ribbon bar.<!--more-->\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/scrollmenu1.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright size-large wp-image-6528\" title=\"scrollmenu\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/scrollmenu1.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"78\" /></a>\n\nSelect View Side by Side and Synchronous Scrolling. Then scroll one of the documents. You will see the other scroll to the same position in sync as you move forwards and backwards. So you can view the changes you and others have made instantly, and see what they look like with and without all that redlining too.\n\nAs far as I can see it does <em>not</em> work by simply opening  a new window on the same file. So you need to save a new revise of your document, which is probably a good idea anyway. But it\'s made revision tracking usable for me for the first time.\n\nNeat trick, and I gather it works on Word for the Mac too.\n\n&nbsp;','The best Word editing tip I&#039;ve found of late','','publish','open','open','','the-best-word-editing-tip-ive-found-of-late','','','2010-12-21 08:22:33','2010-12-21 08:22:33','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6527',0,'post','',7),(6536,1,'2010-12-21 11:59:28','2010-12-21 11:59:28','','stacks','','inherit','open','open','','stacks','','','2010-12-21 11:59:28','2010-12-21 11:59:28','',6535,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/stacks1.jpeg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6535,1,'2010-12-21 12:31:31','2010-12-21 12:31:31','I\'ve been a big fan of <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Evernote\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://www.evernote.com\">Evernote</a> ever since it appeared. It\'s clever software that lets you sync notes, ideas and photos between Macs, PCs, phones and tablets such as the iPad. But there\'s always been one big bug bear that\'s stopped me using it over Microsoft\'s OneNote: it\'s never been easy to organise information in hierarchical folders.\n\nPeople have been complaining about this for years. The Evernote people always told us we were wrong to want it. Finally it seems they are seeing the light.\n\nI only just noticed this but, on the Mac only, they have snuck out a new version of their client software that finally brings hierarchical information to the platform. You <a href=\"http://blog.evernote.com/2010/12/01/evernote-beta-for-mac-gets-sharing-and-notebook-stacks/\" target=\"_blank\">can read about it here.</a> A screenshot is below.\n\n<img class=\"size-full wp-image-6536 alignnone\" title=\"stacks\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/stacks1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"287\" />\n\nThey call the feature \'stacks\' and it\'s not a full-blown hierarchical system. Basically that top level \'folder\' is just a label beneath which you can drop actual notebooks. The hierarchy as far as I can see goes one level deep. But actually that\'s enough for me. So call me happy.\n\nThe post from Evernote says this will be introduced into other versions in future releases, and the stacks won\'t show up in anything other than a Mac until new software is rolled out. But the stacks do appear for me on Windows in version 4, even if I can\'t create them there. No sign of them on my Android phone or in the rather gimmicky iPad app though - you just see the folders without the stack, and they mustn\'t have common titles -- research for example -- or they\'ll get confused with others of the same name.\n\nStill this seems quite an advance, and one that will be very popular indeed once it\'s more widely available. It doesn\'t turn Evernote into OneNote. But you do have to balance the fact Evernote is available in so many places -- on phones, tablets, computers and directly through the web -- with OneNote\'s sophistication.\n\nWhere does this leave the Mac and Windows in the writing stakes? For me it runs like this...\n\nWindows leads the field with the much superior general word processor in Word 2010 and has the most capable information manager in OneNote.\n\nThe Mac lacks a word processor that comes close to Word 2010 -- sorry -- but is miles ahead in the specialist writing app market with the amazing Scrivener 2. Mac users were also lacking something as fluent and logical as OneNote on the information manager front. But these new features for Evernote do close the gap on OneNote quite a lot though it seems to me. I could see myself running a project\'s research and management functions through this now -- I could have a top folder for the project then notebooks beneath it for characters, location, research and diary functions.\n\nInteresting times ahead.','Evernote sneak out a killer feature','','publish','open','open','','evernote-sneak-out-a-killer-feature','','','2010-12-21 12:31:31','2010-12-21 12:31:31','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6535',0,'post','',6),(6546,1,'2010-12-23 14:09:02','2010-12-23 14:09:02','','Scrivener sync','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-14-07-56','','','2010-12-23 14:09:02','2010-12-23 14:09:02','',6543,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-14-07-561.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6543,1,'2010-12-23 14:15:20','2010-12-23 14:15:20','I\'ve been faffing around with Scrivener 2 on the Mac a bit and, as always with this piece of software, uncovering amazing capabilities underneath the bonnet. Here\'s one I never expected to find since I\'d assumed Scrivener wasn\'t built for collaboration.\n\nBut how about using it as a way of managing a two, or three or four author project... even with people who don\'t use Scrivener or even the Mac?\n\nYes, it\'s not just possible but actually rather easily. All you need is Scrivener 2 and a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Dropbox\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://www.dropbox.com\">Dropbox</a> account, after which you can manage a multiple author project through Scrivener with ease. Here\'s how it goes...<!--more-->\n\nThe key is Dropbox. You need to set up a folder there through which you will sync your master document and share our the scenes and chapters to your collaborators. This is detailed in the video here: <a href=\"http://www.literatureandlatte.com/videos/FolderSync.mov\">Sync with Scrivener</a>\n\nHow it works in a nutshell is pretty simply. Let\'s imagine we want to share out our chapters with people using standard word processors such as Word. Got to File, Sync and you get this...\n\n<img class=\"size-full wp-image-6546 alignnone\" title=\"Scrivener sync\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-14-07-561.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"455\" />\n\nIn its basic form -- which is probably good enough for most of us -- this will simply export the basic files of your draft folder to a Dropbox folder. Just text, in this case rich text, not any photos or pdfs you may be saving as research.\n\nYou then give your collaborator access to your shared Dropbox folder. They edit the scenes and chapters and make comments on them. When you next run Scrivener it alerts you to the fact that synced files have changed. It will then (using the defaults above) back up your current scene version and import the new one so you have both to refer to. And those Word comments will magically be converted into Scrivener comments too.\n\nThis is easier than trying the same trick with Word (and I speak here from experience).\n\nThe other trick you can perform with this is to export your scenes as plain text. Once you\'ve done that you can read and edit them on an iPad using any one of a number of text editors (the video lists a few). Pretty neat.\n\nDrawbacks? You need to maintain the file names of those bits of book when you export and sync them. No renaming them or the whole thing might go belly up. And your collaborators will only see individual scenes, not the whole book. But it\'s still a great way to work remotely it seems to me.\n\nScrivener 2 is quite something all round. With this and Dropbox I could edit my Scrivener book with anything from Windows to Linux or an iPad and not lose a thing (though you won\'t have any formatting with those plain text files of course).','Scrivener for collaboration - pretty cool','','publish','open','open','','scrivener-for-collaboration-pretty-cool','','','2010-12-23 14:15:20','2010-12-23 14:15:20','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6543',0,'post','',1),(6549,1,'2010-12-24 08:26:29','2010-12-24 08:26:29','During 20010 I\'ve written two books and co-authored a third work (sorry but two of these are still under wraps). Busy old year and as always at the end of it I have to ask myself: what did I do to lighten the load?\n\nWe always ask ourselves what we can do to make writing easier. It\'s the wrong question. The right one is: how do we make it less hard? Let me try to list a few of the things that fit that category for me this year in a few separate posts...<!--more--><a href=\"http://Wordpress.com.\" target=\"_blank\">Wordpress.com.</a> Yes, the place you\'re reading this. Authors have to have websites. Mine\'s been running under the davidhewson.com banner since 1998 or so. There are two problems with author websites. We don\'t really know that they\'re for. And like all websites they\'re a pain to manage, demanding design, administration and technical skills most of us don\'t own. Especially since we\'re now blogging too.\n\nAfter trying a multitude of solutions this year I finally moved to Wordpress.com. I\'d been running Wordpress software on a third party host for some time. But Wordpress.com makes your life <em>so</em> much easier. No horrible C panels or technical issues to put up with. You create your site from templates. You point your domain name at it. You\'re done.\n\nOne of WP\'s great strengths is its limitations. You can\'t run plugins. You can\'t install fancy add-ons from other sites. This restricts what you can achieve but it means the damned thing doesn\'t keep crashing all the time.\n\nSo I decided to run with the limitations and see how well I could do within them. This is the site you see. It\'s not perfect but for a self-run site by an author I don\'t think it\'s too bad. There are a lot of books and projects to list for one thing. And WP does keep improving at a rapid rate, so I look forward to seeing what else we can bring on board during 2011.\n\n<em>Benefits:</em> cheaper than third party hosting, a huge time-saver, and scarcely any downtime at all.\n\n<em>Drawbacks:</em> I can\'t run a proper events diary. But I am trying to cut down on events anyway, so that\'s not too big a problem.','This year&#039;s best goodies 1: Wordpress','','publish','open','open','','this-years-best-goodies-1-wordpress','','','2010-12-24 08:26:29','2010-12-24 08:26:29','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6549',0,'post','',1),(6552,1,'2010-12-24 09:10:56','2010-12-24 09:10:56','Microsoft have released two new versions of Word: <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/05/05/word-2010-for-windows-wonds-well-hidden/\">2010 for Windows</a> and <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/11/06/thank-you-microsoft-for-the-worst-word-processor-ever/\">2011 for the Mac.</a> The first is fantastic. The second should make them hang their heads in shame.\n\nYou can scream all you like about Word but it\'s hard to avoid it. Books are submitted in Word. Sometimes they come back with comments and change tracking as part of the editing process. It\'s the <em>lingua franca</em> of publishing. I can\'t imagine delivering a book that doesn\'t, at some stage, go through Word before submission, even if it\'s only to check that the translation to Word format from some other program has gone smoothly.\n\nI had to do one major edit in May and, out of interest, decided to try that in Word for Windows, even though the book was mainly written on a Mac. The process, as you can read in the post above, was wonderful. This really is a major piece of software for an author, capable of handling the mosaic approach to a book -- breaking it down into component parts of chapters and scenes -- very well indeed once you understand how to manage it.\n\nAs an added bonus you get <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/08/17/onenote-a-place-to-keep-everything/\">OneNote</a> in even the cheapest Office package, Student and Home. That\'s currently £79.99 for three PCs on Amazon. An absolute bargain.\n\nThe killer features of Word 2010 are its ability to count scenes and chapters and allow you to move them around in the sidebar, just as Scrivener does. This is handled so well you\'d think Microsoft\'s Mac team would leap to copy it for their new 2011 version. Well they don\'t. Word 2011 really is a huge disappointment, and in the new Mac version of Outlook they have managed to create a program that actually achieves <em>less</em> than the rather flaky app it replaces, Entourage.\n\nBig disappointment. If Apple come out with a decent new version of Pages next year they could knock Office out of the market. For authors anyway.\n\nBefore anyone asks... yes I did move over to Windows because of Office 2010 and the new capabilities of Word and OneNote. But as we\'ll see with the next post things have changed in the Mac world too. So now I\'m running both Mac and Windows side by side in my office, and using the one best suited to the project in hand. More soon...','This year&#039;s best goodies 2: Microsoft Office 2010','','publish','open','open','','this-years-best-goodies-2-microsoft-office-2010','','','2010-12-24 09:10:56','2010-12-24 09:10:56','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6552',0,'post','',1),(6571,1,'2010-12-24 09:11:47','2010-12-24 09:11:47','','Screen shot 2010-12-23 at 11.01.48','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-01-48','','','2010-12-24 09:11:47','2010-12-24 09:11:47','',6565,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-01-481.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6573,1,'2010-12-24 09:13:32','2010-12-24 09:13:32','','Screen shot 2010-12-23 at 11.07.13','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-07-13','','','2010-12-24 09:13:32','2010-12-24 09:13:32','',6565,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-07-131.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6574,1,'2010-12-24 09:14:51','2010-12-24 09:14:51','','Screen shot 2010-12-23 at 11.07.55','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-07-55','','','2010-12-24 09:14:51','2010-12-24 09:14:51','',6565,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-07-551.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6576,1,'2010-12-24 09:16:22','2010-12-24 09:16:22','','Screen shot 2010-12-23 at 11.36.02','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-36-02','','','2010-12-24 09:16:22','2010-12-24 09:16:22','',6565,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-36-021.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6556,1,'2010-12-24 09:42:46','2010-12-24 09:42:46','I\'ve been using Scrivener since it first came out as a modest shareware package three years or so ago. I\'ve written four or five books in it and loved the thing. As I wrote earlier Word 2010 caught my attention earlier this year with some Scrivener-like features. Also, to be honest, once you\'ve spent so many hours inside the same application you do feel like a change for a while.\n\nSo I shifted to Windows and never touched Scrivener. But nothing stands still. Scrivener for Windows is now out in beta. And Scrivener for Mac has come out with version two, a huge rewrite still being sold for the ridiculously low price of $45.\n\n<!--more-->You can read some of my thoughts on Scrivener <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/tag/scrivener/\">in this articles series link</a>. Version one was a quirky, one-man-band shareware offering. Version two is an astonishingly rich virtual operating system for creative writing that can handle text, outlining, collaborative working, syncs to external proofing system on tablets such as an iPad, reference, character and location management and lots more I still haven\'t discovered.\n\nIf you write and own a Mac you owe it to yourself to try this thing for free, go through the fantastic video tutorials, and try to work out whether you shouldn\'t just devote your creative process to working inside this thing, entirely or with an external information manager (I still prefer the latter but that\'s the way my head works).\n\nHaving made one abortive start on a new book in Word 2010 I\'m now trying a new one, rather more successfully in Scrivener, learning its new features as I go. I\'d like to say Scrivener made this second stab at the book easier. I\'m not sure that\'s true. It\'s just a better idea all round. But I am thoroughly enjoying using it at the moment.\n\nCongratulations to Keith and all those involved in Scrivener. The Windows version will be much more like the version one on the Mac when it\'s released next year. But at some stage it will catch up with the sophistication of version two. When that happens authors everywhere, Windows and Mac, will realise there\'s more than one way to write a book.','This year&#039;s best goodies 3: Scrivener 2','','publish','open','open','','this-years-best-goodies-3-scrivener-2','','','2010-12-24 09:42:46','2010-12-24 09:42:46','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6556',0,'post','',1),(6561,1,'2010-12-24 10:54:04','2010-12-24 10:54:04','The iPad. I swore I\'d never buy one. Then I saw all my mates flashing them around at Bouchercon and gave in. Hmm. The jury\'s still out. I thought I\'d be able to proof manuscripts on it in iPad Pages but I was wrong. Still, <a title=\"Scrivener for collaboration – pretty cool\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/12/23/scrivener-for-collaboration-pretty-cool/\">perhaps Scrivener will come up with a solution</a> (provided I\'m willing to write in text only files without formatting, an iPad limitation, not Scriv\'s).\n\nAs for its broader use... I don\'t know. When I was in Florence in November for research I had it on all the time. At home it barely gets used. Nice toy, not sure it\'s much else frankly. Not yet anyway.\n\nI also found <a title=\"The best writing keyboard ever\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/12/08/the-best-writing-keyboard-ever/\">a lovely, Windows-only solar-powered Logitech keyboard,</a> the best I\'ve ever used. I\'ve been <a title=\"Evernote sneak out a killer feature\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/12/21/evernote-sneak-out-a-killer-feature/\">greatly impressed by Evernote</a>, especially now I can take photos with my Android HTC Desire phone and send them straight to a research folder shared between my different computers.\n\nHad to <a title=\"Kindle as a book revision tool\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/08/30/kindle-as-a-book-revision-tool/\">buy a Kindle 3</a> when it came out, of course. Not sure it really works as a book revision tool. That keyboard is too tiny. But it\'s a fine e-reader and I\'m happy <a title=\"Dead Men’s Socks… a new story of Rome\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/12/13/dead-mens-socks-a-new-story-of-rome/\">to say I now have my own ebook short story</a> out there you can buy for it and other readers.\n\nFor travelling I was immensely impressed by Packard Bell\'s little tablet Windows PC, the <a title=\"A new writing laptop\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/09/15/a-new-writing-laptop/\">Butterfly Touch</a>. This is currently about the price of a basic iPad and offers so much more. Great battery life, lovely keyboard. Fantastic highly portable writing machine.\n\nThat\'s me tooled up for 2011 already. I won\'t be buying anything else. Honest. <em>Honest. </em>','This year’s best goodies: the rest','','publish','open','open','','this-year%e2%80%99s-best-goodies-the-rest','','','2010-12-24 10:54:04','2010-12-24 10:54:04','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6561',0,'post','',4),(6565,1,'2010-12-24 11:20:46','2010-12-24 11:20:46','All those earlier posts have been about tricks and tools. They\'re important up to a point. But they\'re nothing without people. Without a good agent and publishers you\'re writing for no one but yourself.\n\nSo a million thanks to Carole Blake, my wonderful agent at Blake Friedmann, and her colleagues for a fantastic year. And the same to all my publishers around the world too. It\'s a pleasure to be working with you all.\n\nHappy Xmas everyone! This office is now closed for a little while. In the meantime let me leave you with a little computer creativity courtesy of the name generator for the new Scrivener 2.\n\n<!--more-->I don\'t use name generators but if you put a toy like this in a writing app I <em>will</em> give it a try. It generates a decent range of names left to itself. But naturally I had to tweak the options so that it gave me Italian female first names tied to a restricted form of dictionary-based surnames (oh come on, you know you\'d do the same).\n\nHere\'s what you get with a \'simple\' name search.\n\n<img class=\"size-large wp-image-6571 alignnone\" title=\"Screen shot 2010-12-23 at 11.01.48\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-01-481.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"600\" />\n\nHere\'s what you get if you ask for double-barreled names.\n\n<img class=\"size-large wp-image-6573 alignnone\" title=\"Screen shot 2010-12-23 at 11.07.13\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-07-131.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"617\" />\n\nAnd here\'s what you get if you ask for \'obscure\' names, as if these ones aren\'t obscure enough.\n\n<img class=\"size-large wp-image-6574 alignnone\" title=\"Screen shot 2010-12-23 at 11.07.55\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-07-551.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"628\" />\n\nAs I said on Twitter my favourite was definitely Dafne Snood-Flatus. About five minutes later I then got the following reply tweet.\n\n<img class=\"size-full wp-image-6576 alignnone\" title=\"Screen shot 2010-12-23 at 11.36.02\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-23-at-11-36-021.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"69\" />\n\nWhat <em>did </em>we do before the internet?','PS, and the real secret to writing is...','','publish','open','open','','ps-and-the-real-secret-to-writing-is','','','2010-12-24 11:20:46','2010-12-24 11:20:46','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6565',0,'post','',0),(6582,1,'2010-12-26 12:04:29','2010-12-26 12:04:29','','Structure','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2010-12-26-at-11-58-33','','','2010-12-26 12:04:29','2010-12-26 12:04:29','',6581,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-26-at-11-58-331.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6584,1,'2010-12-26 12:07:12','2010-12-26 12:07:12','','Diary','','inherit','open','open','','diary','','','2010-12-26 12:07:12','2010-12-26 12:07:12','',6581,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/diary1.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6585,1,'2010-12-26 12:10:15','2010-12-26 12:10:15','','To do','','inherit','open','open','','to-do','','','2010-12-26 12:10:15','2010-12-26 12:10:15','',6581,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/to-do2.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6586,1,'2010-12-26 12:12:02','2010-12-26 12:12:02','','To do','','inherit','open','open','','to-do-2','','','2010-12-26 12:12:02','2010-12-26 12:12:02','',6581,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/to-do11.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6581,1,'2010-12-29 12:00:03','2010-12-29 12:00:03','As I wrote before Christmas, <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Evernote\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://www.evernote.com/\">Evernote</a> <em>finally</em> <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/12/21/evernote-sneak-out-a-killer-feature/\">has the ability to divide information</a> into folders and sub-folders. May not sound a big thing. It is to me. I put a lot of information into my book management process. Without the ability to divide it into hierarchical sub-folders it all gets too complicated and messy.\n\nNow Evernote can do much (if not all) of the job I used to assign to OneNote or on the Mac Macjournal. The finer points aren\'t there but perhaps simplicity is a benefit, not a disadvantage. Here\'s how it\'s looking for me. Note: sub-folders are currently only fully implemented in the Mac Evernote client. You can see them in the latest Windows client, and create them there by dragging notebooks on to one another to form the hierarchy. You don\'t see them on the iPad or Android phones yet -- just a flat notebook list.\n\n<!--more--><img class=\"size-full wp-image-6582 alignright\" title=\"Structure\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-26-at-11-58-331.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"166\" height=\"99\" />Here\'s my basic book management structure. Dead simple. I have a notebook enclosing all this (which you can\'t see here). Below that I create new sub-notebooks for five different functions.\n\nIt should be obvious what they are from the names here. Places where I can jot down notes about characters, locations and any research associated with the project. Then two more notebooks with very simple functions, one to act as a diary for the project, the other to list tasks I need to do at a later stage.\n\nHere\'s what the diary looks like.\n\n<img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6584\" title=\"Diary\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/diary1.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"320\" />\n\nVery simple idea. I make an entry when I feel like it, jotting down story ideas, concerns, possibilities. <a title=\"Writing a book diary\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2009/08/05/writing-a-book-diary/\">You can read more about this process here</a>. At the end of each working week I list the week\'s running word count. So I have a simple tally of my thoughts about the book and a visual guide to how it\'s growing.\n\nThe To do section is even simpler (and could be included in the diary folder if you like).\n\n<img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6586\" title=\"To do\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/to-do11.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"228\" />\n\nYou can put in a check box through a simple shortcut (check the instructions -- it depends on what you use). After that I create a simple list of items under those general headings.\n\nWhy don\'t I mix to-dos with the diary? Because I don\'t want to lose them. OneNote has a very useful feature that allows you to tag any part of a document with a to do or other label. You can then search for them across the whole project and see how many you have.\n\nI can\'t see a way to do that in Evernote. Something is either flagged as a whole item or not at all. Nor can you search on check boxes (as far as I can see). So I go for this simple option of setting them apart in one place with a check box. That way they won\'t disappear and will hang around to nag me -- which is the purpose of a to do.\n\nYes, OneNote is a lot more sophisticated. But Evernote is a lot more gregarious. I can see this information on my Mac, on anyone\'s PC, on the web when I log in to Evernote and on my phone and iPad. When I\'m out with my phone I can tap in new ideas and even send research photos straight to the project file if I want. The whole thing is a lot more portable than it would have been solely in OneNote.\n\nCould you do all this in Scrivener? Some of it. But I always try to divide left brain from right in the book-writing process. And Scrivener wouldn\'t give me -- easily -- the ability to work with my notes and material on my phone.\n\nSo I like this for the moment, and it certainly makes the Scrivener for writing/Evernote for info management partnership a very workable one. Another win for the Mac right now.','Managing a book project with Evernote','','publish','open','open','','managing-a-book-project-with-evernote','','','2010-12-29 12:00:03','2010-12-29 12:00:03','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6581',0,'post','',9),(6599,1,'2011-01-03 09:15:05','2011-01-03 09:15:05','<p>I had an odd email last night. A chap in a bit of a semi-panic because he couldn’t find <em>anywhere</em> a novel template for Apple Pages. Could I help? </p> <p>Well, no actually. I’ve written about Pages here. It’s a pretty good WP for book revision. I wouldn’t use it as a primary writing tool because the outlining is appalling. You can’t even see a book structure easily in the sidebar (for that you need to use Word 2011 on the Mac, though that porker won’t let you drag the elements to new positions). For the record, my current ‘workflow’ is to do primary writing in Scrivener 2 on the Mac, which is wonderful for the highly creative, organisational stuff. Then I plan to do major revisions in Word 2010 on Windows, which is still the best general WP for novel work in my opinion.</p> <p>Scrivener is much more than a word processor. More an operating system for creative writing. It can use templates very effectively. I’ve <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/11/03/a-novel-template-for-scrivener-my-way/\">put one of my own for you to see here.</a> There are lots of other possibilities. But how about a template for a general word processor? Let’s give it a try…</p> <p>What do you need to write a book in terms of a general WP app? Er… headings and text. Nothing more that I can think of. You set up the different elements as heading styles and a body text for the, well, body text. And that’s it. For a complex book it might be…</p><!--more--><h1>Parts</h1> <h2>Chapters</h2> <h3>Scenes</h3> <p>Body text</p> <p>For a simple book</p> <h1>Chapters</h1> <p>Body text</p> <p>And that really is it. There’s a huge temptation to look for illusory reasons why a book project isn’t working. Maybe it’s the wrong software. You need a different font. Or, heaven forbid, a magic ‘template’. </p> <p>Cobblers. Books are made from words. If you’re using a general word processor set up the headings and body text in a font and size you find comfortable. Then find the right words and stop worrying about the minutiae.</p>','The ultimate novel template for any word processor','','publish','open','open','','the-ultimate-novel-template-for-any-word-processor','','','2011-01-03 09:15:05','2011-01-03 09:15:05','',0,'https://davidhewson.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/the-ultimate-novel-template-for-any-word-processor/',0,'post','',5),(6601,1,'2011-01-03 18:20:02','2011-01-03 18:20:02','','Scrivener backup','','inherit','open','open','','scrivener-backup','','','2011-01-03 18:20:02','2011-01-03 18:20:02','',6600,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/scrivener-backup1.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6600,1,'2011-01-04 10:15:16','2011-01-04 10:15:16','If you\'re a seasoned Scrivener hand you doubtless know this trick already. But Scrivener seems to be getting a lot of new fans at the moment so perhaps a few have missed it. Here we go: how to get safe, offsite online backups every time you open and/or close a manuscript, without even thinking.\n\nFirst you need a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Dropbox\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://www.dropbox.com\">Dropbox</a> account, paid or free, or some other form of online storage that can be made to look like a folder. This trick only works for Scrivener 2 on the Mac at the moment by the way, though doubtless it\'s on its way to the coming Windows version at some stage.\n\n<!--more-->It\'s not a great idea to copy Scrivener document files straight to online storage. While they may look like simple files to you they are in fact folders, full of text, images, pdfs, even videos if you\'ve dragged them into your project. If you copy the standard \'document\' you run the risk of it getting corrupted if some small part of it goes wrong syncing between your online version and your local one.\n\n<img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6601\" title=\"Scrivener backup\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/scrivener-backup1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"290\" />\n\nScrivener 2 gets round this problem very neatly. Go to Preferences and open the Backup pane. Here\'s what mine looks like. Point the backup location to your Dropbox folder. Choose to save as zip files, use the date in the filename, and select how many copies you want to keep. Zipping your document turns it into a single, compressed file, so the chances of corruption pretty much disappear. It also makes it fast for Dropbox to upload.\n\nI choose to backup whenever I close the file. Do it on open or manual save and you end up with millions of backup copies which is a bit pointless. But it\'s your choice.\n\nLike this, every time I close Scrivener a zipped copy of the latest version gets placed in the Dropbox folder and backed up straight away. Plus I have all four previous version there as well.\n\nThis is also a very reliable way of sharing Scrivener files with other Macs using the software. Possibly better than copying plain files for the reasons already stated.\n\nUsing this simple routine ensures your work is safely stored offsite, and accessible through other computers. It\'s about as disaster-proof as you can get, and absolutely free if your storage needs are modest enough for an unpaid Dropbox account.','Getting safe automatic backups with Scrivener','','publish','open','open','','getting-safe-automatic-backups-with-scrivener','','','2011-01-04 10:15:16','2011-01-04 10:15:16','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6600',0,'post','',10),(6602,1,'2011-01-04 11:24:00','2011-01-04 10:24:00','<blockquote>The unseen girl was screaming again, at the top of her voice. There was real agony and fear in her cries, not the drunkenness and violence he\'d come to recognise over the years. He could see his concern reflected in Agata\'s shocked features... Costa ran across the riverside road and down towards the tortuous web of lanes and alleys that meandered in every direction out from the ghetto like a tangle of veins an arteries wound around the human heart...</blockquote>\r\n<img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6616\" title=\"The Fallen Angel\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/fallen-angel-uk-small1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"362\" />When British academic Malise Gabriel falls to his death from a Rome apartment, detective Nic Costa rapidly comes to realise that there is much more to the accident than he first thought. It also becomes apparent that Malise\'s family -- mysterious and tragic daughter Mina, stoic wife Cecilia and troubled son Robert -- may be keeping vital information hidden.\r\n\r\nNic becomes obsessed with the case, intrigued by Mina\'s story which seems to be linked to the sixteenth-century real-life tragedy of a young Italian noblewoman, Beatrice Cenci.\r\n\r\nAs the investigation deepens, Rome\'s dark and seedy side is uncovered, revealing a tangle of deceit, treachery and corruption. Costa realises that the key to the truth lies with the Gabriels. Why are they so unwilling to co-operate, and who, or what, is the reason for their silence?\r\n\r\nThe ninth novel in the Costa series is available from Macmillan in the UK and Delacorte in the US.\r\n<blockquote>Intricately plotted and gorgeously written, THE FALLEN ANGEL weaves a spell that will entrap you until the final page. David Hewson\'s Rome is dark and tantalizing, seductive and dangerous, a place where present-day crimes ring with the echoes of history.\r\n\r\n<strong>Tess Gerritsen</strong>, author of THE KILLING PLACE\r\n\r\nHewson is one of our finest crime writers.  Absorbing, intelligent, and with a staggeringly vivid sense of place.  No author has ever brought Rome so alive for me -- nor made it seem so sinister.