Umnitsa: Good Girl

Romantic Historical Espionage Suspense
In the tradition of
Graham Greene (The Third Man), Boris Pasternak (Dr. Zhivago), and Herman Wouk (Winds of War; War and Remembrance)

Umnitsa: The Good Girl Good example of Romantic Fiction by Men (RFM), and not formula genre Romance. The love story is complex, and overpoweringly real and strong, yet does not define plot or character. The ending is not "happy and uplifting" but a mixture of tragedy and triumph. Does not meet the definitions of RWA, but aspires to the great and proud company of romantic literature (lower case, not the New York genre) exemplified from Homer to Dickens, from James Joyce to D. H. Lawrence, from Henrik Ibsen to Guy de Maupassant, from Gustave Flaubert to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and more great authors than we can list here.

A wealthy but troubled French countess, in midlife, who was adopted out of squalor and hopelessness in post-World War II Siberia, goes on a search for her long-lost father as the Soviet Union collapses in 1991. Her journey takes her around the world, and frames the story of the novel, which we see almost entirely from the standpoint of her father.

Courageous, handsome young U.S. Navy officer Tim Nordhall pursues a Soviet-Nazi-Allied triple agent (Jaguar) bent on the most dangerous imaginable World War II atomic espionage. Tim Nordhall's adventures take him from the deserts and jungles of Africa, to London during the Blitz, and finally wartime San Francisco in 1945. In London, the naive clockmaker from Connecticut encounters the great, beautiful love of his life, a Free Polish Army nurse named Anna Stokowska, who will bear him the lost child around which the entire novel circles. Anna, Tim, and other memorable characters fade in and out in the fog of war, while the ruthless espionage services of the Great Powers ply their shadowy and ubiquitous trade.

San Francisco, like Paris a world-class City of Love, is a wild brawl where atomic bomb material destined for Hiroshima and Nagasaki passes through en route to Tinian. Secret agents from around the world conduct shadowy warfare, including two women who become Tim's lovers. Tens of thousands of lusty, brawling young men and women party and work in the waning months of an epic war. San Francisco is a rainy neon blur, whose slick streets rattle with gunfire from passing cars, whose windows glow with parties and jazz, and whose dark doorways shelter terrified and curious eyes. The title, Umnitsa: Good Girl, refers to a common Russian term of endearment for a girl-child, and is key to Marianne (Countess) Didier's desperate, lifelong search…

Article: (Special to Publishing Industry News.) Copyright @ 2011 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.

Introduction     What is Formatting?     One File, Multiple Uses     Platforms     Fictionwise     Smashwords     Smashwords: One Stop     Keep It Simple     Nuclear Option     Nuclear Caution     Nuclear Dilemma     Nuclear Work-Around     More on WP Styles, Word     Table of Contents     Normal Style     Specific Styles     Issue 1: Leading Between Grafs     Issue 2: Indenting Grafs     Sample Doom Spore     Instructions     Your Workflow     Your Template     Bibliography

   Introduction to Formatting. Authors publishing their own work typically follow one of two (or both) paths: Print on Demand (POD) and Digital. We'll tackle these issues one by one in a series of articles on formatting. Today, we are going to focus on digital formatting. I would like to observe, in passing, that you should think of your manuscript as one file that you can massage, with relatively little effort, through a series of steps to accommodate both your POD and digital goals. One key to remember is this: you cannot much control the output on Kindle, Nook, and other platforms, except for a few simple issues (chapter headings in all files, table of contents where needed). Conversely, this makes the task of interior file formatting for digital platforms quite simple. SmashWords, a one-stop solution for most industry platforms, takes your one Word (.doc) upload file and converts it into many output files, each geared for the requirements of a specific platform (Kindle, Nook, Sony, iPad, etc.). Once you get past the fear, the frustration, and sometimes rage and loathing, you'll be just fine. After the whitewaters, your canoe glides in calm waters. The trick is getting there, and this article should help the brave, the patient, and the determined. Doing it yourself saves money. If you've written a book, you are more than smart enough to master this material.

   What is text formatting? To begin with, we assume you have written a story, book, or article. You think of yourself as a professional and a business person. Writing and publishing are two separate businesses you should master, and the latter is far easier than the former, but the latter gets you closer to your hoped-for success. Don't let fear or intimidation get in the way; if you're smart enough to write a book, you're smart enough to understand the business. We'll refer to your product collectively as a book, for simplicity. You have spent a lot of time and effort, and have arrived at the most wonderful book it can be. You have proof read it, and have had other eyeballs (line editing) on it. That means, for most people, their friend the English teacher, their friend the librarian, or a hired editor whose credentials, references, and track record you have verified…in short, you are ready to go to press. As I will explain, your text (the book) will flow into whatever output format you wish to publish into—the print book, or the many digital formats competing for writers and readers today. We'll talk about print in another article upcoming soon. Just remember that you'll use the same file for the print book as you use for the digital. We'll talk about digital today.

