To Forbear or Not to Forbear?

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Mandated Memoranda

That is today’s question… While investigating last week’s issue of “jumping to conclusions,” we ran across a convicting passage in Calvin’s commentary on this all too familiar verse:

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” Matthew 18:15 English Standard Version (ESV)

We’ve covered the mechanics of the confrontation–repentance–reconciliation process in “I’m Sorry, Please Forgive Me.” However, Calvin points out that there is a step prior to confrontation in which many of us fail.

But if thy brother shall sin against thee. [Since the Lord had broached the topic of] bearing the infirmities of [brothers and sisters], he now shows more clearly in what manner, and for what purpose, and to what extent, we ought to bear with them. [Without such guidance in the] way of avoiding offenses, every man [is abandoned to] winking at the faults of others, and thus what is evil would be encouraged by forbearance.

I find myself caught in this trap at times: not wishing to offend but knowing that the other is at fault to their own harm (as well as mine.)

Christ therefore prescribes a middle course, which does not give too great offense to the weak, and yet is adapted to cure their diseases; for that severity, which is employed as a medicine, is profitable and worthy of praise.

Having taken on our humanity, our Lord knows our own infirmities in these matters and provides a solution:

In short, Christ enjoins his disciples to forgive one another, but to do so in such a manner as to endeavor to correct their faults. It is necessary that this be wisely observed; for nothing is more difficult than to exercise forbearance towards men, and, at the same time, not to neglect the freedom necessary in reproving them.

Therefore, we see that we have an obligation to confront our brothers or sisters for their good.

Almost all lean to the one side or to the other, either to deceive themselves mutually by deadly flatteries, or to pursue with excessive bitterness those whom they ought to cure. But Christ recommends to his disciples a mutual love, which is widely distant from flattery; only he enjoins them to season their admonitions with moderation, lest, by excessive severity and harshness, they discourage the weak.

As we said last week, we have a duty to hope well of others, for we are not acquitted and shall stand before the Judge. And, yet, we must hold one another accountable for our mutual well-being, neither deceptively flattering nor harshly rebuking one another. Rather, Christ recommends to his disciples a mutual love: moderate admonition, that cures our diseases.

The Reconciliation of the Montagues and the Capulets, 1854, Fredric Leighton (1830–1896), in the public domain in the United States

God and Country

Posted on February 20, 2016 by Mandated Memoranda

From the title, you might think this post is entirely about politics. It could have been, but instead, we examine human responsibility in light of God’s sovereign providence. Though, by the end of this post, you might concede that the principles we will discover are applicable to today’s political process and the restoration of our Republic.

The scripture that starkly portrays this seeming dichotomy between God and Man is found in the second book of Samuel the prophet (sometimes referred to as Two Samuel.) Preparing to battle the Ammonites and Syrians, Joab, commander of David’s armies, exhorts Abishai, his brother, to:

Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him.” 2 Samuel 10:12 English Standard Version (ESV)

John Calvin discussed this verse in The Institutes of the Christian Religion. As prelude, he sets out the following principles for one who would know and do God’s will. First God’s provision for us often comes through human hands:

…He [or she] will revere and extol God as the principal author [of the blessings which he receives], but will also honor men as his ministers, and perceive…that by the will of God he is under obligation to those, by whose hand God has been pleased to show him kindness.

The one who fears God will:

Believe that [any loss sustained through negligence or imprudence] was the Lord’s will it should so be, but, at the same time, he will impute it to himself.

Furthermore:

…In the case of theft or murder, fraud and preconceived malice, […he] will distinctly recognize the justice of God, and the iniquity of man, as each is separately manifested.

Therefore, this one:

…Will not…be remiss in taking measures, or slow in employing the help of those whom he sees possessed of the means of assisting him. …As hands offered him by the Lord, he will avail himself of [all the aids which the creatures can lend him] as the legitimate instruments of Divine Providence.

Yet, undeterred by uncertainty or overconfidence:

And as he is uncertain what the result of any business in which he engages is to be (save that he knows, that in all things the Lord will provide for his good), he will zealously aim at what he deems for the best, so far as his abilities enable him.

However, his confidence in external aid will not be such that the presence of it will make him feel secure, the absence of it fill him with dismay, as if he were destitute.

Calvin, having laid out these principles, says:

Thus Joab, while he acknowledges that the issue of the battle is entirely in the hand of God, does not therefore become inactive, but strenuously proceeds with what belongs to his proper calling, “Be of good courage,” says he, “and let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God; and the Lord do that which seems him good,” (2 Sam. 10:12).

