Back on the ePub trail…

This is something of a perennial topic for me, but I keep discovering new wrinkles in the ePub drama. This time it was the realisation that some vendors will accept ePub files with minor errors and some will not. In fact most will not, even if the errors are minor. So having got all excited a week or two ago and talked about how Triumphal Accounts in Hebrew and Egyptian was going live… well, it only went live at a limited number of places. I finally tracked the problem down to some errors in the ePub source files which had evaded my notice… but not the detailed scrutiny of the extremely useful epubcheck tool supplied by Google. So… problem fixed, uploads in order, and everyone seems to have accepted the file this time around. Though of course acceptance and distribution takes time so at this point only LeanPub and Smashwords have the thesis live and on sale. Google and iTunes will follow shortly…

I also had a great review of The Man in the Cistern on the Breakfast with Pandora blog – well worth a read.

Lots of other activities in the offing so watch this space next week…

Senet, ‘Scenes from a Life’, and mobile app programming

Well, all three of these have been quite prominent this week. Senet is an ancient Egyptian board game, considered by many people to be an ancestor of backgammon. Available evidence is for the most part from tomb drawings and artefacts, with a small amount of textual material as well. It is not clear how far through the various levels of ancient Egyptian society enthusiasm for the game went – the tomb evidence by its very nature preferentially informs us about elite activities and interests, and we simply do not have information either way about other strata of the culture. Senet was used, apparently, not just directly as a game, but also as a religious or spiritual symbol of the passage through this life and the next. You could liken this very loosely to today’s playing cards, which similarly straddle the long gulf between between gaming and divination in different people’s hands.

Scenes from a Life makes use of Senet quite extensively, and I have assumed that it was played very widely by all kinds of people. Sometimes in the book it is just a game, but much more frequently it features on a metaphorical level. So the journeys that take place through the book might be interpreted by the characters as like movements in the game, with all of the anticipation and anxiety that this brings about. Or there might be an analogy drawn between someone’s behaviour and a game play strategy. If, as I suspect might have been the case, Senet was something of a national game back in New Kingdom Egypt then this is inevitable. Think how sports fans tend to lace their conversation and world-view with ideas and set-piece moves drawn from their favourite sport, whether football, chess, baseball, table-tennis or whatever.

Senet app icon

So that brings us through to mobile apps. Some long-term followers of this blog will know that I have a Senet game available on the various app stores (pick your favourite store and search for DataScenes Development, or just directly for Senet). But over the last few weeks I have been working on a new version. Alongside the paid-for version there will be a free (well, advert-supported) one which has a number of geeky techie advantages.

  • By using a different underlying technology I am able to release it for a lot of phones and tablets of quite modest specification (lots more than was constrained by the previous tech choice).
  • I have integrated the app with the web so there is a sort-of leaderboard feature for those who fancy themselves as modern-day Senet champs.
  • I have taken the opportunity to rework a lot of code that had got more and more like tangled spaghetti. Anyone in the IT trade will recognise this as refactoring, and with my QA hat on I am completely aware just how many bugs get introduced by enthusiastic developers doing just this… but my code will be different…

Senet splash screen But I have also been finding some of the down-sides with the new development tool (it’s the Corona SDK for the true IT geeks). This is based on a graphics engine called OpenGL – which is magnificent for things like displaying images and moving them round the screen, but really quite poor at laying out simple text in – say – some help pages. Ironically I think I have spent longer getting the in-app help to work properly than the mechanics of the game itself.

Now, the characters of Scenes from a Life did not have smart-phones with them on their journeys. But they did enjoy the game of Senet – and you can enjoy it along with them! Realistically Senet the free game will be released quite some time before Scenes from a Life hits the bookshelves, so it can act as a sort of preview…

Triumphal Accounts – epub version

At long last I have been able to complete preparation of the epub version of my PhD thesis ‘Triumphal Accounts in Hebrew and Egyptian’. The kindle version has been available for some while now on Amazon UK and Amazon.com, but this opens up more distribution opportunities. So right now it is available at LeanPub – https://leanpub.com/triumphalaccounts – and it is queued up for approval at Google Books and iTunes. As usual, it will take a few days for it to appear at these places, and anywhere else I can find.

Cover - Triumphal Accounts in Hebrew and Egyptian

Another excitement of the week is the start of a group of readers/writers/reviewers who intend working through a book at a time. Some explanation is at http://www.kephrath.com/BookReviewGroup.aspx, and I wil fill in more details as they come along. The first book is Marian Allen’s fantasy novel The Fall of Onagros, and our target is to read it, review it and interview Marian during August. Should be fun.

New maps!

I thought it was about time I got on with maps for Scenes from a Life, so here are a couple…

Full regional map – Waset to Kephrath

Full regional map - Waset to Kephrath

The area around Waset

The area around Waset

Of course these are provisional at this stage, so expect some changes here and there, but it’s a start. Waset is nowadays known as Luxor, so you can have some fun matching places onto Google maps or something similar!

