Category: Autobiography

Glowing Review from Marguerite Labbe

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I woke up this morning and immediately turned on my computer so I could check my email while I ate my breakfast and I came across an email from my favorite author Marguerite Labbe.  She posted a review of my book on her blog and I was so beyond excited because I wasn’t sure how people would feel about reading my book, but apparently it’s good.

Marguerite Labbe is an award-winning M/M author.  She wrote those gay vampire books that I love so much starting with  “My Heart Is Within You.”  I really love to read supernatural fiction, especially when they have vampires, ESPECIALLY when they are gay vampires lol.  She really knows how to capture the raw sexuality of two hot gay men better than I have ever even experienced.  Let’s just say that I had to take several bathroom breaks when I read her book.

MargueriteLabbe.com: Diary of a Gay Nerd by Michel McDonald

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2012

Diary of a Gay Nerd by Michel McDonald

“I’ve had a hard time putting into words how I felt when I read Michel’s memoir.  Many parts struck a chord in me from my own childhood, though I was far luckier than Michel was and I didn’t have the added alienation of being gay.  I’ve known Michel for several years now, ever since he picked up my vampire trilogy and we started talking.  In that time, I’ve found him to be a very kind, passionate and determined man.  After reading his memoir I have to add brave to that as well and not just for what he endured and overcame.  To be able to write something like this, with such unflinching honesty, takes a rare kind of person.  Michel doesn’t gloss over his own mistakes, but puts them out there just as baldly as the abuse he went through.

“I am honored to know such a man and call him my friend.”

How awesome is that?  When I first read her book after buying it from Rainbow eBooks, I knew I had to find her on Twitter and tweet her telling her how awesome her book was.  I was surprised that she responded, but equally surprised that she continued talking to me through Twitter.  We have been talking ever since.  I think Twitter is one of the most amazing online services ever invented.

Thank you Marguerite Labbe for writing this review.  I have added it to the Barnes & Noble website btw.

It’s Totally Tuesday at Rainbow eBooks

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I love Tuesdays because that means that Rainbow eBooks has a sale on all of their new releases, which mine happens to be, new that is and on sale at 15% off.  It’s regularly $6.99, but you can buy it today for only $5.94.

Diary of a Gay Nerd by Michel McDonald – Totally Tuesdays at Rainbow eBooks

If you have a Nook just download the epub file, if you have a Kindle, download the mobi file.  If you don’t have an ebook reader then you can download any file, mobi, epub or pdf.  They all work with PC if you have a PC ebook reader.

Reading My Book On An iPhone/iPod

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Want to read my new book “Diary of a Gay Nerd: Life After Child Abuse, It Gets Better!” but don’t have a Nook or a Kindle but have an iPhone or an iPod?  Not to worry, that is why I published my book with RainboweBooks.com.

You actually don’t have to have a Kindle to be able to buy Amazon ebooks, or a Nook to buy Barnes & Noble ebooks.  You can download the app for your phone and create an account and start buying ebooks.  That way if you decide later that you want to buy a Nook or a Kindle, you already have an account and books in your library.  But if that is not what you want then you can also use iBooks from the app store.

What you do is simply download iBooks from the app store and install it.  Now go to RainboweBooks.com on your computer and buy my book.  Now download it in .epub format.  Open iTunes and drag the file from your computer into iTunes and a new item will show up called Books.  Plug your iPhone or iPod into your computer via the USB cable.  When iTunes finds your device, simply drag the book file to the device and it will upload it.  Disconnect from the USB and open the iBooks app and viola it’s in your bookshelf.  Open, read and enjoy.

You may notice that the book is going to be well over 1000 pages, but that is because it only shows one or two paragraphs.  The book is actually only 296 pages in e-book format but the iPhone/iPod cannot show the full page and if it did you would need a microscope to read it.

So there are your simple instructions.  I hope you enjoy my book on your Apple product.

My Book is Coming Soon…

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I have finally published my book.  It will take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours for it to be reviewed before it will be ready for sale so I would count on January 6th as my official publish date.  Keep your eyes crossed for that one.

I had a hard time getting an author picture because we just couldn’t find a good location to take it, so I recycled a picture from 2005 lol.  I know it’s cheating but it’s a really good picture.

Of course it will be in black and white in the paper book and on all e-ink e-book readers, it will be in color in the color e-book readers, tablets and phones.  I am just happy that I didn’t have to pose cause I really don’t like to fake a smile when someone can’t figure out how to push the button.

You have no idea how much anxiety I had to push the “publish” button.  I finally just clicked it and covered my mouth with both of my hands as if I accidentally clicked it.  I spent seven months working on it, it’s now or never.

So my new website for the book www.diaryofagaynerd.com is up and running with a picture of the book along with buttons to click to buy the book, to follow me on twitter, like me on Facebook, to get a GetGlue sticker and to come here, although only three buttons work because I have to get the links when the book has been published.  I will be offering a GetGlue sticker, but I have to wait for the book to be on the GetGlue site first.