\r\n\r\n<strong>Peter James</strong>, author of the bestselling Roy Grace series</blockquote>\r\n<strong>Reviews</strong>\r\n\r\n<em>Bookreporter</em>\r\n\r\nI am probably preaching to the choir here, but I cannot imagine anyone picking up a book authored by David Hewson and not falling in love with the subject matter within the first 50 pages or so. Hewson has made a profession of doing the amazing and making it look commonplace in novel after novel. THE FALLEN ANGEL, his latest and arguably best work, continues the practice while upping his own ante by a notch or three.\r\n\r\nIt is Hewson’s practice to take an ensemble cast — headed in interest, if not by rank, by Rome police detective Nic Costa — and place them against the backdrop of one of the world’s oldest cities as they solve one or more baffling murders. William Faulkner wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Hewson’s novels bring these famous words to life, and perhaps nowhere more so than in THE FALLEN ANGEL.\r\n\r\n...even if you somehow put together at least part of what is ultimately revealed here, it is doubtful that you will figure out all of it, as Hewson drops revelations and bombshells — including a major one — right up through the final few pages. As tantalizing as the mystery is, however, the primary <em>raison d’etre</em> is Hewson’s unparalleled description of the ins and outs of Rome, as he guides you through the hidden nooks and crannies of the city through the eyes of his various and assorted characters.\r\n\r\nAt some point, Hewson should publish a travel guide to Rome and its surrounding environs (title it “Costa’s <em>Roma</em>“) as a source book to the magnificent scenery he has presented in THE FALLEN ANGEL and its predecessors. In the meantime, though, Hewson’s body of work provides a tempting map not only to an intriguing city but also to the darkest recesses of the human mind, past and present.\r\n\r\n<em>Associated Press</em>\r\n\r\n<!-- p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px \'Times New Roman\'} -->Hewson has a gift for weaving complex mysteries and thrills into a tight and captivating tale. Just as Michael Connelly reveals the dark underbelly of Los Angeles, Hewson immerses the reader into the city of Rome and shows a side that tourists don\'t often see\r\n\r\n<em>Publishers Weekly starred review (third in series)</em>\r\n\r\nNear the start of Hewson\'s accomplished ninth novel featuring Roman detective Nic Costa... an eccentric English scholar, Malise Gabriel, falls to his death from a balcony, and Nic finds the man\'s lovely 17-year-old daughter, Mina, kneeling over his body on the street. The neighborhoods of Rome offer satisfying texture, as does Roman history—in particular, the dramatic story of another daughter, Beatrice Cenci, who was executed centuries earlier for killing the father who molested her... once secrets begin to be revealed, especially about the Gabriel family, there\'s no stopping them. Readers will have a lot of fun peeling away the book\'s many layers, right down to the final, closing twist.\r\n\r\n<em>The Times</em>\r\n\r\nHewson presents an atmospheric portrait of a dark, corrupt Rome behind the jolly tourist façade, astutely mixing the historical and the present. This is the ninth in the Nic Costa series, and possibly the best.\r\n\r\n<em>New York Times</em>\r\n\r\nMr. Hewson’s crime novel, the ninth in a series, is like a satisfying “Law &amp; Order” episode set in modern-day Rome... the ending is the rich tiramisu we’ve waited for.<em>\r\n</em>\r\n\r\n<em>Daily Express</em>\r\n\r\nThis latest novel in David Hewson’s Italian-set crime sequence is as vivid and engaging as ever. His Roman copper, the unshakeable Nic Costa, is the perfect guide to one of the most atmospherically rendered cities in current crime fiction. Reading <em>The Fallen Angel</em> might have you planning your own trip to Rome.\r\n\r\nA variety of British and American novelists have set their books in Italy, notably Donna Leon and the late Michael Dibdin, whose Zen books have recently enjoyed TV adaptations. Hewson is ahead of the pack in this country-hopping band, mainly because his ambitions clearly stretch beyond the parameters of standard crime fiction.\r\n\r\n<em>Cleveland Plain Dealer</em>\r\n\r\nDavid Hewson ends nearly every chapter in a cliffhanger, and his writing is good enough to glow in the dark. His characters are fresh and vivid, his story deftly constructed, and his portrait of modern Rome dazzles. <strong>Grade A</strong>\r\n\r\n<strong>Photos</strong>\r\n\r\nBrowse David\'s gallery of research photos of Roman locations for <em>The Fallen Angel</em>, from the Cenci church in the ghetto to the Italian State Police Black Museum. And read more about <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2011/02/beatrice-cenci-the-true-story-tragedy-behind-the-fallen-angel/\">the background to the true story of Beatrice Cenci.</a>\r\n\r\n[gallery link=\"file\"]','The Fallen Angel','','publish','closed','closed','','the-fallen-angel','','','2011-05-01 22:03:24','2011-05-01 21:03:24','',3302,'http://davidhewson.com/',-1,'page','',0),(6616,1,'2011-01-04 10:38:47','2011-01-04 10:38:47','','The Fallen Angel','','inherit','open','open','','fallen-angel-uk-small','','','2011-01-04 10:38:47','2011-01-04 10:38:47','',6602,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/fallen-angel-uk-small1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6622,1,'2011-01-04 10:49:01','2011-01-04 10:49:01','<h3>The ninth Nic Costa novel is here</h3>\r\n<img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6616\" title=\"The Fallen Angel\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/fallen-angel-uk-small1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"205\" height=\"297\" />\r\n\r\nWhen British academic Malise Gabriel falls to his death from a Rome apartment, detective Nic Costa rapidly comes to realise that there is much more to the accident than he first thought. It also becomes apparent that Malise\'s family -- mysterious and tragic daughter Mina, stoic wife Cecilia and troubled son Robert -- may be keeping vital information hidden.\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong><a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/the-nic-costa-series/the-fallen-angel/\">Read reviews from the Times, New York Times, Publishers Weekly and others</a></strong></em></p>\r\nCosta becomes obsessed with the case, intrigued by Mina\'s story which seems to be linked to the sixteenth-century real-life tragedy of a young Italian noblewoman, Beatrice Cenci.\r\n\r\nAs the investigation deepens, Rome\'s dark and seedy side is uncovered, revealing a tangle of deceit, treachery and corruption. Costa realises that the key to the truth lies with the Gabriels. Why are they so unwilling to co-operate, and who, or what, is the reason for their silence? <em>The ninth novel in the Costa series is available from Macmillan in the UK and Delacorte in the US.</em>\r\n<blockquote>Intricately plotted and gorgeously written, THE FALLEN ANGEL weaves a spell that will entrap you until the final page. David Hewson\'s Rome is dark and tantalizing, seductive and dangerous, a place where present-day crimes ring with the echoes of history.\r\n\r\nTess Gerritsen, author of THE KILLING PLACE</blockquote>\r\n<a title=\"The Fallen Angel\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/books/the-nic-costa-series/the-fallen-angel/\">Read more about the new book and see some of David\'s research photos for the novel taken in Rome. </a>\r\n<strong></strong>\r\n\r\n<strong>A new Roman tale for download</strong>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6426\" title=\"Dead Men\'s Socks\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/12/dead-mens-socks1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"176\" height=\"266\" />\r\n\r\nGianni Peroni is feeling at a loose end. Mooching around with no boss at hand he wanders into the Questura morgue and sees Teresa’s deputy staring at two newly-arrived corpses. One is the body of a wealthy psychiatrist recovered from the river, apparently after committing suicide. The second is that of a young Roma petty criminal, seemingly beaten to death in a different part of the city, perhaps as some gang vendetta.\r\n\r\nPeroni watches the pathologist start to work with the corpses and notices something extraordinary. Both are wearing odd socks. <em>Identical</em> odd socks.\r\n\r\nSo begins <em><a title=\"Dead Men’s Socks — a Roman short story\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/books/the-nic-costa-series/dead-mens-socks-a-roman-short-story/\">Dead Men\'s Socks</a>, </em>a brand new 10,000-word Rome short story featuring one of the series\' most popular characters. Out now with instant download as part of the new Pan Macmillan Short Reads initiative.\r\n\r\n<strong>Get </strong><strong><em>Dead Men’s Socks </em>for 99p now</strong>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Mens-Socks-Short-Reads/dp/B004FV4RWC\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Kindle UK</strong></a> <a href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/dead-mens-socks-short-reads/id409366072?mt=11\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>iTunes</strong></a> <strong> </strong><strong><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Mens-Socks-Short-Reads/dp/B004FV4RWC\" target=\"_blank\">Kindle non-UK </a>(including US sales)</strong>','The Fallen Angel — the ninth Costa novel','','publish','closed','closed','','the-fallen-angel-the-ninth-costa-novel','','','2011-05-02 06:19:23','2011-05-02 05:19:23','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?page_id=6622',-3,'page','',0),(6629,1,'2011-01-04 10:51:05','2011-01-04 10:51:05','[wpvideo 1gXwMkOd]\nThe unseen girl was screaming again, at the top of her voice. There was real agony and fear in her cries, not the drunkenness and violence he’d come to recognise over the years. He could see his concern reflected in Agata’s shocked features… Costa ran across the riverside road and down towards the tortuous web of lanes and alleys that meandered in every direction out from the ghetto like a tangle of veins an arteries wound around the human heart…\nWhen British academic Malise Gabriel falls to his death from a Rome apartment, detective Nic Costa rapidly comes to realise that there is much more to the accident than he first thought. It also becomes apparent that Malise’s family — mysterious and tragic daughter Mina, stoic wife Cecilia and troubled son Robert — may be keeping vital information hidden.\n\nNic becomes obsessed with the case, intrigued by Mina’s story which seems to be linked to the sixteenth-century real-life tragedy of a young Italian noblewoman, Beatrice Cenci.\n\nAs the investigation deepens, Rome’s dark and seedy side is uncovered, revealing a tangle of deceit, treachery and corruption. Costa realises that the key to the truth lies with the Gabriels. Why are they so unwilling to co-operate, and who, or what, is the reason for their silence? The ninth novel in the Costa series is published by Pan Macmillan in the UK on February 4, 2011 and Delacorte in the US on April 26, 2011.\nIntricately plotted and gorgeously written, THE FALLEN ANGEL weaves a spell that will entrap you until the final page. David Hewson’s Rome is dark and tantalizing, seductive and dangerous, a place where present-day crimes ring with the echoes of history.\n\nTess Gerritsen, author of THE KILLING PLACE\nBrowse David’s gallery of research photos of Roman locations for The Fallen Angel, from the Cenci church in the ghetto to the Italian State Police Black Museum.\n\n[gallery]','','','publish','open','open','','6629','','','2011-01-04 10:51:05','2011-01-04 10:51:05','',3302,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6629',3,'nav_menu_item','',0),(6636,1,'2011-01-04 11:00:00','2011-01-04 11:00:00','','Cenci','','inherit','open','open','','cenci','','','2011-01-04 11:00:00','2011-01-04 11:00:00','',6632,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cenci1.jpeg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6632,1,'2011-01-04 11:09:05','2011-01-04 11:09:05','<img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6616\" title=\"The Fallen Angel\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/fallen-angel-uk-small1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"362\" />The ninth novel in the Costa series will be out a month today in the UK, and in the US in April. So it seems about time I put up some information about it. <a title=\"The Fallen Angel\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/books/the-nic-costa-series/the-fallen-angel/\">You can find a lot on its own page here</a> including a video about the book\'s background, a quote from the lovely Tess Gerritsen and some of the research photos I took in Rome during a long winter\'s research.\n\nAs usual it\'s not much like the book that went before. <em>The Blue Demon</em> was a political thriller, one that sets up a sequel (which I hope one day to write). This is a very different story, a close and personal one set in Rome during the dog days of August. It brings Costa and crew into contact with a very unusual English family living in impoverished exile.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cenci1.jpeg\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6636\" title=\"Cenci\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cenci1.jpeg?w=228\" alt=\"\" width=\"228\" height=\"300\" /></a>Most of the narrative takes place in the Roman ghetto, a small and little-visited area in the centre. It was here, at the end of the sixteenth century, that a real-life tragedy occurred in the household of the Cenci, one of the grand, land-owning families of the time. The story of <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Beatrice Cenci\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Cenci\">Beatrice Cenci</a> is a remarkable one in its own right, and little known outside Italy. It was the inspiration for this tale, which also includes the lovely portrait by Guido Reni in the Barberini, right. Though as is so often the case with the Beatrice Cenci legend, whether it really is her must be open to doubt.\n\nThe book also brings back a character from an earlier story, one I wanted to meet again. She\'s Agata Graziano, who appeared in <em>The Garden of Evil</em> as a rather argumentative nun with specialist knowledge of Caravaggio.\n\nNext year\'s book will be called <em>The Plague Doctor</em>, set entirely in Venice during the Carnival, and will be a slight departure in that only one of my recurring characters appears, Teresa Lupo. She\'s been nagging for a book of her own for a while and she\'s a hard woman to refuse.\n\nBut for now you have the full crew -- Costa, Teresa, Peroni and Falcone, with Agata at their side, tackling a very curious mystery in a very small and interesting part of Rome. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.','The Fallen Angel... a video, a quote from Tess Gerritsen and the story','','publish','open','open','','the-fallen-angel-a-video-a-quote-from-tess-gerritsen-and-the-story','','','2011-01-04 11:09:05','2011-01-04 11:09:05','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6632',0,'post','',2),(6649,1,'2011-01-04 16:31:22','2011-01-04 16:31:22','','Blue Demon Part ne','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-29-55','','','2011-01-04 16:31:22','2011-01-04 16:31:22','',6646,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-29-551.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6650,1,'2011-01-04 16:34:40','2011-01-04 16:34:40','','Costa','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-07-00','','','2011-01-04 16:34:40','2011-01-04 16:34:40','',6646,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-07-001.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6651,1,'2011-01-04 16:36:35','2011-01-04 16:36:35','','Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.10.10','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-10-10','','','2011-01-04 16:36:35','2011-01-04 16:36:35','',6646,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-10-101.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6652,1,'2011-01-04 16:37:16','2011-01-04 16:37:16','','Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.11.03','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-11-03','','','2011-01-04 16:37:16','2011-01-04 16:37:16','',6646,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-11-031.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6653,1,'2011-01-04 16:38:54','2011-01-04 16:38:54','','Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.10.35','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-10-35','','','2011-01-04 16:38:54','2011-01-04 16:38:54','',6646,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-10-351.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6654,1,'2011-01-04 16:40:40','2011-01-04 16:40:40','','Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.12.18','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-12-18','','','2011-01-04 16:40:40','2011-01-04 16:40:40','',6646,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-12-181.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6655,1,'2011-01-04 16:43:28','2011-01-04 16:43:28','','Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.11.56','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-11-56','','','2011-01-04 16:43:28','2011-01-04 16:43:28','',6646,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-11-561.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6660,1,'2011-01-04 16:48:02','2011-01-04 16:48:02','','Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.47.32','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-47-32','','','2011-01-04 16:48:02','2011-01-04 16:48:02','',6646,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-47-321.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6646,1,'2011-01-05 11:16:23','2011-01-05 11:16:23','As may be apparent already, I am now back in Scrivener 2 for my new project (and booting into Windows for Word 2010 to revise earlier work). Quite a few new possibilities are occuring to me as I work my way into this new version. I\'ll throw them out as they come along.\n\nFirst a really very nifty trick for managing the editing of elements of long documents that have different but connected threads. Imagine, for example, that you use three specific points of view. Or three different time periods for your story. How useful would it be to be able to say \'Show me only the chapters where the POV is Costa\'. Or \'show me only the scenes that take place in 1986\'.\n\nAnd then when you\'ve checked sense and continuity to make the whole thing revert magically and instantly into the original narrative order.\n\nI <em>love</em> that idea. Here\'s how it\'s done (again Scrivener 2 only so just for Mac users).\n\n<!--more-->The key lies in a new feature called Collections. Let me use the opening section of <em>The Blue Demon</em> as an example. Here\'s how it looks in Scrivener 2 (you can see the Collections button at the top but it won\'t do a thing until we set it up correctly).\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-6649 aligncenter\" title=\"Blue Demon Part ne\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-29-551.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"252\" height=\"471\" /></p>\nPart One of this book is 27,307 words long and breaks down into fifteen different scenes seen through three different character points of view: Costa, Peroni and the antagonist Petrakis. There are different ways to separate these out as collections. Let me try the simplest (or what seems that way to me). It involves keywords.\n\n<img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6660\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.47.32\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-47-321.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"151\" height=\"31\" />Click the little key icon at the foot of the Inspector for any scene and you get the chance to add a keyword. Let me put one in for each of the three POV characters. It just looks like this.\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-6650 aligncenter\" title=\"Costa\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-07-001.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"226\" height=\"47\" /></p>\nNow go to the search field at the top of the screen and make sure you are searching for Keywords, not just any old text.\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-6651 aligncenter\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.10.10\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-10-101.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"264\" height=\"221\" /></p>\nLet\'s find every scene that has the keyword \'Costa\'.\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-6652 aligncenter\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.11.03\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-11-031.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"295\" height=\"480\" /></p>\nWe will then get this. Only the scenes that have been given that keyword. So you can read them for continuity, sense, general narrative flow, and to make sure your people seem the same from scene to scene.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-10-351.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6653\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.10.35\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-10-351.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"361\" /></a>\n\nBut we\'ve saved that that search too. Every time we look for a keyword and do that Scrivener will prompt you to create a collection with the name of the search. It takes a jiffy to do all three point of view characters. Once we\'ve done that we just click on Collections and we see each of the saved searches.\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-6654 aligncenter\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.12.18\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-12-181.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"267\" height=\"625\" /></p>\nChoose any one and you see all the scenes with that keyword in the order they appear in the manuscript. And see them instantly. Click on Binder and you see the full narrative.\n\nAmazing stuff. And dead easy once you understand how to set it up. The one thing that baffled me at first was how to get rid of the Collections when I wanted them out of the way. It\'s the little x-mark close button at the bottom of the Binder, below.\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-6655 aligncenter\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.11.56\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-11-561.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"241\" height=\"87\" /></p>\nIf you write multiple POV and/or multiple location or time period stories of some complexity this can make your life a lot easier. If you\'re writing a first person linear story that has no curves and dark corners don\'t bother. No need to make your life more complicated than it is.\n\nScrivener is full of tricks and wheezes. I doubt I know more than a fraction. But we\'re not here to master software. We\'re here to write books. So focus, as ever, is what it\'s about.','How to manage POV and time zone with &#039;Collections&#039;','','publish','open','open','','how-to-manage-pov-and-time-zone-with-collections','','','2011-01-05 11:16:23','2011-01-05 11:16:23','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6646',0,'post','',6),(6667,1,'2011-01-06 11:10:56','2011-01-06 11:10:56','','Screen shot 2011-01-06 at 11.10.23','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-06-at-11-10-23','','','2011-01-06 11:10:56','2011-01-06 11:10:56','',6666,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-06-at-11-10-231.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6670,1,'2011-01-06 11:15:07','2011-01-06 11:15:07','','Screen shot 2011-01-06 at 11.14.24','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-06-at-11-14-24','','','2011-01-06 11:15:07','2011-01-06 11:15:07','',6666,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-06-at-11-14-241.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6666,1,'2011-01-06 11:28:51','2011-01-06 11:28:51','There\'ve been a couple of comments lately about using timelines while writing a book. Scrivener doesn\'t have a timeline feature, if by that you mean some visual flow chart that shows you the progression of narrative threads across a set period, be it days, weeks or years. Nor does Word, of course.\n\nThere are easy ways to monitor time, though. Any word processor that handles comments can do it. Go to the beginning of a scene and put in a time, date, location or anything else. Here\'s an uncorrected draft of a scene from <em>The Fallen Angel</em> in Apple Pages using that (yes, I know about the typo, I did say \'uncorrected\'). Dead simple.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-06-at-11-10-231.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6667\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-06 at 11.10.23\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-06-at-11-10-231.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"203\" /></a>To be honest this is as much as I need when it comes to monitoring time. It tells me when and where a scene starts. So when I look at other comments (or notes in the Scrivener inspector) I can see if things don\'t add up. \'Accuracy\' is a movable feast in fiction but time needs to feel right. You can\'t have people going from Rome to Florence in forty five minutes. Notes such as these are good anchors to make sure your narrative is grounded in physical reality.\n\nWhen people talk about fiction timelines though they\'re usually thinking of something visual. The Mac fiction app <a href=\"http://www.marinersoftware.com/products/storymill/\" target=\"_blank\">Storymill</a> has this feature. It looks like this.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-06-at-11-14-241.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6670\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-06 at 11.14.24\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-06-at-11-14-241.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"335\" /></a>Storymill\'s a great piece of software and well worth giving a trial if you\'re a Mac user. I struggled with the timeline side of it though. The current method has its limitations, <a href=\"https://marinersoftware.tenderapp.com/discussions/storymill/1141-timelinestoryline-troubles\" target=\"_blank\">though they may well soon be fixed</a>. Timelines are difficult notions, I suspect. They may sound simple but in reality they\'re complicated, and different for everyone.\n\nEven if they did work the way I do I\'m still not convinced I\'d use them. Tagging each scene with a date and location seems to work fine for me. Adding a visual narrative also subjects me to yet another layer of information, one that the reader, remember, will ever see. The more complex we make a book project in terms of its production, the more we may distance ourselves from that all-important manuscript. I want the greater part of my limited brain power to go on the words, since that\'s all readers will use to follow the story. Introducing timelines and brainstorming and other \'inspirational\' devices may make my life easier -- and I emphasise <em>may -- </em>but run the risk of getting between writer and reader unless you\'re very competent at handling them (and I\'m not sure I would be).\n\nThere\'s a broader point to be made about time in fiction too: writers agonise over it in ways that readers rarely do. Yes, obvious time mishaps -- ridiculous journeys, people who never sleep -- need to be avoided because they will be spotted. But minor disjoints -- an hour here or there, a lost day -- probably don\'t matter much. Readers understand this is fiction. They want a good story that feels real. Not the dead hand of actual reality.\n\nAn example: DNA. You can\'t write a modern crime story without considering this. In actual forensic work DNA tests can take absolute ages. Weeks, months even. If crime stories followed strict and \'real\' DNA procedures stories would become extended and have long gaps between meaningful events. Who wants to read that?\n\nSo most of us will cheat. Lie. Make it up. We\'ll have DNA tests coming back to match the required rhythm of the narrative.\n\nIs this \'wrong\'? No. We get filed under \'fiction\' remember.\n\nWould a visual timeline help? Not for me. To be honest I don\'t agonise over this subject too much. There are bigger worries to deal with, and they always, always come back to characterisation and events, not dates and times.\n\nBut you, of course, may be different.','Timelines: don&#039;t get hung up on them','','publish','open','open','','timelines-dont-get-hung-up-on-them','','','2011-01-06 11:28:51','2011-01-06 11:28:51','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6666',0,'post','',1),(6686,1,'2011-01-07 15:26:10','2011-01-07 15:26:10','','iAnnotate','','inherit','open','open','','photo-1','','','2011-01-07 15:26:10','2011-01-07 15:26:10','',6685,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/photo-11.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6689,1,'2011-01-07 15:40:07','2011-01-07 15:40:07','','goodrdedit','','inherit','open','open','','goodrdedit','','','2011-01-07 15:40:07','2011-01-07 15:40:07','',6685,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/goodrdedit1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6690,1,'2011-01-07 15:41:48','2011-01-07 15:41:48','','goodreadann','','inherit','open','open','','goodreadann','','','2011-01-07 15:41:48','2011-01-07 15:41:48','',6685,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/goodreadann1.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6691,1,'2011-01-07 15:45:00','2011-01-07 15:45:00','','pdfexpert','','inherit','open','open','','pdfexpert','','','2011-01-07 15:45:00','2011-01-07 15:45:00','',6685,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdfexpert1.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6692,1,'2011-01-07 15:46:27','2011-01-07 15:46:27','','pdfnote','','inherit','open','open','','pdfnote','','','2011-01-07 15:46:27','2011-01-07 15:46:27','',6685,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdfnote1.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6693,1,'2011-01-07 15:56:08','2011-01-07 15:56:08','','pdfdraw','','inherit','open','open','','pdfdraw','','','2011-01-07 15:56:08','2011-01-07 15:56:08','',6685,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdfdraw1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6694,1,'2011-01-07 15:57:02','2011-01-07 15:57:02','','pdftools','','inherit','open','open','','pdftools','','','2011-01-07 15:57:02','2011-01-07 15:57:02','',6685,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdftools1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6695,1,'2011-01-07 16:04:27','2011-01-07 16:04:27','','mac','','inherit','open','open','','mac','','','2011-01-07 16:04:27','2011-01-07 16:04:27','',6685,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/mac1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6685,1,'2011-01-07 16:14:25','2011-01-07 16:14:25','My good friend David Headley of that splendid London institution the <a href=\"http://www.goldsborobooks.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Goldsboro book store</a> asked me on Twitter yesterday, \'Can you edit a book on an iPad?\' The only answer I feel able to give within the limitation of 140 characters is: no.\n\nI tried when I first got my iPad a few months ago and failed miserably. But time, and software, moves on. I have another MS to read. So I thought I\'d give it another go. And the answer this time has to be... perhaps. If you accept the limitations and you choose the right software.<!--more-->\n\nLet\'s deal with a simple issue first: can you import a Word document and edit it in a safe way? Not in any way I\'d trust. Pages on the iPad will open Word. But you have no change tracking or comments, as you have on the Mac version of Pages. All you can do is change the text. Using a very unsatisfactory keyboard. With no revision history. You\'d be mad to try frankly.\n\nSo however you look at it the only way to deal with this is by reading and annotating a pdf. Fine, but let\'s think of the practical limitations. I always print out a manuscript and go through it line by line, page by page, with a red pen in hand. Nothing will cure me of that habit. But I read and reread a MS and I\'m open to the idea that at least one or two of those passes could be handled digitally.\n\nThe problem is we think marking up a paper MS with a red pen is a simple exercise. It isn\'t. Think of it this way: you can hold that pen and turn the page, scratch your nose, answer the phone, drink a cup of coffee. Computers aren\'t that smart. No tablet I\'ve seen yet has come with the obvious mechanical tool to turn pages -- up and down buttons. You have to swipe or tap the screen somehow. Oh, but that\'s how you use the pen too. So you have to do something to choose between these actions and <em>tell</em> that dumb piece of plastic, \'No, I\'ve stopped scribbling now. Take me to the next page\'.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/photo-11.png\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6686\" title=\"iAnnotate\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/photo-11.png?w=225\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" /></a>This was what drove me nuts with the first iPad pdf app I tried, iAnnotate. You can flick through pages easily but when you want to annotate it looks like this...\n\nClick for a bigger view. Someone has been taking the icon pills for this app. Everything seems to come with whacking great pictures and text boxes. All I want to do is circle a word or scribble a note. But to do that I have to flick the pen icon, see that hideously big lump of stuff appear on the screen -- which I find deeply distracting -- make my scribble then click the gigantic red close button to make it go away.\n\nThat was money wasted (you have to buy iPad apps before you can try them, a neat trick I must say). I experimented with a few other pdf apps after that and none of them seemed particularly convincing. But there\'ve been some updates of late and here, I think, are two that are worth a look, <a href=\"http://www.goodiware.com/goodreader.html\" target=\"_blank\">Goodreader</a> ($2.99) and <a href=\"http://readdle.com/pdfexpert_ipad\" target=\"_blank\">PDF Expert</a> ($9.99).\n\nThese are both powerful pieces of software that do a lot of things I don\'t need or frankly understand. All I want is to be able to flick through a long pdf manuscript and make notes and bookmarks.\n\nThe cheaper one first. Goodreader doesn\'t get in your way when you\'re reading a manuscript. You just place your finger on the spot where you want to make your annotation. The word may be selected (I\'m not quite sure how this works) and you get this menu.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/goodrdedit1.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6689\" title=\"goodrdedit\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/goodrdedit1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"215\" /></a>As you can see in the preceding paragraph I\'ve crossed out the word \'dish\'. I did this by choosing markup and delete. You can write a note, highlight the text or draw -- in other words scribble some words. Do that and it looks like this...\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/goodreadann1.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6690\" title=\"goodreadann\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/goodreadann1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"194\" /></a>I used an inexpensive stylus to write that. But you could just use your finger. It all worked fine but you do have to flick through a lot of menus to get to freehand drawing in Goodreader. If you want to scribble on your manuscript a lot this could get tedious.\n\nPDF Expert has very much the same idea. Click on a word or line and you get this.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdfexpert1.