Also a short review of a short book – Robyn Hode (I) by David Pilling. David is slowly working through a series of short, fairly self-contained episodes about Robyn. Robyn is actually called Robert Hode in the books, but I suppose nobody would get the reference if he used that name on the cover! David has done a good deal of background research into the historical figure behind the Robin Hood tales, and this series is his attempt to map out a possible history. I enjoyed it, but found the shortness a bit frustrating so gave it four stars. The review is on Amazon.co.uk.

Some new places to download Kephrath short stories

I have been steadily working away for the last few months – since grappling with epub format – on extending the range of places where my short stories can be found. For reference, we have:

LeanPub
The Man in the Cisternhttps://leanpub.com/TheManInTheCistern
The Lady of the Lionshttps://leanpub.com/TheLadyOfTheLions

Google Books
The Man in the Cisternhttp://books.google.co.uk/books?id=btI7ztEAutIC
The Lady of the Lionshttp://books.google.co.uk/books?id=urtDZFceBYQC

iTunes
The Man in the Cisternhttps://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/the-man-in-the-cistern/id648034238
The Lady of the Lionshttps://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-lady-of-the-lions/id664565774 (in the process of distribution to iStores – should be available shortly)

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The full range of purchase links can be found at http://www.kephrath.com/WhereToBuy.aspx

All pretty exciting stuff, and as availability increases I’ll be advertising it here…

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Also, The Man in the Cistern just had a great review, to be found at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/622005023

A bonus post

The bonus is a link to a post I guest-wrote for Erin Eymard’s Bookworms Fancy blog. The brief was to explore the question “How did you become a lover of books and reading?” and several guest writers are going to be tackling that very same question. My contribution drifted over a number of factors, from the very first school that I have any recollection of (Miss Pears, near Romsey, Hampshire, England), the public library at Godalming (Surrey, where I spent my teenage years), maps integrated into books, and a few brief highlights of individual books which have had an impact on me. Read the whole article over at the Bookworms Fancy!

Bookworm's Fancy logo

Godalming library as it is nowadays

Launching an author web widget

Firstly, there are a number of birthday giveaway free tokens still available for In a Milk and Honeyed Land – but less than last week so if you would like one of these please contact me at books@kephrath.com. This is for the electronic version (epub or kindle mobi), sadly not for physical copies. I also had time to write a review of Britannia’s Wolf by Antoine Vanner, a piece of naval fiction set near the end of the 19th century.

But the main thing I wanted to talk about today was that, wearing one of my IT development hats, I have now finished work on a web (or blog) widget for authors. This screenshot shows the appearance, but for ‘live’ operation please look at the Matteh Publications site at http://mattehpublications.datascenesdev.com/AuthorWidgets.aspx or http://mattehpublications.datascenesdev.com/AuthorWidgetRegister.aspx.
Screenshot of author web widget

What does the Author Web Widget do? Well, you can have a single widget which combines information from a whole multitude of different sources. It can be placed on your web site or blog – so long as the blog supports JavaScript, which is typically in the sidebars or banners rather than the main area. You can give the code – just a few simple lines to copy and paste, which connect to the Matteh Publications site for all the hard stuff – to your friends and supporters who can embed it on their own site in order to promote you.

The widget will link to your web site, blog, main social media sites and email. It will also allow you to combine a whole list of different vendor links – Amazon, Goodreads, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and so on. You may well have reviews of the book scattered here and there – maybe Goodreads, Shelfari, and a whole lot of separate blogs. Same for extracts that you have contributed to various locations over the months. Since this widget is independent of each of these separate sites, you can connect to all of them in one place.

All of the details can be edited from a single page on the Matteh Publications web site – colour, size, text and link entries, vendors and so on. This page becomes accessible to you after registration. The edit process is pretty much automated and should be easy to manage, but if you run into problems I am just at the other end of an email – matteh@datascenesdev.com. At the moment the widget only lists a single book, but you can always have more than one and I can walk you through the simple process of hosting multiple widgets on a single web page if you like. From your page on the Matteh Publications site you can also see how much use your widget has had – how many page views, how many times someone has clicked through to one or other site, and so on.
Screenshot of configuring the author web widget

How much does the widget cost? Well, the normal price would be £20 for a year’s subscription, to include unlimited edits and unlimited use on as many different sites or blogs as you wish. I am running an introductory offer of £10 for the first year for a limited time, probably a couple of months as the system is proved in action. The money transaction is handled by PayPal so your financial details wil be held securely at the PayPal site and not by me. All I need is the transaction ID to confirm payment.

If you’re interested in one of these web widgets for yourself, drop me an email at matteh@datascenesdev.com and we can talk about it.

More updates – and the birthday giveaway has not yet ended!

