I have completed another read-through of the manuscripts, and I am surprised how well they continue to hold up, even after reading them several times in a row. While reading I quite often find myself easily immersed in the story, and then I completely forget to read it as an editor, who's suppose to spot typos and all those other things I'm suppose to look for. But you know it's okay, I'm managing, this whole editor-thing is still kinda new to me, and one of the biggest challenges in all this, is to stay focused and keep a fresh mind, while going over the text with a fine-tooth comb again and again, until everything is right.
And this editor-thing, it's been a huge learning experience for me, the part about becoming inspired and making notes, and the writing itself: I know all that, I've been doing that for so long, it comes naturally and completely effortless to me. But this other part of proofreading and editing the manuscripts, and then doing my own pr and all that stuff related to self-publishing, that's all new for me and I really had to set myself down, and focus and learn it, and learn it well, because of course it is important.
And knowing all this what I know now, I think I will work a lot quicker through future projects. The writing process is very intuitive and this editing and the finalizing of the manuscripts, is actually the opposite of intuitive, it is very much a conscious and pragmatic process, and maybe that's why I have so much trouble doing it, because by nature I am a very intuitive person.
The original plan, after this last read-through, was to send it off to the copyright office and then publish it later this summer, but that's not gonna happen, I need more time, I need to give the manuscripts at least another thorough read-through, to make sure everything is absolutely flawless, because with this last read-through I still spotted quite a few typos, grammar inconsistencies and continuation issues. I've also started scanning the text for trademark names that could cause legal difficulties. Expressions like "ping-pong" and "ice popsicle" just to name a few or brand names like "Batman" or "tumblr", are all trademarked names and I can't use them. I could try to use them, but then I run the risk of getting sued, and then I have to recall all the books that are already out there or pay a penalty. I could try ask for a written permission to use expressions and names like that, but because of the naughty nature of my manuscripts they will most likely say no, and besides I don't even know who to ask. So all 'n all it's just better to omit all these words from the text that are problematic, find alternatives and play it safe. Because when legal issues as such occur, I not only risk the possibility of getting sued, I also run the risk of having my kdp account banned, and I need that for my self publishing activities on amazon.
In the last read-through I've also edited the manuscripts quite a bit, The Midsummer Night Garden went from 59 to 38 chapters, now sitting around 340 pages. And The Adventures of Princess Ballerina went from a three book version to a four volume set. As it is now: volume one will go from chapter 1 to 10 with a page count of 344, volume two will go from chapter 11 to 19 with a page count of 366, volume three will go from chapter 20 to 26 with a page count of 292, and volume four will go from chapter 27 to 35 with a page count of 361.
And the chapters that have been omitted from The Midsummer Night Garden, will go to my next poetry collection, I already have a working title for it, it's called: Salt of the Earth. And overall it will be a little more spicy, as the title suggests, but all that is still far in the future.
I've also decided with the next read-through of The Midsummer Night Garden, to add all the original dates to the poems of when they were posted, I still have that information in my tumblr back ups, and adding this information will give the manuscript an extra layer of authenticity.
I've also made new covers for The Midsummer Night Garden as well as The Adventures of Princess Ballerina. The previous covers had illustrations that were generated with AI, and apart from the possibility that again I might get in trouble with AI related copyright issues, at the moment there's also this huge backlash going on against everything AI related, and with all the AI-slop flooding social media at the moment, it's completely understandable, because it's just becoming more ridiculous every day. And with AI generated book covers it's exactly the same, a year ago it was new and interesting, but now as everybody is doing it, it has become predictable and lame.
It's better to have a book cover that makes people curious about the content, that's original and different from everything else, that makes them wonder: "hey what's this about?" And the covers I made myself, are exactly that, and I'm happy with them.
And so for the time being, I think it's better to stay away from AI generated illustrations. I still have the covers, I've been using for the past 12 months as place holders, and I might still use them at a later date, for a hardcover or limited edition (because I do like them), but for now it's better to wait until all the dust surrounding this AI controversy has settled.