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6691\" title=\"pdfexpert\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdfexpert1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"151\" /></a><a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdfnote1.png\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6692\" title=\"pdfnote\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdfnote1.png?w=225\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" /></a>Click on Note and you get a rather nattier looking note feature than Goodreader (though in practice they do the same thing).\n\nI did like this pop-up note feature on both programs, by the way, especially PDF Expert. It seemed easy and logical. PDF Expert also puts a little icon on the side of the page which is rather more obvious than the small mark you get with Goodreader. Agents and publishers, who will approach manuscript revisions in a different way to authors, might find these particularly useful. They\'re good for general observations, not the individual word criticism an author might make at revision stage.\n\nWriting freehand is <em>much</em> easier with this app than in Goodreader. You just tap at the top of the screen and get this menu which hides normally when you\'re reading. The first pen is a freehand drawing tool (the second is for signatures, the third for help, the fourth searches, the fifth bookmarks, and the plus sign will set a bookmark).\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdfdraw1.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6693\" title=\"pdfdraw\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdfdraw1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"527\" /></a>The help function is excellent too.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdftools1.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6694\" title=\"pdftools\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdftools1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"483\" /></a>\n\nHere\'s a little video showing you PDF Expert in action on next year\'s book, <em>The Plague Doctor.</em>\n\nYou get what you pay for I guess. Goodreader\'s excellent value but if I were to use the iPad for revision a lot I think the $9.99 (£5.99 when I bought it in the UK) is worthwhile. PDF Expert is very simple to use and very logically designed. Both these apps will work with a Dropbox account for sending and receiving files which is a real blessing given how hard it can be to get stuff on and off the iPad (I had to email those screenshots to myself for pity\'s sake). A decent stylus would be useful for anyone wanting to scribble a lot. I bought a Boxwave stylus because the reviews said it was the best. Don\'t much like it. If there\'s nothing better than that I guess it\'s back to trying to write with a fingertip, which isn\'t wonderful.\n\nCan this completely replace pen and paper? Not for me. Not for a while anyway. But it\'s getting closer. And here\'s the most intriguing thing that occurred to me. Stupidly I kept thinking I\'d transfer the annotated pdf back to the computer and read it there against the uncorrected manuscript, dealing with the changes along the way.\n\nBut why? Pop the iPad into a stand, set it next to your main screen and use it like an old-fashioned copy holder, checking revision notes there against the original on your Mac or PC. <em>This I like.</em>\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/mac1.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6695\" title=\"mac\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/mac1.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"404\" /></a>\n\nI hope that long-winded ramble answers some of your questions, David. We are getting there but, given that iPad 2 is just round the corner, along with a lot of Android and Windows tablets, my inclination right now would be to wait for the next generation of machines before making the leap.','Can you really revise a book on your iPad?','','publish','open','open','','can-you-really-revise-a-book-on-your-ipad','','','2011-01-07 16:14:25','2011-01-07 16:14:25','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6685',0,'post','',0),(6720,1,'2011-01-17 07:53:12','2011-01-17 07:53:12','','Pages markup','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-17-at-08-51-01','','','2011-01-17 07:53:12','2011-01-17 07:53:12','',6718,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-17-at-08-51-011.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6721,1,'2011-01-17 07:57:39','2011-01-17 07:57:39','','Pages setup','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-17-at-08-55-39','','','2011-01-17 07:57:39','2011-01-17 07:57:39','',6718,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-17-at-08-55-391.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6722,1,'2011-01-17 08:03:53','2011-01-17 08:03:53','','excisions','','inherit','open','open','','excisions','','','2011-01-17 08:03:53','2011-01-17 08:03:53','',6718,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/excisions1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6723,1,'2011-01-17 08:06:42','2011-01-17 08:06:42','','photo','','inherit','open','open','','photo','','','2011-01-17 08:06:42','2011-01-17 08:06:42','',6718,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/photo1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6725,1,'2011-01-17 08:09:01','2011-01-17 08:09:01','','pdf','','inherit','open','open','','pdf','','','2011-01-17 08:09:01','2011-01-17 08:09:01','',6718,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdf1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6718,1,'2011-01-17 08:16:26','2011-01-17 08:16:26','As I said a while back, I think the iPad -- with PDF Expert -- is an interesting medium for revising a manuscript, but it will never replace paper for me. Right now I\'m putting the revise of next year\'s book <em>The Plague Doctor</em> to bed.\n\nI tried to do that on the iPad but gave up and resorted to printing out the pages. It really is the easiest solution. You see more, you\'re reading the book away from the computer screen, you can flick backwards and forwards easily.\n\nTrouble is time constraints meant I had to finish that process here in Florence, in a rented apartment. I no longer have a printer. How do I do the final <em>final</em> revise? The iPad of course...\n\nWhat am I trying to do with this last pass of the book? Simple: revise the changes. I have to take it on faith that I can\'t do any more to the unchanged bits. That\'s going to have to go through the line editor: I\'m blind to the old stuff by this stage. But I do need to look at the new text I\'ve written in, since that\'s raw and unrevised too.\n\nThe simple way to do this within Word (or Apple Pages) is to turn on change tracking. Then you get the usual coloured text for additions, moves and deletions. You can print these out from Word. The trouble is you then get the large revisions sidebar added to the page which, for me, makes them unreadable on the iPad. Either you zoom into to lose the sidebar or you zoom out for the full page and the main text is unreadable.\n\nI couldn\'t find a way to print out a Word document the way I wanted to see it: with the changed text in the main document but without any sidebar. If someone out there knows how do please let me know. But there\'s always Pages...\n\n<span style=\"font-size:13px;font-family:Georgia, \'Times New Roman\', \'Bitstream Charter\', Times, serif;line-height:19px;\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6720\" title=\"Pages markup\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-17-at-08-51-011.png?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"109\" /></span>\n\n<span style=\"font-size:13px;font-family:Georgia, \'Times New Roman\', \'Bitstream Charter\', Times, serif;line-height:19px;\"> </span>With that you can choose to hide the side pane while still seeing your changes.  I also want to make sure my additions are underlined and my excisions crossed out.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-17-at-08-55-391.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6721\" title=\"Pages setup\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-17-at-08-55-391.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"151\" /></a>\n\nIf you don\'t do this you just get coloured text for what\'s changed and delete. The same colour out of the box, which is confusing.\n\nWith these selections I then export to pdf and transfer to the iPad using Dropbox. Inside PDF Expert (here with the annotation tools showing, though they are usually out of the way for reading) it now looks like this. Changed text in blue with a helpful black line in the side to show.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/excisions1.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6722\" title=\"excisions\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/excisions1.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"553\" /></a>\n\nI still find this a bit too much information frankly. I think it\'s easier to look at the new text only, not the excisions, which I saw anyway on paper. And, of course, I can go back to those easily on the machine. So I choose the \'view without delete\' option which you can see in the first screenshot above and get this.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/photo1.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6723\" title=\"photo\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/photo1.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"556\" /></a>\n\nI then scribble on bits that need changing and when I\'m finished go yto PDF Expert\'s bookmark menu which keeps a list of where the annotations are.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdf1.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6725\" title=\"pdf\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pdf1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"501\" /></a>\n\nAnd that\'s it really. Hope that was useful -- and you have a few paragraphs from next year\'s book there too.','Revising on the iPad part two','','publish','open','open','','revising-on-the-ipad-part-two','','','2011-01-17 08:16:26','2011-01-17 08:16:26','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6718',0,'post','',0),(6735,1,'2011-01-18 08:12:29','2011-01-18 08:12:29','','Casio EX-H20G','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-11-42','','','2011-01-18 08:12:29','2011-01-18 08:12:29','',6734,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-11-421.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6736,1,'2011-01-18 08:18:46','2011-01-18 08:18:46','','Santa Croce night','','inherit','open','open','','santa-croce-night-001','','','2011-01-18 08:18:46','2011-01-18 08:18:46','',6734,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/santa-croce-night-0011.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6737,1,'2011-01-18 08:22:49','2011-01-18 08:22:49','','Photo map','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-02-20','','','2011-01-18 08:22:49','2011-01-18 08:22:49','',6734,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-02-201.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6738,1,'2011-01-18 08:27:43','2011-01-18 08:27:43','','Track','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-05-51','','','2011-01-18 08:27:43','2011-01-18 08:27:43','',6734,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-05-51.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6739,1,'2011-01-18 08:35:30','2011-01-18 08:35:30','','Gates 001','','inherit','open','open','','gates-001','','','2011-01-18 08:35:30','2011-01-18 08:35:30','',6734,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/gates-001.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6734,1,'2011-01-18 08:40:43','2011-01-18 08:40:43','As I\'ve said here on several occasions, photography is important for me when I\'m planning a book. I take lots of photos before I start and refer to them constantly while I\'m writing. They help me set the feel and tone of the story and remind me of what I wanted to achieve when, months later, I\'m hard at work in England.\n\nBut there\'s a problem with all these photos. It\'s called filing. I am the world\'s worst filer. I have photos that look lovely and potentially useful were it not for the fact I don\'t actually know where they were taken. Wouldn\'t it be good if the camera did that geographic filing for me?\n\n<!--more-->I think so. A couple of years ago, while writing <em>The Fallen Angel</em>, I bought a Nikon camera with GPS. It took lovely pictures. The GPS capabilities were appalling. It took ages to get a location fix and frequently lost it. It soon became a present for the son (he gets most of my old cameras).\n\nBut time moves on. Now I\'m in Florence with another GPS-equipped camera. A <em>hybrid</em> GPS camera if you will. It\'s brand new, called the Casio EX-H20G and cost me £249.99 tax free at Gatwick, £100 less than some places sell it for on the High Street. It\'s a modest looking, slightly chunky upmarket 14 megapixel point and shoot and looks like this...\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-11-421.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6735\" title=\"Casio EX-H20G\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-11-421.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"329\" /></a>\n\nThe GPS is a bit out of the ordinary. It does the standard thing of picking up location from satellites. But then, as far as I understand it, the thing also has an internal motion sensor. So once you lose sight of the satellite, by going indoors for example, the camera works out where you are itself (don\'t ask for details -- I don\'t know either). It also comes with a built-in map system covering the whole world. This means you can view where your pictures were taken on the camera itself using a map (and find out your present position too). And it has a database of popular cities and destinations such as Florence, which allow it to tag well-known places automatically and suggest places for you to visit (if you want that).\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/santa-croce-night-0011.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright size-large wp-image-6736\" title=\"Santa Croce night\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/santa-croce-night-0011.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"262\" height=\"349\" /></a>Unlike the Nikon it seems to have an incredibly long battery life too. Does the geotagging work? Oh yes. Here\'s a photo I took of the basilica of Santacroce at night (without flash I should say, the slight blurring is probably hand-held camera movement). Click on the image to see the full size picture unretouched.\n\nI\'m not going to talk image quality here. I wouldn\'t expect the Casio to be as good as the more expensive Ricoh cameras I used last year in Venice for <em>The Plague Doctor. </em>It\'s much more an everyday point and shoot model than they are. And frankly quality is not <em>that</em> important to me. I photograph all kinds of things that most people wouldn\'t bother with -- street detail, rubbish, signs, nameplates. This is for research not a photo album.\n\nNo, it\'s the location information that interests me. If I pull those photos into any common photo app, be it Picasa or iPhoto (here it\'s Aperture) I see this...\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-02-201.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Photo map\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-02-201.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"384\" /></a></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Pinpoints for all the places I\'ve taken pictures and an easy way to see how many are at each location. The naming of the photos as Santa Croce was done by the camera by the way, not me. It has the main Florence sights listed in its database of locations. All I did was point and shoot. This is good.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Another remarkable thing the camera does (if you apply a new update from Casio and make sure you format your SD card too) is keep recording GPS data when it\'s turned off. Even when it\'s in a pocket. I mooched around Florence yesterday seeing a variety of interesting things. When I got home I saved my GPS information as a kml file, the kind used by Google Earth. When I pulled in there I saw where I walked. Unfortunately Earth seems to stick a distracting label on every one of the many waypoints. So it\'s easy to see this by uploading that same file to the free <a href=\"http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/\" target=\"_blank\">GPS Visualiser</a> service. Here were yesterday\'s peregrinations when I was out with the camera, which was mostly turned off and inside a jacket pocket.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\"><a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-05-51.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6738\" title=\"Track\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-18-at-09-05-51.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"480\" /></a></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">That snail trail of marks is pretty accurate, though I didn\'t actually wander into the river Arno at any stage. As a research tool this is, I have to say, incredibly useful. I can fire away and have an automatic record of the photo location.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">The big test for the internal motion sensor comes later today though when I walk through the Vasari Corridor. This is a private passageway built for the Medicis which runs all the way from the Uffizi on the north bank of the Arno, across the top of the Ponte Vecchio and comes out in the gardens of the Pitti Palace on the south bank. All of it indoors.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Will my clever little camera be able to handle that? We\'ll see. And as to picture quality... I will put up a single Florence gallery on Flickr at the end of this week so you can all judge. I think it takes very nice if unremarkable photos though. Here\'s a close up with lots of zoom of the Adam and Eve panel from the Gates of Paradise on the Baptistery.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\"><a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/gates-001.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6739\" title=\"Gates 001\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/gates-001.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>Not an easy subject given the people around these doors, and the zoom copes very well. More later when I\'ve taken this thing through the Medici\'s corridor...</p>','A camera that knows where you are','','publish','open','open','','a-camera-that-knows-where-you-are','','','2011-01-18 08:40:43','2011-01-18 08:40:43','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6734',0,'post','',1),(6751,1,'2011-01-18 21:18:44','2011-01-18 21:18:44','','bridge 002','','inherit','open','open','','bridge-002','','','2011-01-18 21:18:44','2011-01-18 21:18:44','',6745,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridge-002.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6752,1,'2011-01-18 21:21:06','2011-01-18 21:21:06','','ponte1 004','','inherit','open','open','','ponte1-004','','','2011-01-18 21:21:06','2011-01-18 21:21:06','',6745,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ponte1-004.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6755,1,'2011-01-18 21:26:31','2011-01-18 21:26:31','','ponte2 005','','inherit','open','open','','ponte2-005','','','2011-01-18 21:26:31','2011-01-18 21:26:31','',6745,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ponte2-005.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6756,1,'2011-01-18 21:29:41','2011-01-18 21:29:41','','ponte3 007','','inherit','open','open','','ponte3-007','','','2011-01-18 21:29:41','2011-01-18 21:29:41','',6745,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ponte3-007.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6745,1,'2011-01-18 21:39:45','2011-01-18 21:39:45','I have Rick Steves\' guide to Florence and Tuscany in my apartment here in Florence. It\'s excellent stuff on the whole. Today I was lucky enough to walk down the Vasari Corridor, the Medici\'s private walkway from the Palazzo Vecchio on the north side of the Arno, over the Ponte Vecchio, winding up at their home in the Palazzo Pitti by the Boboli Gardens.\n\nRick says the Vasari Corridor is hard to get into and probably not worth it. Boy is he wrong.\n\n<!--more-->Some facts first. The <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasari_Corridor\" target=\"_blank\">Vasari Corridor</a> is an extraordinary private passageway originally built for the Medici. It runs from Florence\'s first town hall in the Palazzo Vecchio, through the Uffizi Gallery, along the Arno river, over the top of the Ponte Vecchio shops, through the church of Santa Felicita and then winds up in the Pitti Palace,  the final home of the Medici family who were Florence\'s royal family in all but name. It meant they could walk to the centre of the city without mixing with the hoi-polloi and just to make it nicer they filled it with works of art.\n\nIt\'s still there today, though the bit from the Palazzo Vecchio is closed because it\'s used for storage. You can walk down the Vasari Corridor but you need to book and it costs -- 85 euros in my case. And you won\'t be able to do it for a while either. From next October, on the present schedule, it will close for three years for renovation work (though this being Italy dates are, as always, vague).\n\nOur tour began with a one-hour trip round the key parts of the Uffizi. Then we went into the corridor itself down a set of stairs, with two Uffizi guard ladies following on behind out charming American guide to make sure we only took pictures out of the few windows, not of the corridor itself.\n\nAfter that we descended into the first floor of the Uffizi and what was once private apartments, all razed for the Medici\'s designs. It\'s quite something to move out of the Uffizi\'s hustle and bustle into this cold, quiet private area. There\'s no heating, no air conditioning for the paintings, which is one reason why the place is about to close for work.\n\nThe corridor is quite narrow -- here\'s the bridge that takes it from the Palazzo Vecchio to the Uffizi.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridge-002.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6751\" title=\"bridge 002\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridge-002.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>Once you\'re inside you get some interesting views too. Here\'s the Ponte Vecchio from the Uffizi part. You see that tiled narrow bit leading to the bridge? That\'s the corridor we\'re about to walk down.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ponte1-004.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6752\" title=\"ponte1 004\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ponte1-004.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>The entire corridor is lined with paintings. Some -- most, let\'s be honest -- passable. But once you get into the bit over the bridge you get a collection of self portraits by some well-known artists and some of them are pretty astonishing. Among them, I was amazed to see, was Carlo Levi, author of the wonderful <em>Christ Stopped at Eboli</em> which he wrote in Florence as a Jew in hiding from the Nazis. This isn\'t just ancient history, you see.\n\nThere are views from the occasional windows (which you can photograph). Here\'s one, part way across the Ponte Vecchio.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ponte2-005.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6755\" title=\"ponte2 005\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ponte2-005.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>\n\nHalfway across the bridge you meet a set of windows which seem quite modern. They are. Mussolini had them installed for a meeting with Hitler. There is a local story that Hitler so enjoyed the view that he ordered the Ponte Vecchio be saved from destruction when Italy was falling to the Allies and all the other Florentine bridges were being destroyed. I find this a little hard to believe. Would a man who could murder millions really be bothered about a bridge?\n\nBut the window\'s still there and this is a view from it...\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ponte3-007.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6756\" title=\"ponte3 007\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ponte3-007.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>\n\nAfter that the corridor wanders through the church and then on to the Pitti Palace, where we emerge in the Boboli Gardens, next to the famous grotto. The corridor does wind into the palace itself but visitors are kept out of that bit.\n\nThis seems a very short account of something that lasted three hours. It really was an extraordinary experience, one greatly enhanced by the knowledge and enthusiasm of our guide. And there has to be a guide of course, since you can\'t do this without one. I normally shun tourist arrangements but frankly this one was so well organised, and with such genuine knowledge, I may be more accommodating in future.\n\nIf you want to do the Vasari Corridor yourself you have until October to get in there. My visit was organised through <a href=\"http://www.florencetown.com/eng/monthly-suggested-choice/30/vasari-corridor-available-all-through-winter-20102011.html\" target=\"_blank\">Florence Town.</a> It was excellent and I certainly recommend them.\n\nHow did my clever GPS camera fare on this trip? I\'ll tell you tomorrow when I\'ve looked at the files.','A walk down the Vasari corridor','','publish','open','open','','a-walk-down-the-vasari-corridor','','','2011-01-18 21:39:45','2011-01-18 21:39:45','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6745',0,'post','',4),(6769,1,'2011-01-19 08:12:22','2011-01-19 08:12:22','','map','','inherit','open','open','','map','','','2011-01-19 08:12:22','2011-01-19 08:12:22','',6768,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/map.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6770,1,'2011-01-19 08:13:45','2011-01-19 08:13:45','','Screen shot 2011-01-19 at 09.04.56','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-19-at-09-04-56','','','2011-01-19 08:13:45','2011-01-19 08:13:45','',6768,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-19-at-09-04-56.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(6771,1,'2011-01-19 08:17:34','2011-01-19 08:17:34','','corrid 009','','inherit','open','open','','corrid-009','','','2011-01-19 08:17:34','2011-01-19 08:17:34','',6768,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/corrid-009.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6775,1,'2011-01-19 08:24:21','2011-01-19 08:24:21','','corrid 009','','inherit','open','open','','corrid-009-2','','','2011-01-19 08:24:21','2011-01-19 08:24:21','',6768,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/corrid-0091.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6776,1,'2011-01-19 08:24:57','2011-01-19 08:24:57','','bridge 010','','inherit','open','open','','bridge-010','','','2011-01-19 08:24:57','2011-01-19 08:24:57','',6768,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridge-010.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6768,1,'2011-01-19 08:25:14','2011-01-19 08:25:14','<a title=\"A walk down the Vasari corridor\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2011/01/18/a-walk-down-the-vasari-corridor/\">I promised to let you know </a>how my new super GPS-equipped Casio EX-H20G fared when I walked through the Vasari Corridor, going through the Uffizi gallery then down the Medici\'s private internal passage, along the Arno river, across the top of the Ponte Vecchio, then emerging in the Boboli Gardens of the Pitti Palace on the other side.\n\nBy rights a GPS should be clueless about this since all of the journey is indoors and frankly I didn\'t know which way I was pointing most of the time. Since cameras were banned except for pointing out the occasional window I couldn’t take photos either.<!--more-->\n\nHere\'s the actual route of the corridor which is roughly one kilometre in length (I\'m a bit hazy about the bit in the Boboli Gardens so don\'t quote me on that by the way).\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/map.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6769\" title=\"map\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/map.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"402\" /></a>\n\nAnd here\'s what the camera made of it...\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-19-at-09-04-56.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6770\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-19 at 09.04.56\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-19-at-09-04-56.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"484\" height=\"429\" /></a>\n\nNot bad. It does dump me in the Arno at some stage and it didn\'t get a large section of the corridor running along the river and across the bridge. But it picked up the outdoor locations very quickly and accurately.\n\nWhen it loses the satellite signal the camera tries to guess your position by monitoring your movements using an internal sensor. The corridor involves a lot of up and down and roundabout walking. I can\'t complain it fooled the Casio a bit. It was rather like a touch of potholing in some ways.\n\nStill an impressive camera when it comes to the GPS though. But I have a few things to learn about picture quality. Some of the features offering \'super\' and \'premium\' quality do result in photos that seem overprocessed to me. I think I\'ll turn them off for the duration of the trip.\n\nHere\'s the corridor as it crosses the Ponte Vecchio.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridge-010.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6776\" title=\"bridge 010\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridge-010.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>','Casio&#039;s GPS camera gets the ultimate test','','publish','open','open','','casios-gps-camera-gets-the-ultimate-test','','','2011-01-19 08:25:14','2011-01-19 08:25:14','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6768',0,'post','',1),(6780,1,'2011-01-19 16:00:16','2011-01-19 16:00:16','','Ricoh new b/w mode','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-83','','','2011-01-19 16:00:16','2011-01-19 16:00:16','',6779,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bw-011.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6781,1,'2011-01-19 16:03:08','2011-01-19 16:03:08','','Baptistery','','inherit','open','open','','exif_jpeg_picture-84','','','2011-01-19 16:03:08','2011-01-19 16:03:08','',6779,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/baptistery-012.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6779,1,'2011-01-19 16:27:43','2011-01-19 16:27:43','After a few days playing with my GPS Casio camera I took out my favourite photo toy today, a trusty Ricoh GR Digital III. Fixed lens, only ten megapixels but a pricier, classier beast, though it lacks that useful GPS feature of course.\n\nIt\'s funny how cameras change these days too. Ricoh recently released a firmware update for this model which added some features, including a grainy black and white mode designed to look like old-fashioned film photography.\n\nHad to try it of course.\n\n<!--more-->Here\'s one example...\n\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/hewsons/sets/72157625860723334/\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6780\" title=\"Ricoh new b/w mode\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bw-011.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>This being Florence I couldn\'t stay in monochrome all the time, of course. It would be a crime to photograph the roof of the baptistery in black and white. Click on either photograph to go to the Flickr gallery with the originals.\n\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/hewsons/sets/72157625860723334/\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6781\" title=\"Baptistery\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/baptistery-012.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>','Some black and white (mainly) photos of Florence','','publish','open','open','','some-black-and-white-mainly-photos-of-florence','','','2011-01-19 16:27:43','2011-01-19 16:27:43','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6779',0,'post','',2),(6810,1,'2011-01-24 10:17:45','2011-01-24 10:17:45','','snapshot','','inherit','open','open','','snapshot','','','2011-01-24 10:17:45','2011-01-24 10:17:45','',6809,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/snapshot.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6811,1,'2011-01-24 10:18:49','2011-01-24 10:18:49','','snap inspect','','inherit','open','open','','snap-inspect','','','2011-01-24 10:18:49','2011-01-24 10:18:49','',6809,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/snap-inspect.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6812,1,'2011-01-24 10:20:20','2011-01-24 10:20:20','','track change','','inherit','open','open','','track-change','','','2011-01-24 10:20:20','2011-01-24 10:20:20','',6809,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/track-change.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(6809,1,'2011-01-24 10:23:44','2011-01-24 10:23:44','It\'s amazing how rapidly Scrivener has developed over the years. I recall back when I first started using it, perhaps in 2007/8, whining that it didn\'t have much in the way of revision facilities or change tracking. Keith, the developer, said very honestly that he didn\'t have the resources to do something as fancy as the very capable change tracking you see in Microsoft Word.\n\nHow things have changed. Scrivener 2\'s approach to revisions and change tracking is different to Word\'s, and markedly superior in some ways. It\'s also less than obvious to find. But worth it, trust me. Here\'s how to get there...\n\nHere\'s the problem. We want to carry out a major revise on an invididual scene. One so radical we may not be sure it\'s a great idea, so we\'re reluctant to lose the first version we have.\n\nOK. Choose the document you want to work on then hit Command 5 or choose this option from the menu.\n\n<a href=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/snapshot.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6810\" title=\"snapshot\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/snapshot.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"443\" /></a>Scrivener will now take a snapshot of the entire scene and store it separately in an inspector window.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6811\" title=\"snap inspect\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/snap-inspect.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"258\" height=\"504\" />As you can see you can give your snapshots titles and take multiple ones of the same scene. You can rollback to the original at the click of a button. Or look at what\'s changed between that and your revision too, just by clicking Compare.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6812\" title=\"track change\" src=\"http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/track-change.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"437\" />Deletions appear in red, additions in blue (sorry but this is a work in progress so I can\'t really show you the actual text).\n\nI like change tracking in the latest versions of Word. And as always I have to emphasise: Word is how a final book will normally be delivered. But this is probably a more subtle and powerful way to keep track of changes on a heavily-edited book. So congratulations to Keith for coming up with such a clever solution.\n\nIt is currently Version 2, Mac only, by the way.','Revision and change tracking in Scrivener','','publish','open','open','','revision-and-change-tracking-in-scrivener','','','2011-01-24 10:23:44','2011-01-24 10:23:44','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6809',0,'post','',6),(6794,1,'2011-01-24 15:12:56','2011-01-24 15:12:56','I\'m delighted, as you might imagine, to be able to pass on this news release from my literary agency Blake Friedmann...