You know how anxious you are on Christmas eve, or the day before your birthday, or the day before you go to Disneyland?  Yeah… that’s me right now.

Publishing My Book

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The time has finally come for me to announce that my book is FINALLY FINISHED!

Seven months of hard work has finally paid off.  Not only have I learned how to write, but I have also learned how to grammar… wait no that’s bad grammar!  But seriously, my grammar has greatly improved, compared to when I started writing anyway.

The only thing that is preventing me from publishing my book now is an author picture.  I don’t want to publish it until I can get dressed up in my gay uniform, that being my “Legalize Gay” t-shirt that I got from the Human Rights Campaign from when I volunteered with them a few months ago at the gay pride here in Bakersfield.  Although I am not set on that shirt as being the only thing in the photo, I may bring a dress shirt.  Who knows, I may combine them and wear the dress shirt unbuttoned on top of the Legalize Gay shirt.  We’ll see.

I was going to use my own domain xanapus.com as the hub, but decided to buy a new domain name www.diaryofagaynerd.com with links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Rainbow eBooks, GetGlue, Facebook, Twitter and here.  Of course I’m paying every month for 1 single html page lol.  That doesn’t seem fair since I have a lot of space over here, but whatever.

Oh I mentioned GetGlue, yeah I haven’t really talked to them yet but I sent a tweet to one of the GetGlue people that I know.  I want to offer a sticker for my readers.  I already have the sticker made, I just need to give them the file so they can give it to people when they check-in.  Although I don’t know if a lot of writers offer stickers for books, maybe I’m the first.  Wouldn’t that be awesome if I were?  How cool would that be?  I’m a GetGlue pioneer LMAO.

So I will just focus my energy now on getting that picture so I can publish it.  Hopefully tomorrow, but no promises.

I do have future plans for another book, actually a series of fictional stories about my character Xanapus from the game EverQuest.  Of course I won’t be able to write about Norrath, I will have to make up my own fantasy world.  That will just make it more fun to write if I make things up as I go.  I will probably start the first story with a short story to make sure I know how to write fiction, of course I will be taking a course on writing fiction first.  It was one thing to write an autobiography because I didn’t have to make anything up, a story based on one single character living in a world that doesn’t exist yet is going to be the difficult part.  If I can write a short story with one little tiny quest, then we will see if I have what it takes to write a 200-300 page novel, 8 of them in total to be exact.  Yes, I am aiming high lol.  Don’t hold your breath…

Until tomorrow when I have more news about the book that I already wrote…

The Never Ending Book

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Just when I thought my book was finally ready to be published, I read it again and found more mistakes and then have to start all over again.

I sent my book out to several people a few weeks ago and they sent me feedback with highlights and notes so that I will know what needed to be fixed.  Up until recently I thought my grammar was correct considering I used spell and grammar check “After The Deadline” which told me I was right.  Apparently not.

I went through the book correcting everything that was highlighted.  I did search and replace and fixed countless issues and read the book again to be sure I had it right.  Naturally I found more errors.  I fixed the new errors, but to be 1,000,000% sure that it is ready, I will have to read it yet one more time.

The more I read my book, the faster I get at reading it.  When I first began, it used to take me a week or more to read it, now it takes 2 days.  I guess the more you read the same story, the easier it gets.  Now if only I could read other books that fast, I would have a bigger library under my belt.

I will start reading it again tomorrow from the beginning and hope that I don’t have to make any more changes.  I feel that when I can read my entire book without opening the document file on the computer to fix something, that is when it’s finished.

I’m going to be blind by the time this book is done lol.  At least I’m learning better grammar which will help me be a better blogger.

My Book for the Kindle – Issue Solved

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I mentioned yesterday that I had a few issues with my book on the Kindle.  There was a lot of strange code in the .epub file that was making it look funny.  I spent countless hours over the last couple of days trying to fix the issue and unfortunately those fixes removed 200 words from the book.  I found out last night that all I have to do is convert the book to .mobi format to publish to the Kindle, which I did and it is now perfect.

I have learned so much from writing this book, it’s amazing how horrible my English was before.  I mean, I never understood punctuation because I just let the spell check do all the work for me.  Apparently the spell and grammar checker that I have been using is crap because it told me that I was right when I was clearly wrong.  Unfortunately, that has made me question every blog post I have ever written.

As far as I am concerned, my book is finished, but I am going to go through it one last time to make 100% sure that it is before I publish it.  I want to say that I will publish it on February 1st 2012, but I don’t want to promise it.  I will write a post the day it is published though.

I want to go out to Hart Park and have Darrin take a picture of me for the About The Author page.  I thought about doing a joke picture of me sitting in robe wearing an Ascot and smoking from a pipe in front of a green screen to add a picture of a library with a big fireplace behind me, but I don’t have any of those things.  I think it would look more genuine if I had a real picture taken, and not in a studio where they would charge me $60 just for the digital copy for publication.