   One File, Multiple Uses. In the working terminology of word processing, desktop publishing, and digital publishing, your manuscript is a file. Once you have created this file, you will get your file ready for publication. To begin with, we assume you have written a story, book, or article. You think of yourself as a professional and a business person. Writing and publishing are two separate businesses you should master, and the latter is far easier than the former, but the latter gets you closer to your hoped-for success. Don't let fear or intimidation get in the way; if you're smart enough to write a book, you're smart enough to understand the business. We'll refer to your product collectively as a book, for simplicity. You have spent a lot of time and effort, and have arrived at the most wonderful book it can be. You have proof read it, and have had other eyeballs (line editing) on it. That means, for most people, their friend the English teacher, their friend the librarian, or a hired editor whose credentials, references, and track record you have verified…in short, you are ready to go to press. As I will explain, your text (the book) will flow into whatever output format you wish to publish into—the print book, or the many digital formats competing for writers and readers today. We'll talk about print in another article upcoming soon. Just remember that you'll use the same file for the print book as you use for the digital. We'll talk about digital today.

   What Are Platforms? The digital publishing age effectively began during the mid-1990s (I was the world's sixth digital publisher, Clocktower Books, so I've seen the entire industry evolve in a hands-on manner). Originally, until around 1998 or so, there was no e-commerce online yet. There was also no print on demand (POD) industry—we'll discuss that in another article. By 2000, e-commerce started booming. Sites like Amazon.com by then were accepting credit cards and PayPal for processing physical book orders, and digital texts followed soon after. One of the key fits and starts in digital publishing was a company called Nuvomedia, started by Martin Eberhard. Nuvomedia sold a beautiful, early e-book reader called the Rocket eBook, but the world wasn't quite ready yet. After the dot-com crash in 1999-2000, investors were skittish of digital technologies and focused on real estate and finance.

   Fictionwise. Meanwhile, however, entrepreneurial siblings Steven and Scott Pendergrast in 2000 created a digital website still around today, called Fictionwise (acquired in 2010 by Barnes & Noble). More on Fictionwise shortly. Now here's the key. Not only was Fictionwise the top player in the industry, quietly creating a huge community around e-books, but Fictionwise effectively defined the industry as it is unfolding today. What they created was not only a complete website environment for browsing, buying, and rating digital texts, but they created for publishers a remarkable system whereby the publisher uploads one file; Fictionwise runs your file through a software gizmo (converter, one could call it) and out pop at least eight separate files, one for each major platform on which people read e-books. Fictionwise's early output formats included MS Lit (Microsoft properietary format for PCs); Palm for Palm OS, usually telephones; PDF (Adobe format, for Adobe's popular Acrobat freely downloadable format); and so on. Sony, Mobi, and other platforms come to mind. Here's the nomenclature: each output file ('format,' distinguished by its own extension like .lit, .mobi, .pdf, etc) is designed to work with a unique platform. A Palm telephone owner could download your book in Palm format. Someone else might read your book on their Windows OS laptop, using MS lit. And so forth. As I recall, you had to download these files through your PC or Mac, to your actual reading device. Today, the world is working on a new evolutionary layer.

   Smashwords: the New Fictionwise. Fictionwise still exists, and still does brisk business in its market niche. It is now owned by Barnes & Noble, which however is focusing on its Nook series of digital reading devices. There has been small talk that the Nook brand might actually outshadow the Barnes & Noble brand itself. Let's focus on today's formatting topic: Smashwords. First of all, you have a choice. You can format and upload your books separately for each major platform (e.g., Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, Apple iPad, Motorola Xoom, Borders-related Kobo, Sony eReader, and many others). Or you can remember how Fictionwise worked, and use the one-input-fits-all-outputs formatting method employed by Smashwords. Here's a brief bit on separate handling. Kindle requires a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) file; you can save your Word .doc or .rtf file as html right in Word. The result is a horrendous mess that even seasoned HTML experts can barely make sense of, because the save employs a mechanical process rather than careful, hands-on craftsmanship (which I prefer in handling HTML). Sony requires a PDF file, and you can print your Word (.doc or .rtf) file to a file (or spooler, as we used to call it long ago), for conversion by Adobe Distiller. Barnes & Noble's Nook publishing platform asks for a .doc (Word) file. I have started with a Word file for B&N, saved the file to HTML for Kindle, and printed it to a PDF file for Sony#&133;but each of these companies also has file management stuff you have to do online at their website, and Sony requires their metadata (author name, publisher info, short and long blurbs, ISBNs, etc) in a separate Excel sheet. For my purposes, I learned long ago that it's best to handle a file once, and to use a one-time upload like Fictionwise (today Smashwords). That way, you can easily make corrections and changes by uploading one new file, rather than chase all these different platforms around in various formats and what not. That's why I recommend using Smashwords for all of your digital needs. They even require a Word file for your upload, so what could be simpler? One note: at this time, though promised, they have not yet finalized their bridge with Amazon Kindle, so you may want to publish directly to that format (we'll discuss saving as HTML in another article).