\n<blockquote>The Blake Friedmann Agency is pleased to announce that a deal has been signed between David Hewson and Bavaria Media Italia for all eleven of Hewson’s contemporary crime novels based in Italy.\n\nBavaria Media Italia optioned screen rights in order to develop and produce a major international series of six television movies. The series is planned to be shot in English by Bavaria which will work in conjunction with co-production partners from several European territories. Bavaria’s Philipp Kreuzer will Executive Produce the series; Bavaria Media TV will handle international sales. The concept for the series is currently being written in Rome.\n\nThe deal was negotiated for Hewson by Conrad Williams of Blake Friedmann’s Film/TV department and for Bavaria by Philipp Kreuzer and legal counsel Georg Hoess.\n\nSaid David Hewson: “It is enormously flattering to have eleven of your books snapped up for option in one swoop and with such high ambitions for English language, feature length TV dramas.  There is a lot of work to be done on a project of this magnitude. I am happy that it has already started.”\n\nBavaria plans to develop and partner this series in 2011 with production slated for 2012. It will be shot on location in and around central Rome.</blockquote>\n<!--more-->I\'m very grateful to Conrad Williams of Blake Friedmann for concluding this very wide-ranging agreement. <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavaria_Film\" target=\"_blank\">Bavaria</a> are one of the biggest media groups in Europe and have optioned all current ten books in the series, including two yet to be published titles, <em>The Fallen Angel</em> and next year\'s <em>The Plague Doctor. </em>They have also optioned the standalone <em>The Cemetery of Secrets (US Lucifer\'s Shadow) </em>which ties in with the fourth Costa book, <em>The Lizard\'s Bite. </em>It\'s particularly gratifying that, while these are destined to be English language productions, the initial interest came from Rome where, as the release says, the project will be based.\n\nAnd quick answers to two questions I\'m being asked already...\n<ul>\n	<li><em>Will you write the scripts? </em>No. I\'m a novelist, not a scriptwriter, but I will be there to offer my thoughts if needed.</li>\n	<li><em>Who will play Costa, Teresa, Peroni... </em>Sorry... far too early to say.</li>\n</ul>\nWhen there is more news I\'ll happily pass it on.','Entire Costa series optioned for TV','','publish','open','open','','entire-costa-series-optioned-for-tv','','','2011-01-24 15:12:56','2011-01-24 15:12:56','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6794',0,'post','',26),(6664,1,'2011-02-07 08:58:28','2011-02-07 08:58:28','I\'ll be talking about the Costa books and the latest one, <em>The Fallen Angel</em>, at the Italian Cultural Institute, 39 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8NX, on February 21 at 7pm. My host for the evening part of a series of talks with authors who write about Italy, will be Barry Forshaw, author of <em>Italian Cinema</em> and <em>The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction</em>, and a biography of Stieg Larsson.\r\n\r\nThe event is free but booking is essential. Please contact rsvp.icilondon@esteri.it.','In conversation at the Italian Cultural Institute, London','','publish','open','open','','in-conversation-at-the-italian-cultural-institute-london','','','2011-02-06 22:23:01','2011-02-06 22:23:01','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=6664',0,'post','',0),(6813,1,'2011-01-27 17:40:53','2011-01-27 17:40:53',' ','','','publish','open','open','','6813','','','2011-04-20 16:18:26','2011-04-20 15:18:26','',0,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//?p=6813',28,'nav_menu_item','',0),(6875,0,'2011-01-27 18:52:30','2011-01-27 18:52:30','In voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur occaecat cupidatat non proident, in culpas officia deserunt.','Drag&amp;Drop Design','','publish','open','open','','dragdrop-design-2','','','2011-01-27 18:52:30','2011-01-27 18:52:30','',0,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//?boxes=dragdrop-design-2',0,'boxes','',0),(6876,0,'2011-01-27 18:52:30','2011-01-27 18:52:30','Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in.','PageLines Framework','','publish','open','open','','pagelines-framework-2','','','2011-01-27 18:52:30','2011-01-27 18:52:30','',0,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//?boxes=pagelines-framework-2',0,'boxes','',0),(6877,0,'2011-01-27 18:52:30','2011-01-27 18:52:30','Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim.','Rock The Web!','','publish','open','open','','rock-the-web-2','','','2011-01-27 18:52:30','2011-01-27 18:52:30','',0,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//?boxes=rock-the-web-2',0,'boxes','',0),(6887,1,'2011-01-27 22:32:04','2011-01-27 22:32:04','The unseen girl was screaming again, at the top of her voice. There was real agony and fear in her cries, not the drunkenness and violence he’d come to recognise over the years. He could see his concern reflected in Agata’s shocked features… Costa ran across the riverside road and down towards the tortuous web of lanes and alleys that meandered in every direction out from the ghetto like a tangle of veins an arteries wound around the human heart…\r\nWhen British academic Malise Gabriel falls to his death from a Rome apartment, detective Nic Costa rapidly comes to realise that there is much more to the accident than he first thought. It also becomes apparent that Malise’s family — mysterious and tragic daughter Mina, stoic wife Cecilia and troubled son Robert — may be keeping vital information hidden.\r\n\r\nNic becomes obsessed with the case, intrigued by Mina’s story which seems to be linked to the sixteenth-century real-life tragedy of a young Italian noblewoman, Beatrice Cenci.\r\n\r\nAs the investigation deepens, Rome’s dark and seedy side is uncovered, revealing a tangle of deceit, treachery and corruption. Costa realises that the key to the truth lies with the Gabriels. Why are they so unwilling to co-operate, and who, or what, is the reason for their silence? The ninth novel in the Costa series is published by Pan Macmillan in the UK on February 4, 2011 and Delacorte in the US on April 26, 2011.\r\nIntricately plotted and gorgeously written, THE FALLEN ANGEL weaves a spell that will entrap you until the final page. David Hewson’s Rome is dark and tantalizing, seductive and dangerous, a place where present-day crimes ring with the echoes of history.\r\n\r\nTess Gerritsen, author of THE KILLING PLACE\r\n\r\nHewson is one of our finest crime writers.  Absorbing, intelligent, and with a staggeringly vivid sense of place.  No author has ever brought Rome so alive for me — nor made it seem so sinister.\r\n\r\nPeter James, author of the bestselling Roy Grace series\r\nBrowse David’s gallery of research photos of Roman locations for The Fallen Angel, from the Cenci church in the ghetto to the Italian State Police Black Museum.\r\n\r\n[gallery]','','','publish','open','open','','6887','','','2011-04-20 16:18:22','2011-04-20 15:18:22','',3302,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//?p=6887',2,'nav_menu_item','',0),(6888,1,'2011-01-27 22:33:11','2011-01-27 22:33:11','It’s a quiet day in the Rome Questura. Nic Costa is out on a job. Leo Falcone is on holiday. Teresa Lupo is in Venice on business.\r\n\r\nAnd Gianni Peroni is feeling at a loose end. Never a good sign. Mooching around with no boss at hand he wanders into the Questura morgue and sees Teresa’s deputy staring at two newly-arrived corpses. One is the body of a wealthy psychiatrist recovered from the river, apparently after committing suicide. The second is that of a young Roma petty criminal, seemingly beaten to death in a different part of the city, perhaps as some gang vendetta.\r\n\r\nPeroni watches the pathologist start to work with the corpses and notices something extraordinary. Both are wearing odd socks. Identical odd socks.\r\n\r\nSo begins a single day in the life of this genial, inquisitive, unruly old cop as he comes up against managerial incompetence, petty bureaucracy and a touch of rampant ageism when he tries to get to the bottom of the riddle.\r\n\r\nRejected, Peroni sets out on his own to talk to the relatives of both dead men and try to solve, in a matter of hours, two strange deaths which the sharp young officers in suits he’s left behind haven’t begun to unravel.\r\n\r\nDead Men’s Socks is a 10,000-word short story written for Pan Macmillan’s new Short Reads digital promotion and available for instant delivery through iBooks, Kindle and Waterstones for just 99p. This is the first short story I’ve written about my little team in the Rome Questura. I hope you like it — and that it won’t be the last.\r\n\r\n Get Dead Men’s Socks for 99p now\r\n\r\nKindle UK\r\n\r\niTunes link\r\n\r\nWaterstones (link coming shortly)\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nKindle non-UK (US sales coming shortly)','Dead Men\'s Socks','','publish','open','open','','dead-mens-socks-2','','','2011-04-20 16:18:24','2011-04-20 15:18:24','',7670,'http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//?p=6888',13,'nav_menu_item','',0),(7184,1,'2011-01-28 09:56:22','2011-01-28 09:56:22','We\'re planning a few new features to coincide with the release of <em>The Fallen Angel</em> next week so please bear with us while this site is reorganised a little. All the blog posts should be in place but there may be a touch of removal hassle in the days to come. And we seem to have a glitch on the contact form right now so if you want to get in touch Twitter could be the best way...','A refresh of the site','','publish','open','open','','a-refresh-of-the-site','','','2011-01-28 09:56:22','2011-01-28 09:56:22','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7184',0,'post','',0),(7188,1,'2011-01-28 10:47:07','0000-00-00 00:00:00','','Front','','draft','closed','closed','','','','','2011-01-28 10:47:07','2011-01-28 10:47:07','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/',0,'page','',0),(7573,1,'2011-03-02 18:35:00','2011-03-02 18:35:00','<strong>Privacy Policy for davidhewson.com</strong>\r\n\r\nThe privacy of  visitors to davidhewson.com is important to us.\r\n\r\nWe recognise that privacy of your personal information  is important. Here is information on what types of personal information  we receive and collect when you use and visit davidhewson.com, and how we  safeguard your information.  We never sell your personal information to  third parties.\r\n\r\n<strong>Log Files</strong>\r\nAs with most other websites, we collect the data contained in  log files.  The information in the log files include  your IP (internet  protocol) address, your ISP (internet service provider, such as AOL or  Shaw Cable), the browser you used to visit our site (such as Internet  Explorer or Firefox), the time you visited our site and which pages you  visited throughout our site.\r\n\r\n<strong>Cookies and Web Beacons</strong>\r\nWe do use cookies to store information, such as your personal  preferences when you visit our site.  This could include only showing  you a popup once in your visit, or the ability to subscribe to blog comments.\r\n\r\nWe also use third party advertisements on the blog section of davidhewson.com to support our  site.  Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and  web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these  advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program)  information including your IP address, your ISP , the browser you used  to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed.   This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real  estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads  based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone  who frequents cooking sites).\r\n\r\nYou can chose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or  third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences  in programs such as Norton Internet Security.  However, this can affect  how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites.   This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such  as logging into forums or accounts.','Privacy Policy','','draft','closed','closed','','privacy-policy','','','2011-04-29 22:05:53','2011-04-29 21:05:53','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?page_id=7573',0,'page','',0),(7230,1,'2011-01-29 10:29:40','2011-01-29 10:29:40','A year ago I quit Facebook. I didn\'t like the <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/04/were-back-to-the-privacy-thing-again-and-its-not-good/\">privacy issues</a>. I didn\'t like the big chunk it was taking out of my time. And frankly I didn\'t like the way I was expected to \'friend\' everyone who happened upon me. Most of the people I dealt with on FB were lovely. A few were tedious, always wanting something, advice, free books, blurbs for their self-published books. And a handful were out and out nutters.\r\n\r\nDo I miss FB? A bit. I had some good, real friends on there, people who used it to keep in touch in a way that never seemed to happen through email and Twitter (yes, Linwood, I am thinking of you). And then there\'s just the professional thing. Writers these days seem to be expected to have an internet presence that goes beyond just a web site. If they don\'t tweet or appear on FB too they are, in some quarters, viewed to be either moribund or dead.\r\n\r\nDoes this bother me?\r\n\r\n<!--more-->Not a lot frankly. Maybe it\'s age but I find myself wanting to spend more time writing and less on \'the business\'. This is, I realise, the exact opposite of current fashionable authorial thinking in which we are supposed to regard ourselves as \'owners of our brand\'. Sod that for a lark.\r\n\r\nWriting\'s hard and time-consuming. The annual cycle of events and conventions are usually enjoyable -- note that word \'usually\' -- but they can also be very exhausting, even more so than constantly dealing with people you don\'t know on Facebook. Does all this constant activity sell books? Don\'t know frankly. But I do know that you can\'t be both writing personal messages to complete strangers, or addressing distant literary conventions, and writing full time simultaneously. And given the choice between the two... it\'s not really a choice at all.\r\n\r\nSo the question I ought to face up to, one year on from quitting FB, is this: is there a way to have my cake and eat it? Can I be on FB and let people into my little world there while keeping some kind of distance? Yes, I know there are fan pages and things that can be set up (I think there\'s one of those already actually).\r\n\r\nBut the truth is this: if I did go back on I couldn\'t go back to devoting a chunk of each day to \'interacting\' with people. And I certainly don\'t intend to waste a bunch of time turning down invitations to play Farmville or whatever they do today.\r\n\r\nIs it possible to use FB as a mirror of Twitter so your status messages on that turn into your status messages there? I\'m sure there is, but if you do nothing but that is it enough? Or will people think you\'re ignoring them on FB?\r\n\r\nAnd the big question. Can I be on FB and strictly stick to \'friending\' (God I hate that word) only people I actually know? Turning down genuine, sincere and honest readers and fans into the bargain? Will my presence there, visible but \'shunning\' strangers as friends, hack off more people than simply being absent completely?\r\n\r\nMy gut feelings is... yes it would. But if any of you have opinions I\'d love to hear them.','Do tell -- should I go back on Facebook?','','publish','open','open','','do-tell-should-i-go-back-on-facebook','','','2011-01-29 10:29:40','2011-01-29 10:29:40','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7230',0,'post','',15),(7448,1,'2011-02-11 12:25:04','2011-02-11 12:25:04','I try not to use this blog for whining -- it\'s tedious to do so all round. But I do try to give people outside the writing business a few insights into how life really works for those of us inside it. Just so you have no illusions.\r\n\r\nNow let me introduce you to a truly shocking state of affairs for those writers who, like me, bring in revenue to the British exchequer through selling books in translation. Exports, remember. The kind of thing the UK so desperately needs.\r\n\r\n<!--more-->I\'ve been published in something like twenty three different languages over the years. Most of those countries have something called a double taxation agreement with the UK. This means that you don\'t pay income tax twice on your earnings -- just once in your country of residence. You still end up paying some foreign tax a lot of the time, for reasons I don\'t really understand. But in general the principle, long-established by international agreement, is that it\'s unfair for people to be taxed twice over.\r\n\r\nIn order to process payments from abroad without tax being taken off there you need to get a form -- often just a page or two -- stamped by Her Majesty\'s Revenue and Customs. Until a few years ago I used to do this by driving down to my local tax office in Ashford, Kent. The friendly people there used to take the paperwork and bring it back stamped in five minutes or so. Then one day they couldn\'t do this any more. The \'rules\' had changed. They were no longer my local tax office. My local tax office was now in Edinburgh, five hundred miles or so away.\r\n\r\nThe next forms came in and I sent them off. It took a month for them to come back. Then some more came in and they never came back. Not until I remembered to phone after three months and some sleepyhead in the office said, \'Oh right... we actually sent them on to Oxford because we\'re a bit busy here right now.\'\r\n\r\nAfter something like four months they finally came back with that simple stamp -- and I suspect they\'d still be there now if I  hadn\'t called.\r\n\r\nI lodged a formal complaint with Edinburgh about that and got a fulsome apology and a promise it wouldn\'t happen again. The delay went back to a month. Then, in the middle of January, I sent off another set of forms, making a note in the diary that I ought to be nagging around now.\r\n\r\nNo need. The forms went off to the usual Edinburgh address. They\'ve just come back in a \'return to sender envelope\' from the offices of Her Majesty\'s Revenue and Customs with a simple form slip from the Post Office with a tick on the box, \'Sender gone away\'.\r\n\r\nNo. I\'m not kidding. Here\'s HMRC, the government department that deals with individual tax affairs, moving offices and not even sorting out a mail redirection service for the public who pay their wages. So I\'ve lost three weeks on these forms already. There\'s no clue where to send them now. I\'ll be leaving all this in the hands of my accountant who says that HMRC are now quoting a waiting time of twelve to sixteen weeks for all personal tax inquiries.\r\n\r\nOn that basis I will be lucky to get these forms back by early summer, six months after they were first sent to HMRC. And, of course, this is just the delay for the tax form. It can still take months to be paid for foreign income even after that is stamped.\r\n\r\nFive minutes in a tax office down the road a few years ago. Six months if I\'m lucky from a tax office that \'has gone away\' now.\r\n\r\nI would try to raise another formal complaint about this appalling service if there was anywhere I could see to do it. But really... I wonder how understanding HMRC would be if, when my tax to them becomes due, I simply put it at the bottom of the paper file for a few months? Or just sent the tax demand back and said, \'Gone away?\'\r\n\r\nSo if you\'re thinking of being a writer do bear this in mind. Foreign earnings are wonderful. But they can take a very long tine to turn up, even though you\'re providing hard-earned foreign income for George Osborne too.','The great foreign tax scandal','','publish','open','open','','the-great-foreign-tax-scandal','','','2011-02-11 12:26:37','2011-02-11 12:26:37','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7448',0,'post','',2),(7250,1,'2011-01-29 11:16:40','2011-01-29 11:16:40','After the semi-rant below I should offer some balance. Many thanks to Lorelei King for <a href=\"http://www.tribalwriter.com/2011/01/28/is-blogging-and-tweeting-a-waste-of-time-what-writers-should-know-about-social-media/\" target=\"_blank\">pointing out this article</a> which takes an alternative view on what we should be doing on Twitter and Facebook. Maybe it\'s just age but frankly I don\'t feel I have the time or energy to start \'building platforms\'. Will happily leave that to others.\r\n\r\nFor the record when I quit Facebook I had something like 1,200 friends or so if I recall correctly. Those among them who bought my books usually bought them before I joined Facebook. I\'m sure I gained some new readers while I was there, though I suspect Twitter has been more effective in that regard. Even so... think about the numbers. I have something like 1400 followers on Twitter, some of whom would have been duplicated on Facebook. In terms of commercial book sales even if every one of those bought a new book it\'s still small stuff.\r\n\r\nI don\'t doubt social media can help new writers meet useful people and begin to learn about the business. But the basic equation seems to me unchanged: writers writer, publishers publish and market, retailers sell. It\'s an author\'s job to support the other links in the chain. But I, for one, can\'t take their place.','Another view on social media for authors','','publish','open','open','','another-view-on-social-media-for-authors','','','2011-01-29 11:16:40','2011-01-29 11:16:40','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7250',0,'post','',2),(7253,1,'2011-01-29 15:06:29','2011-01-29 15:06:29','OK -- after the very useful feedback from my correspondents below I am back on Facebook and trying to make it work again, for me and for everyone else. I was <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2011/01/do-tell-should-i-go-back-on-facebook/#comments\">particularly struck by Gary Slinger\'s advice</a>: keep a private page for friends and a public one for readers.\r\n\r\nMakes a lot of sense so that\'s what I\'ll attempt to do. You can reach the public page using the icon at the top of the page or following this link. It\'s always nice to hear from new people and I\'ll do my best to offer answers and news when I can. The private page can be found through a simple Facebook search and I would very much like to get back in touch with the people out there I actually know through that means.\r\n\r\nThanks for your advice. I feel like a newbie out there!','Back on Facebook','','publish','open','open','','i-am-now-back-on-facebook','','','2011-01-30 18:13:58','2011-01-30 18:13:58','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7253',0,'post','',1),(7255,1,'2011-02-02 14:43:58','2011-02-02 14:43:58','<img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7256\" title=\"Cenci\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cenci-228x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"228\" height=\"300\" />Most of my books hinge upon some aspect of history, sometimes recent, sometimes ancient. <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/the-nic-costa-series/the-fallen-angel/\"><em>The Fallen Angel</em></a>, which is published this week by Macmillan in the UK, is no different. The inspiration behind it is a very curious episode from Rome\'s past, one little known outside Italy, more\'s the shame.\r\n\r\nSo let me tell you a little about the curious and bloody case of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Cenci\" target=\"_blank\">Beatrice Cenci</a>, a young noblewoman who was executed in 1599 on a scaffold by the bridge to the Castel Sant\'Angelo, a place now crammed with traffic and tourists enjoying the sights of the city.\r\n\r\nBeatrice was the daughter of Francesco Cenci, an aristocrat from a long line of nobility, one that traced its ancestry, probably rather creatively, all the way back to imperial times. The Cenci owned a considerable chunk of valuable land and property in Rome in the area that is now the ghetto. Their name lives on in the rather bleak and sprawling palace which Beatrice and her unfortunate siblings regarded as home, now a block of offices and apartments. The nearby riverside road, the Lungotevere, bears the name Cenci too, and a narrow street off it is named after Beatrice herself.\r\n\r\n<!--more-->Francesco Cenci was by all accounts a monster. Unpleasant, violent, prone to constant arguments, often in trouble with the law. In 1598 he was found dead outside his castle in the remote Abruzzi mountains. It appeared that Cenci had fallen from the window of his bedroom. But suspicious locals pointed the finger at his family, who were duly arrested and taken to Rome for interrogation.\r\n\r\nA story emerged that Francesco was abusive to both his wife, Beatrice\'s stepmother and his two sons. Worse, he had formed an incestuous relationship with the beautiful Beatrice. The family had become so frightened of his violent and tyrannical behaviour they eventually decided to put an end to the man, and try to make his death appear an accident. All of them were tortured, usually with the \'strappado\', a method which involved tying the victim\'s hands behind the back then hoisting them to a ceiling and jerking them until they talked. This frequently dislocated the suspect\'s shoulders, which supposedly happened with Beatrice though still she refused to talk.\r\n\r\nHer brother Giacomo eventually coughed under torture, and admitted they\'d murdered Francesco. Ordinary Romans who killed people could expect swift and bloody judgement. Aristocrats, however, frequently escaped with exile or a ticking off. The Cenci got neither, and quite why remains open to debate. Some say the pope of the time, Clement VIII, was worried about violence in the upper classes. Others believe Clement wanted the Cenci\'s extensive property estate for himself. Whatever the reason he decreed that Beatrice, her stepmother and Giacomo must die, and only the twelve-year-old brother, who could scarcely have been involved, was to survive, stripped of rank and riches.\r\n\r\nRome was outraged. To the average citizen Beatrice became a beacon of innocence in a world that was venal and corrupt, a young woman who\'d defended her own honour in the only way she knew.\r\n\r\nOn the day of her execution, September 11, 1599, thousands turned out to line the streets demanding she be saved. To no avail. The unfortunate Giacomo was paraded through the city while torturers tore his flesh with red-hot pincers. He was then bludgeoned to death and quartered on the scaffold. Next the stepmother Lucrezia was beheaded, followed by Beatrice. The youngest brother, Bernardino, was forced to watch this spectacle. All this happened a few yards to the right of the point on the Tiber bank where this picture was taken.\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridge.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7275\" title=\"bridge\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridge-640x480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a></p>\r\nCrowds followed Beatrice\'s coffin to the beautiful church of Montorio where she was interred in an unmarked grave. So great was her fame that Napoleon\'s soldiers chose to desecrate what they thought was her body, playing football with the severed skull. Now nothing marks her resting place, though even today, on September 11, some people will lay flowers for her, and there\'s a memorial service in the Cenci\'s private church in the ghetto.\r\n\r\nThis extraordinary story caught the imagination of many. In the Barberini you will find the portrait at the top of this post, one that bears her name and is attributed to the great Guido Reni. Shelley saw this in 1818, fell a little in love with Beatrice I suspect and wrote a verse drama about her. Stendhal, Alberto Moravia and Alexandre Dumas among others followed suit.\r\n\r\nBut... where does the truth end and legend begin?\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cenci.jpeg\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7256\" title=\"Cenci\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cenci-228x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"228\" height=\"300\" /></a>That painting by Reni, for example. It is such a beautiful and haunting image I find it hard to imagine the Cenci story could have proved so enduring without it. The story has it Reni saw Beatrice the night before she was beheaded and painted from his memory of that meeting. The trouble is... several sources indicate Reni wasn\'t in Rome at the time. Some experts question whether the canvas is a Reni at all, and  if it is whether it it\'s actually a depiction of a classical sibyl, not a convicted and executed murderer.\r\n\r\nIn an adjoining room you can see another canvas from this time, Caravaggio\'s savage <em><a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Judith Beheading Holofernes\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Beheading_Holofernes\">Judith Beheading Holofernes</a>. </em>It\'s no great stretch of the imagination to think that Caravaggio was in the crowd that day, witnessing her execution. Most of Rome was there, and he was a man who was always drawn to violence. Look at his version though... the distanced determination in Judith\'s eyes, the way she stares calmly at the man she\'s slaughtering. Close up  this is darkly erotic in the physical detail of Judith too. In the biblical story she seduced the tyrant Holofernes, offering up herself to gain the chance to kill him. This Judith knows exactly what she\'s doing and why.\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Judith_Beheading_Holofernes_by_Caravaggio.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7294\" title=\"Judith_Beheading_Holofernes_by_Caravaggio\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Judith_Beheading_Holofernes_by_Caravaggio-640x469.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"469\" /></a></p>\r\nWas Beatrice, like the Judith here, less innocent than she appeared? Possibly. Though the \'portrait\' seems to show her as a virginal teenager she was actually twenty two when she died. Public records suggest she had a lover in the Cenci household, a man who helped in Francesco\'s murder. According to <a href=\"http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n13/charles-nicholl/screaming-in-the-castle-the-case-of-beatrice-cenci\" target=\"_blank\">a fascinating article by Charles Nicholl in the </a><em><a href=\"http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n13/charles-nicholl/screaming-in-the-castle-the-case-of-beatrice-cenci\" target=\"_blank\">London Review of Books</a> </em>there\'s also a hint that she had an illegitimate child by the same man.\r\n\r\nNot that any of this lessens the crime of incest. But did that happen? Nicholl\'s 1998 article reveals that the records of her last interrogation have Beatrice saying her stepmother urged her to kill him with the words, \'He will abuse you and rob you of your honour\'. He <em>will</em>. Not he <em>has. </em>There\'s clear evidence Francesco was a beast, and cruel to those around him. But nothing much to confirm incest. So perhaps the legend of Beatrice -- the angelic young innocent defending her virtue -- is just a myth.\r\n\r\nAn enduring one though. Once you\'ve seen that portrait in the Barberini it\'s hard not to notice her presence in Rome. In <em>The Fallen Angel</em> another young woman becomes obsessed with her story, and takes Nic Costa on a guided tour of the last few days of her life, from where she was imprisoned to the place of her execution, and then to the beautiful church of Montorio on the Gianicolo hill. Those places are all real.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cloak.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7278\" title=\"cloak\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cloak-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"152\" height=\"203\" /></a>And here is the grimmest, most shocking memento of all, a sight down a back street not far from the place of Beatrice\'s execution: the black museum of Rome. The <a href=\"http://www.museocriminologico.it/storia_3_uk.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Museo Criminologico</a> is run by the Justice Ministry and frankly scares the life out of me. This is a chilling collection of the instruments of \'justice\' used by the Vatican and Italian state over the centuries. It\'s the stuff of nightmares. You can see the red cloak of the infamous Roman executioner <a href=\"http://www.museocriminologico.it/boia_uk.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Mastro Titto</a> who took no fewer than 516 lives in his long career.\r\n\r\nYou can see the sack cloth hooded robes of the friars who were charged with \'comforting\' the condemned before they died, accompanying them to the scaffold, chanting prayers and waving crucifixes in their faces, as happened with Beatrice and her family.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cloak2.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7283\" title=\"cloak2\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cloak2-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"200\" /></a>These cheery chaps were part of the \'Brotherhood of the Decapitated John the Baptist\' who still do charity work, of a more mundane nature, today. They have a church of their own in Rome, one that is usually closed to visitors and possesses a number of historic items from the past, some memorabilia of Beatrice among them.\r\n\r\nHave I put you off the black museum? I hope not. It is one of the most extraordinary sights in Rome, inexpensive and open to the public. Definitely worth a look so long as you don\'t scare easily.\r\n\r\nOh, and you can also see this. The sword which historians firmly believe was used to behead the unfortunate woman on distant bright September day four hundred odd years ago.\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/sword1.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7270\" title=\"sword\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/sword1-640x480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a></p>\r\nPeople say I write about crime. Maybe, but I like to think I write more about justice. What constitutes it, how we find it, how loosely, on occasion, we define it. <em>The Fallen Angel</em> is a story that grows out of the Cenci legend and tackles those questions. How, in the twenty-first century, would we react to a crime such as Beatrice\'s? Are we really more civilised? Or just blind in different ways?','Beatrice Cenci: the true story behind <i>The Fallen Angel</i>','','publish','open','closed','','beatrice-cenci-the-true-story-tragedy-behind-the-fallen-angel','','','2011-02-02 14:42:29','2011-02-02 14:42:29','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7255',0,'post','',2),(7256,1,'2011-01-30 10:45:29','2011-01-30 10:45:29','','Cenci','','inherit','open','open','','cenci-2','','','2011-01-30 10:45:29','2011-01-30 10:45:29','',7255,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cenci.jpeg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7267,1,'2011-01-30 10:50:18','2011-01-30 10:50:18','','sword','','inherit','open','open','','sword-2','','','2011-01-30 10:50:18','2011-01-30 10:50:18','',7255,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/sword.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7270,1,'2011-01-30 10:51:59','2011-01-30 10:51:59','','sword','','inherit','open','open','','sword-3','','','2011-01-30 10:51:59','2011-01-30 10:51:59','',7255,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/sword1.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7275,1,'2011-01-30 11:00:22','2011-01-30 11:00:22','','bridge','','inherit','open','open','','bridge-2','','','2011-01-30 11:00:22','2011-01-30 11:00:22','',7255,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridge.