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Good news for Moon Realm fans! Baker & Taylor has picked up Gibbering Gnome Press as a vendor.

Posted in Gibbering Gnome Press, a Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™, The Moon Coin, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 19, 2013 | 6 Comments »

Which means . . . after I slay a thousand forms, hire TRON to break into B&N’s catalog system, kill the witch, and bring back the broom to Oz . . . after all that . . . The Moon Coin is headed for Barnes & Noble!

Here’s how it happened: back in the fall, Barnes and Noble sent me a letter saying they wanted to carry The Moon Coin in their brick and mortar bookstores. The problem is that B&N doesn’t acquire books from publishers and authors, they get them from distributors and wholesalers.

Well, this week I heard back from Baker & Taylor. I’VE GOT THE BROOM AND I’M HEADING BACK TO OZ! My book is going to be available to B&N, (among many other bookstores), and a 95% of all libraries!

I have no idea how long it’s going to take me to get back to Oz, though. A couple months maybe? There’s just never a roving band of blood-thirsty flying monkeys around when you need one. Have you ever noticed that? But when I do get back, and into the Barnes & Noble catalog, B&Ns everywhere will be able to stock the series!

I’ve already heard from one B&N children’s dept manager who says she already has a special display in mind. She also plans to put up posters! Yikes!

One B&N store down, 722 to go.

In other news, I’m back up on Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/u/0/116346566164783346454

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ColorPage Testimonial

Posted in Gibbering Gnome Press, a Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™, The Moon Coin, The Moon Realm, tagged , , , on February 16, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

ColorPage, the amazing printer I use for all the Moon Realm books, asked me to do a testimonial for their website. Here it is:

CPTestimonial

Click HERE to read it in full.

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New Author Bio and Author Note

Posted in Gibbering Gnome Press, a Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™, Self-Press, The Dragondain, The Moon Coin, The Moon Realm, Typesetting, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 26, 2013 | 5 Comments »

New Author Bio and Author Note

My editor has been asking me to rewrite my bio. She thinks a bio should satisfy a reader’s curiosity about an author’s journey and skillz.  She also sees it as an opportunity to let a prospective employer—in this case, one of the goliath publishing corporations—know that I’m not a complete dolt.

This is what I emailed her today. Any feedback would be welcome—just post your comments at the bottom. Thanks!

Author Bio:

Richard Due (pronounced “Dewey”) first imagined the Moon Realm while telling bedtime tales to his children. He makes his home in Southern Maryland, where he and his wife have owned and operated Second Looks Books since 1991. The Moon Coin is the first novel in his award-winning Moon Realm series.

Author Note:

I started writing stories in the 3rd grade and moved on to novels in my teens and twenties, only to give that all up in my mid-thirties.

In my working life, however, I’ve been into making squiggly marks (or dots, lots of dots) on paper since the 1980s. First, I worked as a laser scanner operator, making halftones. (Halftones are a reprographic technique that simulates continuous tone imagery through the use of dots). Or, put more simply, I turned black and white photographs into a whole mess-o-dots, extra pretty-like, making them perfect for running on printing presses.

Later, I worked as a DS camera operator, making halftones and text negatives on orthographic film. Or, put more simply, I turned photographs into a whole mess-o-dots, on film, and did the same with text, only without all the dots, making them perfect for running on printing presses. I made several hundred BFOPs this way. (BFOPs, pronounced BEEfops, stands for Books For Other People. And they aren’t always fun to make, but they’re great for paying for things like books, car insurance, rent, more books, food, and drink.)
Eventually, though, computers took all those jobs away from me and gave them to something called a digital typesetter. So I taught myself how to be one of those, and made more books (some cool, most not so much) and computer software manuals (can you say: kill me now).

In 1991, I put the typesetting business on freelance, and entered into the exciting and glamorous world of book selling. My wife and I are still at it, selling books at our independent (mostly-) used bookstore in Prince Frederick, Maryland.

In 2010, however, something very strange happened. . . . On a complete lark, during the night of a full moon, I put all my skills together in a paper bag, and waved them over my head while clucking like a chicken, then opened the bag, and out spilled the Moon Realm Series in all its ebook and print goodness. I have been very happy ever since.