So that’s it, I can stop obsessing over formatting and get back to the real issue which is making sure it is ready to publish.  Updates coming soon…

My book is almost ready to publish, only one tiny issue left…

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My book files came back to me a couple of days ago (two beta readers as I like to call them) with highlights of things for me to fix.  I have read my book at least 30 times and I was just getting so sick of reading it and they wanted to read it so I figured they could read it early, but I’d love to have bug reports.

So I went through the highlights which weren’t all that major.  I missed a few capitalizations and punctuation issues.  There were also a few words where I forgot to add a letter, like instead of writing the word “from” I wrote “for”, don’t ask why lol.

As I was getting the paper book put together with all of my corrections made, I noticed a little issue which turned out to be a major issue.  There were grey boxes where spaces were supposed to go.  It wasn’t everywhere, but it was annoying that there were so many.  I was able to delete them as I went, but that didn’t help because it was still messed up.

The paper book got put together and turned in to check for errors, which I’m happy to report weren’t any.  I converted the .odt file to epub and was going to publish to Amazon for the Kindle and Barnes & Noble for the Nook.  It looked great on the Nook, but the Kindle wasn’t doing so good.  Here is what I was seeing…

You see the top paragraph?  It’s not exactly a paragraph is it?  That was what happened because of the square boxes.  Also look at the other paragraphs, they weren’t indented, except for the last one.  I went into Sigil to look at the html code of the chapters and this is what I saw.

That is supposed to be a little paragraph.  Those <.span.> things were out of control.  That is what was causing the text to move down.  So the only way for this to work is to cut all that crap out.  I tried to do find and replace, but unfortunately each one of those lines has its own number so it’s not like I can replace all of them throughout the entire document, they have to be deleted one at a time.  ANNOYING!

I worked for 8 hours to get rid of them and then discovered that if I converted the file to .html, it got rid of all that.  So that was a waste of time, but it was a learning experience.

I fixed all of the capitalization and punctuation issues, but I have a feeling I am still missing something so I’m going to have to read the whole thing again.  It sucks but I don’t want to publish a book that isn’t right.

I said I would get it published by January 1st and here we are nearing February and it still isn’t ready to publish.  I don’t know how long it will take but I will get it out there eventually.

Book Cover

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I have been going crazy making all of these book covers for the paper book, the Nook and the Kindle.  I made a banner for my blog, iPhone icon, even a few iPhone/iPod wallpaper images lol.  I am even thinking about making a sticker to offer people when they check in to my book on the GetGlue website.

My bubble has burst though and I may have to rethink the whole texture part of the rainbow colors because the spine of the book won’t be textured, it will be a solid color.  Although that doesn’t really matter to me, it is a bit upsetting that I won’t have that one thing to make it match.  But do I really need it to be textured?  Hell yes I do!  It’s what makes it unique.  Whatever, I’m probably going to redesign it again before I publish it, I mean it is going to be forever and I don’t want to make something that I may regret forever just because the spine isn’t the same as the book.  I’m mostly designing it for ebooks, not paper books, but since I am offering that option, it has to look right everywhere else.

Tomorrow is another day so I will focus on trying to make it work then.

My Book is Almost Ready for Publication

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I started writing my life story many years ago, but really worked hard on it in 2011.  It took me 2+ months to write it and 4 months to edit it.  I have sent it off to a few people as an advanced copy and of course mistakes were found.  So it is not yet ready for publication, but it will be soon.

In case anyone is wondering what it’s about, I’ll tell you.  I was abused as a child by my stepfather; my mother and older sister also mentally abused me.  I tried to kill myself many times from the age of 13 until I was 20.  A woman attempted to molest me when I was 15 years old and I was raped multiple times when I was 20. I was homeless for 6 months at the age of 15 and for 10 months when I was 17.  I was also homeless in my early 20’s; I was living in motels, but that is technically considered being homeless.  I met my soul mate and life partner of 17 (going on 18) years and meeting him was when it got better.

I started out writing my life story (as if anyone cared because I’m a nobody) but then these gay children started killing themselves and it suddenly evolved into an “It Gets Better” book.  I want to show that I had a horrible life and I wanted to end it all, but it got better for me and it can get better for them too if they just hang on for a little bit longer.  It may seem like it’s never going to get better, and believe me, I thought for years it could only get worse, but it did get better.

My main goal is that it may help someone out there who is being bullied and wanting to end it all.  They will read my “it gets better” book and see that it got better for me and it can get better for them too.  If they don’t read it, and I don’t expect them to, then perhaps someone can read it and give them the cliffs-notes version to help them.

I am a bit nervous about publishing it because of course I don’t want the people who I wrote about to get upset with me, despite them being in the wrong.  They don’t even talk to me so I don’t know why I would care if they were upset with me anyway.

I am excited because I am finally finished and can publish it soon.  What makes me more excited is that I can finally help some charities when I get my first check from the sales of the book.  I have wanted to help these charities for a long time but couldn’t because I never had the money.

Today is Wednesday, so hopefully I will be able to publish my book within the next week.  Of course I will be advertising my little butt off here, on Twitter, on Google+ and on Facebook so stay tuned for that lol.

Thanks for reading.