In the previous diary entry, I also mentioned the plan to start working on the next draft of The Adventures of Special Agent 123XRT, while I was cooling down for the next read-through session. And I did try, I started working my way through the notes, reading and editing the text, and organizing everything by theme and setting.
But as soon as I began, I started to realize it was just a little bit too much, working on three different projects at the same time: my poetry collection, my Phoebe novel and then on top of that this huge futuristic story. It was just too much for my brain to handle and so I just had to step back and let it go for the time being.
In the past few months since then, I have continued to make notes for The Adventures of Special Agent 123XRT, because that happens on another level but the process of editing and formatting it into a readable manuscript, I have decided to do that after I've published The Midsummer Night Garden and The Adventures of Princess Ballerina. You know just keep everything a little bit more orderly and clear, because when three different projects start to overlap each other, it just becomes a little chaotic. I guess editing two projects simultaneously, is my maximum.
So for now, after this last read-through, I again will take a little break from writing and editing. Let it all sink in. And then in September when optimistically it's no longer so hot as it has been this summer, I will start again and probably that will be the final read-through. Originally I had planned the release date for the spring of '25, then it became the summer of '26, and now I'm looking at the spring of '27 as a feasible release date. Let's hope it all pens out.
When I now look at The Midsummer Night Garden and The Adventures of Princess Ballerina, it feels as if they have leveled up and have become practically more ready to be published, and it's not just understanding and knowing it, it's also feeling this, as in they've become more professional, as in: they can stand on their own, go out there and conquer the world.
Just need one more read-through, to polish them a little more.
The diary of an Underground Writer
January 9, 2026
I have finished the formatting of "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina", and I've ended up with a total page count of 1323 pages, and that was a little bit unexpected. In my mind it was always somewhere around 240 pages, and I never imagined it would go beyond that, never bothered to count the pages while I was writing it as well, and that's also why I always called it a funny little novel about everything sexy, but with 1323 pages I will need to reassess the presentation of the book, the maximum amount of pages for a self published book is around 800 pages, and for a hard cover it's even less, it's only 550 pages, and I have to consider this too, even when at first it will only be a paperback, but maybe in the future (when there is enough interest) I might publish it as a hard cover as well.
But that's still far far away in the future, for now I will have to divide the manuscript in three parts to make it more manageable. Book one (chapter 1 to 10) will have 341 pages, book two (chapter 11 to 22) will have 480 pages, and book three (chapter 23 to 35) will have 520 pages. Also have to make three different versions of the cover.
But for now, I have to step back from it for a bit, take a pause. The past few weeks while I've been reading it, and formatting it, and editing it, to see how it was holding up, which to my surprise it actually pretty well did, as well as sifting through each page with a fine tooth comb to spot typos, have been a bit tiresome and boring. Formatting a manuscript and writing a manuscript, are two very different things. I love the writing, I love the creative process, I love doing that so much, I wish I could just do that, without being bothered with all the other things. But nowadays with all the self publishing, you have to do the formatting too, and the marketing, and the pr, and all that stuff.
But okay, I'm managing, I'm learning.
But for now, I'm gonna let it rest for a while, until April. I will then read it one more time, to check for typos and see how it holds up, and then when everything is okay, I will send it off to the copyright office and have the three books of "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina" as well as the poetry collection "The Midsummer Night Garden", registered so I can connect an ISBN to each of them, and then go to Kindle direct publishing and go through the process of putting them out there, for real. And then start up the pr-machine with my youtube channel.
I don't expect to sell anything at first. If I can manage to get a thousand followers with my youtube channel, that will be an amazing achievement in itself, but even that can take a year, maybe two or even more, knowing how little interest there is on youtube for poetry. But all that is okay, I know this, I'm playing the long game. For now all I have to do is work diligently, stay focus and stay true to what needs to be done.