   Smashwords: One Stop. We'll talk about the generalities of working with Smashwords next week. Today, we'll concentrate on how to format your created file into a usable text file that Smashwords can convert into Kindle, Nook, Sony, iPad, and other major platforms. Again, the Kindle connection has not been successfully made at this writing, but the Smashwords site is ready to upload your book(s) once the final protocols have been hammered out between Smashwords and Amazon. You would do well to investigate their website thoroughly (again, their link: Smashwords). In particular, read but do not be intimidated by founder/CEO Mark Coker's extensive free formatting guide. You should take time and digest his book. In this article, I will give you a template based on my experience, which should make your task easier.

   Keep It Simple. The single most valuable aspect of Word that you can learn is Styles. Mark Coker's SmashWords has some very specific (and simple) styles requirements you need to learn and apply. I am a great advocate of independence, and so I like to learn to do as much as possible myself. I've been disappointed with subcontractors too many times not to do so, although some self-pubs will want to get professional help. Word processing is not an over-paid skill, but some of the people doing it are stellar. If you try and try and try, and simply can't get the hang of it, I recommend taking a course at an inexpensive public night school (high school, junior college, evening extension, or whatever). It is indeed a learning curve, but with diligent study and practice, you'll get the hang of it. Here's the key. For most of us old-timers, the biggest transition is from a brain-dead typewriter to a sophisticated electronic word processor. You learn, for example, never to put two spaces after a period, as was beaten into us in typing school (for me, around 1965). The software takes care of all kerning (horizonal spacing between letters and words) and leading (vertical spacing between lines). I describe the nuclear option below, in which you save as a txt file (which strips away all the hidden formatting), close to make the nuclear wipeout total and final (no formatting left); open the file in Word as a txt file you just saved; and save it as a doc or standard Word file to start over. When you do that, everything should be in the default MS Word style Normal. Keeping things simple, and following Mark's formatting rules in his free guidebook, you should have minimal styles, all variations of Normal. As you will see in my template(s) which you can use to 'pour' your text into, I use only a handful (no more than five or so) styles for most files. You don't need to invent or manipulate them—the template does it all for you. Key thing to remember is: Keep it Simple.

   Word: Styles; Nuclear Option. We discuss the world's most common word processing software because it is the required input format for Smashwords. There are many iterations of Word, going back to its pre-Microsoft days in 1983. Word also operates across platforms, most notably the IBM PC and its horde of clones on one hand, and the Mac world on the other hand; there are frequently formatting discrepancies as files are passed between PC and Mac. I work with Word 2003 on a PC running a version of Windows XP Build 2600, SP3, released in 2007. The reason I mention this is because, as a publisher, I often reformat or work with files submitted to me by authors coming at me from a variety of platforms and releases. Sometimes I have to take what Mark Coker, CEO of Smashwords, calls 'the nuclear option.' When all else fails, save your file to .txt (text or ASCII or plain text) format, close it, and reopen it in Word as a txt file; then save it as a .doc (Word) file. That gets rid of any and all formatting tags hanging on under the surface, where you can't see them, but which may blow up your file when you upload it to any platform, including the general platform of SmashWords. I have been working with word processing since 1975 (the old IBM Memory Typewriter) and with desktop publishing since around 1988 (Ventura, et al). I sometimes forget that, with over 40 years' experience, I take for granted a lot of nuts and bolts stuff that others struggle with. Therefore, I'll do my best to discuss two important aspects of Word and how it can work powerfully for you. I typeset all of my books in Word, and while it's not as robust as (e.g.) PageMaker (or RageMaker, as some users call it), Word does get the job done. I made the observation, years ago, that word processors (e.g., Word, WordPerfect, etc.) strive to also be desktop publishers, while desktop publishers (e.g., QuarkXPress, Ventura, FrameMaker, PageMaker) also strive to internally do word processing. Neither side of the fence generally succeeds well on the other's turf. However, with Word you can typeset a book to sufficient quality to stand beside most professional print-shop jobs. Digital typesetting is that easy, especially when you've formatted one or two books and start getting comfortable with the process. The process is inherently just about the same each time, especially for a straight-forward modern novel, which typically has no Table of Contents, footnotes, endnotes, index, or interior images.