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Blue-lines!!!

Posted in Artwork, Gibbering Gnome Press, a Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™, The Moon Coin, The Moon Realm, Typesetting, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 24, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Some pics of the blue-lines the printer sent me:

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Technically, these are digital proofs, but they’ve been made to look exactly like traditional blue-lines burned from negatives, which I think is really cool! (Although dang hard to read!) Each page is a separate piece of paper, double-sided, formatted, and paginated exactly as it will appear in the book—except, of course, the light blue will be replaced by black ink! :)

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I love the Gibbering Gnome Press colophon (that’s the little silhouette thingy above the press name) Carolyn designed.

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This map of Treling is new for the print edition.

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The pages with illustrations are on normal paper so I can spec the color.

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Paperback and eBook now available:

Amazon and Second Looks Books.


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Click HERE to Read Reviews of The Moon Coin.

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❍

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Copyright © 2011 by Richard Due. All rights reserved.

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Gibbering Gnome Press, A Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™

The Moon Realm™

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The Moon Coin

Posted in Gibbering Gnome Press, a Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™, The Moon Coin, The Moon Realm, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 13, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Paperback and eBook now available:

Amazon and Second Looks Books.

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2012 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards: Gold Medal Winner

“Tales, unlike stories, never lie. You see, a tale is an account of things in their due order, often divulged secretly, or as gossip. Would you like to hear one?” —Lord Autumn

Uncle Ebb was so good at telling his tales of the Moon Realm that Lily and Jasper used to wonder if he’d been there himself. But as teenagers, they’re beyond all that—up until the moment they’re plunged into the fantastic bedtime tales of their youth. Now, armed with nothing more than memories—and the moon coin—Lily and Jasper must piece together Uncle Ebb’s shattered tales and unite the fractured Moon Realm, or lose the moons they loved so much . . . all over again.

Illustrated by Carolyn Arcabascio. Volume One of the The Moon Realm Series

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Preview: The Moon Coin.

Six chapters formatted for ePub, Mobi, or PDF.

Please share these files with your friends. Enjoy.

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Praise for The Moon Coin

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“If I had to compare The Moon Coin to any other work, I’d say it is a cross between Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings. It reads very well for middle grade and younger YA, like Narnia, with the immense fantasy of LOTR. The imagery is so captivating, Lily is so mature, and the reader is swept along [on] her adventure as if we are riding the Rinn or facing the dragon ourselves. It is everything you want a great fantasy to be and then some.”

—Gathering Leaves Reviews (5 Stars)

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“The Moon Coin was Middle-Grade Fantasy at its best! The world Richard Due created was lush and overflowing with imagination and wonder. This story puts you in a fantasy overload, full of creatures and places you only dream about existing. When I was a kid I would have annihilated this book, slept with it under my pillow, and carried it with me at school.”

—Sizzling Reads (5 Flames)

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“The Moon Coin, fast, furious and immensely enjoyable, reminded me of what I love about fiction. . . . The way Mr. Due has crafted his tale is wickedly enthralling, with a touch of what we know added into the larger mix of what we don’t, we get to discover everything right along with Lily (and eventually Jasper). There are surprises around every corner and by taking the more difficult theme of division, forcible annexation and the underlying currents of coloring up the truth, Mr. Due has made The Moon Coin into a story that is deeply layered and developed as much as it is entertaining and delightful.”

—In the Closet with a Bibliophile (5 Stars)

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“. . . I fell in love with the hand drawn illustrations. Call me old fashioned, but I really miss the days when all illustrations looked like these. Computers are a fantastic invention (without them this ebook wouldn’t exist) but I sure do miss the gorgeous fruits of someone talented’s labor. Carolyn Arcabascio’s illustrations really bring the story to life. They are that little link that makes all the difference in becoming immersed in the story.”

—Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile (5 Stars)

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“The world of the Moon Realm is so wonderfully detailed and vivid that you have no trouble imagining everything that Lily is going through. The book also includes really fantastic illustrations. The world building is really awesome and is most definitely a stand out feature of this book.”