In the next couple of months up to April, I will rewrite the first draft of "Special Agent 123XRT", my futuristic novel about the beginning and the end of the Universe. That will be a nice diversion, it will give me something to play with, I'm looking forward to that.
The diary of an Underground Writer
November 8, 2025
Good news, I have completed the formatting of my poetry collection "The Midsummer Night Garden", the way it looks now in the epub format is still somewhat clunky, and it looks a little different on each e-reader too (I have tried it on several), but at least it's formatted and now I can move on to the next step: complete the formatting of my little novel "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina", and once that is done and I'm happy with how it looks, I will then send them both off to the copyright office and have them registered, after which I will buy the isbn numbers for them and have those registered too.
The plan is to self-publish them both around the same time as an e-book on Kindle (for everyone who is into Amazon) and on Kobo (for everyone who is outside Amazon), so I can refer to these e-book publications when I start promoting them through weekly videos on my youtube channel, and then when it starts to pick up momentum (which could take six months to a year, or maybe even more), I will than publish them in the format of a printed book, but that's only when there is an audience for it.
Also when all that is happening, when we come to it, I do hope I will have a little more control over how it looks, when I start finalizing the format for Kindle and Kobo, because as I said the epub format in which it is now, is a bit clunky. I may need to buy a Kindle and Kobo device just to be sure of how it will finally look. I have done the formatting with the Atticus program, but the white lines and the page breaks I have put in, do not always show up on the e-readers I now have on my phone, and that's a bit frustrating because I do care about how it will eventually look on the page (on paper as well as in the digital version). But I'll cross that bridge when we get there
For now I have to continue working diligently, focus on the things that need to be done, because I still have a lot of writing to do. Once "The Midsummer Night Garden" and "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina" are out there in the world, I will then have to go back to "The Adventures of Special Agent 123XRT" and continue where I left off, because it's still only a first raw draft and a lot of re-writing needs to be done, but again I'll cross that bridge when we get there.
All 'n all, it feels like it's slowly taking off, you know like a train, starting steadily, picking up speed as it continues to move, and then when it's moving in full motion and on it's way to the next destination, it will be very difficult to stop or change its trajectory, because once that train is rolling, it will go on. All that I'm doing now, with the self-publishing of my writings feels like that too, once it's out there in the world, it no longer can be stopped.
The diary of an Underground Writer
September 30, 2025
I had to take a break from writing in general, or more specifically from formatting "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina". At the moment I've done about 60%, and the main reason for me to take a break, was the warm weather we had in August, it was just too hot to think clearly. I always have this during the summer, when the temperature goes towards 30 degrees Celsius, my brain just stops working and I begin to have great difficulty focusing, and then the only thing I can do, is take a break and just let go. And so I thought: oh well might as well take a little vacation from it all, I've been writing almost constantly the past few years, and to pause it all for a while might actually be a good thing.
And so, from the beginning of August I've been on a vacation from writing (hehe, look at fancy me, tweedlee dee) although when you're writing, it's always there, even when you're not writing, and so I continued to make a few notes here and there, and I also started to think about how I wanted to promote "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina" and "The Midsummer Night Garden" (my first collection of naughty love poems), because I still hadn't figured out that one. I had thought about using images or photos, illustrating the stories and poems for my youtube videos, but how to set up a scene that could accompany the stories, was still something I wasn't sure about.
I had already figured out how I wanted to illustrate and promote the stories of "The Adventures of Special Agent 123XRT", I could simply use the footage from the game "No Man's Sky", this is a science fiction game, and you can customize your characters and quite easily set up a scene. And so I had this covered, but for "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina" and "The Midsummer Night Garden", I couldn't really find a game with which I could do this. And I then thought about using AI generated images, but those AI images always look so terribly fake, and when I see a youtube channel using AI images, it always looks wrong, like it's the easy solution or as if they don't care about the quality of the videos.