The same conviction keeping us free from rashness and false confidence, will stimulate us to constant prayer, while at the same time filling our minds with good hope, it will enable us to feel secure, and bid defiance to all the dangers by which we are surrounded.

***

Some voters this election season have been thinking:

“…[I have] nothing to lose,” but most of us have something to lose.”

I feel we’re in danger of throwing our Republic to the wind. Another commentator has said:

Now we are at the start of an electoral season that Americans say is of the utmost importance even as they make the most flippant choice of front-runners…

Sober up, America. We’re a republic only for as long as we can keep it.

You might say, “we trust in God; He will bring about a good result.” But, I urge us to trust “the Lord to do what seems good to Him” and be courageous for our people: pray, vote, donate, and campaign.

Speaker Ryan at National Prayer Breakfast: ‘Prayer Should Always Come First,’ Speaker Paul Ryan, Published Feb 4, 2016

ADC Punch List

Posted on December 5, 2014 by Mandated Memoranda

No, it’s not something that one makes before sitting down around the Thanksgiving table. From Wikipedia, a punch list:

…Takes its name from the historical process of punching a hole in the margin of the document, next to one of the items on the list. This indicated that the work was completed for that particular construction task. Two copies of the list were punched at the same time to provide an identical record for the architect and contractor. ^{[citation needed]}

Although, I suppose, a punch list could be used for nefarious purposes, Mandated Memoranda Publishing formulated and used one to develop and market our newest book: A Digital Carol – A Tale for Our Generation. We refer to it as ADC.

We’ve become fairly practiced at generating Kindle books. We’ve reported on our eBook development for previous books: Tragic Wonders – Stories, Poems, and Essays to Ponder and Tiānmìng – Mandate of Heaven.

Earlier descriptions give more insight into the detailed development. As we’ve said before, your mileage may vary. Please consider this list as what it is: steps in a conditional and evolving process meant for adaptation and improvisation.

As an amusing aside, we helped surface a software bug in the Kindle Fire HD device’s Kindle Reader application (version 9.5_1190027510 (before Oct. 28, 2014) progressing to 9.5_1190027710 (as of Dec. 4, 2014)). According to some Amazon Customer Service representatives, it’s been widely reported from multiple users. I managed to send Amazon a device log to examine (using the Fire HD device’s help service). Additionally, one worker was able to duplicate the issue on her Fire HD device with her own book selection. It seems to occur generally with all Kindle eBooks.

We assured ourselves it was a device application issue by downloading our eBook (the AZW file) to our PC. Then we ran Kindle Previewer, version 2.923 in Fire HD emulation mode to check the book cover under midnight, sepia, and normal backgrounds. It rendered correctly and repeatedly in emulation mode. We also tested four randomly selected books we had purchased before the update (system update 4.5.1) was installed.

This testing followed running the original KDP generated MOBI file of our own book through a full Quality Assurance schedule using Kindle Previewer in E-Ink, Fire, and iPad (w/ side-loading) modes. We also tested the original KDP generated MOBI with the Kindle PC application and an AZK file side-loaded onto an iPad. Our book rendered correctly on all platforms but the Fire HD device. We almost halted publication because of the issue but went through with it anyway based on our intuition and experience.

What happens when the issue occurs is that any eBook’s cover (the JPG or GIF image at the book front) renders correctly when the selected background is midnight. It renders incorrectly when the background is changed to sepia or normal (white). The cover is surrounded by a background toned frame but the cover is either blacked (or whited) out or obscured by a dark semitransparent overlay.

The phenomenon is repeatable so long as the book is open. Once the book is closed and reopened, the issue changes. In this second instance, the cover renders correctly with sepia and normal background, but this time the midnight background obscures the cover.

One Amazon Customer Service rep said the issue was viewed as content related (i.e., the eBooks were at fault). She recognized the issue was a device application issue.

The best analogy I can give is this. Pretend you’ve taken a photo with your phone. You view the photo with the camera app and it looks good. You decide to improve how the photo looks so you open a photo-enhancement app on the phone. There, the photo is blacked out. Puzzled, you reopen the camera app. The photo is there and seems unchanged from when you took it. You close the camera app and reopen the enhancement app. This time the photo is whited out. Concerned, you email the photo to your PC where it looks just as colorful as it did in the camera app. Clearly, the enhancement app on the phone is at fault, not the photograph itself.

The photo represents all Kindle eBooks. The camera app and the PC app represent all Kindle Reader apps except the one on the Fire HD device. The enhancement app on the phone represents the Kindle Reader app on the Fire HD device. It is the Kindle Reader app on the Fire HD device that is at fault.