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7278,1,'2011-01-30 11:04:33','2011-01-30 11:04:33','','cloak','','inherit','open','open','','cloak','','','2011-01-30 11:04:33','2011-01-30 11:04:33','',7255,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cloak.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7283,1,'2011-01-30 11:06:18','2011-01-30 11:06:18','','cloak2','','inherit','open','open','','cloak2','','','2011-01-30 11:06:18','2011-01-30 11:06:18','',7255,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cloak2.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7294,1,'2011-01-30 11:17:07','2011-01-30 11:17:07','','Judith_Beheading_Holofernes_by_Caravaggio','','inherit','open','open','','judith_beheading_holofernes_by_caravaggio','','','2011-01-30 11:17:07','2011-01-30 11:17:07','',7255,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Judith_Beheading_Holofernes_by_Caravaggio.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7340,1,'2011-01-30 16:13:13','2011-01-30 16:13:13','You can browse the archives below.\r\n\r\n[cleanarchivesreloaded]','Archives','','publish','open','open','','archives','','','2011-01-30 16:14:12','2011-01-30 16:14:12','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/',0,'page','',0),(7344,1,'2011-01-30 16:13:48','2011-01-30 16:13:48','You can browse the sites archives below.\r\n\r\n[cleanarchivesreloaded]','','','publish','open','open','','7344','','','2011-04-20 16:18:28','2011-04-20 15:18:28','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7344',37,'nav_menu_item','',0),(7348,1,'2011-01-30 18:01:23','2011-01-30 18:01:23','You can now view a specially enhanced version of this site for viewing on smart phones and the iPad. You don\'t need to do anything at your end. Just point your device at the site and it will know and rearrange itself accordingly. The home page will become the blog and you can navigate around much more easily than you can with the normal site on a small screen.\r\n\r\nOh, and on the iPad you can rotate the site and see a menu along the left, below. How do we do it? Haven\'t a clue. Ask the clever people who came up with <a href=\"http://www.bravenewcode.com/\" target=\"_blank\">WP Touch</a>. Another good reason to be with Wordpress.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/photo2.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7349\" title=\"photo\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/photo2-640x480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" /></a>','We\'re now iPhone, Android and iPad friendly','','publish','open','open','','were-now-iphone-android-and-ipad-friendly','','','2011-01-30 18:02:55','2011-01-30 18:02:55','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7348',0,'post','',1),(7349,1,'2011-01-30 18:00:00','2011-01-30 18:00:00','','photo','','inherit','open','open','','photo-2','','','2011-01-30 18:00:00','2011-01-30 18:00:00','',7348,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/photo2.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7359,1,'2011-01-31 09:07:18','2011-01-31 09:07:18','I like making comments on a manuscript throughout every part of its development. Some go in a book diary. Some need to go into the actual draft itself as it\'s growing. Scrivener has a very simple and clever way to handle the latter. Let\'s take a look.\r\n\r\nFirst, put your cursor into the place where you want the comment to appear.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7360\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.30.50\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.30.50.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"442\" height=\"160\" />\r\n\r\n<img class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-7361\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.46.53\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.46.53.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"221\" height=\"26\" />Hit the comment button in the toolbar and you can type a comment which will appear in the Inspector bar whenever you select the comments icon, right, which you find at the foot of the column -- it\'s the icon selected here with the \'n\' in it.\r\n\r\nWe now have a comment, tied to a particular line, its presence announced by that yellow colour in the draft.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.31.31.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7363\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.31.31\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.31.31-640x159.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"159\" /></a>\r\n\r\nNice and easy and obvious, the way writing should be. You can edit out the name and time stamp by the way. There are a couple of extras you may have missed though. First, you can see your comments in full screen mode if you choose, which is a good way of dealing with revisions.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.31.59.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7364\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.31.59\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.31.59-640x154.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"154\" /></a>\r\n\r\nEven better, if you like to do your final revision in Word or Pages, you can pass on those comments to those apps in your exported final draft. There\'s just a small trick involved in this. Do <em>not</em> export the file as a Word document since, thanks to something within OS X, that will strip the comments. Instead use an rtf compile like this...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.41.12.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7365\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.41.12\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.41.12-640x607.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"607\" /></a>\r\n\r\nThat will give you a document that Word (Mac or Windows) and Pages will both import and convert. And the comments will still be there...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.42.50.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7366\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.42.50\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.42.50-640x207.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"207\" /></a>\r\n\r\nThis is immensely powerful stuff and opens up lots of different possibilities for managing your work. Here\'s one that could appeal to anyone involved in a collaboration. Imagine: you\'re boss of the collab, using a Mac, and your co-author works with a Windows PC and Word on the other side of the world. How the hell do you work together? Easily...\r\n\r\nSet up a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Dropbox\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://www.dropbox.com\">Dropbox</a> account to which you both have private access. Then use Scrivener\'s sync feature to export your manuscript to a shared folder there.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7368\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.56.55\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.56.55.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"518\" height=\"391\" />\r\n\r\nAnd make sure the export is in rtf export format.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7369\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.57.16\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.57.16.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"555\" height=\"511\" />\r\n\r\nYour collaborator will be able to edit the individual scene files with Word, see your comments and add some of his/her own. When they save them back to the Dropbox folder Scrivener will back up the original version of the scenes and import the new ones, along with comments.\r\n\r\nThe one drawback I can see is that your collaborator will see the project as individual files, not as a whole manuscript. Can\'t think of an easy way round that, except to persuade them to get a Mac and use Scrivener as well. But perhaps someone else can come up with a workaround.\r\n\r\nAny way you look at it though this is a great way to insert comments into a work in progress, and have them carry over into other, more mainstream word processors.\r\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><img class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: medium none; float: right;\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=423e7049-9ea4-456c-8f83-2a50b72666c2\" alt=\"\" /></div>','How to make simple manuscript comments in Scrivener','','publish','open','open','','how-to-make-simple-manuscript-comments-in-scrivener','','','2011-01-31 09:07:18','2011-01-31 09:07:18','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7359',0,'post','',10),(7360,1,'2011-01-31 08:45:54','2011-01-31 08:45:54','','Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.30.50','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08-30-50','','','2011-01-31 08:45:54','2011-01-31 08:45:54','',7359,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.30.50.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7361,1,'2011-01-31 08:47:45','2011-01-31 08:47:45','','Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.46.53','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08-46-53','','','2011-01-31 08:47:45','2011-01-31 08:47:45','',7359,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.46.53.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7363,1,'2011-01-31 08:49:43','2011-01-31 08:49:43','','Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.31.31','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08-31-31','','','2011-01-31 08:49:43','2011-01-31 08:49:43','',7359,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.31.31.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7364,1,'2011-01-31 08:51:12','2011-01-31 08:51:12','','Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.31.59','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08-31-59','','','2011-01-31 08:51:12','2011-01-31 08:51:12','',7359,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.31.59.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7365,1,'2011-01-31 08:53:06','2011-01-31 08:53:06','','Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.41.12','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08-41-12','','','2011-01-31 08:53:06','2011-01-31 08:53:06','',7359,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.41.12.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7366,1,'2011-01-31 08:54:20','2011-01-31 08:54:20','','Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.42.50','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08-42-50','','','2011-01-31 08:54:20','2011-01-31 08:54:20','',7359,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.42.50.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7368,1,'2011-01-31 08:58:25','2011-01-31 08:58:25','','Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.56.55','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08-56-55','','','2011-01-31 08:58:25','2011-01-31 08:58:25','',7359,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.56.55.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7369,1,'2011-01-31 08:59:17','2011-01-31 08:59:17','','Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.57.16','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08-57-16','','','2011-01-31 08:59:17','2011-01-31 08:59:17','',7359,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.57.16.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7385,1,'2011-02-01 10:48:37','2011-02-01 10:48:37','<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/9781849015677.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7387\" title=\"9781849015677\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/9781849015677-198x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" /></a>There\'s now a lovely cover for THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 8 edited by Maxim Jakubowski, out from Robinson on April 21. Looks lovely, eh? Thank you Maxim for choosing to include my tale about an unfortunate incident on the London Tube, <em>The Circle. </em>\r\n\r\nFirst short story I ever wrote. Peroni\'s standalone outing <em><a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/the-nic-costa-series/dead-mens-socks-a-roman-short-story/\" target=\"_self\">Dead Men\'s Socks</a> </em>is only the second. Perhaps I should run up some more. Just to be clear... this is a London short story, with no Italians in it whatsoever. A one-off...\r\n\r\nFor more details or if you want to pre-order <a href=\"http://www.constablerobinson.com/?section=books&amp;book=the_mammoth_book_of_best_british_crime_8_9781849015677_paperback&amp;imprint=&amp;author=maxim_jakubowski&amp;order_by=book_publication_date%20desc&amp;start=0\" target=\"_blank\">just head off to the publisher\'s page.</a>','The Best of British Crime 2011','','publish','open','open','','the-best-of-british-crime-2011','','','2011-02-01 10:49:50','2011-02-01 10:49:50','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7385',0,'post','',1),(7387,1,'2011-02-01 10:47:09','2011-02-01 10:47:09','','9781849015677','','inherit','open','open','','9781849015677','','','2011-02-01 10:47:09','2011-02-01 10:47:09','',7385,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/9781849015677.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7417,1,'2011-02-03 08:02:09','2011-02-03 08:02:09','We\'ll be launching the book in London tonight and officially it\'s out tomorrow but that busy army of blog reviewers are coming up with their opinions already.\r\n\r\nHere are a couple.... from <a href=\"http://www.milorambles.com/2011/02/01/the-fallen-angel-by-david-hewson-book-review/\" target=\"_blank\">Milo\'s Rambles</a> and from <a href=\"http://booksandwriters.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/the-fallen-angel-by-david-hewson/\" target=\"_blank\">Books and Writers</a>. Thank you both for taking the time to read the book and then choosing to write about it.','A couple of early blog reviews for <i>The Fallen Angel</i>','','publish','open','open','','a-couple-of-early-blog-reviews-for-the-fallen-angel','','','2011-02-03 08:03:30','2011-02-03 08:03:30','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7417',0,'post','',0),(7455,1,'2011-02-12 08:12:55','2011-02-12 08:12:55','The ninth Costa novel <a href=\"http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/books/fiction/article2907676.ece\" target=\"_blank\">is reviewed in today\'s Times</a> by <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Marcel Berlins\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Berlins\">Marcel Berlins</a>. Marcel comments... \'Hewson presents an atmospheric portrait of a dark, corrupt Rome behind the jolly tourist façade, astutely mixing the historical and the present. This is the ninth in the Nic Costa series, and possibly the best.\'\r\n\r\nThank you! Nice to see my name in my old paper again (is it really twenty five years since I left there?) So what\'s the painting that a clever Times researcher found to illustrate the review? A myth portraying a myth in all probability. As the book recounts one reason for the Cenci story\'s popularity is the beautiful portrait of her now in the Barberini. Supposedly that was by Guido Reni, painted the night before her execution. This painting depicts Reni and Cenci as he sketched her at that moment. Which probably didn\'t take place by the way... <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2011/02/beatrice-cenci-the-true-story-tragedy-behind-the-fallen-angel/\">as you can read here.</a>\r\n\r\nThe link above won\'t work unless you have a subscription that will take you behind the Times paywall. So I hope I\'m not breaking any rules by posting a clip of the review from the  web site below.<!--more-->\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-12-at-07.28.48.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7456\" title=\"Times reviews The Fallen Angel\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-12-at-07.28.48-640x869.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"869\" /></a>\r\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><img class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none; float: right;\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=4af9f742-979e-41cc-8bf3-bfa4ca6ff1d6\" alt=\"\" /></div>','The Fallen Angel reviewed in The Times','','publish','open','open','','the-fallen-angel-reviewed-in-the-times','','','2011-02-12 09:42:19','2011-02-12 09:42:19','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7455',0,'post','',0),(7465,1,'2011-02-15 08:40:45','2011-02-15 08:40:45','I\'m still struggling with the idea of using either an iPad or an Android tablet as a serious writing tool. One big reason: both struggle with styled text. I can see the argument about why you might not need to write italic or bold or formatted text for a lot of portable note-taking. But if you want to share text between your desktop and your tablet... well you do.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2011/02/syncing-scrivener-to-windows/\">Scrivener\'s very promising sync feature</a>, for example, becomes a lot less interesting if you can only deal with plain text, which is the norm on the iPad and most word processing tools I\'ve found for Android too.\r\n\r\nThere are signs this is changing. Evernote, the notes system that runs across Macs, Windows, iPad and Android, has a new Android update. Before this came along Evernote would look at a formatted note in Android and offer to turn it into a copy in plain text before you could edit it. Yuk.\r\n\r\nNow you can open and edit formatted entries directly. You still can\'t create them and you couldn\'t use this to edit a Scrivener sync unfortunately. But we are getting there.\r\n\r\nI bought an iPad to edit and revise manuscripts primarily, and it still doesn\'t do that very well if I\'m honest.\r\n\r\n<!--more-->Have to say though looking at the overpriced Version 3.0 Android tablets being launched in Barcelona at the moment I\'m not too optimistic about them either. They seem like Christmas stocking overstuffed with toys that will pall after a couple of days. Who needs a 3D camera over the ability to edit text properly? Someone I guess... but not me.\r\n\r\nHere\'s Evernote\'s text editing in action.\r\n\r\n[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUxPIxYrZqs[/youtube]','Some rich text from Evernote','','publish','open','open','','evernote-rich-text','','','2011-02-15 08:40:45','2011-02-15 08:40:45','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7465',0,'post','',0),(7428,1,'2011-02-05 14:57:30','2011-02-05 14:57:30','I\'m a great believer in reading a manuscript from as many different perspectives as time allows. A printout in 1.5 line spacing on A4 pages. A second version in typeset-style pages, two to a printed page. As a pdf file on an iPad or laptop. And, in other pieces of writing software.\r\n\r\nMy usual workflow these days is to deal with story development to first draft through Scrivener and then pass the file on to Word (preferably in Windows, version 2010, which is the best general word processor around I think). Word is how the file will be delivered, and 2010 (though not so much 2010 on the Mac) is a great way to deal with a final polish once the sequence of scenes is in place.\r\n\r\nBut perhaps that working method will change with Scrivener 2, which brings in some interesting syncing possibilities. I covered these briefly <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2011/01/how-to-make-simple-manuscript-comments-in-scrivener/\">in an earlier post about comments</a>. Let\'s take a closer look because this is quite something.\r\n\r\n<!--more-->Scrivener, as any user knows, breaks down a book into separate sections and scenes. This isn\'t for show. A Scrivener \'file\' is actually a folder made to look like a single document. In fact all those different scenes are individual text files. What we\'re about to do is sync the text as distinct files into a folder dedicated for that job, then share them with a Windows PC through Dropbox.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.15.34.png\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7429\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.15.34\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.15.34-300x279.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"279\" /></a>Here\'s the first step.\r\n\r\nYou\'ll find the Sync command under the File Menu. Create a new folder on Dropbox for your project. If you want to use Word choose the options here and make sure you choose to save in RTF format.\r\n\r\nYou can sync files to an iPad or Android tablet too. But at the moment these will only work with plain text files. You won\'t be able to deal with comments or any text formatting. I did try this but frankly I found it a bit faffy. iPad writing apps seem to insist on files being in special places a lot of the time, and the nicest one, iAWriter, can\'t deal with this sync terribly well at all because it\'s very rigid about what has to go where.\r\n\r\nWhen tablets can do rtf I will look again. For now editing with them won\'t work for me -- I want comments and I want formatting.\r\n\r\nWhen you\'ve synced you get a confirmation dialogue. Now let\'s move to a Windows laptop with Dropbox on it. Here\'s what the synced files look like.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/dropbox.jpg\"></a><a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/dropbox.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7430\" title=\"dropbox\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/dropbox-640x403.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"403\" /></a>\r\n\r\nAs you can see they\'re now all separate rtf files representing individual scenes. Forget about those numbers. They\'re Scrivener\'s way of keeping track of synced documents. Don\'t change them or you\'re headed for trouble.\r\n\r\nLet\'s open one in Word 2010 for Windows and insert a comment.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Word.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7431\" title=\"Word\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Word-640x292.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"292\" /></a>\r\n\r\nI really do like this piece of software. It\'s fast, slick and very intuitive. Nothing to touch it for big document editing on the Mac in my book. All I do now is save (as an rtf file -- don\'t convert to Word or any other format) and then quit. The edited scene is synced back to the Mac by Dropbox. Note that I\'ve closed the original Scrivener file after the sync. This is important because Scrivener is set to look for updates to synced files when it opens.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.16.png\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7432\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.23.16\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.16-300x276.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"221\" height=\"203\" /></a>So when I call up the document again I see this.\r\n\r\nAll I have to do is click OK and Scrivener will then do the following...\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>Import the new versions of any changed scenes</li>\r\n	<li>Show me a list of imported scenes in the sidebar (you can get rid of this using the close button at the bottom</li>\r\n	<li>Back up the previous version of the scene as a snapshot.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nI should also note that I backup all complete documents on close to Dropbox too. So there are two fallbacks if something should go wrong somewhere. I can call up the snapshot and I can go back to the previous version of the Scrivener file.\r\n\r\nWhen I go back to my scene in Scrivener it looks like this.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.50.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7433\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.23.50\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.50-640x193.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"193\" /></a>\r\n\r\nThe comments are viewable and editable within Scrivener as if they were written there. Formatting is all accurate, paragraphs and line spacing are unchanged. If I look at the Snapshot pane in the Inspector I can see the previous version in its entirety and check for changes between new and old versions if I wish.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7435\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.24.27\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.24.27.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"227\" height=\"627\" />\r\n\r\nWhat would you use this for? Perhaps if you\'re on the road with a small Windows laptop reading scenes outside Scrivener to see how they feel. Different, I guarantee it. Or you could collaborate with someone else who uses Word only.\r\n\r\nThe first idea is appealing to me. I\'m always keen to get some extra perspective on a manuscript. Looking at a small part of it -- and nothing else -- can reveal things you don\'t see when you\'re viewing the work as a whole.\r\n\r\nI\'m sure there are other uses too. Scrivener 2 is turning out to be a very flexible and open beast indeed.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.50.png\">\r\n</a>','Syncing Scrivener to Windows','','publish','open','open','','syncing-scrivener-to-windows','','','2011-02-05 14:57:30','2011-02-05 14:57:30','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7428',0,'post','',9),(7429,1,'2011-02-05 14:34:18','2011-02-05 14:34:18','','Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.15.34','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14-15-34','','','2011-02-05 14:34:18','2011-02-05 14:34:18','',7428,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.15.34.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7430,1,'2011-02-05 14:38:55','2011-02-05 14:38:55','','dropbox','','inherit','open','open','','dropbox','','','2011-02-05 14:38:55','2011-02-05 14:38:55','',7428,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/dropbox.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7431,1,'2011-02-05 14:41:04','2011-02-05 14:41:04','','Word','','inherit','open','open','','word','','','2011-02-05 14:41:04','2011-02-05 14:41:04','',7428,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Word.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7432,1,'2011-02-05 14:44:03','2011-02-05 14:44:03','','Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.23.16','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14-23-16','','','2011-02-05 14:44:03','2011-02-05 14:44:03','',7428,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.16.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7433,1,'2011-02-05 14:47:10','2011-02-05 14:47:10','','Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.23.50','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14-23-50','','','2011-02-05 14:47:10','2011-02-05 14:47:10','',7428,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.50.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7435,1,'2011-02-05 14:49:53','2011-02-05 14:49:53','','Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.24.27','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14-24-27','','','2011-02-05 14:49:53','2011-02-05 14:49:53','',7428,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.24.27.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7442,1,'2011-02-06 10:27:42','2011-02-06 10:27:42','<div id=\"ectocontent\">\r\n<div>\r\n\r\nI\'m 35K words into the book for 2013 now, a point at which it\'s worthwhile to sit back and review the progress so far. As usual there\'s plenty of work to be done. But here\'s an interesting problem to fix, one that can be tackled in several different ways.\r\n\r\nThe story has an important character who, when I first dreamt up the tale, was going to be young, say 22 or 24, a little naive, straight from university, a little lost in a big and complex world. When I review the way that character appears in the book so far, though, I find he/she doesn\'t quite fit that description. The voice is older, more comfortable with itself, more in control.\r\n\r\nWhat do I do? Here are the options, at least the ones I can see...\r\n<ol>\r\n	<li>Leave things as they are and effectively say to the reader, \'Look, I know most twenty-two-year-olds aren\'t as sure of themselves and seemingly adult as this. But some are and this is one of them. OK?\'</li>\r\n	<li>Do the above but insert some kind of back story which explains why the character\'s like this.</li>\r\n	<li>Go through all his/her appearances in the text and change them to match my original concept for the part: young, naive and sounding it.</li>\r\n	<li>Change the character\'s age to reflect the way he/she sounds in this first draft.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\nSo which one is the right approach?\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n</div>\r\n<!--more-->\r\n\r\nThat was a trick question. There is no right approach. The answer will depend on many things. How happy you are with the story so far. What kind of writer you are. How confident you feel about the future direction of the story.\r\n\r\nHere are my gut feelings about these four possibilities.\r\n\r\n<em>Leave things alone and say that\'s how the character is.</em>\r\n\r\nI don\'t like that. Readers aren\'t dumb. If you\'re seeing this bit of grit in your well-laid plan by 35K words they will be seeing it too, and noticing it all the more as they progress. Yes, some characters of that age would talk and act like this. But in my draft it still doesn\'t feel right.\r\n\r\n<em>Put in some explanation for why he/she is this way.</em>\r\n\r\nI\'m squirming on my seat with this one too. Characters should emerge naturally from the page, not carry labels attached to them designed to explain why they act the way they do. We all explain things a bit, of course. But those explanations should be part and parcel of the narrative itself, not functional devices designed to fulfil some specific dramatic function. Stories come from the imagination, not IKEA. They\'re meant to be dreamt, not assembled.\r\n\r\n<em>Rewrite the dialogue and action to make the character fit the original template.</em>\r\n\r\nThis is a possibility, perhaps a sound one. It depends on a single question: how convincing is the character in his/her present shape? The clash between voice and age apart, does the character work? If the answer\'s no, then this would seem to be the option to take. But in this case the character <em>does</em> work. He/she has emerged organically from the narrative, developing a unique voice, fitting in with the principal character with whom he/she has to interact.\r\n\r\nIn circumstances like that I really have only one option. Go back into the story and revise the age references and anything else that needs changing. I\'ll make him/her twenty nine or so, and instead of being straight from university someone with a shattered career behind them, perhaps, one that\'s sent them back to doing that postgrad degree he/her had been promising themselves one day.\r\n\r\nI really like that idea. It gives the character more depth and it means I don\'t have to introduce any artificial devices to make the story work.\r\n\r\nBut that\'s me. For you it could be different.','The age difference: how a few years can change a character','','publish','open','closed','','the-age-difference-how-a-few-years-can-change-a-character','','','2011-02-06 10:29:02','2011-02-06 10:29:02','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7442',0,'post','',0),(7456,1,'2011-02-12 08:11:06','2011-02-12 08:11:06','','Times reviews The Fallen Angel','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-12-at-07-28-48','','','2011-02-12 08:11:06','2011-02-12 08:11:06','',7455,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-12-at-07.28.48.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7492,1,'2011-02-20 11:28:49','2011-02-20 11:28:49','Computers are weird. They can do the most amazing things at times, things you barely knew were needed. But rudimentary tasks can fox them. Handling simple to-do lists is the best example I know. Why is it so hard to keep a handy task list on the go across PCs, Macs, phones and tablets? How difficult can that be?\r\n\r\nI\'ve tried lots of different solutions in the past, the last being <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Remember The Milk\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://www.rememberthemilk.com\">Remember the Milk</a>. That didn\'t last because it was just too fiddly after a while.\r\n\r\nHere\'s a new one (to me anyway) -- <a href=\"http://producteev.com\" target=\"_blank\">Producteev</a>.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://producteev.com\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7493\" title=\"Producteev\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-20-at-11.15.39-640x388.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"388\" /></a>\r\n\r\nI\'ve been messing with it for a day or so. Since I\'m an individual user it\'s free. I like the look of it... a lot.\r\n\r\nSome things to admire...\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>There\'s a free iPhone app</li>\r\n	<li>The truly excellent Android to do app <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Astrid\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http://weloveastrid.com/\">Astrid</a> syncs directly with it, and does so very well</li>\r\n	<li>It\'s very simple to understand on a rudimentary basis (though I suspect has a lot of power under the bonnet).</li>\r\n	<li>It syncs with my Google calendar, as does iCal on my Mac. So when I put in a to do it appears in my desktop calendar.</li>\r\n	<li>You can add items to it just by forwarding emails. When you do that it comes back and lets you edit them with a simple email reply too if you want, without opening a browser (just reply to the confirmation message with the word \'tomorrow\' for example).</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nAll very likeable. Less welcome...\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>There\'s no actual client for Mac or Windows though one has been promised for quite some time.\r\nYou can fudge it a bit with a browser turned into an app -- <a href=\"http://blog.producteev.com/create-a-mac-desktop-app-using-fluid\" target=\"_blank\">details here.</a></li>\r\n	<li>A lot of the instructions come in the form of videos when a simple, textual description of what\'s needed would be much faster and simpler.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nVery promising though -- I\'ll be trying it out for the next few weeks to see how things go.\r\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><img class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: medium none; float: right;\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=1eebab8b-9ddb-4925-951c-277329bad92f\" alt=\"\" /></div>','A promising new to-do toy','','publish','open','open','','a-promising-new-to-do-toy','','','2011-02-20 11:30:11','2011-02-20 11:30:11','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7492',0,'post','',2),(7474,1,'2011-02-18 08:49:10','2011-02-18 08:49:10','Last reminder for Monday night\'s event... I\'m being interviewed by the very knowledgeable Barry Forshaw at the <a href=\"http://www.icilondon.esteri.it/IIC_Londra\" target=\"_blank\">Italian Cultural Institute</a> in London, and it\'s free.\r\n\r\nThe event is at the institute, 39 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8NX, on February 21 at 7pm. Barry is the author of <em>Italian Cinema</em> and <em>The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction</em>, and a biography of Stieg Larsson.\r\n\r\nThe only prerequisite is you need to book a place, and you can do that through a simple email message to rsvp.icilondon@esteri.it. Or you can book <a href=\"http://www.icilondon.esteri.it/IIC_Londra/webform/SchedaEvento.aspx?id=626&amp;citta=Londra\" target=\"_blank\">directly online through this page.