And I don't want this for "The Midsummer Night Garden" and especially not for "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina", those two are special and they only deserve the best.
And so I had a problem. The writing was no problem, the editing and formatting was no problem, all the publishing stuff with copyright registration and other things was no problem, … but then how to promote it through youtube videos, yes that was a problem, because I still had no idea how I wanted to do that, because in the end, you can write the most beautiful things, but if you don't give it the proper promotion, no one will ever take notice.
And so as I took a break from writing in early August, I sort of started thinking about that, although not intentionally it just kinda came to me by accident.
I had already been collecting nendoroids for a couple of years, I bought the first one somewhere around 2017, and I'd been steadily building a small collection, buying a few each year, and I'd even used a few of them for toy-photography too, you know just to see what they looked like in a picture. But I never really made this connection between my nendoroid collection and how I wanted to illustrate "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina" and "The Midsummer Night Garden", until it just clicked and started to make sense, to bring it all together.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I remembered I had seen the nendoroid of Harley Quinn, in the Birds of Prey version, and the thought occurred: hey I could use that nendoroid to take pictures and then use them to illustrate the poems I'd written for the love affair between Harley Quinn and Batman.
And so, I quickly bought that nendoroid, before it got sold to someone else, because it had already become something of a rarity among collectors, and I had already bought the other Harley Quinn nendoroid from the Suicide Squad movie, and I also had the Batman and the Joker nendoroids, and so they made a nice set, and thusly I was all ready to go and illustrate those love poems. And then I saw this amazing rare thing, the nendoroid of the Justice League version of Batman, and this truly was such an amazing find, because it had been a sold-out item practically from the day of it's release, and sometimes you can find one on ebay for a high price, but there's no way of knowing what quality you're gonna get, because it's always second hand, that is if you're lucky to find one.
But this nendoroid I saw of the Justice League Batman on a website in Finland, was still brand new and sealed. And honestly, I couldn't believe my luck, it was such a rare find, it was like winning the lottery. And so I immediately ordered it, and it took like: a whole week for the Bat to be delivered because it had to come all the way from Finland, but when it was delivered and when I played a little bit with it, I realized: this is it, … this is how I will illustrate my poems and stories.
And nendoroids, they are little action figures, and you can practically do everything with them, they are posable in every possible way, and all the parts from all nendoroids are interchangeable, allowing for the possibility to practically create every scene I might need, … it was perfect, and I thought: why hadn't I thought of this earlier!? (hehe), it was right there in front of me all the time. And then I quickly started buying other nendoroids I could use for illustrating my stories. In early August, I had about 40 of them, and now less than two months later, I have close to a 100.
The people who collect nendoroids, are people mostly like me, they quite often are the people from the woke community in all their diversity, with their blue hair and pink make-up and all sorts of other things like tattoos and piercings all over the place (aka the beautiful freaks) and especially now when there's so much anti-woke going round, I feel connected to this community more then ever, so it makes sense to follow this path, although I don't have an exact audience in mind when it comes to my writings, but if there are people who do kinda get what I'm writing it's probably the woke community (hehe) the anti-woke people from Florida who banned Anne Frank from the school libraries will never-never get what I'm trying to communicate through my writing, that's for sure.
And so, it was a vacation well spend. And this new insight changes everything. Previously I had the understanding that it would be best to begin my youtube channel with the videos for "The Adventures of Special Agent 123XRT" because I knew how I wanted to promote them, and then do "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina" and "The Midsummer Night Garden" later, much later.