First and foremost, it was my very great pleasure to read a review this morning on Goodreads – an extract follows

Flowing, eloquent descriptions of the region, traditions, music, and writings of the people of those times immerse the reader. I felt as if I were there, standing at “the high place” with the world spread out before me, walking in an ancient olive grove, hearing the soothing notes of a lyre. I wanted to be there, to be part of the exhilarating festivals, to share in the people’s sorrows, to face their challenges with them. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, yet I hated to see the book end.

Considering the depths of emotion explored, the lessons conveyed, and the story told, “In a Milk and Honeyed Land” is an astonishingly easy read. More than that, it’s utterly beautiful.

For the full review, check out Goodreads. As you can imagine, I was absolutely thrilled to find this! Meanwhile, here are some (modern) olive trees in the region of the four towns…

Olive grove in the region of the four towns

The birthday giveaway continues – some of the free download tokens have gone but others still remain, so if you want to receive a download token and instructions how to use it please contact me at books@kephrath.com soonish. Electronic copies only, I’m afraid, as the physical soft- or hard-back versions are not included in this.

So meanwhile… updates continue over at the Kephrath site. Some of them are just geeky things to bring the web technologies used up to date – the shiny new rotating news feed on the home page is one such, and the book review filter at http://www.kephrath.com/BookReviews.aspx is another. But as well as that I finally got the timeline page out at http://www.kephrath.com/Timeline.aspx. It’s fairly basic at the moment but from this point on I can enhance it as time permits.

Keep watching for more changes…

Birthday giveaway!

'In a Milk and Honeyed Land' cover
In a Milk and Honeyed Land is a year old shortly! The exact date depends a little whether you mean the physical or electronic version, and I’m not fussy about the details, so May 31st is as good a date as any. Many thanks to all those who have read the book this last year, especially if you have given some feedback. Over the last year I have had contact with a lot of great people and new friends, and feel enriched because of it.

To celebrate the event, I have organised a giveaway with the publishers Trafford. I have a limited number of tokens which will allow people to download an electronic version (epub or kindle) from the Trafford site. If you are interested, please contact me with your email address and I can supply details of how to download. Numbers are limited, so please don’t delay too long. This could be a great opportunity to get a copy for a friend. It applies to the electronic version only, not physical copies.

Other news – I have written a couple of book reviews. The first is for Of Battles Past, by Bryn Hammond. As usual, a quick summary may be found on the Kephrath web site (see http://www.kephrath.com/BookReviews.aspx), and the full review is at Amazon, Goodreads and Shelfari.

As for the second, it is my great pleasure to be contributing again to Erin Eymard’s Bookworm’s Fancy blog (http://bookwormsfancy.wordpress.com/), with a review of A Swarming of Bees by Teresa Tomlinson. I loved this book, as you can read shortly. This review will appear on Erin’s blog in a few days time so keep a look out.

Also, The Man in the Cistern is now available on the iTunes book site at https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-man-in-the-cistern/id648034238?ls=1 (US), https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/the-man-in-the-cistern/id648034238?ls=1 (UK), or other regional iTunes stores. Price varies a little per region but should be around the £1 / $1 etc mark.

Finally, I have been overhauling the Kephrath web site a little to take advantage of some new web technologies. There are no really dramatic changes but I have changed the way some of the navigation works. and the way my book reviews are displayed on the page http://www.kephrath.com/BookReviews.aspx. Currently there are a few problems with old web browsers such as Internet Explorer 7, but any modern browser should be fine. I hope to iron out the last issues shortly. Enjoy!

Reminders of Kephrath near to home…

I thought this week I would post up some images taken over the weekend from in and around home, which have some sort of loose connection with the world of Kephrath. The first is a bee-and-flower picture – nowhere near as sharp as the real book cover, but this one was just at the back of the garden with our own bee!

Bee and Flower

The second is our fig tree, which is now (after a slow cold start) coming into leaf. Back in Southampton our fig tree there produced some fruit each year, the amount varying considerably with the season. This little one is only last year’s planting and so is some way away from fruiting yet… but great to see the leaves emerging.

Fig leaves

Qetirah poured them each a little red wine from a stoppered jar. They drank it very solemnly, eyes fixed on one another. She took one of the figs and pulled it in two, giving half to Damariel. He held the fruit in his hand briefly, caught by the dark flesh speckled with seeds. When they had finished he took another fig and did the same, this time keeping hold of it for her to eat, feeling her lips against his fingers.

Finally here is a view of a corner nearby. The connection here is quite tenuous but made through the name Gilgal – the name of the first encampment of the Israelites across the Jordan.

Garden corner

The camp itself was roughly square, insofar as the arc of the River and a few encroaching outcrops of rock allowed, and was divided into unequal regions of tents by interior paths. Nepheret supposed that, like islands in the inundation that she remembered from childhood, the tent groups were occupied by different families. The people she could see wore a range of brightly coloured kefs, and for a moment she was reminded of the flower fields that filled the hill country in the spring time.

Other news – it’s nearly a year since In a Milk and Honeyed Land reached the market, and to mark the anniversary I am planning some sort of promotion for the end of this month. More details next week…

Writing, both historical and speculative