</a>','Monday at the Italian Institute: final reminder','','publish','open','open','','monday-at-the-italian-institute-final-reminder','','','2011-02-18 08:52:44','2011-02-18 08:52:44','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7474',0,'post','',0),(7478,1,'2011-02-19 09:29:15','2011-02-19 09:29:15','Twenty years ago I wasn\'t writing fiction. I was on the board of a small publishing company in charge of launching a new monthly magazine. It was called <a href=\"http://www.flyer.co.uk/\" target=\"_blank\">Flyer</a> and I\'m happy to say it\'s still going. Miracle really. That was in the middle of another recession, and it was only through using new technology -- what was then called desktop publishing -- that we managed to get it onto newsstands at all.\r\n\r\nAs a journalist I loved the creative side of publishing -- design, editing, writing. As a company director, though, I soon learned there was a lot more to creating a commercially successful publication than content. There was distribution, printing, marketing, merchandising. All skills that were beyond me frankly, which is why before I long I went back to writing and, not long after, books.\r\n\r\nBut the publishing world is at another crossroads now, a bigger one than DTP ever brought. Digital distribution. The end of paper for a lot of books, papers and magazines. I thought I\'d try to imagine how I\'d approach launching a magazine in this new world. And one of the first conclusions I reached surprised me. <em>Flyer</em> depended entirely on Macs. We couldn\'t have produced it on anything else. While I\'d still probably use a Mac for design and editing today though, Apple\'s the last company I\'d use to get my digital mag out there.\r\n\r\n<!--more-->\r\n\r\nJames Kendrick, a great commentator on matters digital, got me thinking about this earlier in the week with his post <a href=\"http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/apple-8217s-subscription-policy-convinced-me-to-sell-my-ipad/957?tag=content;search-results-rivers\" target=\"_blank\">Apple’s subscription policy convinced me to sell my iPad</a>. I\'ve got an iPad too, bought last October in San Francisco when I saw everyone at Bouchercon seemed to have one and felt left out. Having read about Apple\'s plans to control the sale of content through the iPad I must felt much the same way as James. It seems the regulatory authorities are taking a look at Apple\'s plans too. They involve demanding a thirty per cent cut of all sales of content through the app store -- and a new demand that, to all intents and purposes, the app store must be, for most people, the only place you can sell.\r\n\r\nA closed market in other words. Going back to my <em>Flyer</em> magazine days it would be like a major newsagent chain saying, \'We will sell your title but only if you give it to us exclusively. Oh, and we\'d like thirty per cent of any subscriptions you sell too.\'\r\n\r\nSubscriptions, by the way, were what made <em>Flyer</em> fly. People so loved the mag when it came out that a fantastic number took out discounted 12 months subs -- vital money in the bank for us.\r\n\r\nLet\'s leave that aside though and think about what channel exclusivity means in practical terms today. I\'m going to use a digital publishing analogy here -- one you could apply to books, magazines, anything that\'s mainly static print and images. A lot of the content on app stores doesn’t fit that bill. They\'re real apps -- programs that need to be \'run\'. Text and pictures are static. They\'re effectively another form of a web site or a pdf. Content and content alone.\r\n\r\nLet\'s say I wanted to put my publication out there for iPad users. The obvious option ought to be through Apple\'s own iBooks service. Except I can\'t see any other magazines there so it might not find many readers. Also I don\'t know anyone who uses iBooks. Also I can\'t see <em>The Fallen Angel</em> there yet though it\'s been out since the start of the month, and iBooks want £8.99 for my current paperback, <em>The Blue Demon</em>, which can be had on Amazon\'s rival Kindle service for £3.98. Less than half the price for exactly the same thing. iBooks doesn\'t sound the place for this magazine.\r\n\r\nOK, well let\'s head to that very busy place the iPad app store. There are magazines on there aplenty, along with newspaper apps and lots of other singing and dancing stuff. If I wanted a magazine as an app -- in other words flashy video and interactive stuff -- I\'d have no alternative but to employ some programmers to make one. How much? Seems as long as a piece of string. Maybe between $20,000 and $100,000. And that\'s just for the programming -- you\'d still have to edit and \'publish\' the thing separately too.\r\n\r\nAs I recall from my magazine days of twenty years ago... production costs can be the death of any publishing project. No small company with modest sales projections can undertake this kind of expense, and give away thirty per cent of its income to its distributor. Plus, you\'re building a wall round your publication. You\'ve built an app for the iPad. Other rival tablets -- Android, Blackberry, Web OS, Windows -- won\'t run it. You\'ll need to incur extra expense just to get into those markets too, which may be small now but could be dominant in a couple of years.\r\n\r\nThis is just a magazine we\'re talking about. Words and pictures. I don\'t think it needs video and flash and fancy stuff. It\'s there to be read, not played with. Surely there has to be an easier solution. Well there is, though it\'s one that will place you in the hands of another dominant player, Amazon. We\'re back with Kindle. Not everyone\'s latched onto this yet, but Kindle isn\'t just that neat, lightweight inexpensive ereader a lot of people got for Christmas. It\'s a system, one that\'s agnostic about where it runs. You don\'t even need that ereader. You can download free Kindle apps for Macs, Windows, iPad, Android and probably other things I haven\'t heard of. Then you can link them up to a single Amazon account <em>and read your Kindle books and magazines on any device you choose.</em>\r\n\r\nNote that word: choice. Apple don\'t like it and never have. Amazon\'s Kindle division realised it\'s the basis of everything some time back and have implemented choice wonderfully. At the moment I\'m reading Stephen King\'s <em>Full Dark, No Stars.</em> I pulled down a sample to my iPad yesterday and decided to buy it. Read one story on the iPad, then another on the Kindle later in bed. When I switched from the iPad to the Kindle the latter knew where I\'d left off reading when I closed down the former.\r\n\r\nThis is clever. As a reader I love it. Were I to be a magazine publisher again I\'d be excited by the prospects Kindle offers. How would I get my magazine on there? I could fork out a fortune for Adobe In Design, download a special free Kindle plugin, and export things that way. But to be honest I think I\'d pick up Apple Pages (£11.99 on the app store) and just export an epub for that. I haven\'t tried it but from what I\'ve seen that would provide me with a nicely-designed Kindle magazine very easily, and one that would run on phones, tablets, Macs and PCs with no extra work whatsoever.\r\n\r\nAnd Kindle\'s cut? Thirty per cent too. But then my production costs would be minimal. I wouldn\'t have to worry about programmers, expensive development bills and whether it would run on everything it was supposed to. Yes, I\'d be locked into a single distributor. But my readers wouldn\'t be forced to buy their readers from a single manufacturer in order to consume what I was producing -- which would be the case if I were an Apple app store-only publication.\r\n\r\nTwenty years ago the Mac made <em>Flyer</em> possible. If I tried to follow the Apple route to publishing a new title today I\'d have to spend needless production money and find myself locked into a walled garden over which I had no control. If you\'re thinking of going into publishing yourself my advice is: avoid this. In the digital world you will, in all probability, have to face up the reality of a few, perhaps just one dominant distributor. But at least pick one who doesn\'t lock you into development costs you don\'t need, and ties your readers to buy their products -- and theirs alone -- in order to read the book or magazine you\'re working so hard to produce.\r\n\r\nPS. It just occurred to me that Scrivener can export to epub too, and -- in the export dialog if not in the table below -- what it calls \'Kindle format .mobi\'. I\'m out of my depth here but perhaps a simple anthology or short story magazine could be handled directly through Scrivener. Here are the export formats for those who know about these things...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-19-at-11.57.25.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7489\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-02-19 at 11.57.25\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-19-at-11.57.25-640x994.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"994\" /></a>','Why Apple and publishing don\'t mix','','publish','open','closed','','why-apple-and-publishing-dont-mix','','','2011-02-19 12:01:16','2011-02-19 12:01:16','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/2011/02/why-apple-and-publishing-dont-mix/',0,'post','',7),(7489,1,'2011-02-19 11:59:38','2011-02-19 11:59:38','','Screen shot 2011-02-19 at 11.57.25','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-19-at-11-57-25','','','2011-02-19 11:59:38','2011-02-19 11:59:38','',7478,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-19-at-11.57.25.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7493,1,'2011-02-20 11:19:42','2011-02-20 11:19:42','','Producteev','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-20-at-11-15-39','','','2011-02-20 11:19:42','2011-02-20 11:19:42','',7492,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-20-at-11.15.39.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7501,1,'2011-02-26 09:58:45','2011-02-26 09:58:45','I\'ve been a bit busy of late so lost track somewhat of progress on bringing Scrivener to Windows. Last time I looked it seemed as if the first version for Windows would be a bit tame compared to version two for the Mac, which drove me back to OS X much to my surprise last autumn.\r\n\r\nTurns out I\'m wrong. <a href=\"http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&amp;t=11874\" target=\"_blank\">There\'s a new beta for Windows out now</a> and a release version is due very shortly it seems. Even the beta has a lot more in it than I expected, including the excellent Collections feature. And there\'s a roadmap for Windows which shows exactly what\'s in, what\'s out, and what\'s due compared to the current Mac version.\r\n\r\nVery impressive indeed. Given that Word for Windows remains my favourite preferred tool for that final manuscript polish I may be back on Windows full time before long. Here\'s that roadmap...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/WindowsScrivenerProposedRoadmapDRAFT.pdf\">WindowsScrivenerProposedRoadmapDRAFT</a>','Scrivener for Windows... coming along wonderfully','','publish','open','open','','scrivener-for-windows-coming-along-wonderfully','','','2011-02-26 09:58:45','2011-02-26 09:58:45','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7501',0,'post','',3),(7502,1,'2011-02-26 09:56:23','2011-02-26 09:56:23','','WindowsScrivenerProposedRoadmapDRAFT','','inherit','open','open','','windowsscrivenerproposedroadmapdraft','','','2011-02-26 09:56:23','2011-02-26 09:56:23','',7501,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/WindowsScrivenerProposedRoadmapDRAFT.pdf',0,'attachment','application/pdf',0),(7508,1,'2011-02-27 11:23:04','2011-02-27 11:23:04','I have a little search robot that scours the web for new mentions of my work. A few years ago it used to be a good way of picking up reviews. It still is, but more often than not what it picks up today is book theft: pirated copies being spread around willy-nilly.\r\n\r\nI\'m not going to go over the arguments about book theft again, or grace it with terms such as \'file-sharing\' or even \'piracy\'. I write books, publishers publish them, retailers sell them. These are copyright works. It\'s wrong, morally and legally, to distribute them electronically across the web without permission, without paying any of those whose livelihoods depend upon them. And no, this is not the same as passing a copy of a paper book to a friend, taking a book out of a library, or buying it from a second hand store.\r\n\r\nIt\'s deliberately ripping off copyright digital material, often by hacking the code to remove the copy protection. And boy is it rife. <em>The Fallen Angel</em> came out three weeks ago. It\'s up there in cracked form already, of course, in multiple locations, none of them openly hosted, naturally, but hidden away in parts of the world where copyright laws cannot reach.\r\n\r\n<!--more-->Here\'s one...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://89.248.172.78/viewtopic.php?f=121&amp;t=169379\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7509\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-02-27 at 10.51.55\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-10.51.55-640x443.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"443\" /></a>\r\n\r\nMobilism.org, the thieving toerags who are hosting this stolen material, are in the Ukraine. If you want a laugh try reading their \'<a href=\"http://forum.mobilism.org/ppcw.php?mode=policies&amp;type=copyright\" target=\"_blank\">copyright policy\' here</a>. It basically says, \'We don\'t want to host copyright material but we may remove if it you can prove it\'s here\'.\r\n\r\nThe entire site consists of links to ripped off books and software, of course. It even allows the thieving bastards who patronise it to advertise for ripped off material. Should I be flattered that \'boraz\' would like someone to provide him with my entire back list as ripped-off ebooks?\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?t=169605&amp;p=718543\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7511\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-02-27 at 11.00.23\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11.00.23-640x292.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"292\" /></a>\r\n\r\nNot really. If he likes the books that much why can\'t he buy them himself? Each one of those books took a year to write. I don\'t think it\'s unreasonable of me to expect some reward for all that work.\r\n\r\nAnd before I get swamped with the \'it\'s digital, it\'s all free\' nonsense it\'s worth pointing out that the people involved in ebook and software piracy aren\'t doing it for love. They\'re fences, effectively, keen to make a bit of money themselves out of the stolen material they handle.\r\n\r\nMobilism want you to pay them a subscription fee for access to their stolen goods. Happily Paypal, who used to provide them with billing facilities, have cut them off. Can\'t imagine why, but judging from this posting below they\'ll be trying again soon...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://forum.mobilism.org/ppcw.php?mode=donate\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7512\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-02-27 at 11.04.41\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11.04.41-640x217.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"217\" /></a>\r\n\r\nThere\'s also a \'currency\' called WRZ$ which the book thieves exchange among one another to encourage yet more theft. They also get \'rewards\' from Mobilism themselves for putting up ripped-off stuff...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11.08.01.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7514\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-02-27 at 11.08.01\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11.08.01-640x288.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"288\" /></a>\r\n\r\nI\'ve no idea what 5 WRZ$ is worth, but none of it is clearly coming back to the author or publisher who made the book possible in the first place.\r\n\r\nAre many people involved in this kind of theft? Well, yes. Here are the user stats as I write this...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11.11.07.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7515\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-02-27 at 11.11.07\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11.11.07-640x298.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"298\" /></a>\r\n\r\nYes, you did read that right. It currently has 381,117 members, 1,615 of whom are online as I write. Won\'t take many of them to fork out the $10 basic sub fee or $80 \'premium\' fee to Mobilism to make this a nice little earner. I do hope the people who patronise it have handed over their credit card details to those charming people in Ukraine too. I\'m sure they\'ll have plenty of ideas how to deal with those.\r\n\r\nBut here\'s the richest thing of all. Mobilism is an illicit site that\'s trying to live off stolen intellectual property. So how does it feel about people ripping off its own site and services?\r\n\r\nGet <a href=\"http://forum.mobilism.org/ppcw.php?mode=policies&amp;type=terms\" target=\"_blank\">this gem from the \'terms of use\'. </a>\r\n<blockquote><strong>Personal use</strong>\r\nYou agree not to reproduce, duplicate, sell, trade or exploit any Mobilism services for commercial gain.</blockquote>\r\nYeah. Must be awful if someone steals from you, especially if you\'re a thief yourself.','Another insight into how book thieves work','','publish','open','open','','another-insight-into-how-book-thieves-work','','','2011-02-27 12:41:03','2011-02-27 12:41:03','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7508',0,'post','',78),(7509,1,'2011-02-27 10:52:30','2011-02-27 10:52:30','','Screen shot 2011-02-27 at 10.51.55','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-10-51-55','','','2011-02-27 10:52:30','2011-02-27 10:52:30','',7508,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-10.51.55.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7511,1,'2011-02-27 11:01:23','2011-02-27 11:01:23','','Screen shot 2011-02-27 at 11.00.23','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11-00-23','','','2011-02-27 11:01:23','2011-02-27 11:01:23','',7508,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11.00.23.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7512,1,'2011-02-27 11:05:55','2011-02-27 11:05:55','','Screen shot 2011-02-27 at 11.04.41','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11-04-41','','','2011-02-27 11:05:55','2011-02-27 11:05:55','',7508,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11.04.41.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7514,1,'2011-02-27 11:08:54','2011-02-27 11:08:54','','Screen shot 2011-02-27 at 11.08.01','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11-08-01','','','2011-02-27 11:08:54','2011-02-27 11:08:54','',7508,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11.08.01.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7515,1,'2011-02-27 11:12:15','2011-02-27 11:12:15','','Screen shot 2011-02-27 at 11.11.07','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11-11-07','','','2011-02-27 11:12:15','2011-02-27 11:12:15','',7508,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-27-at-11.11.07.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7705,1,'2011-03-08 15:12:20','2011-03-08 15:12:20','You hear some odd advice in this business at times. One of the oddest old saws is the one that says you must always be writing something. Anything? Well, the conversation never gets that far. The idea, as far as I understand it, is that writing is an obsessive act, a kind of mental warfare. Walking away from the battlefront risks losing the campaign. Ooer....\r\n\r\nMy opinion (and it is just my opinion)?\r\n\r\nPoppycock. Dangerous poppycock too.\r\n\r\nLet me be plain about this. I write at least a book a year. I always deliver ahead of time. It\'s been ages since any of those have required major surgery before publication. I like to think I\'m professional about what I do.\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>I do not have serious word targets in terms of output (though I will occasionally try to stick to an optimum length for scenes -- for narrative reasons, not \'productivity\').</li>\r\n	<li>I never work weekends or nights unless I\'m travelling and there\'s nothing better to do.</li>\r\n	<li>I will from time to time quite deliberately walk away from a project and not read a word of it for a week or two.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<!--more-->The present WIP is a case in point. Here\'s the word count status over the three months I\'ve been working on it.\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>December 25: 5,100 words</li>\r\n	<li>January 26: 23,000 words</li>\r\n	<li>February 3: 35,618 words</li>\r\n	<li>February 17, 50,000 words</li>\r\n	<li>February 25, 55,000 words</li>\r\n	<li>And today? 58,228 words.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nEek! Am I slowing down? In word terms, yes. But for the last two weeks I\'ve been revising the story, making it work more fluently with a bit of luck. Refining the narrative so I\'m better placed to proceed to the next stage.\r\n\r\nThen at the weekend I went off to do some promotion in Dublin, and tomorrow it\'s a research and TV trip to Italy. How much writing will I do over the next ten days? Very little in all probability.\r\n\r\nDoes this worry me? Not at all. A bit of space between you and your work is good at times. You come back at it with fresh eyes. Problems which once seemed insurmountable sometimes appear puny and easily dealt with. If the story\'s working you\'ll soon find your way back into it and begin to hit the kind of output levels you had before you took a breather.\r\n\r\nThe problem with the \'I will write 40,000 words a month\' school of fiction is it\'s based around quantity alone. What if half those words are the wrong ones? Then you\'ve only written 20,000 words really. And worse, you\'re going to have to spend time going through that 40K mess working out which ones are good ones and which ones expendable.\r\n\r\nWriting\'s not a race. At least if it is, it\'s a marathon, not a sprint, for most of us anyway. How do I meet those deadlines? Simple, I take what\'s in the contract and subtract a month or two of my own. Then carry on to my own schedule, not the contracts.\r\n\r\nBooks get finished through steady, efficient workmanship, produced by writers in control of their craft. Not by hammering out words incessantly and hoping that somehow in the end they\'ll fit.\r\n\r\nOh -- and the other joy of not writing is it gives me more time to read, and there\'s never enough of that these days either. And a lovely stash of books just went into the case and the Kindle for that too.','It\'s not a sin to stop writing','','publish','open','open','','its-not-a-sin-to-stop-writing','','','2011-03-08 15:12:20','2011-03-08 15:12:20','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7705',0,'post','',2),(7531,1,'2011-02-28 15:25:52','2011-02-28 15:25:52','Yesterday was a busy day. The busiest this blog has had. Book theft is clearly a hot topic, and generated a phenomenal number of comments, mostly it has to be said from people who are appalled by the spiralling crime of ebook piracy.\n\nBut not all. People who think it\'s OK to go to sites hidden behind foreign countries and grab ripped-off commercial books for free came into the game too, anonymously usually, of course. I get most of the same arguments from them every time this issue is covered here. Let\'s deal with a few right now, and if you want another view on this issue<a href=\"http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/v3site/faq/piracy.html\" target=\"_blank\">, read the excellent Joanne Harris on piracy too</a>.\n\n<!--more-->First...\n<blockquote>It\'s not really theft, is it? So stop calling us thieves.</blockquote>\nI\'m a writer, not a lawyer. Given that there\'s no chance of my bringing any of the people who purloin my work to court, I\'m not much interested in pedantic legal definitions. Theft doesn\'t need them, frankly. We all should know what stealing is: taking something that doesn\'t belong to you and having the benefit of whatever that thing is without paying the purchase price.\n\nThink of the behaviour here. People are going to illicit sites, often paying a fee to gain access anonymously to software, books and audio files that are commercially copyright, protected by intellectual property law. Then they\'re running them, reading them and listening to them without paying a penny to the people who produced them. That five-letter word \'theft\' covers this just fine for me.\n\nOne other good reason for calling it theft: those involved hate it. They are desperately trying to convince themselves that what they do can somehow be justified. A lot of them are individuals who wouldn\'t dream of stealing under other circumstances. They hope to rationalise what they inwardly know to be unacceptable behaviour by pretending it\'s something it\'s not: OK. They resent being labelled criminals because it interferes with that process of self-justification. Good.\n<blockquote>People rip off books because they\'re too expensive.</blockquote>\nAt least this acknowledges the theft side of things. Unfortunately -- a few exceptions aside -- it ignores plain fact. There are territories in the world where books are, in my opinion, overpriced. They\'re mainly ones where foreign language and translation issues have pushed up the prices. They\'re also the ones where ereaders in those languages are in their infancy at best.\n\nBook theft is most prevalent in developed markets, especially English, where ereaders are readily available. So what people are often saying is, \'I steal books because I can\'t afford to buy them for my £200 ereader\'.\n\nQuite.\n\nMore importantly, books are cheaper than ever in some key markets, notably in the UK and America. If you want to see a simple illustration of <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2010/08/inflation-in-the-book-business/\" target=\"_blank\">this look here</a>, at what\'s happened to the price of <em>The Godfather</em> over forty years.\n\nAuthors, whose income depends on a royalty on the selling price, have seen an effective price cut in their take on each book of around 30% to 40% in the UK alone over the last decade, simply down to the fall in cover prices. Cutting those prices even further won\'t have any impact on book theft. It will simply diminish the income of authors, publishers and retailers even further. Book thieves steal because they can, not because they\'re broke. If you\'re seriously mired in poverty I very much doubt you\'re sitting there thinking, \'If only I had a book...\' And for those who really can\'t afford to buy a book there\'s a very simple place to go to get one. It\'s called a library.\n<blockquote>This is a new world, dude, and you need a new model \'cos the old one\'s broken.</blockquote>\nPublishing is in trouble for a variety of reasons but it\'s a bit of a stretch to say that the business is broken because it\'s now victim to widespread theft. There may be new models coming. But if they get robbed too they\'ll just go the way of the old model.\n<blockquote>You\'re not losing out because these people wouldn\'t buy your book if they had to pay for it.</blockquote>\nYou get that one a lot. Firstly, it\'s highly dubious. Read yesterday\'s article. I show one thief on that site actually asking and offering \'payment\' for someone to supply my entire Costa series as ripped-off copies. He knows the titles. He even knows the order they appeared in. Maybe he thinks of himself a \'fan\' (message to \'boraz\' if you\'re reading this -- you\'re not -- go steal someone else you light-fingered jerk). If someone\'s that keen, wouldn\'t they be tempted to buy a book -- if a stolen one wasn\'t around?\n\nBesides, even if this argument is correct -- which I doubt -- it\'s irrelevant. The people concerned are still stealing copyright material and getting the benefit of it illegally. Remember the phrase \'right and wrong\'? This is the \'wrong\' part.\n<blockquote>Maybe you should spend your time opening a dialogue with your fans and figuring out how you can create a mutually beneficial arrangement (they receive your work, you receive compensation) rather than clustering a bunch into a group and calling them names.</blockquote>\nThank you for that advice \'Bob\', well meant I\'m sure, though quite who you are to offer it God knows. This is quite a busy web site in case you hadn\'t noticed. There\'s plenty of dialogue with my fans already, and a \'mutually beneficial arrangement\' in place too -- they receive my work, I receive compensation. It\'s a simple, well-established, functional system known as \'buying the book\'. One anyone can participate in <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;field-keywords=David+Hewson&amp;x=0&amp;y=0\" target=\"_blank\">as easily as this. </a>People who don\'t want to be clustered into a group shouldn\'t sign up for dodgy web sites in dodgy parts of the world just so they can rip off stuff they ought to be paying for.\n<blockquote>It’s disheartening to see that the enlightened souls here aren’t willing to engage in debate.</blockquote>\nAnd thank you \'Jerry\' -- why do you keep posting your comments from a different email address I wonder?\n\nI find this question a bit baffling frankly. If a burglar in a mask breaks into your house and starts stealing your property do you engage him in debate too?&nbsp;Would you be interested in a conversation if he said, \'I\'m stealing this because I\'m poor/I can/you won\'t notice/no one\'s going to catch me\'?\n\nPerhaps you would, Jerry. Me? I have to be honest. Opening a dialogue with petty criminals isn\'t a high priority.\n\nWhy should people who pay for what they consume spend their time engaging with those who go out of their way to filch it instead? We\'re all in the same boat here. I have to work to pay the bills like anyone else, and that work happens to be writing, the very work book thieves value so little they think it\'s OK to steal it without a second thought. They choose to step outside the law and rip off the world right, left and centre. And then they want decent people, who do pay for what they consume, to listen to them too?\n\nFinally, \'Jerry\' again...\n<blockquote>The free market value of any infinitely reproduceable object is zero...&nbsp;There is an upfront cost to producing a book, of course there is. However, once produced, there is effectively zero cost in reproduction. That makes the fruit of your labour economically worthless. If food, or energy, or anything else were infinitely reproduceable at zero cost, they would be economically worthless too.</blockquote>\nChanting teenage pseudo-intellectual mantras like this is sadly common in what passes for \'debate\' over this issue. In truth it\'s just one more exercise in obfuscation, another attempt by book thieves to convince themselves \'it\'s not really stealing\' by concocting ridiculous faux intellectual arguments about the \'death of copyright\' and the injustice of the notion of property.\n\nBut... please. Web sites hiding behind domain names in countries without enforceable copyright laws, selling subscriptions to allow access to stolen software, music and books are <em>not</em> part of any free market. They\'re just criminal money-making fencing operations for ripped-off property. If you were to take this to its logical conclusion there\'d be no software companies, no publishers, no music companies, and pretty soon no jobs for developers, writers, publishers, musicians...\n\nA pretty boring world in other words.\n\nI don\'t know how to tell you this Jerry but... you know that John Lennon song <em>Imagine? </em>\n\n<em></em>That\'s all it was. A song. And it\'s copyright too.','A few great book theft myths debunked','','publish','open','open','','a-few-great-book-theft-myths-debunked','','','2011-02-28 15:38:44','2011-02-28 15:38:44','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7531',0,'post','',8),(7546,1,'2011-02-28 11:23:54','2011-02-28 11:23:54','I only just spotted this which makes me feel like an idiot. It\'s <em>so</em> obvious and yet I never noticed it before. Very useful too.\n\nAny Scrivener user learns very quickly that you can edit and view multiple scenes just by selecting them in the Binder. What I just realised is that you can do this for <strong>non</strong>-consecutive scenes too.\n\nSay you have a couple of scenes in one location, with a scene or two set elsewhere in between. You\'re writing the second scene to match the first location. With most software you\'d have to keep going backwards and forwards to refer to what went before, or open a new window in Word.\n\nNo more...\n\n<!--more-->Just select the scenes in the Binder using the command key when you click on them. This only picks the scene itself and doesn\'t care whether they\'re contiguous. What you then see are the scenes with the intermediate bits taken out, and all the notes for those scenes. And yes - this works for full screen view too. Magic...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-28-at-11.17.42.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7547\" title=\"Non-contiguous scenes\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-28-at-11.17.42-640x305.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"305\"></a>','One small but wonderful Scrivener discovery','','publish','open','open','','one-small-but-wonderful-scrivener-discovery','','','2011-02-28 14:19:17','2011-02-28 14:19:17','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7546',0,'post','',0),(7547,1,'2011-02-28 11:22:49','2011-02-28 11:22:49','','Non-contiguous scenes','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-02-28-at-11-17-42','','','2011-02-28 11:22:49','2011-02-28 11:22:49','',7546,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-28-at-11.17.42.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7558,1,'2011-03-01 08:58:33','2011-03-01 08:58:33','It seems to be the lot of Kindle owners to be unpaid demo merchants for the things at the moment. If you have one you\'re probably in the same boat. Someone you know is interested and begs, \'Show me...\'\r\n\r\nHappened to me last night so a \'sales meeting\' was duly arranged, at the local pub. I\'m an odd Kindle user. I like the thing but prefer printed books whenever possible. However I do use Kindle frequently for proofing my own work, something it does wonderfully. I can send a Word file to my Kindle email address and have a draft manuscript converted into a Kindle document which I can read on the Kindle hardware and on Kindle apps for PCs, Macs, Android (everything except the iPad which doesn\'t let me get the file for some reason, at least as far as I can see).\r\n\r\n<!--more-->Two interesting things from last night\'s meeting. First, my interested guinea pig wanted to know what newspapers looked like on the Kindle. I\'ve never tried them. So I set up a trial subscription for the Daily Telegraph and downloaded the latest edition.\r\n\r\nSame words, same articles, though I wasn\'t convinced it was the whole paper. Guinea pig, who loved books on the Kindle, looked at it and shook his head. Never in a million years, he said. I felt the same way too. The shape\'s wrong. This looks like a book reader, not a newspaper reader. Won\'t work.\r\n\r\nSecond interesting thing... the woman behind the bar looked at the Kindle and said, \'I got one of those for Christmas.\'\r\n\r\nShe loves it naturally, and sold the thing to the guinea pig better than I could (perhaps because I didn\'t feel I was there to sell it). Key question guinea pig asked her: do you read more now?\r\n\r\nAnswer: I\'ve bought four books on Kindle since Christmas. Ordinarily I would have bought one. The Kindle goes everywhere with me in my bag.