But now, understanding how I can promote them, I can just follow the chronology of when it was written, like I always wanted to do, meaning I'll begin with "The Midsummer Night Garden" and then do "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina" and then "The Adventures of Special Agent 123XRT", and then all the other things.
ps.
and the girl in the picture, yep that's her, that's Princess Ballerina
Today is a good day, outside it's a peaceful Sunday morning, the world is slowly awakening, and inside, well I just finished the first draft of "The Adventures of Special Agent 123XRT", I've ended up with 21 chapters, 21 stories and combined they will make a nice short novel. I may need to rewrite some stuff, not sure if it all worked out as I had planned, and there is still a lot of stuff I haven't used either, and is still buried in the notes I've made, have to figure out how I can use that, maybe use it for a second season, as these first 21 chapters are like the first 21 episodes of a youtube spoken word video series, but all that is so far in the future, I don't even want to think about it. For now I'm gonna let it sink in for a while, take a few days to clear my mind. And then in the coming weeks, I'll begin formatting my little novel "The Adventures of Princess Ballerina", focus on that and see how that goes.
it's such a privilege to be alive
and I feel so fortunate
to live in a beautiful place like this
I am deeply content
just
being here
immersed
in gentle
bliss
Today was such a beautiful day, it just put a smile on my face when I was out on my bicycle, doing the groceries. Everything was in bloom, the flowers, even the trees, and the air was heavy with the scent of spring. And it was such a delight, just to be alive and witness all this and enjoy it.
Anyways,.. update on my writing: I've been writing a lot the past few weeks, and with a lot I really mean a lot (hehe). On average I write about two to three hours a day. I don't think I've ever been this productive in my live as I am right now.
At the moment I am about half way my science fiction novel, earlier referred to as "Project 3", but now I've given it the working title: "The Adventures of Special Agent 123XRT" and it's set somewhere in the future, and it's about a time traveler who goes back in time to save poetry and literature from the Great Library of Alexandria and the Imperial Library of Constantinople, before they were burned to the ground. But of course, he's not the only one with interest in going back in time, there are also more sinister forces interested in acquiring this ability and to use it not for such noble goals as saving long lost poetry, but to use it to gain power and riches. And then this Special Agent (a mix of myself, Fox Mulder and Dale Cooper)(hehe), finds himself in a perilous conflict where he not only has to protect himself but also safe the time line from irreparable damaged.
That in short is the synopsis of what the novel is about, but there are a lot of other things going on as well. I've already outlined almost all of the novel, and now it's just a matter of writing it all down. Maybe, I'll even be able to finish the first draft in a few weeks time. And then I can put it aside for a while, and refocus my attention on my little novel, which at the moment is still maturing in silence. I've already re-read a few of the first chapters, just to stay connected, and it still holds up pretty nicely. The plan is to buy the ISBN numbers and register the copyrights by the end of May, when I've saved up enough money to do these things, because they are quite costly, and I will then start the formatting and try to get it released on Amazon.
There is so much happening at the moment. The thought of having my little novel, my poetry collection and my science fiction novel out there for the world to read, by the end of the year, is both fascinating but also a little bit scary (hehe). But I love doing it, everything tells me: this is why I'm here. So, I do this.
The diary of an Underground Writer
February 28, 2025
Today was a beautiful day, it almost felt as if spring had already began, but of course we're still only in February and we did have a few very cold days last week, but while I was out on my bicycle, I did see a few crocuses in bloom, enjoying the early warmth of the sun. That was nice.
Earlier this month, I finished the re-write (the second draft) of my little novel, and now for just a few weeks or so, I'm leaving it alone, letting it sink in, focus on other things. So when it's time to pick it up again, and perhaps do a third draft, I might be able to look at it with a pair of fresh eyes.
At the moment I continue to work on Project 3, and in the past few weeks it's become a lot more beefy. It contains several stories about Special Agent 123XRT (his real name is Tristan), set somewhere in the future, and it deals with things like time travel and remote viewing (that is why he is a special agent, hehe)(and he is born on planet Earth, just like me), and it's so completely different from my little novel. And that is a good thing, I like doing different things, it keeps me inspired.
I started making notes for this project a few years ago, although at the time when I started, I had no idea what it was all about. It were just my thoughts on time travel and how the Universe began, and how it will end, … you know stuff like that. And now, as I'm sorting out all the notes I've made, it's somewhere between a collection of stories and a novel. In word count it's almost the same size as my little novel, and like I said, it's becoming beefy.