   Nuclear: Major Caution. We use the nuclear option, as Mark Coker calls it, to overcome Word's constant addition of new background styles every time a novice touches a Word file (.doc). The idea of my template is to provide you with a simple, elegant container with about four or five predefined styles. You must never, ever, ever make a single manual formatting change. Every time you italicize a word or even a space, Word creates a style if it's not already there. Every time you bold something, or underline, or add an indent, Word creates a style. A typical novice file that has been worked on for (sometimes) years, with no backups, no version control, no progressive iterations, etc., will be so loaded with all these styles that the novice despairs of ever mastering styles. The fundamental problem is that styles is the most powerful feature in Word Processing (WP) in general, and Word in particular. When all else fails, Mark correctly advises 'nuking' your file: saving it as a text only file (no formatting, .txt extension), saving and closing it as a txt file, and opening it in Word as a txt file; then saving it in Word as a .doc file so you can make a fresh start. Another approach is to open a text-only editor like Wordpad or Notebook, and copy/pasting your entire file into this container-file, saving as txt, and proceeding as just described. All that is fine, described in more detail in the instruction file for using my template, but a HUGE word of caution is necessary. If you do not use extensive italics or other text decoration (bold, underline, all sternly advised not to do), then you will have a tough time with the nuclear option. If all your italics are gone, you'll have to reinsert them manually.

   Nuclear: Dilemma. Here's the dilemma you could face in using my template to pour your book file (minus front and end matter) into my template. One approach is the nuclear option, reducing your entire interior file to ASCII to get rid of unwanted styles (which you must do, one way or another). The benefit is that you'll lose all your formatting (those unwanted styles). The problem is that you'll lose all your formatting, including any italics, bolds, or whatever.

   If you have no extra decoration or formatting (italics, bold, etc), your task is easy. Use the nuclear option to obtain a text file in which there is only one style, Plain Text (by default). Save this to a Word (.doc) file by the same name, so you can start over. Change all your interior text to Normal. Whatever Normal (99% of your text, hurray!) looks like, it will assume proper SmashWords style characteristics when you pour it into the template file. Given that a digital source file is inherently very simple, you can then manually impose the Heading1 style on your chapter headings (make them one line only, no wrap or second line!). You can finally impose the Normal Center style on all else, and that's all SmashWords' converter needs to output properly formatted and functioning digital files to Kindle, Nook, etc. Word of caution: special instructions are coming for Tables of Contents next week. Using Word's automatic ToC generator renders into links that look good, but don't work in the end-user file that the reader reads.

   If you have italics, as many of us novelists do (bold, underline, etc. not recommended), then I provide a work-around below. If you do not exercise the nuclear option, but change all to Normal before pasting into the tamplate, Word should retain your italics. If you have tons of extraneous styles that SmashWords will (guaranteed) find unacceptable and reject your file, you should use the nuclear option, or some other method, to delete all those styles. The nuke is the simplest method I know of. If you do nuke your file to make it clean and pristine, then I offer a possible work-around in the next section.

   The dilemma of which I speak is this. When you pour or paste your story source file into the template (after cleaning up styles and other issues), you will usually have some amount of restoration to do. Either you lose your chapter heads, and must restore them one by one, or you lose your italics, and must rstore them one by one. My recommendation is to think of it this way. I've seen author files with hundreds of italics (not recommended, but people do it). Most novels, however, seem to have about 25 to 50 chapters. Therefore, it's easier to restore the chapters (to Heading1 after nuking) rather than to save chapter head formatting but lose italics. You will have, by definition, chapter headings that are usually numbered 1-25 or whatever, and they will be on a single line. That makes them easy to find. You may be able to use the Find capability (maybe searching for all instances of initial cap(italized) 'Chapter,' which by the way is a handy, practical way to create your chapter headings. One by one, find the Chapter N: Blah-Blah-Blah headings or usually just plain Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, etc. Click anywhere in the chapter heading (or title) to select it. Then click on Style in your Menu, and select Heading 1. The best way to test that you got all of them, and that they are properly, sequentially numbered, is to generate an automatic Word ToC. The ToC (Table of Contents) gives the author a powerful tool that is at once a roadmap, and an easy way to access various points in a long document. Caution: it doesn't create viable links in your end-file (Kindle, Nook, etc) even though you'll have a nice-looking ToC; the links just won't work. Mark Coker has a specific, manual method I'll discuss in detail next week.

   Once you have solved the Styles problem, you can paste or 'pour' your semi-formatted story (without front or end matter) into the template. The template, as you have customized it in the workflow described below, will provide fully formatted and detailed custom front and end matter suitable to you as an author and publisher, and to your specific project. If you need further help with the nuclear option, perhaps in restoring italics, the following section may be of help. Otherwise, skip it and go on to the template discussion itself.

   Nuclear: Work-Around. I have a work-around that should probably save you some of the trouble. This involves using global search and replace (Menu > Edit > Replace). I'll use italics as an example, but it can be done for bolds and other decorations. This is an extremely dangerous tool in anyone's hands, especially the inexperienced, so I advise full caution. Think every step through! Make a separate, disposable copy for a sand-box to try your skills at this. Do not take a chance and screw up your master document. Most of all, follow explicit directions so you avoid some of the unexpected global changes that are hidden until they embarrass you. For example, let's say you blithely change all instances of 'all' to 'none,' while forgetting that you have words like 'carry-all' and 'fall' and 'ballplayers.' Globals are insidious, bloody, horrible things in that they do not advertise the horrific damage they can do. Now you have a file that not only has all the 'all' changed to 'none,' as you naively wished. But you also have a bunch of 'carry-none', 'fnone', and 'basenoneplayers'. Proceed, therefore, with caution. A spellcheck at the end of the process should help find all or most of the damage if you do this wrong, but the best advice is to discard it totally and do the changes manually.

