But they have to be high-resolution, wraparound and you have to use amazing mathematics to figure out where the spine is going. Off by even a hundredth of a inch and the cover looks askew. Both the book and cover have to posted as PDFs but really, in the grand scheme of things, that was the simplest. I use a PDF-printer called BullZip and it works great.
For Rome's Revolution, it took us three full passes through the proofing procedure until we got it right. But then it was done. And I sold some! It is pretty cool.
Entry 1-145: May 19, 2013
VIRUS 5 - Original Layout
Before it evolved into Rome's Revolution, VIRUS 5 (later VIRUS 5: Asdrale Cimatir) was laid out to be a "you are there" experience.
It started out with the Author's note: This story is true. It just hasn't happened yet. It then presented an astrogeophysical chart regarding the characteristics of the Alpha Centauri star system. At that point in time, it was occupied by the colonists from the Ark I and the habitable planet (later called Helome by the Vuduri) was called New Earth. I did a lot of research into this chart and now it is gone :( However, I did post the data to my Wiki if you ever want to see it.
From there, it launched into the beautiful little story about Silas Hiram (see previous post Silas Hiram, RIP). It was my most polished piece because I thought that was how people were going to judge the book. But now it is gone (see Action, action, action) but it will be back some day in The Vuduri Companion.
The book then announced it was 1318 years later which was enough to tell you we were far into the future. Once again, I launched into the astrogeophysical data for the Tabit system. You can see it here if you like.
Finally, it was on to our story. I know people like action so I intended for the first real chapter to be dramatic. In fact, I envisioned it as the opening scene of the movie, but that hasn't happened yet.
My biggest problem was: in writing you are supposed to show, not tell. But the Vuduri don't speak. There simply was no dialog. Just a lot of telling. My only hope was to write it "cinematically" so you felt like you were at the movies.
There were several take-home lessons from this chapter.
- The Vuduri really were from the future
- They had conquered FTL travel
- Their method of towing the Ark II laid the groundwork for Rei's transport of the Ark II to Deucado
- Rei was picked at random as their test subject. (Not really!)
Tomorrow, Rei's Resurrection
Entry 1-146: May 20, 2013
Rei's Resurrection tomorrow, VIRUS 5 today
I promised I would talk about Rei's Resurrection today and I will do it tomorrow but I realized I had to give you the structure of VIRUS 5 novels as laid out. I even created a web site called VIRUS5.COM but it never really went anywhere.
Here is the original logo of the series when it was called VIRUS 5. It was supposed to be a symbolic representation of a Stareater consuming a star.