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Doobie’s Odyssey Now Available in Print!

The day is finally here: Doobie’s Odyssey: Civet Coffee, Brothels, and the Andaman Sea is now available in print! You can purchase a copy on Create Space by clicking here.

If you would prefer, you can purchase on Amazon by clicking here. (Amazon gets a higher percentage of the sale than me if you do it that way.) But either way, check it out!

It is also still available as an E-book on pretty much any E-reader out there. Click here for Kindle and here for Nook.

What is Doobie’s Odyssey about, you may be asking yourself. The book blurb sums it up concisely:

When Craig Dobbins decides to backpack across Southeast Asia, he resolves to travel now and plan afterward. Craig dreams of life on the road and the freedom and spontaneity that only an open itinerary can offer. Joining him is his former roommate Zach, a more structured persona, who serves as the yin to Craig’s yang. Their personalities clash for side-splitting confrontations as they explore the region by any means available—bus, train, plane, boat, motorcycle, and on foot—bringing them to exotic locales and exciting adventures: snorkeling amongst disappearing reefs off uninhabited islands; trekking in the oldest rainforest in the world; learning to drive a motorcycle; participating in an indigenous Lahu New Year’s ceremony; working on remote farms (one in the process of developing a civet coffee operation). Hilarious and informative, as Doobie’s Odyssey follows the adventures of this dynamic duo, it also demonstrates the difficulties globalization has imposed upon the developing world.

Hope you enjoy it, and tell your friends!

Doobie’s Odyssey is Now on Kindle

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Well, at long last, the day is here: my manuscript is now officially a book! Doobie’s Odyssey: Civet Coffee, Brothels, and the Andaman Sea is now available on Kindle. To purchase a copy, look for it on your Kindle or click here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MTO5QW0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479407155&sr=8-1&keywords=doobie%27s+odyssey

It should be out on other E-readers in the next week or so and as a print book by early December. A travel adventure memoir, it also describes the cornucopia of problems that tourism and unrestrained capitalism have brought to Southeast Asia.

You can see photos or read an excerpt by clicking on the menu bar on the top of the page. Or you can sign for the email list to be notified of its release on other E-readers and as a print book by clicking on the Follow button on the right side of the page.

Thanks for checking the blog out, and I hope you enjoy the book!

Cover Design for Manuscript

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Here is the cover for my forthcoming memoir, Doobie’s Southeast Asian Odyssey: Civet Coffee, Brothels, and the Andaman Sea. I am now in the process of reading notes from my beta readers and giving the manuscript a final look-over. Then all that will be left is formatting the book from a document to a HTML file.

Unfortunately, progress has been a bit slow as of late. (I have yet to receive a day off from work after starting my summer job.) Regardless, I am still planning on a June release, hopefully by summer solstice. Check back for updates!

Beta Reader

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I have finished the final revision of my manuscript! It is now just half the length of the long-winded original, hopefully making for a more-readable adventure. I have a friend (referred to as a beta reader) giving it a final look-over, checking for any typos, misprints, or other glaring errors.

While she is working on that, I have also begun the process of designing the cover. Actually, to be precise, I have begun the process of finding someone else to design the cover. I have as much artistic talent and knowledge of graphic design as a kindergartner, so I made the decision to bring in some outside help. Based on a recommendation from my editor, I have contacted a professional, and we have just started a working relationship.

Things are coming along smoothly. Keep checking back for updates and the upcoming release date.

Manuscript Revision Continues

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Update on the progress of my manuscript: I recently finished reviewing the changes my editor has suggested, and we had a conversation via Skype where he offered advice on self-publishing. Now I must commence with a final revision and then a final edit. Unfortunately, the word processor I have been using has began to cause errors in formatting. The Internet is too slow here (Punta Sal, a small beach town of the northern coast of Peru), so I will have to wait to begin this project. On the plus side, this has given me the necessary time to catch up on my journal.

4 December 2015

Editor’s Completed Manuscript

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The editor I hired to help me put the finishing touches on my manuscript just got back to me with his finalized version. He has suggested taking out around 10,000 words (out of an original 96,000), to make a leaner and quicker read. Now I must begin the cumbersome process of going through all his suggestions and comments, deciding what to change and what to leave the same.

Unfortunately, before I can even begin this process, I am faced with the problem of looking at his notes. Microsoft Word has a great feature where words, sentences, or paragraphs can be crossed out, but still read, indicating that they should be cut. Additions made by the editor are underlined. Unfortunately, when I try to open this file with Open Office (a free alternative to cost-prohibitive Microsoft Word), most of this is rendered unreadable.

A recently downloaded WPS Office fixes this problem, but the text is now filled with red markings.

Aha, by copying and pasting the final version to a new WPS text document, all the text is congruently black. Why must everything be so complicated?!

Ok, now that I’ve got that sorted out, all I have to do is review my entire manuscript, for the umpteenth final version!

Finding an Editor

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The seemingly simple task of finding an editor to help put the finishing touches of my manuscript has been completed. My requirements were simple. I did not want to work with an editor that wanted to be involved in all assets of publication (book design and format, marketing, et cetera). S/he must be familiar with working on books for the general public, preferably the genre of travel adventure – basically not someone used to textbooks, professional and medical journals, or other such publications. This narrowed down somewhat the hundred and hundreds of listings in Writer’s Market, but still left me tons of options. The most crucial requirement would be that his/her responses to my inquiry be free from typographical errors. Surprisingly, this proved more difficult than anticipated, as editor after editor did not seem to be able to write a simple email free from mistakes. How could I trust him/her with my manuscript if s/he could not write an error-free paragraph. Finally, I found someone that appeared to be a match: he could type emails without making mistakes; he enjoyed working on travel adventure books; he responded timely to my emails; and I thought he did a great job on a sample edit of the first few pages of my manuscript. Now I can move on to other matters.

8 October 2015