   To do the global option for, say, italics, open Menu > Edit > Replace. The Find and Replace dialog box opens. Specific terms and locations of buttons will vary from iteration to iteration of Word, so proceed with at once imagination, caution, and an ever-looming sense of dread just waiting to become gut-acid terror as you watch your file turn into a pile of electro-poop. Can I say enough into scaring you into handling globals like a loaded gun? Don't be afraid, and do use globals, but know and respect their mindless, literal, vast, stupid power.

   In the Find What text entry box, leave blank, but use the More expander to display more Search Options. At bottom, in the pull-down list titled Replace > Format, choose Font. In the Font dialog that opens, on the Font tab, under Font Style, press Italic and then OK. Do nothing else. You return to the Find and Replace dialog.

   In the Replace text entry box, enter the special character @ ('at') from your keyboard (above the number 2). Then, immediately after the @, open the Replace > Special pulldown list, and choose Find What Text. Finally, immediately after this, enter another @. My choice of 'at' is arbitrary, and another symbol may work better for your particular manuscript. The idea is that @ is a rare character, usually not found in any novel, but be careful. If you have any @ characters (as in an e-mail address), they will be affected. Always proceed with terrified caution when using globals, think everything through ("Cut once but measure seven times," old Russian proverb), and have backups and a safe rear exit if hell breaks loose. That said, press Replace All in the Find and Replace dialog.

   Seconds later, Word should inform you that it made NNN changes, whatever the number will be. That is the number of italicized words (or groups of words) in your document. Each such string (one word or multiple) will now have a @ before it and an @ after it. Check to make sure it worked correctly before proceeding.

   Now do the nuclear option. Save the entire file as .txt, accepting the warning that your formatting will be lost. Open the file in Word, and Save As a .doc file. You will see the entire document in Plain Text. Select All and toggle the Normal pull-down. Your entire document will now be in the default Normal style--don't panic, because there will be no idents on the paragraphs, and there will be visible white space between the paragraphs. The beauty of the template is that, when you pour this whole thing into the template, your Normal will automatically and instantly take on the Normal characteristics required by SmashWords.

   Okay, you now have a bunch of words or strings delimited with @'s. You want to get rid of the @'s, and end up with italics instead. Here's how you iteratively do this.

   Open Menu > Edit > Replace. In the Find What text entry box, place two @'s, like this: @@. Place your text insertion (I-Bar) cursor between them and leave it parked there. Open the Find and Replace fully by pressing More. In the Replace > Special pull-down, select Any Character (which means either alpha or numeric). You will see this character combination appear between the @'s, thus: @^?@. In the Replace With text entry box, leave blank but open the Format dialog to cause the Format (expressed on the line below the Replace With text entry box as 'Italic') to force the found string to remain the same but in italics. The system will find any instance of @ and @ with a single letter or number between them, and make the whole string (@X@) italic, where X represents Any Character. (In the last step of this process, when all the italics are restored, do a global to get rid of the 'at' or @ signs, and you're done).

   For the second iteration, leave everything as it is, but change the Find What string from @^?@ to @^?^?@. You can select and copy the first ^? and paste it twice, so you get the @^?^?@. Press Replace All. The system now races through your file, finding all instances of @XX@ and italicizing the string.

   Repeat this as many times as needed to restore all the italics. In order, continue with @^?^?^?@ (three characters), then @^?^?^?^?@ (four characters), then @^?^?^?^?@ (five characters), and so on until you think you've converted all the strings back to italics.

   Before you eliminate the @'s, do a search on '@' to see if you missed any really long strings, and convert them to italic manually.

   At the end, do a global to delete all instances of '@'. Then, do a search on italics to make sure nothing strange happened. It's better to not restore an italicized word, than to find somewhere a text string like "Your mother is a @@@" or whatever. Anything can happen when we use globals, so be very, very careful.