And the plan is (while my little novel and my poetry collection are peacefully maturing like delicate wines), to finish the first set of stories of this Project 3, which I will than use to practice making spoken word videos for youtube. You know, just to get the hang of it and build up experience, so when it's finally time to make the spoken word videos for my little novel and my poems (the ones that really matter), I will have some understanding and familiarity with: how to do it.
Anyway, that is what I'm doing at the moment, as I enjoy the lovely weather outside.
The diary of an Underground Writer
January 16, 2025
In 1980 on my fifteenth birthday I got this amazing present from my parents "26 Griezelverhalen" (26 Horror Stories) by Edgar Allen Poe. Published by Hollandia, in a translation by Simon Vestdijk (a well known Dutch writer in his own right) and with illustrations by Arthur Rackham.
I remember it was at the top of my wish list, I don't remember how or why I, as a young man had become interested in the works of Poe, but for some reason I was drawn to it, fascinated by the dark and mysterious nature of his stories. And in later years I bought several other publications of his work either in hardcover or paperback, always with a somewhat secretive desire in the back of my mind, to one day read his work in the original English language.
And now, practically a lifetime later, again it's my birthday, today I turned 60 (can you believe that? yeah I know I'm an old boomer)(hehe), and to mark the occasion I bought this present for myself, usually I don't buy presents for myself, but because I turned 60 (!!!) I thought: oh well, might as well buy something special and make myself happy. And so I bought this Barnes & Noble edition of "The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe", in the original English language. And it feels like a circle closing from then, way back in 1980 when I was just a boy, to now as I've become an old man.
And I've also noticed as I've become older, the more I feel this desire to go back to how things once were, it's not just this feeling of a circle closing, it's also with a sense of nostalgia, you know like the glow of moonlight, glistening on the surface of a river at night, as the water tries to finds it way back home, to the sea.
Update on my writing, everything goes forward with a steady pace, the formatting of my poetry collection into an ebook for kindle and kobo is mostly a technical formality and doesn't require much time. However the rewrite of my little novel does require time and attention too. I finished the first draft half way December of 2024, and now half way January I'm almost done with the second draft. And it's not only about rewriting, it's also about bringing balance to the story and the style in which it is written, as I've noticed that earlier chapters have a slightly different writing style than the later, as it's been written over the span of about one year, and one's writing style always changes a little bit over time. One might say, as it matures within the story.
And in the rewrite I'm trying to bring the writing style of the chapters closer together, bring balance to the story as a whole and make the reading experience more homogeneous. I hope to finish this second draft later this month, or perhaps early February, I will then let it sink in for two or three weeks, and give it another read to see how it holds up, maybe do some more rewriting, if needed. The plan is to round it all up in March and April, and then hopefully bring the poetry collection as well as my little novel out on kindle and kobo before spring sets in, so they can surf the waves of warm and sunny days.
Alongside these two projects, I've also started working on a third project. It's about the story of why we are here, the story of the Universe and evolution and stuff like that. I've started making notes a few years back, and at the time I had no idea what it was all about. But in recent times, I've started to notice a thematic structure in all those little scribbles and now (like two weeks ago) I've started organizing these notes by theme and topic, to get a better understanding of what it's all about and what it all means and then once it's all organized, usually the main story will show it self. I know it's a weird way of working, but for some reason it works for me, the same thing happened with my little novel. For now let's give it the working title "Project 3", I do have some ideas of what to call it, but it's still very early to give it a real title, and besides I'm not yet sure if it's a little novel or a collection of related stories and or meditations.
Anyway, today was my birthday and it was a good day. I've slept for seven hours, it's cold outside and I'm at peace.