\r\n\r\nImpressive stuff...','Some novice feedback on the Kindle','','publish','open','open','','some-novice-feedback-on-the-kindle','','','2011-03-01 08:58:33','2011-03-01 08:58:33','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7558',0,'post','',10),(7562,1,'2011-03-02 11:09:35','2011-03-02 11:09:35','I <a title=\"One small but wonderful Scrivener discovery\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2011/02/one-small-but-wonderful-scrivener-discovery/\">wrote on Monday </a>of the discovery that Scrivener is marvellous when it comes to viewing and editing non-continuous documents when you select them with the command key in the Binder. Here\'s this morning\'s related discovery: the same trick works with Scrivener 2\'s QuickRef feature, a little tool that opens up another chapter in a small window for reference.\r\n\r\nYou know when you\'re writing one chapter but need to refer back to another for details? You don\'t have to have that chapter open in a long scrolling document. QuickRef lets you open it up in a small, resizable scrollable window to find the parts you want.\r\n\r\nLet\'s start like this... by selecting three scenes I want as reference holding down the command key, then picking the QuickRef icon.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7563\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-03-01 at 11.03.38\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screen-shot-2011-03-01-at-11.03.38.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"437\" height=\"273\" />\r\n\r\nNext we see this... those three scenes as small windows to be positioned anywhere.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7564\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-03-01 at 11.03.53\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screen-shot-2011-03-01-at-11.03.53.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"399\" height=\"423\" />\r\n\r\nSo I can use them to flick back to related detail very easily. And if I hit full screen I can still see them there, along with my notes...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screen-shot-2011-03-01-at-11.04.17.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7566\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-03-01 at 11.04.17\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screen-shot-2011-03-01-at-11.04.17-640x424.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"424\" /></a>\r\n\r\nThis is very powerful stuff if you\'re the kind of writer who needs to keep different sections of a narrative in sync across extended sections of the book (which I am).','More Scrivener goodies for power editing','','publish','open','open','','more-scrivener-goodies-for-power-editing','','','2011-03-01 11:12:20','2011-03-01 11:12:20','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7562',0,'post','',6),(7563,1,'2011-03-01 11:07:56','2011-03-01 11:07:56','','Screen shot 2011-03-01 at 11.03.38','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-03-01-at-11-03-38','','','2011-03-01 11:07:56','2011-03-01 11:07:56','',7562,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screen-shot-2011-03-01-at-11.03.38.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7564,1,'2011-03-01 11:09:16','2011-03-01 11:09:16','','Screen shot 2011-03-01 at 11.03.53','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-03-01-at-11-03-53','','','2011-03-01 11:09:16','2011-03-01 11:09:16','',7562,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screen-shot-2011-03-01-at-11.03.53.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7566,1,'2011-03-01 11:11:08','2011-03-01 11:11:08','','Screen shot 2011-03-01 at 11.04.17','','inherit','open','open','','screen-shot-2011-03-01-at-11-04-17','','','2011-03-01 11:11:08','2011-03-01 11:11:08','',7562,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screen-shot-2011-03-01-at-11.04.17.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7569,1,'2011-03-02 08:37:33','2011-03-02 08:37:33','<strong>Update: After wise advice below we\'ve now reverted to the original Georgia scheme, since we don\'t want the site to look too different in different browsers. Am leaving this post here so that anyone who experiments in a similar fashion can understand the restrictions.</strong>\r\n\r\nThe latest update to the Wordpress theme for this site, <a href=\"http://www.pagelines.com/\" target=\"_blank\">the excellent Platform Pro,</a> now has the ability to tap into Google\'s fonts store and let you see this site using a wider range of fonts that is usually available for the web.\r\n\r\nAs someone who came from the world of print, where fonts are ten a penny and infinitely changeable, I\'ve always found the restricted number used on the web a bit odd. Though after all these years... perhaps not.\r\n\r\nAnyway, the site is now experimentally switched over to Google\'s font API, using their own Droid sans for headlines and Droid serif for body text. It looks OK to me, but then it\'s early in the morning here. If any of you experience problems do please let me know (I doubt you\'ll see much change on a phone, iPad or Internet Explorer by the way).\r\n\r\nThis change does make the body text bigger and more readable. Again, as an old printie this to me looks on the large side, but then people always tell me what I think is a good size for web text is actually too small. No one will agree about this kind of thing of course so I am not looking to set up the site design by committee...','Faffing around with fonts - feedback welcomed','','publish','open','open','','faffing-around-with-fonts-feedback-welcomed','','','2011-03-02 08:53:33','2011-03-02 08:53:33','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7569',0,'post','',4),(7576,1,'2011-03-02 18:35:52','2011-03-02 18:35:52','Privacy Policy for davidhewson.com\r\n\r\nThe privacy of  visitors to davidhewson.com is important to us.\r\n\r\nWe recognise that privacy of your personal information  is important. Here is information on what types of personal information  we receive and collect when you use and visit davidhewson.com, and how we  safeguard your information.  We never sell your personal information to  third parties.\r\n\r\nLog Files\r\nAs with most other websites, we collect the data contained in  log files.  The information in the log files include  your IP (internet  protocol) address, your ISP (internet service provider, such as AOL or  Shaw Cable), the browser you used to visit our site (such as Internet  Explorer or Firefox), the time you visited our site and which pages you  visited throughout our site.\r\n\r\nCookies and Web Beacons\r\nWe do use cookies to store information, such as your personal  preferences when you visit our site.  This could include only showing  you a popup once in your visit, or the ability to subscribe to blog comments.\r\n\r\nWe also use third party advertisements on the blog section of davidhewson.com to support our  site.  Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and  web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these  advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program)  information including your IP address, your ISP , the browser you used  to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed.   This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real  estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads  based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone  who frequents cooking sites).\r\n\r\nYou can chose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or  third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences  in programs such as Norton Internet Security.  However, this can affect  how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites.   This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such  as logging into forums or accounts.','','','publish','open','open','','7576','','','2011-04-20 16:18:28','2011-04-20 15:18:28','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7576',36,'nav_menu_item','',0),(7578,1,'2011-03-03 12:44:35','2011-03-03 12:44:35','I\'m genuinely a bit foxed by yesterday\'s news about the iPad, and version two coming soon. It was good to see Steve Jobs well enough to make his usual charasmatic public appearance. But the product...\r\n\r\nI bought an iPad because I thought I\'d be able to use it for revising a manuscript. I can just about manage this using pdf files <a title=\"Can you really revise a book on your iPad?\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2011/01/can-you-really-revise-a-book-on-your-ipad/\">as I recount here</a>. But this is marking up passages for revision. Not editing. Fine for big things, but I really ought to be able to change small typos directly as I read if I want.\r\n\r\nI don\'t always feel like doing that. But I would like the option and it\'s not there with a pdf file. or anything else I\'ve found. Apart from the decidedly mediocre (no full screen viewing, no revision tracking, no comments) cut-down Pages app from Apple itself, nothing on the thing can handle rich text. All the many editors for the thing (at least the ones I\'ve come across) work in plain text only. And books -- mine anyway -- are written in rich text, as Word or rtf files.\r\n\r\nSo what does Apple announce yesterday? Oh look. You can edit movies on the iPad now. You can also play with Garageband. The music thing I can see. Why anyone would seriously want to edit video on the thing... beyond me.\r\n\r\nAnd rich text? Nothing. In fact Jobs didn\'t even announce an update to Apple\'s own word processor Pages, now years old and looking it. Pages is just a short step from being a fine competitor to Word 2010 on Windows, the best general purpose fiction word processor around. It also has to \'compete\' on the Mac with Word 2011, a decidedly inferior effort of which Microsoft should be ashamed. A good update would make Pages a killer necessity for Mac-based authors. But no... or at least not yet.\r\n\r\nSo you can play with video on your new iPad and pretend you\'re a pop star. But want to type something in italics? You\'ll struggle.\r\n\r\nPlain ridiculous...','So aren’t you supposed to write on an iPad?','','publish','open','open','','so-aren%e2%80%99t-you-supposed-to-write-on-an-ipad','','','2011-03-03 12:47:02','2011-03-03 12:47:02','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7578',0,'post','',9),(7583,1,'2011-03-05 11:06:14','2011-03-05 11:06:14','<a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judith-and-the-Holy-Ferns/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226074&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7588\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Judith\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Judith-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" /></a>Today Amazon published my first direct from Scrivener-to-Kindle work, a short story set in Rome, though not part of the Costa series, called <em><a title=\"Judith and the Holy Ferns\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/standalones/judith-and-the-holy-ferns/\">Judith and the Holy Ferns</a>. </em>I put this up because it\'s an unusual piece of work I\'d quite like to get out there, but also as a test of how easy it is to go from Scrivener 2 to Kindle with no intermediate apps or conversions.\r\n\r\nI\'m also interested in seeing how many people will think it worth reading; you can <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judith-and-the-Holy-Ferns/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226074&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">find it in the UK store here</a> and <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Judith-Holy-Ferns-ebook/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;m=A7B2F8DUJ88VZ&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226147&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">in the US one here</a>. It\'s priced at 94p (including VAT which applies to ebooks, sigh) in the UK. I tried to match my Macmillan short story of a similar length, <em>Dead Men\'s Shoes</em>, which is 99p, but you have to enter the net price in Kindle and let the system calculate the VAT (and clearly I got that 5p short). In the US it\'s $1.84 again to match the Macmillan pricing.\r\n\r\nBelow is a step-by-step guide detailing how I got this 9000-word story from Scrivener on to Kindle, so that those of you wanting to do the same can see in detail how it happened.\r\n\r\nFirst, watch this video which is produced by the Scrivener people. It begins by describing the process involved in producing an epub ebook, the kind used by iBooks and other places. I haven\'t put this work up on iBooks; to do it directly demands you get an ISBN, which is a pain frankly, and overkill for a 99p short story, nor do I have the time right now to deal with iBook aggregators. Besides, I think Kindle wipes the floor with every other ebook delivery system. It\'s quick, easy and very, very popular.  The process for getting a Kindle file follows the epub pattern in the video. Part way through you will see how to choose Kindle over epub.\r\n\r\n[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cgJ8x-R86M[/youtube]\r\n\r\nTo go further you will need to be signed up for Kindle Digital Publishing and to have <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&amp;docId=1000234621\" target=\"_blank\">downloaded the KindleGen plugin and the Kindle Previewer here.</a> Note: it only works on Intel Macs running 10.5 or higher. So Tiger users won\'t be able to take advantage of it (this is an Amazon limitation, not a Scrivener one).\r\n\r\nAll done? Next, get yourself a cover, a jpeg 600 x 800 at 72 dpi. It will appear on Kindle hardware in black and white, but not everyone uses Kindle hardware. Kindle apps are very popular too. So my advice is: choose a cover that\'s colour and will work in both. The Kindle Previewer will show you what it looks like in black and white.\r\n\r\nMy cover for <em>Judith and the Holy Ferns</em> is light and minimal and self-produced. Flashy cover designs are essential in paper book publishing where they are used to generate advance sales from retailers among other things. I\'m not entirely convinced they are so high on the buy/don\'t buy process in epublishing, but that\'s a discussion for another time. This is a 99p short story. I\'m not forking out $1000 for a commercial book cover.\r\n\r\nWhen you have a suitable jpeg drag it somewhere into the Binder in your Scrivener project so that it sits as a separate file. This is important. You can\'t import that cover into your final Kindle file if it\'s outside Scrivener.\r\n\r\nNow go to the Compile option in the File Menu.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Contents1.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7616\" title=\"Contents\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Contents1-640x600.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"595\" /></a>\r\n\r\nWe will be running down the list of processes on the left and dealing with the options as they go. The first is obvious -- contents. This will determine the text elements in the manuscript you want to go into the finished book. There are just three chapters in this short story, each with names and manual chapter numbers. So I don\'t need to worry about auto chapter numbering (which is possible and the video shows how). I just tick the chapters I want to include.\r\n\r\nNext comes formatting.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Formatting1.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7617\" title=\"Formatting\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Formatting1-640x599.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"594\" /></a>\r\n\r\nThis isn\'t text and font size -- Kindle takes care of that for you. This is to do with how chapter headings are dealt with. If your book is hierarchical -- parts and chapters, for example -- this is where you dictate that those headings are different to the body text. I only have Level 1 text documents in here -- the third option. So while the others are ticked they won\'t have any effect. I\'ve changed the header setting to Heading 3 (just put your cursor next to title) to make it bigger than the body text and on the right I\'ve inserted Page padding of eight lines. This will make new chapters start a little way down the page, something that\'s becoming popular in ebook formatting.\r\n\r\nProcessing options...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Processing.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7602\" title=\"Processing\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Processing-640x533.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"528\" /></a>\r\n\r\nBy clicking \'Do not add page padding to the first document\' I make sure the first chapter of the book starts at the top of the page, which I prefer. This is just personal taste. I don\'t need to do anything with the other options.\r\n\r\nSeparators...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Separators.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7603\" title=\"Separators\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Separators-640x598.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"593\" /></a>\r\n\r\nThis threw me at first and caused my one hiccup. I had the text set to break to a new line between sections. In order to generate proper chapter headings and a table of contents (and Kindle likes TOCs, even for small documents) you need to separate everything with a section break. Otherwise you will get nagged for not having a TOC.\r\n\r\nCover... just pick the jpeg you already have in your Scrivener binder which will appear as an option in the popup.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Cover2.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7605\" title=\"Cover2\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Cover2-640x533.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"528\" /></a>\r\n\r\nE-Book options... these will give you a TOC that Kindle will like.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Ebook-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7606\" title=\"Ebook options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Ebook-options-640x526.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"521\" /></a>\r\n\r\nText Options...\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Text-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7607\" title=\"Text options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Text-options-640x531.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"526\" /></a>\r\n\r\nYou can clean up text if you want here -- I don\'t need to.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/html-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7608\" title=\"html options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/html-options-640x596.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"591\" /></a>\r\n\r\nThis doesn\'t apply to a short story with no internal links, but I left it selected anyway. But if you use internal wiki-like links in Scrivener this will recreate them in the Kindle document, which could be useful for non-fiction projects.\r\n\r\nFinally, as far as a modest project like this is concerned... Meta-Data.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Metadata.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7609\" title=\"Metadata\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Metadata-640x597.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"592\" /></a>\r\n\r\nThis is where you deal with title, publisher and author information. That\'s all you need enter really as far as I can see -- forget about ID numbers and dates. I suspect something ought to be entered under Rights but I don\'t know what and Kindle DRMs the files anyway so it doesn\'t much bother me.\r\n\r\nOne caveat. Kindle demands you put in the author as Last name, First name. The current release version of Scrivener isn\'t happy with this and recognises it as two authors. At the time of writing, early March 2011, you need to download the latest Scrivener beta to get this working properly. <a href=\"http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&amp;t=11692\" target=\"_blank\">You can find it here</a>. After that type in Last name, First name and it will work.\r\n\r\nThe final option is simply a link to where the KindleGen plugin is kept on your Mac. The other options can be left for me. After that click Compile and check your output in Kindle Viewer (and a Kindle app too). When you\'re happy with it upload to Kindle Digital Publishing and wait for it to go public after it\'s approved.\r\n\r\nThis is a simple process for a fairly simple short story. Anyone with hierarchical novels, in folders or as sub documents, should take care to get those options right in the Formatting section and to check that the separators are working fine too.\r\n\r\nOnce you have a working system you can save it in the Compile window and simply reload the settings for another publication later. This is getting as close to an automated ebook process as I can imagine right now, and is <em>much</em> slicker than anything that I\'ve seen before for Kindle publication. One more amazing facet in the amazing piece of software that\'s Scrivener.\r\n\r\nBefore long I hope to show you something from this that is rather more complex. But it will require some editing first.\r\n\r\nOh, and do remember. This is processing, not writing. It\'s important, but not as important as the words themselves.','From Scrivener to Kindle step-by-step','','publish','open','open','','from-scrivener-to-kindle-step-by-step','','','2011-03-05 21:58:32','2011-03-05 21:58:32','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7583',0,'post','',12),(7588,1,'2011-03-03 14:42:46','2011-03-03 14:42:46','','Judith','','inherit','open','open','','judith','','','2011-03-03 14:42:46','2011-03-03 14:42:46','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Judith.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(7596,1,'2011-03-03 14:52:09','2011-03-03 14:52:09','','cover','','inherit','open','open','','cover','','','2011-03-03 14:52:09','2011-03-03 14:52:09','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/cover.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7600,1,'2011-03-03 15:04:28','2011-03-03 15:04:28','','Formatting','','inherit','open','open','','formatting','','','2011-03-03 15:04:28','2011-03-03 15:04:28','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Formatting.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7602,1,'2011-03-03 15:07:49','2011-03-03 15:07:49','','Processing','','inherit','open','open','','processing','','','2011-03-03 15:07:49','2011-03-03 15:07:49','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Processing.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7603,1,'2011-03-03 15:09:28','2011-03-03 15:09:28','','Separators','','inherit','open','open','','separators','','','2011-03-03 15:09:28','2011-03-03 15:09:28','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Separators.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7605,1,'2011-03-03 15:12:11','2011-03-03 15:12:11','','Cover2','','inherit','open','open','','cover2','','','2011-03-03 15:12:11','2011-03-03 15:12:11','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Cover2.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7606,1,'2011-03-03 15:13:46','2011-03-03 15:13:46','','Ebook options','','inherit','open','open','','ebook-options','','','2011-03-03 15:13:46','2011-03-03 15:13:46','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Ebook-options.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7607,1,'2011-03-03 15:14:31','2011-03-03 15:14:31','','Text options','','inherit','open','open','','text-options','','','2011-03-03 15:14:31','2011-03-03 15:14:31','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Text-options.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7608,1,'2011-03-03 15:15:36','2011-03-03 15:15:36','','html options','','inherit','open','open','','html-options','','','2011-03-03 15:15:36','2011-03-03 15:15:36','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/html-options.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7609,1,'2011-03-03 15:17:00','2011-03-03 15:17:00','','Metadata','','inherit','open','open','','metadata','','','2011-03-03 15:17:00','2011-03-03 15:17:00','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Metadata.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7617,1,'2011-03-04 08:17:00','2011-03-04 08:17:00','','Formatting','','inherit','open','open','','formatting-2','','','2011-03-04 08:17:00','2011-03-04 08:17:00','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Formatting1.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7616,1,'2011-03-04 08:15:31','2011-03-04 08:15:31','','Contents','','inherit','open','open','','contents-2','','','2011-03-04 08:15:31','2011-03-04 08:15:31','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Contents1.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7619,1,'2011-03-05 11:08:17','2011-03-05 11:08:17','<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Judith.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7588\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Judith\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Judith-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" /></a>Downtrodden, impoverished and frumpy -- in her own eyes at least -- Mary Mackenzie finds herself in Rome with the latest in a long line of abusive \'employers\'. The elderly Mr Carstairs \'works in art\' and has taken her to a painting exhibition, one that turned out to be rather more shocking than she expected.\r\n\r\nNow she finds herself in Babington\'s Tea Rooms getting a lecture from Mr Carstairs on the history of the painting concerned, and her own inadequacies. After which she will be expected, once more, to perform her \'duties\', ones she finds distinctly distasteful.\r\n\r\nBut is the worm about to turn?\r\n\r\n<em>Judith and the Holy Ferns</em> is a 9000-word short story set in Rome but without any of the customary cast from the Costa books. It\'s a two-hander mainly, Mary and Mr Carstairs with one unusual added guest towards the end. Those of us with longish writing careers often end up with pieces like this, ideas that, in this case, hark back to my old love of Roald Dahl (in his adult stories) and Robert Aickman. Slightly odd tales with curious resolutions that don\'t quite resolve.\r\n\r\nA part of me wonders if this might be the beginning of a Costa story, one in which my familiar team take up the challenge Mary and Mr Carstairs leave hanging in the air at the end of this tale.\r\n\r\nOne day perhaps... for now it is just <em>Judith and the Holy Ferns</em>, a short story available only on Kindle. If you want to know how this was done <a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/2011/03/from-scrivener-to-kindle-step-by-step/\">please read here</a>.\r\n\r\n<strong><a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judith-and-the-Holy-Ferns/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1299228829&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">Buy from the UK Kindle store for 94p\r\n</a></strong>\r\n\r\n<strong><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Judith-Holy-Ferns-ebook/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;m=A7B2F8DUJ88VZ&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226147&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Buy from the US Kindle store for $1.84\r\n</a></strong>','Judith and the Holy Ferns','','publish','closed','closed','','judith-and-the-holy-ferns','','','2011-03-06 08:33:51','2011-03-06 08:33:51','',7670,'http://davidhewson.com/?page_id=7619',0,'page','',0),(7625,1,'2011-03-04 18:19:08','2011-03-04 18:19:08','So the government <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8362153/Superfast-broadband-plans-get-50m-government-boost.html\" target=\"_blank\">is to slap down £50 million</a> to help kickstart broadband into every community in Britain, including little rural places like the spot on the North Downs where I live.\r\n\r\nHere\'s George Osborne, the Chancellor, announcing it, \'Broadband is crucial    for the country’s economic future; that’s why the coalition Government is    investing over half a billion pounds in its infrastructure.\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n\'We want to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015 and    today’s £50m will benefit up to 800,000 homes and businesses. This is very    much a locally-driven process and we encourage bids from all local people    with plans for improving broadband in their local area.\'\r\n\r\nA word in your shell-like, George. You may hand out that money to the fat cats of the telecom industry. But if you do make sure they actually deliver, won\'t you? Cue a cautionary tale...\r\n\r\n<!--more-->Five years ago when I was running the web site for the <a title=\"Saved\" href=\"http://davidhewson.com/standalones/saved/\">save-wye campaign</a> I was paying £100 a month for a crappy satellite broadband connection that capped my monthly bandwidth to 1 gb and throttled everything after that. I didn\'t have any choice. There was no broadband on our village exchange and even expensive ISDN -- 64K! -- didn\'t cut it.\r\n\r\nThose kind people at BT said we could have broadband if we clubbed together and paid them £15,000 to put the equipment in the local exchange. Eventually Kent County Council shelled out to install it. So we could get ADSL, but only from BT and its resellers, since BT had the monopoly on the exchange.\r\n\r\nIt started off at a 2mb connection. Later that rose to \'up to 8mb\'. If you were lucky. The problem is, you see, we may have ADSL in the exchange, but we also have copper telephone wires that haven\'t been upgraded in donkey\'s years. The voice quality on many lines hereabouts is so poor you\'re better off on a mobile call (if you can get a signal).\r\n\r\nBroadband speed? Totally depends on where you are and what the line is like. I have two lines into this place, one for business, one, the older one, for private use. The business one, installed at great expense when ADSL turns up, chugs along at a steady 6mb and has pretty clear voice quality. The older voice line is incredibly crackly and is lucky to get a 3mb connection. <em>Both come into the house through the same cable.</em>\r\n\r\nThe pub restaurant up the road, the excellent Timber Batts, has a phone line so crackly they sometimes struggle to hear customers, and a net connection struggling at 2mb. And they\'re <em>nearer</em> to the exchange than I am. So it\'s nothing to do with distance.\r\n\r\nWhat happens when you complain to BT about the state of the wires? They um and aah and say... it \'meets their minimum standards\'. So crappy are the lines they usually go down for a week or more once or twice a year. Every time the engineers come out they say, \'This lot should have been replaced years ago.\'\r\n\r\nBut BT, who have a monopoly around here, as they do in many small exchanges, just can\'t be bothered.\r\n\r\nSo give them all that money if you like, George. But make sure they pass the benefits onto their customers, and don\'t just put a load of flashy new equipment in the exchange that\'s no use to man nor beast.\r\n\r\n</div>','Broadband in the countryside: having a laugh?','','publish','open','open','','broadband-in-the-countryside-having-a-laugh','','','2011-03-04 18:19:08','2011-03-04 18:19:08','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7625',0,'post','',0),(7599,1,'2011-03-03 15:01:40','2011-03-03 15:01:40','','Contents','','inherit','open','open','','contents','','','2011-03-03 15:01:40','2011-03-03 15:01:40','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Contents.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7965,1,'2011-04-06 18:53:15','2011-04-06 17:53:15','Years ago backing up was easy. I gave my mother-in-law a floppy with the latest draft and she kept it in a safe place. Never needed to ask where that safe place was, of course. Because that\'s the truth about backup. You only need it when you don\'t have it. Backup well and regularly and nothing much is likely to go wrong. Let down your guard and...\r\n\r\nA few years back a Word file went bad. I didn\'t mind too much. I was paying for Apple\'s MobileMe service at the time, which included twice daily backups to the web. So I went to recover the last version and... it wasn\'t there. The backup service had given up the ghost and never mentioned it. I actually lost something.\r\n\r\nAnd to make it worse when I moaned about this to warn people on the Apple forums some 15-year-old geek came along and scolded me. Didn\'t I read the small print? The bit where Apple said their MobileMe backup service \'wasn\'t meant for business\'?\r\n\r\nI never did work out how Apple divided the bits and bytes it was supposed to be storing into business ones and personal ones. I did, however, pull my money out of MobileMe and look for other solutions. Multiple solutions in the end because the truth is that, if you\'re paranoid about backup, just one simply will not do.\r\n\r\nTo begin with though I didn\'t learn that either. I plugged in one of those 1TB USB hard drives and relied on Time Machine. A few months later I thought I\'d just check how this was going. No, I didn\'t have the Time Machine icon running in the window. Enough clutter up there already. I thought it might beep if it had a problem. It didn\'t. It just stopped working.\r\n\r\nSo I restarted that and discovered, after a while, that my Western Digital My Book backup drive would simply go offline from time to time, killing Time Machine too. Worked again if I unplugged it and plugged it back in. But that\'s not the point, is it? I needed to keep on checking the whole thing was working. And sooner or later it wasn\'t.\r\n\r\nHere, then, comes the latest solution. Let\'s call it Backup 13 because I\'ve probably been through that many combinations over the years.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/002.jpeg\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7967\" title=\"002\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/002-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" /></a>First... local. I still have the WD My Book. Time Machine still writes to it. But I now have a new bit of kit too, a network drive, the Synology DiskStation DS111 on the right. This is what\'s called a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Network-attached storage\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage\">Network-attached storage</a> device (NAS). Essentially it\'s a little computer in its own right which hooks onto your network through the Ethernet port on your router. It then runs happily and quietly using very little power (and switching itself off at night if I want) doing a number of different jobs.\r\n\r\nThe DS111 is just a box with no storage. It costs around £220 though you can get similar things with fewer features for less. It can take two hard drives (I had a couple of 1tb spares that fitted) and use them. It also does something called RAID which combines those two 1tb drives into a single one of the same size with redundant storage. What that means is... if one drive goes down you don\'t lose anything. The data will always be recoverable from the other working drive.\r\n\r\nIf all you want is local storage this thing is very easy to set up. You can flick an option and use it directly for Time Machine backups. Or you can just see it as a storage drive attached to your network. I don\'t want to mimic what I do with Time Machine though. What I really want on this thing is a working copy of my current Documents folder on my desktop, for reasons which will soon become apparent.\r\n\r\nThe DS111 comes with software to achieve this on Windows. For the Mac I use an excellent and inexpensive app called <a href=\"http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/cs/chrono_overview.html\" target=\"_blank\">Chronosync</a> ($40). This syncs my Documents folder to a storage directory on the DS111 to schedules I want, archiving old copies so I don\'t lose a thing.\r\n\r\nOK - so now I have two forms of local backup, one through USB, one slightly different to the network drive. Now for the clever stuff. The DS111 is a clever, working computer in its own right and will go about its business night and day whether I\'m working, have my desktop on, even when I\'m away. Backing up to home drives is fine but what if the house burns down? I need offsite backup too.