I hope Amazon Software personnel find and fix the bug (perhaps a test software artifact left active after product release?). Not resolving the issue could adversely affect all Amazon eBook sales this Christmas buying season. I wouldn’t want to be on the customer service staff if it is not fixed.

Obviously, these are our personal observations and opinions. EBook development seems never to be without excitement. Maybe it will be different next year? We resolved the previous bug we reported on our own (a rectifiable Windows ‘run with graphics processor’ selection for Kindle Previewer’s phantomjs_mobi82html executable file). Not so with this one, I’m afraid. As of yesterday, I think they still think it’s a data (or user!) issue. Such is the way of medium to large-sized software organizations.

POST UPDATE (12182014): Amazon has upgraded the Kindle Fire HD (3^rd Gen) System software version to 4.5.2 and the HD device’s Kindle Reader to 9.6_1190216910. The reader was updated before the system software and appears to have resolved the cover rendering problem. This puts Amazon software in the ranks of Microsoft who actually fix their issues in a timely manner rather than letting them linger for weeks, months, and years.

Here’s the structured procedure we followed in the development and marketing of A Digital Carol – A Tale for Our Generation. We’ve also added some details on our HTML generation. This is our punch list:

Fact find from recent KDP newsletters

Kindlefy ADC version 1 – 3

Add ISBN
Spell check and search for errant spaces
Create HTML
Prepare Two Structure Files (Check To Press archive)
Create File Folders (Check To Press archive)
Update Kindle Previewer (KP)
Generate MOBI and AZK files using KP
Examine with KP (use spreadsheet for QA)
Examine on Fire, PW, and iPad
Revise original and go to 3 or Finish

Revise Blurb (do word count based page estimate ~130 pages; ASIN assignment)

Author interview, ADC Status, and MM posts: ADC status, Author interview (hit themes: Economic divide, Jobs automated, AI demons, War, and Population), Character Interview, Excerpts (?)

Dry run finalization of manuscript and generation of PDF

Recheck KF8 on HW

Start KDP entry for ADC [DO NOT SUBMIT]

Receive Copyedited Manuscript back from Kirkus (due November 17, received November 12)

Finalize manuscript, generate PDF

Submit PDF for review

Kirkus review ($575 for rush – suppressible if bad)

Books and Culture (?) – delayed

Publishers Weekly Indie aka Booklife (free if accepted)

Red City Review ($40) – delayed

Kindlefy ADC version 4

Compare new manuscript with existing HTML (Use KDP generated version)
Transcribe deltas into existing HTML
Spell check updated HTML for transcription errors
Buff em> versus i> and em> punctuation issues leave well enough alone (also French sp. not perfect; issue with images and font size, too)
Repeat general HTML check over (used IE)
Compare PDF source with HTML in Word
Update Kindle Previewer (KP)
Generate MOBI and AZK files using KP
Do Kindle Fire only QA check on KP version
Run KP MOBI (KF8) through KDP to get testable MOBI file, folders with HTML [check book data; DO NOT SUBMIT]
Generate AZK from KDP file
Examine KDP MOBI with KP (use spreadsheet for QA)
Examine on Fire, PW, and iPad
Revise and go to 3 or submit to KDP

Investigate Bowker listing?

Submit ADC for sale via KDP [Submitted to KDP Wednesday Nov 19, 2014, Published on Wednsday, Nov. 19, 2014] [ADC Pre-order unrealistic (Up to 90 days early; By Nov. 18 for 28 release?)]

Submit application for Copyright to LOC (need publication date)

Buy book and push to all devices, check out background color on cover issue

Follow up with KDP and Kindle development on this Fire HD device issue (kindle app version 9.5_1190027510).

Submit PDF for review:

Red City Review ($40)

Books and Culture (Free)

Update Author Central as necessary

Solicit reviews from Vine and other Amazon reviewers (see Dickens’s works)

Use Goodreads Authors program posts and adverts

Solicit Amazon Singles

Update Blurb/Press Release with ASIN and Amazon page estimate

Update MM Blog posts with ASIN and Amazon page estimate

Create PR Newswire Press Release from Blurb and Red City or Kirkus Reviews (Times Square and don’t forget Twitter Leisure, $400~)

Solicit other Reviews (if Kirkus Review good)

Economist

WSJ

Here’s the HTML process:

On Word file (97–2003 versions seem cleaner upon HTML conversion)

Remove cover

Reinforce styles (especially in author bio)

Substitute en dashs for hyphens (to account for Kindle rendering)

Replace book signing image with jpg

Save as ‘filtered web file’