   More on WP Styles, Word The advantages of using styles are many, including the fact that you can change every occurrence of Normal or Plain Text or any other style by operating on a single word in that style. Let's say your Normal text is 9 point Arial and you want to change it to 12 point Times New Roman. To do this on my machine—yours may vary slightly, including later Windows/Word iteration using the 'ribbon' interface)—I would select one instance anywhere in my book, let's say the word animal on page 215; or a paragraph on page 81; it doesn't matter, as long as the information displayed for that selection of the Normal style in your file is 9 pt Arial. In the Menu, select Format, which pulls down into a menu, and select Styles and Formatting. This opens the Styles and Formatting popup window, which displays all the styles I am using in this particular file. Even an empty file will have one flashing paragraph symbol in its blank sheet starter-metaphor (like cranking a sheet of blank paper into the old typewriter). Everything in Word hangs on the paragraph symbol at end of every paragraph (which contains or has attached to it all the paragraph's formatting). This starter para, in any new file, is in Normal style by default; therefore, Normal displays in the pop-up by default. [By the way, working in Word, you should always have the paragraph symbol toggled 'on,' so that you see the hidden markup text under the surface. I always work in Print mode, so I can see as closely as possible the output file resulting from my work. These are good practices to follow.] Again, the point is that one of the major advantages of the style tool is that you don't need to go through your entire book, line by line or word by word, changing all instances of Normal from 9pt Arial to 12pt Times New Roman. You do it in one grand swoop, with one change. The Word software will walk you through steps like these. Like most people, you probably plunged into Word haphazardly. If you haved not really mastered it, it's probably time to take a class, and to buy and use a guide. Most of us never rely on company-published books as our primary resource; these have been butchered to death by inhouse engineers who cannot write or edit, and who probably hated the technical writers struggling to get these manuals out under deadlines, while working for bosses who have not a clue about editing, English, or anything else. "I learned all I need to know about English in the 5th grade," were the immortal words of one savant I worked for long ago, in dismissing all my issues about serial commas, full stops and half stops (see Fowler's Guide), and more. Presumably, as a professional writer, you own and regularly use a good college dictionary as well as an industry standard style guide (e.g., the MLA, the Chicago, etc.), none of which has ever been heard of in most engineering environments. To clarify one important point: 'flowing text' is a term used in the print industry to talk about how text flows from page to page, how it breaks without leaving widow or orphan paragraphs, and how it creates attractive pages without weird blank spots or, worst of all, 'rivers' of white space zigging and zagging through the paragraphs as a result of poor kerning.

   Tables of Contents (ToC) I'll say little about these today, except to warn that Mark Coker's style guide expressly advises against using Word's automated ToC functionality. As it happens, the Table of Contents functionality in Word is one of the most powerful tools available to a writer for the actual process of organizing and manipulating chapters and subsections within a large file. The automated ToC don't work in a doc file you may submit to Smashwords, but there is an older functionality embedded in Word that will do the trick, as Mark explains in detail in his book. When you see a Smashwords book in which there is a ToC, but the links don't work, it's almost guaranteed because the publisher ignored instructions and left the automated Word functionality in place. More on this at a later date.

   Normal Styles Normal happens to be the name Word chose to designate its default style. There is nothing special about any style name as such, except that the default (predefined) styles can't be deleted. For years, I made up a family of styles, commonly used, named Body Text. I'd have Body Text (as my default paragraph style), Body Text Italic, Body Text Bold, and others. The convenience of this is that, when you use the pull-down menu, they are grouped together alphabetically in one place, and you don't have to search high and low for the style you want to select. The exact same issues pertain in using Normal, as Mark suggests. Here's the key: all you need are a few, a handful, of styles, to make your book work. (The other key is that only by keeping things simple is it possible to take full advantage of Fictionwise's or SmashWords' converter, which takes your one input file and outputs nearly a dozen output formats to transmit to the various publishing platforms on which people will read your book.) So what are these styles typically? The default is Normal. Make it 12 pt Times New Roman (TNR) in your computer, keep the formatting symbol (a black, backward paragraph sign) on so you can see the underlying markup codes attached to each paragraph, and work in Print View mode so you can see your actual output. A fundamental thing to remember about your work flow is this: No matter how you format a file or how you view it, it is basically reduced to a special (usually XML-databased) gibberish that only machines can read, and then output in whatever format(s) the platform manufacturer has specified and programmed into their machine. Although you may view your file in 12pt TNR on your machine (and the underlying file is not what you see, but ASCII text interspersed with markup codes), one platform may display it as 8pt Gibberish and another platform may use 9pt Nonsense or whatever their own style conventions are. You cannot control this, but you had sure better deliver a clean, unambiguous file that will not blow up during the conversion process. I know all this sounds daunting, but it's doable. You have to get control of the process and be your own publisher. To do that, you must believe in yourself and in the fact that people like myself and Mark Coker assure you it's learnable. If you're smart enough to write a book, you are certainly smart enough to learn this tedious, exacting, but ultimately noodle-brained stuff.

   Specific Styles Let's take my longest novel, the atmospheric World War II espionage saga Umnitsa, which clocks in at 153,000 words. Total number of styles I used: four. They are Heading1, Normal, Italic, and Normal Center.