\r\n\r\nEnter <a href=\"http://aws.amazon.com/s3/\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon S3</a>, a storage service from, yes, that company. S3 is used by a lot of serious companies for software development and the rest. But anyone can sign up for a free account and new users currently get 5gb of storage and lot of access per month for free. More than enough, I suspect, for my needs, and even if I go over them a little bit it won\'t cost much at all.\r\n\r\nThe DS111 backs up any of the directories I create on it to my free Amazon S3 account. It will even do this in the middle of the night, when my ISP doesn\'t count broadband use at all. So Chronosync backs up my documents in the middle of the day and early evening. And overnight a copy of my documents folders goes to S3.\r\n\r\nCan I sleep at night with this? I think so. My data is in two local locations and one remote one. This is about as neurotic as it can get.\r\n\r\nBut there is more. My DiskStation isn\'t just a computer. It\'s also a web server. So I can set it up to be accessible to me and me alone, through username and password, anywhere in the world where I have a web connection. I can tunnel back into my documents, access photos, even play my home music (and on an iPad, iPhone or Android phone with a free app too).\r\n\r\nDo I need this? Not the music stuff perhaps -- but the idea of being able to access my own personal dropbox of current documents that easily does sound attractive.\r\n\r\nOne word of caution. Local setup for this thing was very easy. Getting it to be visible outside the local network, through a web connection, is more tricky. Some common routers have automatic setup. Mine didn\'t so I had to go into my router and set up \'port forwarding\'. In other words I had to tell the router to allow certain connections through the firewall to get to the DiskStation. This turned out to be a lot easier than trying to use the wizard on the DiskStation itself.\r\n\r\nRead up on port forwarding and do it on the router is my advice. And if your ISP doesn’t provide you with a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"IP address\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address\">static IP address</a> -- needed so that you can find your DiskStation over the web -- use the built-in workaround within the DiskStation box. This will allow you to sign up for a service that routes you to the right place even if, like most users, your IP address changes from time to time.\r\n\r\nAnyway -- it all seems to be working. If I lose anything after <em>this</em> then I will be mad.\r\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><img class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none; float: right;\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=2404cc68-f0c8-443e-99fb-d37b98e9f512\" alt=\"\" /></div>','The new (final?) backup system is in place','','publish','open','open','','the-new-final-backup-system-is-in-place','','','2011-04-06 18:53:15','2011-04-06 17:53:15','',0,'http://davidhewson.com/?p=7965',0,'post','',4),(7635,1,'2011-03-05 11:01:51','2011-03-05 11:01:51','<a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judith-and-the-Holy-Ferns/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226074&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7588\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Judith\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Judith-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" /></a>Today Amazon published my first direct from Scrivener-to-Kindle work, a short story set in Rome, though not part of the Costa series, called <em>Judith and the Holy Ferns. </em>I put this up because it\'s an unusual piece of work I\'d quite like to get out there, but also as a test of how easy it is to go from Scrivener 2 to Kindle with no intermediate apps or conversions.\n\nI\'m also interested in seeing how many people will think it worth reading; you can <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judith-and-the-Holy-Ferns/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226074&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">find it in the UK store here</a> and <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Judith-Holy-Ferns-ebook/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;m=A7B2F8DUJ88VZ&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226147&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">in the US one here</a>. It\'s priced at £1.14 (99p plus VAT which applies to ebooks, sigh) in the UK, to match my Macmillan short story of a similar length, <em>Dead Men\'s Shoes</em>, and at $1.84 in the US.\n\nThis is a step-by-step guide detailing how I got this 9000-word story from Scrivener on to Kindle, so that those of you wanting to do the same can see in detail how it happened.\n\nFirst, watch this video which is produced by the Scrivener people. It begins by describing the process involved in producing an epub ebook, the kind used by iBooks and other places. I haven\'t put this work up on iBooks; to do it directly demands you get an ISBN, which is a pain frankly, and overkill for a 99p short story, nor do I have the time right now to deal with iBook aggregators. Besides, I think Kindle wipes the floor with every other ebook delivery system. It\'s quick, easy and very, very popular.  The process for getting a Kindle file follows the epub pattern in the video. Part way through you will see how to choose Kindle over epub.\n\n[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cgJ8x-R86M[/youtube]\n\nTo go further you will need to be signed up for Kindle Digital Publishing and to have <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&amp;docId=1000234621\" target=\"_blank\">downloaded the KindleGen plugin and the Kindle Previewer here.</a> Note: it only works on Intel Macs running 10.5 or higher. So Tiger users won\'t be able to take advantage of it (this is an Amazon limitation, not a Scrivener one).\n\nAll done? Next, get yourself a cover, a jpeg 600 x 800 at 72 dpi. It will appear on Kindle hardware in black and white, but not everyone uses Kindle hardware. Kindle apps are very popular too. So my advice is: choose a cover that\'s colour and will work in both. The Kindle Previewer will show you what it looks like in black and white.\n\nMy cover for <em>Judith and the Holy Ferns</em> is light and minimal and self-produced. Flashy cover designs are essential in paper book publishing where they are used to generate advance sales from retailers among other things. I\'m not entirely convinced they are so high on the buy/don\'t buy process in epublishing, but that\'s a discussion for another time. This is a 99p short story. I\'m not forking out $1000 for a commercial book cover.\n\nWhen you have a suitable jpeg drag it somewhere into the Binder in your Scrivener project so that it sits as a separate file like this. This is important. You can\'t import that cover into your final Kindle file if it\'s outside Scrivener.\n\nNow go to the Compile option in the File Menu.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Contents1.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7616\" title=\"Contents\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Contents1-640x600.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"595\" /></a>\n\nWe will be running down the list of processes on the left and dealing with the options as they go. The first is obvious -- contents. This will determine the text elements in the manuscript you want to go into the finished book. There are just three chapters in this short story, each with names and manual chapter numbers. So I don\'t need to worry about auto chapter numbering (which is possible and the video shows how). I just tick the chapters I want to include.\n\nNext comes formatting.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Formatting1.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7617\" title=\"Formatting\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Formatting1-640x599.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"594\" /></a>\n\nThis isn\'t text and font size -- Kindle takes care of that for you. This is to do with how chapter headings are dealt with. If your book is hierarchical -- parts and chapters, for example -- this is where you dictate that those headings are different to the body text. I only have Level 1 text documents in here -- the third option. So while the others are ticked they won\'t have any effect. I\'ve changed the header setting to Heading 3 (just put your cursor next to title) to make it bigger than the body text and on the right I\'ve inserted Page padding of eight lines. This will make new chapters start a little way down the page, something that\'s becoming popular in ebook formatting.\n\nProcessing options...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Processing.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7602\" title=\"Processing\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Processing-640x533.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"528\" /></a>\n\nBy clicking \'Do not add page padding to the first document\' I make sure the first chapter of the book starts at the top of the page, which I prefer. This is just personal taste. I don\'t need to do anything with the other options.\n\nSeparators...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Separators.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7603\" title=\"Separators\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Separators-640x598.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"593\" /></a>\n\nThis threw me at first and caused my one hiccup. I had the text set to break to a new line between sections. In order to generate proper chapter headings and a table of contents (and Kindle likes TOCs, even for small documents) you need to separate everything with a section break. Otherwise you will get nagged for not having a TOC.\n\nCover... just pick the jpeg you already have in your Scrivener binder which will appear as an option in the popup.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Cover2.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7605\" title=\"Cover2\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Cover2-640x533.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"528\" /></a>\n\nE-Book options... these will give you a TOC that Kindle will like.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Ebook-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7606\" title=\"Ebook options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Ebook-options-640x526.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"521\" /></a>\n\nText Options...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Text-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7607\" title=\"Text options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Text-options-640x531.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"526\" /></a>\n\nYou can clean up text if you want here -- I don\'t need to.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/html-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7608\" title=\"html options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/html-options-640x596.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"591\" /></a>\n\nThis doesn\'t apply to a short story with no internal links, but I left it selected anyway. But if you use internal wiki-like links in Scrivener this will recreate them in the Kindle document, which could be useful for non-ficytio.\n\nFinally, as far as a modest project like this is concerned... Meta-Data.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Metadata.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7609\" title=\"Metadata\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Metadata-640x597.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"592\" /></a>\n\nThis is where you deal with title, publisher and author information. That\'s all you need enter really as far as I can see -- forget about ID numbers and dates. I suspect something ought to be entered under Rights but I don\'t know what and Kindle DRMs the files anyway so it doesn\'t much bother me.\n\nOne caveat. Kindle demands you put in the author as Last name, First name. The current release version of Scrivener isn\'t happy with this and recognises it as two authors. At the time of writing, early March 2011, you need to download the latest Scrivener beta to get this working properly. <a href=\"http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&amp;t=11692\" target=\"_blank\">You can find it here</a>. After that type in Last name, First name and it will work.\n\nThe final option is simply a link to where the KindleGen plugin is kept on your Mac. The other options can be left for me. After that click Compile and check your output in Kindle Viewer (and a Kindle app too). When you\'re happy with it upload to Kindle Digital Publishing and wait for it to go public after it\'s approved.\n\nThis is a simple process for a fairly simple short story. Anyone with hierarchical novels, in folders or as sub documents, should take care to get those options right in the Formatting section and to check that the separators are working fine too.\n\nOnce you have a working system you can save it in the Compile window and simply reload the settings for another publication later. This is getting as close to an automated ebook process as I can imagine right now, and is <em>much</em> slicker than anything that I\'ve seen before for Kindle publication. One more amazing facet in the amazing piece of software that\'s Scrivener.\n\nBefore long I hope to show you something from this that is rather more complex. But it will require some editing first.\n\nOh, and do remember. This is processing, not writing. It\'s important, but not as important as the words themselves.','From Scrivener to Kindle step-by-step','','inherit','open','open','','7583-revision-2','','','2011-03-05 11:01:51','2011-03-05 11:01:51','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/2011/03/7583-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(7634,1,'2011-03-05 10:58:49','2011-03-05 10:58:49','<a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judith-and-the-Holy-Ferns/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226074&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7588\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Judith\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Judith-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" /></a>Today Amazon published my first direct from Scrivener-to-Kindle work, a short story set in Rome, though not part of the Costa series, called <em>Judith and the Holy Ferns. </em>I put this up because it\'s an unusual piece of work I\'d quite like to get out there, but also as a test of how easy it is to go from Scrivener 2 to Kindle with no intermediate apps or conversions.\n\nI\'m also interested in seeing how many people will think it worth reading; you can <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judith-and-the-Holy-Ferns/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226074&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">find it in the UK store here</a> and <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Judith-Holy-Ferns-ebook/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;m=A7B2F8DUJ88VZ&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226147&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">in the US one here</a>. It\'s priced at £1.14 (99p plus VAT which applies to ebooks, sigh) in the UK, to match my Macmillan short story of a similar length, <em>Dead Men\'s Shoes</em>, and at $1.84 in the US.\n\nThis is a step-by-step guide detailing how I got this 9000-word story from Scrivener on to Kindle, so that those of you wanting to do the same can see in detail how it happened.\n\nFirst, watch this video which is produced by the Scrivener people. It begins by describing the process involved in producing an epub ebook, the kind used by iBooks and other places. I haven\'t put this work up on iBooks; to do it directly demands you get an ISBN, which is a pain frankly, and overkill for a 99p short story, nor do I have the time right now to deal with iBook aggregators. Besides, I think Kindle wipes the floor with every other ebook delivery system. It\'s quick, easy and very, very popular.  The process for getting a Kindle file follows the epub pattern in the video. Part way through you will see how to choose Kindle over epub.\n\n[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cgJ8x-R86M[/youtube]\n\nTo go further you will need to be signed up for Kindle Digital Publishing and to have <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&amp;docId=1000234621\" target=\"_blank\">downloaded the KindleGen plugin and the Kindle Previewer here.</a> Note: it only works on Intel Macs running 10.5 or higher. So Tiger users won\'t be able to take advantage of it (this is an Amazon limitation, not a Scrivener one).\n\nAll done? Next, get yourself a cover, a jpeg 600 x 800 at 72 dpi. It will appear on Kindle hardware in black and white, but not everyone uses Kindle hardware. Kindle apps are very popular too. So my advice is: choose a cover that\'s colour and will work in both. The Kindle Previewer will show you what it looks like in black and white.\n\nMy cover for <em>Judith and the Holy Ferns</em> is light and minimal and self-produced. Flashy cover designs are essential in paper book publishing where they are used to generate advance sales from retailers among other things. I\'m not entirely convinced they are so high on the buy/don\'t buy process in epublishing, but that\'s a discussion for another time. This is a 99p short story. I\'m not forking out $1000 for a commercial book cover.\n\nWhen you have a suitable jpeg drag it somewhere into the Binder in your Scrivener project so that it sits as a separate file like this. This is important. You can\'t import that cover into your final Kindle file if it\'s outside Scrivener.\n\n&nbsp;\n\nNow go to the Compile option in the File Menu.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Contents1.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7616\" title=\"Contents\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Contents1-640x600.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"595\" /></a>\n\nWe will be running down the list of processes on the left and dealing with the options as they go. The first is obvious -- contents. This will determine the text elements in the manuscript you want to go into the finished book. There are just three chapters in this short story, each with names and manual chapter numbers. So I don\'t need to worry about auto chapter numbering (which is possible and the video shows how). I just tick the chapters I want to include.\n\nNext comes formatting.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Formatting1.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7617\" title=\"Formatting\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Formatting1-640x599.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"594\" /></a>\n\nThis isn\'t text and font size -- Kindle takes care of that for you. This is to do with how chapter headings are dealt with. If your book is hierarchical -- parts and chapters, for example -- this is where you dictate that those headings are different to the body text. I only have Level 1 text documents in here -- the third option. So while the others are ticked they won\'t have any effect. I\'ve changed the text setting to Heading 3 to make it bigger than the body text and on the right I\'ve inserted Page padding of eight lines. This will make new chapters start a little way down the page, something that\'s becoming popular in ebook formatting.\n\nProcessing options...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Processing.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7602\" title=\"Processing\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Processing-640x533.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"528\" /></a>\n\nBy clicking \'Do not add page padding to the first document\' I make sure the first chapter of the book starts at the top of the page, which I prefer. This is just personal taste. I don\'t need to do anything with the other options.\n\nSeparators...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Separators.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7603\" title=\"Separators\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Separators-640x598.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"593\" /></a>\n\nThis threw me at first and caused my one hiccup. I had the text set to break to a new line between sections. In order to generate proper chapter headings and a table of contents (and Kindle likes TOCs, even for small documents) you need to separate everything with a section break. Otherwise you will get nagged for not having a TOC.\n\nCover... just pick the jpeg you already have in your Scrivener binder which will appear as an option in the popup.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Cover2.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7605\" title=\"Cover2\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Cover2-640x533.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"528\" /></a>\n\nE-Book options... these will give you a TOC that Kindle will like. I found it still generated errors in the Kindle Viewer app. But when I looked at the same book in Kindle itself the TOC worked fine, so I suspect there may be a glitch in Viewer.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Ebook-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7606\" title=\"Ebook options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Ebook-options-640x526.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"521\" /></a>\n\nText Options...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Text-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7607\" title=\"Text options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Text-options-640x531.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"526\" /></a>\n\nYou can clean up text if you want here -- I don\'t need to.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/html-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7608\" title=\"html options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/html-options-640x596.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"591\" /></a>\n\nI don\'t pretend to know what\'s going on here, and I suspect this doesn\'t apply to a short story with no internal links, but I left it selected anyway.\n\nFinally, as far as a modest project like this is concerned... Meta-Data.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Metadata.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7609\" title=\"Metadata\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Metadata-640x597.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"592\" /></a>\n\nThis is where you deal with title, publisher and author information. That\'s all you need enter really as far as I can see -- forget about ID numbers and dates. I suspect something ought to be entered under Rights but I don\'t know what and Kindle DRMs the files anyway so it doesn\'t much bother me.\n\nOne caveat. Kindle demands you put in the author as Last name, First name. The current release version of Scrivener isn\'t happy with this and recognises it as two authors. At the time of writing, early March 2011, you need to download the latest Scrivener beta to get this working properly. <a href=\"http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&amp;t=11692\" target=\"_blank\">You can find it here</a>. After that type in Last name, First name and it will work.\n\nThe final option is simply a link to where the KindleGen plugin is kept on your Mac. The other options can be left for me. After that click Compile and check your output in Kindle Viewer (and a Kindle app too). When you\'re happy with it upload to Kindle Digital Publishing and wait for it to go public after it\'s approved.\n\nThis is a simple process for a fairly simple short story. Anyone with hierarchical novels, in folders or as sub documents, should take care to get those options right in the Formatting section and to check that the separators are working fine too.\n\nOnce you have a working system you can save it in the Compile window and simply reload the settings for another publication later. This is getting as close to an automated ebook process as I can imagine right now, and is <em>much</em> slicker than anything that I\'ve seen before for Kindle publication. One more amazing facet in the amazing piece of software that\'s Scrivener.\n\nBefore long I hope to show you something from this that is rather more complex. But it will require some editing first.\n\nOh, and do remember. This is processing, not writing. It\'s important, but not as important as the words themselves.','From Scrivener to Kindle step-by-step','','inherit','open','open','','7583-revision','','','2011-03-05 10:58:49','2011-03-05 10:58:49','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/2011/03/7583-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(7637,1,'2011-03-05 11:04:00','2011-03-05 11:04:00','<a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judith-and-the-Holy-Ferns/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226074&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7588\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Judith\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Judith-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" /></a>Today Amazon published my first direct from Scrivener-to-Kindle work, a short story set in Rome, though not part of the Costa series, called <em>Judith and the Holy Ferns. </em>I put this up because it\'s an unusual piece of work I\'d quite like to get out there, but also as a test of how easy it is to go from Scrivener 2 to Kindle with no intermediate apps or conversions.\n\nI\'m also interested in seeing how many people will think it worth reading; you can <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judith-and-the-Holy-Ferns/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226074&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">find it in the UK store here</a> and <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Judith-Holy-Ferns-ebook/dp/B004QGYAFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;m=A7B2F8DUJ88VZ&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1299226147&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">in the US one here</a>. It\'s priced at 94p (including VAT which applies to ebooks, sigh) in the UK, to match my Macmillan short story of a similar length, <em>Dead Men\'s Shoes</em>, and at $1.84 in the US.\n\nThis is a step-by-step guide detailing how I got this 9000-word story from Scrivener on to Kindle, so that those of you wanting to do the same can see in detail how it happened.\n\nFirst, watch this video which is produced by the Scrivener people. It begins by describing the process involved in producing an epub ebook, the kind used by iBooks and other places. I haven\'t put this work up on iBooks; to do it directly demands you get an ISBN, which is a pain frankly, and overkill for a 99p short story, nor do I have the time right now to deal with iBook aggregators. Besides, I think Kindle wipes the floor with every other ebook delivery system. It\'s quick, easy and very, very popular.  The process for getting a Kindle file follows the epub pattern in the video. Part way through you will see how to choose Kindle over epub.\n\n[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cgJ8x-R86M[/youtube]\n\nTo go further you will need to be signed up for Kindle Digital Publishing and to have <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&amp;docId=1000234621\" target=\"_blank\">downloaded the KindleGen plugin and the Kindle Previewer here.</a> Note: it only works on Intel Macs running 10.5 or higher. So Tiger users won\'t be able to take advantage of it (this is an Amazon limitation, not a Scrivener one).\n\nAll done? Next, get yourself a cover, a jpeg 600 x 800 at 72 dpi. It will appear on Kindle hardware in black and white, but not everyone uses Kindle hardware. Kindle apps are very popular too. So my advice is: choose a cover that\'s colour and will work in both. The Kindle Previewer will show you what it looks like in black and white.\n\nMy cover for <em>Judith and the Holy Ferns</em> is light and minimal and self-produced. Flashy cover designs are essential in paper book publishing where they are used to generate advance sales from retailers among other things. I\'m not entirely convinced they are so high on the buy/don\'t buy process in epublishing, but that\'s a discussion for another time. This is a 99p short story. I\'m not forking out $1000 for a commercial book cover.\n\nWhen you have a suitable jpeg drag it somewhere into the Binder in your Scrivener project so that it sits as a separate file like this. This is important. You can\'t import that cover into your final Kindle file if it\'s outside Scrivener.\n\nNow go to the Compile option in the File Menu.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Contents1.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7616\" title=\"Contents\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Contents1-640x600.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"595\" /></a>\n\nWe will be running down the list of processes on the left and dealing with the options as they go. The first is obvious -- contents. This will determine the text elements in the manuscript you want to go into the finished book. There are just three chapters in this short story, each with names and manual chapter numbers. So I don\'t need to worry about auto chapter numbering (which is possible and the video shows how). I just tick the chapters I want to include.\n\nNext comes formatting.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Formatting1.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7617\" title=\"Formatting\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Formatting1-640x599.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"594\" /></a>\n\nThis isn\'t text and font size -- Kindle takes care of that for you. This is to do with how chapter headings are dealt with. If your book is hierarchical -- parts and chapters, for example -- this is where you dictate that those headings are different to the body text. I only have Level 1 text documents in here -- the third option. So while the others are ticked they won\'t have any effect. I\'ve changed the header setting to Heading 3 (just put your cursor next to title) to make it bigger than the body text and on the right I\'ve inserted Page padding of eight lines. This will make new chapters start a little way down the page, something that\'s becoming popular in ebook formatting.\n\nProcessing options...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Processing.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7602\" title=\"Processing\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Processing-640x533.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"528\" /></a>\n\nBy clicking \'Do not add page padding to the first document\' I make sure the first chapter of the book starts at the top of the page, which I prefer. This is just personal taste. I don\'t need to do anything with the other options.\n\nSeparators...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Separators.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7603\" title=\"Separators\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Separators-640x598.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"593\" /></a>\n\nThis threw me at first and caused my one hiccup. I had the text set to break to a new line between sections. In order to generate proper chapter headings and a table of contents (and Kindle likes TOCs, even for small documents) you need to separate everything with a section break. Otherwise you will get nagged for not having a TOC.\n\nCover... just pick the jpeg you already have in your Scrivener binder which will appear as an option in the popup.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Cover2.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7605\" title=\"Cover2\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Cover2-640x533.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"528\" /></a>\n\nE-Book options... these will give you a TOC that Kindle will like.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Ebook-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7606\" title=\"Ebook options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Ebook-options-640x526.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"521\" /></a>\n\nText Options...\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Text-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7607\" title=\"Text options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Text-options-640x531.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"526\" /></a>\n\nYou can clean up text if you want here -- I don\'t need to.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/html-options.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7608\" title=\"html options\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/html-options-640x596.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"591\" /></a>\n\nThis doesn\'t apply to a short story with no internal links, but I left it selected anyway. But if you use internal wiki-like links in Scrivener this will recreate them in the Kindle document, which could be useful for non-fiction projects.\n\nFinally, as far as a modest project like this is concerned... Meta-Data.\n\n<a href=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Metadata.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7609\" title=\"Metadata\" src=\"http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Metadata-640x597.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"592\" /></a>\n\nThis is where you deal with title, publisher and author information. That\'s all you need enter really as far as I can see -- forget about ID numbers and dates. I suspect something ought to be entered under Rights but I don\'t know what and Kindle DRMs the files anyway so it doesn\'t much bother me.\n\nOne caveat. Kindle demands you put in the author as Last name, First name. The current release version of Scrivener isn\'t happy with this and recognises it as two authors. At the time of writing, early March 2011, you need to download the latest Scrivener beta to get this working properly. <a href=\"http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&amp;t=11692\" target=\"_blank\">You can find it here</a>. After that type in Last name, First name and it will work.\n\nThe final option is simply a link to where the KindleGen plugin is kept on your Mac. The other options can be left for me. After that click Compile and check your output in Kindle Viewer (and a Kindle app too). When you\'re happy with it upload to Kindle Digital Publishing and wait for it to go public after it\'s approved.\n\nThis is a simple process for a fairly simple short story. Anyone with hierarchical novels, in folders or as sub documents, should take care to get those options right in the Formatting section and to check that the separators are working fine too.\n\nOnce you have a working system you can save it in the Compile window and simply reload the settings for another publication later. This is getting as close to an automated ebook process as I can imagine right now, and is <em>much</em> slicker than anything that I\'ve seen before for Kindle publication. One more amazing facet in the amazing piece of software that\'s Scrivener.\n\nBefore long I hope to show you something from this that is rather more complex. But it will require some editing first.\n\nOh, and do remember. This is processing, not writing. It\'s important, but not as important as the words themselves.','From Scrivener to Kindle step-by-step','','inherit','open','open','','7583-revision-4','','','2011-03-05 11:04:00','2011-03-05 11:04:00','',7583,'http://davidhewson.com/2011/03/7583-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0);