Name: Adolphus Writer

Title: A Digital Carol – A Tale for Our Generation

On HTML

Simplify page breaks as per KDP guidelines

Move ‘<a> </a>’ out of ‘<h1> </h1>’ for chapter titles

Change ‘a name’ to ‘a id’ in all occurrences

Fix centered stars custom style

Remove excess formatting styles (i.e., those not used in manuscript body)

Clean Styles

Add ‘../image/’ to JPGs

Add text size: 200%, 150%, and 120% to centered title, centered subtitle, and h1 respectively

Add back font variant small caps to centered title

Make sure all styles have text indent as appropriate (0pt)

Remove color, text size (except as specified above), spacing

Adjust margin left to 0in instead of 0.3in as appropriate

Replace i> with em> except for foreign words

Assure punctuation italicized appropriately (see copyedited version)

Remove font color, text size, text spacing, lang[uage] references, and all span references in text

There you have it. I wish you well in your publishing adventures.

ADC Cover quarter scale, Copyrighted, All Rights Reserved

Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell – A Review

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Mandated Memoranda

James Scott Bell gives us the elements of compelling storytelling in his book Plot and Structure. His introduction motivates the reasons for good storytelling and encourages a lifelong process.

Chapter one covers what a plot is, the types of plots, the distinction between literary and commercial plots, and an argument for formulaic writing that produces excitement. He says, quoting the dictionary: “Plot – a plan as for designing a building or a novel.” The function of the plot is to connect with readers though the story. Story is what sells books to readers. Plot and structure help you tell the story. Quoting Hitchcock: “a good story is life, with the dull parts taken out.”

Bell advocates what he terms the LOCK system. The Lead is vibrant and compelling, someone to watch throughout the novel. The Objective is something which the Lead wants to get or get away from. Solid novels have one dominant Objective. Whether the Lead achieves the Objective is crucial to their wellbeing and is the “story question,” the driving force of the novel. Opposition characters and forces Confront the Lead to thwart them from the Objective. Confrontation provides the reader with emotional involvement in the story. Finally, the novel’s ending should be a Knockout. It should satisfy the reader and keep them coming back for more.

Chapter two covers the structure that holds a plot together. If plot is about the elements of a story, structure is about the timing of those elements. Story structure has beginnings, middles, and ends; three acts. The beginning is about the Lead, the entry point for the reader. It also presents the story world, establishes the tone (epic or farce? action or character progression? fast or slow?), compels the reader to move on to the middle, and introduces the opposition.

Middles are for confrontation where physical, professional, or psychological death hangs over the Lead. This is the place where subplots blossom. It creates a sense of inevitability by weaving plot strands in and out of each other and continuously surprising the reader. The middle also: deepens character relationships, keeps us caring about what happens, and sets up the final Knockout confrontation and resolution at the end. Ends tie up all significant, unresolved plot strands and provide the reader with a feeling of resonance. ‘Resonance’ is something beyond the confines of the book (i.e., its meaning in the larger sense).

Finally, chapter two broaches the concept of the disturbance and two doorways. The disturbance is anything that disturbs the lead’s ordinary life. It is the first threat or challenge to the status quo. However, the lead can still return to normal life. That’s where the first ‘doorway of no return’ comes in. This doorway sends the Lead irrevocably into the confrontations of the second act. The second doorway leads to the knockout ending that achieves resolution and resonance.

Chapter three covers methods for creating plot ideas. Chapters four through six dive into beginnings, middles, and ends.

Chapter seven describes the elements of scenes. Scenes typically take place in one location and time frame. They consist of action, reaction, setup, and deepening. These four chords can dominate the scene or compose portions of a scene called beats. Action and reaction naturally follow each other. Setup creates the circumstances and/or conditions for later scenes. Deepening enriches the reader’s understanding of a character or setting.

Scenes must have a Hook, Intensity, and Prompt (HIP). The Hook grabs the reader at the outset of the scene. Dialog, teaser, or action are good hooks into a scene. Description that is brief and sets a mood can also be a hook. Intensity is a building sense that more is at risk, could be lost, or found out. The writer creates this tension through conflict. The conflict can be stretched for all it’s worth by the interplay between action, dialogue, thoughts, and description. Scenes end with Prompts to read on. Prompts can consist of: impending disaster, portent, mysterious line of dialog, a suddenly revealed secret, a major decision or vow, announcement of a shattering event, a reversal or surprise, or a question left hanging.