1. Heading1: This is a predefined style but you can impose whatever formatting you wish upon it. Its main use is to help the automatic Table of Contents functionality work (which you will *not* use with Smashwords files). I didn't say that right. You should use the automated ToC functionality in writing your book, but replace it with the older, more labor-intensive manual method required by Mark Coker's conversion software. The conversion software (at Kindle and Nook as well) keys off this for chapter change page breaks as well. Be sure and keep each instance on a single line or you may end up with a book full of two blank pages with a few title words for each chapter. My preference on format for Heading1 is something like 14pt TNR bold, maybe underlined, but none of this matters, since the output converter formats it whatever way is required by the various end-user platforms.
2. Normal: This is your basic paragraph style, covering probably 99% of your book. Get this right, and you're about 99% home free. There are two issues that keep cropping up, which I'll discuss below (leading and indents). I like to view it as 12pt TNR.
3. Italic: If, in your Normal paragraphs, you italicize words, that creates a spinoff style which is really Normal Italic, but Word's default appears to be the single word Italic. If you occasionally bold or underline a word (very strongly not recommended in fiction), similar separate style considerations will apply. See my note below on Word automatically generating new styles.
4. Normal Center: Last but not least, any centered text is normal, but centered, which creates a separate style. Remember, it doesn't matter how you view your file in your own word processor. Smashwords' converter must accomplish many things for various platforms from your input file, and this can only happen if your input file is clean (devoid of extraneous formatting) and simple.

   Issue 1: Paragraphs. More authors have struggled with this issue in their word processing files to get ready for SmashWords or any other input. Remember this about styles: if you have them properly set up (not hard, but a learning curve, and frustrating until you get the hang) then this should be a piece of cake. If you end up with a 6pt or higher gap (leading) vertically between paragraphs, you must reduce this to 0pt (zero points). That way, your output book in Kindle or Nook won't be loaded with blank gaps. Open the pop-up for Styles and Formatting, so that a display appears showing all of the styles you're using. You can modify how Word displays this (e.g., Styles in Use, All Styles, Available Styles, etc.). Use Styles in Use to avoid seeing a forest of styles. Before you do anything, select an instance of a paragraph using Normal style. Be sure to include the paragraph mark at end, visible if you have toggled Show/Hide Codes on. One of the easy ways to make a global change is to then, in the pop-up window, open the pull down menu for Normal. Click on Modify. The Modify Style dialog box appears. (Note that the menu items are very similar to what you get at Menu Bar - Format - the first several options, which are Font, Paragraph, Bullets and Numbering, Borders and Shading; these may vary a little from one release of Word to another, but the underlying functionality is usually the same.) When you see the Modify Style dialog box, click on Format in the lower left corner. In the drop-down menu that appears, click on Paragraph. This opens the same or similar dialog box just mentioned at Menu - Format - Paragraph. When the Paragraph dialog box opens, under the Indents and Spacing tab, note the Spacing Options. You have two spinners (I believe they are called): Before and After. Make After be 0 points. As you save and close this group of dialogs, this change will be applied to every instance of Normal in your book. If I were making this change in my 153,000 word novel Umnitsa, the change would instantly ripple through the entire manuscript. Mission accomplished. Oh, but now we need to indent, yes?

Issue 2: Indents. Once again, in your Word file, select any Normal paragraph so that it shows outlined, usually in light gray. Now I'm going to tell you a slightly different approach than the one we took for paragraph leading ('after'). Make sure that, in your view, you toggle Menu - View - View Ruler 'on.' You should see a white ruler with black tic marks and numbers across the top of your file. I have created a sample file to briefly illustrate some of these points. Look at the tabs (circled in red) in both images. Compare the non-indented with the indented. You want the indented look, and can closely calibrate how small or large the indent will be. Never, ever, ever make manual changes in your document. Everything must be driven by styles. These tab settings will be part of your Normal paragraph style, which covers about 99% of your document. The following is a brief excerpt from my novel Umnitsa, to illustrate the flow of a SmashWords file text interior. It is a very simple format, using at most about five styles. In the how-to file further down, we'll learn how to create a SmashWords interior text file in greater detail. In this sample, notice that I left the ruler in place, and you can see the settings at left in the ruler, using those little tabs, which create your indent. You will not do that manually, but globally through the Styles functionality. It will be a key part of your Normal style for paragraphs.

   Sample File. I have also abstracted a PDF sample of my science-horror novel Doom Spore (a 'summer movie in a book'—think Invasion of the Body Snatchers) to use as a sample for the template I am about to provide as well. Here again is a file with just four styles. Note that I have created a little decoration (a scary mask) for the breaks, instead of using four asterisks as I normally do—but I still apply the style Normal Center to it. To apply a style, select the text or graphic, and from the pull down menu above, select Normal Center (assuming you have already created this style). This is pretty much what a well-formatted SmashWords file should look like. As you read through the PDF, when you are ready to return to this page from the PDF, close the PDF (click the X at upper right corner).