—A Bookish Affair (4.5 Stars)

Click HERE to Read More Reviews of The Moon Coin.

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❍

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Copyright © 2011 by Richard Due. All rights reserved.

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Gibbering Gnome Press, A Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™

The Moon Realm™

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From Indesign to iPad, Kindle, and Nook: Typesetting eBooks

Posted in Artwork, Gibbering Gnome Press, a Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™, The Moon Coin, The Moon Realm, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Once the book is properly formatted within Indesign, it can be exported to the various formats needed to go to Amazon, Apple, and Barnes and Noble. Each format has its quirks and bugs—the iPad has trouble centering text; the Kindle doesn’t know what to do with DropCaps: and the Nook likes to chop off the last hyphenated syllable of the last word in a sentence (centered text only; go figure); just to name a few. Of the three, the iPad currently offers the most robust formatting.

Here is a screen shot of the finished EPUB file running in iBooks on my iPad:

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This is what happens when you turn the iPad onto its side:

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Preview: The Moon Coin.

Six chapters formatted for ePub, Mobi, or PDF.

Please share these files with your friends. Enjoy.

..

Paperback and eBook now available:

Amazon and Second Looks Books.

❍

..

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Due. All rights reserved.

..

Gibbering Gnome Press, A Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™

The Moon Realm™

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Launched by a Gibbering Gnome

Posted in Gibbering Gnome Press, a Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™, The Moon Coin, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 10, 2011 | 2 Comments »

There are probably as many ways to go about publishing a book as there are ways of writing one. As I conceived the Moon Realm series and wrote the first several books, I envisioned a publishing journey that involved agents and editors and publishers—oh my! But after so many queries and so few offers of representation, I realized I’d have to come to terms with going it alone. But I didn’t want to be alone. So I did what any good, sensible writer would do. I started making things up.

I hadn’t planned it. I didn’t just sit down one day and think, well, what comes next? I didn’t make a list. I didn’t see it coming. I was sitting on my porch on a beautiful day. I’d made a PDF version of the first book to slap onto a Kindle so I could show a friend how it was coming along. But there, at the very bottom of my title page mockup, was a lonely space . . . right where it was supposed to say Scholastic or Bloomsbury or Hyperion Books for Children or Viking. (Ha! Viking! What, am I supposed to believe they actually have Vikings working there? And even if I did believe—I mean, anymore—what about Viking Penguin? Are these Vikings and Penguins working side by side? Or are we talking Viking Penguins? Like the kind you might wake in the middle of the night to find waddling through your coastal village, swinging axes and carrying torches?) I had even once entertained the idea that the bottom of my title page might say—key heavenly music—Candlewick Press. But no. All I had was this big white place of hopelessness, messing up an otherwise perfectly typeset page. Empty. Desolate. Abandoned. Devoid of all meaning.

Actually, the writer in me perked right up. Oooh! A blank space! What am I going to do with that? The story of how L. Frank Baum named OZ rose to mind, but I didn’t need to name a world. I needed to name a press. It had to be dignified, something with both gravitas and chutzpah. Or maybe something hard to pronounce, like Houghton Mifflin, or Knopf. (As unlikely as it may sound, those names were already taken.) And then, in the beat of a butterfly’s wings, it came to me: an idea so obvious one might have imagined it sitting right there in the room, or maybe perching . . . on a three-legged stool.

At the bottom of the title page I typed: Gibbering Gnome Press, a Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink. And just like that, a new indie press was born.

With editing nearly complete, and my press needs met, all I needed now was to find a top-drawer illustrator who LOVED my book. The way I saw it, I had better odds of riding a tornado to Oz than of finding a professional illustrator who loved The Moon Coin. More on that next time. By the way, what ranks above top-drawer?

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The Moon Coin, by Richard Due, is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the iBookstore for $2.99.

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❍

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Copyright © 2011 by Richard Due. All rights reserved.

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Gibbering Gnome Press, A Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™

The Moon Realm™

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