The diary of an Underground Writer
December 24, 2024
Merry Christmas everyone and the best wishes for the new year. Twenty twenty four has been quite a year, for me personally a lot has changed, at the beginning of the year I was still focused on only delivering my poetry to youtube as spoken word videos and nothing else. I had already been working on my music channel for a while, with the intention to protect and copyright my music, so I wouldn't get any weird copystrikes and I could use it safely on my poetry channel.
But than everything changed as I realized, I not only needed to protect the spoken word videos and the background music, I also needed to protect the poetry itself, because nowadays you can self publish a book in one day, and once it's out there under the name of someone else, it's almost impossible to get it back, and although the possibilities for this to happen are slim because my poetry is not that popular or well known, still it's better to be safe than sorry later, because you never know.
And so this whole journey of applying officially registered copyrights to my poems and little novel began, which led me up to here, this now where I'm formatting my first poetry collection, and giving my little novel it's first rewrite, after which the formatting will be applied as well, so I can more or less selfpublish them at the same time.
The plan is to get them out there before the spring of 2025. That still gives me a few months to dot the i's and cross the t's, and get everything right. And then when that's safely out there, I can start working on the spoken word videos as I originally planned.
ps.
We haven't had any snow this Christmas, at the moment it's all gray and rainy, so I decided to take this picture from a few years back. I took it in January 2010 at a nearby recreation park, we had an amazing winter that year.
The diary of an Underground Writer
December 4, 2024
Today I opened an account at Amazon Author Central and Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. It's not yet public but it's on it's way, until I've figured out what exactly I'm doing (hehe), it's pretty technical with all the tax information, hadn't had any weird emails or error messages yet, so I guess I did okay.
Also continue to work with Atticus, it's a whimsical piece of software and it's not always as user friendly as I would like, but it is what it is. Just finished the second chapter.
The diary of an Underground Writer
December 3, 2024
Look, I took this picture earlier today while I was doing the groceries on my bicycle, this is the sleepy little town where I live. Usually during the summer it's crowded with lots and lots of tourists but then as autumn sets in, they leave one by one and the little town becomes peaceful again, although a little bit sleepy too, but that's kinda the way I like it. The house on the right is a café, I used to go there a lot during the late 80's and early 90's, in my younger days, when I was a wild Casanova (hehe), and I got drunk a lot too.
The diary of an Underground Writer
December 1, 2024
Today I bought a software program called "Atticus", this is a plug-in for my web browser, with which I can format text for e-books and printed books. It has a bit of a learning curve, but I'm managing, it's doable. There are also limitations, with which I have to learn to work, which is a bit unfortunate, but once formatted it has to follow the rules set by the publishing industry, and you can't start improvising when it comes to things like that, it is what it is. I wish I had more free options, but then it might not work properly for all e-readers.
I've also figured out, where I can buy ISBN numbers and register the copyrights. It's a bit of a costly affair, here in the Netherlands one ISBN number costs €104,95 but a bundle of 10 costs €284,95. So I guess I'll be doing the bundle then, I need one for the e-book version but also one for the printed version. And as it is now, I'm planning to self publish a collection of poems I written the past twelve years, and a short novel, which I finished a week ago. And as I want to release them both as an e-book and a printed version, the first four ISBN numbers are already taken. I'm also working on a set of short stories, but I'll safe that for later. First the poetry collection and the short novel, and see how that goes. And the copyrights, here in the Netherlands, the copyright can be registered at BOIP for €37 for a duration of five years.
I know the chances of someone stealing my work are slim, because there probably won't be that many people reading it, but you never know, and it's better to be safe now than sorry later. Nowadays you simply have to protect your work, because if not someone can copy-past it from the internet and publish it as an e-book the same day. And once a thing like that happens, once it's out of your hands in such a way, it's very very difficult to get it back.
But anyways, I've started formatting my poetry collection, here's a screen shot.
It's not yet final, I may change the theme or the fonts or the overall layout. It's still a work a progress, but it's gonna look somewhat like this.