   Instruction File. I have created a separate how-to file (click to open) that gives a slightly different, more detailed work flow for your project of turning your book (article, short story, novel) into an acceptable SmashWords upload file. The great news is that it's not that hard, it does take a learning curve, but you never need to go through it again. Before SmashWords, I was formatting entirely different sets of files for every book for Kindle, Nook, Sony, and other formats. Now it's all under one SmashWords roof. You focus on writing the best book you can, learn the minimal stuff you have to know and do to publish digitally with SmashWords, and you're on to your next book. Here is the instruction file. Feel free to contact me at PIN with any questions. I may use some questions in a FAQ, without revealing the sender's name or e-mail address, in order to help others out. Good luck, and Happy Publishing.

   All-Important: Here is your Template. Download your PIN Template for Smashwords Interior Text Formatting. In your template, it is critical that you overwrite just the right things, and not others. Download the template to your pin-template folder (as suggested in the attached how-two with workflow). You should erase or overwrite the square image with the (*) in it, plus the colored-background text (blue and yellow) after reading the notes. If you delete anything else, you will eliminate the necessary styles embedded in your active styles. These are Normal, Normal Center, Heading1, and italic. This presumes you do not use Bold or Underline, but you can (carefully) add those if you understand styles sufficiently well. If you run into trouble, after several tries, e-mail me and I'll help if I can. I will post relevant queries and my answers in a FAQ to help other struggling self-publishers. We might also set up a mutual help blog on Facebook, Goodreads, or some other popular public venue.

   Bibliography. At the Smashwords website, do a search on "format smashwords" (literal text string). I have not entirely read, nor can I therefore endorse, any of these search results. It is possible that you may find more help or a different way of expressing the explanations. First and foremost, download and absorb Mark Coker's free manual. He created the software and is CEO of the entire operation, so he will know the ins and outs better than anyone. Also, you should consider taking classes in word-processing, especially Microsoft Word, since that is currently the required upload file format. Likewise, when we progress to graphics issues (interior images, marketing or cover images), it will be invaluable for the novice to take some third-party classes on how to use Adobe PhotoShop. This is the flagship of graphics packages, and a good investment for the serious publisher. If you are a student, or have a student in your family, you may get a discount from Adobe. One last note: to really get the hang of any software, read the manufacturer's manual; but know that, in most cases, these manuals are produced in an engineering environment, too often very unprofessional in their writing skills, editing skills, and in their conceptual manual design. Engineers are great at engineering, but often don't have a clue about creating manuals, or even understanding that it's a paid for, contractually deliverable part of the product package. Many in-house technical writers aren't much better at it. While the manufacturer's manual typically is a paid part of the deliverable software, so it comes with the software, you should think about acquiring a third-party manual written by a competent, independent technical writer or software expert who is not beholden to any software manufacturing corporation or its in-house bureaucracy (usually captained by non-writers, non-editors, and non-clue-igentsia). Ultimately, keeping the ball in sight, our purpose here is to make an interior text formatter of you, so that you won't want to spend the money, and lose the control, by turning a doable task over to someone else for pay. Unlike graphics, this element of self-publishing is actually fairly mechanical, rote, and requiring very little artistic ability other than an eye for the simplest layout.

Sator Enigma: Ancient Roman Mystery Solved

The so-called Sator Square (also Sator Rebus, Puzzle) refers to a mysterious ancient text found on walls throughout ruins of the Roman Empire. Archeologists have found exemplars in such diverse ancient Roman locations as a government hall (aula) in Cirencester, Britannia; twice in Pompeii, pre-dating the city's volcanic destruction by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE; and in the distant frontier fortress of Dura Europos on Rome's Mesopotamian border with Parthia. Something about this strange, cryptic writing must have been so important that the Romans would post it in their government halls, public squares, and top military headquarters.

It is one of the most perfect palindromes ever created. A simple palindrome is a text that reads the same, backwards or forwards; e.g., "Madam I'm Adam" and ".madA m'I madaM". The Sator Square is a perfect four-way palindrome that reads the same left-right, right-left, up-down, and down-up. Nobody had a clue how to translate it, despite thousands of hours of research, hundreds of learned books and articles, and at least one Ph.D. thesis in Classics at Yale University.

John T. Cullen solved the puzzle in the summer of 2007, almost coincidentally, while continuing eight years of scholarly research for his nonfiction/Ancient History virtual tour guide A Walk in Ancient Rome, Revised 2nd Edition (Clocktower Books, Summer 2011). He had been aware of this baffling cryptogram from long ago, which has since become an object of superstitious reverence in certain Christian and Neo-Pagan settings. Suddenly, while taking a break from his Rome research, he looked at the Sator Square in a new way—and was able, within a few weeks, to both translate it and plausibly explain it.

Ironically, at the annual convention of International Thriller Writers, of which he is an Active Member, in New York City in July 2009, he was the only author present who had actually deciphered and explained a cryptic, ancient epigram of world importance—and lived to tell about it.