Chapter eight discusses complex plots that interweave several subplots with the main plot. A subplot can be thematic, dealing with something the Lead needs to learn, which deepens the plot, lends meaning, and is a place to make a statement about life. Characters carry your themes. Each subplot follows the LOCK method. The subplots can be serial or parallel and each must work on their own.

The next seven chapters dive into the finer points presented in the first eight. This is not so say that you can skip the later chapters. Important principles and techniques are revealed in them. Two appendices summarize the book at a high level and describe how to create back cover material (or a blurb) for your book.

Bell uses movies and well known books to illustrate plot and structure techniques rather than esoteric (to me) literary references. His goal is to teach effectively and not to show how well read he is (and, by implication, how the reader isn’t).

Although portions read like a pep talk, the folksy presentation is not long winded and usually has a point or serves as introduction. The book seems converted to eBook format in a somewhat haphazard way (section and subsection titles in perplexing font sizes, rote use of indent everywhere including bulleted lists, only a logical table of contents). This is likely the publishers doing given the economics involved.

However, weaknesses aside, I strongly recommend the content of James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure for new and struggling novelists who want to sell books.

Self–Publishing – Love It or Leave It (Part 2)

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Mandated Memoranda

A few days ago, I hit the ‘save and publish’ button on the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) website to launch Mandated Memoranda Publishing’s second book: Tragic Wonders – Stories, Poems, and Essays to Ponder. I found one glaring (to me) error in a chapter title very late in the quality control process. I left it.

This post is an update to a previous article on self–publishing. Several things are new with Kindle Previewer software and my process.

The Kindle Previewer (KP) version I used is 2.92. KDP no longer provides an emulated means to check your Kindle files targeted to iPhone/iPad. It generates a file with extension .azk. You’re supposed to sideload it to your Apple device to test it. I have no Apple device.

Additionally, KP 2.92 generates a fault when it produces the .azk file. Windows captures the fault this way:

Description
Faulting Application Path:	C:\..\Amazon\Kindle Previewer\lib\phantomjs_mobi82html.exe

Problem signature
Problem Event Name:	BEX
Application Name:	phantomjs_mobi82html.exe
Application Version:	0.0.0.0
Application Timestamp:	4f7753dc
Fault Module Name:	nvinit.dll_unloaded
Fault Module Version:	0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp:	50ef1ca7
Exception Offset:	7520ce59
Exception Code:	c0000005
Exception Data:	00000008
OS Version:	6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID:	1033
Additional Information 1:	0a9e
Additional Information 2:	0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3:	0a9e
Additional Information 4:	0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID:	4075841998

I sent a query to KDP about the fault and didn’t receive a reply once they figured I wasn’t asking for advice on my .azk file. This was a tad disturbing, to say the least. Then I went ahead and published Tragic Wonders. A friend with an iPhone purchased the book and said it worked fine. However, on 10 January 2014, I received a query from KDP about this issue. We’ll see if anything good results from the continued discussion.

Enough talk of Amazon’s problems. On to the new features of our process, some of which may be technical. We discovered and corrected some upsetting features imposed by Microsoft’s Notepad application. We used the text–align style attribute for chapter titles and table of contents (TOC) entries. We figured out some intricacies of nested .ncx file logical TOCs. We tried a different approach for page-breaks. Finally, we used Kindle Previewer to generate our last few .mobi files that we submitted to Amazon KDP.

We discovered through some disturbing errors in our .mobi files that Notepad was inserting non–printing characters. How could we tell if they were non–printing? It showed up in truncated logical TOC entries (generated by Kindlegen from .ncx entries) during the QA review. It also showed up in HTML TOC errors in the .mobi file text. Both errors occurred at the point where the lines in the files (.ncx and .htm) word wrapped.

It turns out this is well documented and has been an issue since Notepad first appeared. A workaround is: don’t narrow the Notepad application window so any TOC or logical TOC text word wraps. If you’ve done so and you have funny truncation error then you can retype those entries like I did (very tedious). A solution may be to use Notepad++ (but I haven’t, yet).

We used the text–align attribute to left justify chapter titles and TOC style entries. Amazon’s Kindle Publishing Guidelines only discourage specifying alignment for body text so it reflows freely.

We figured out some intricacies of nested .ncx file logical TOCs (and didn’t figure out other things). This is genericized excerpt from our .ncx file:

I call your attention to the em space setting off Story Title 1 as an indent. This conveniently differentiated story titles from section titles. Turns out there is another way, but not all eBook distributors use that method.

Having had difficulty with page breaks in our first book Tiānmìng – Mandate of Heaven, we tried a different approach to page-breaks this time. Using <br> without <p> or other formatting to end chapters seems to work. This is an example of what we did:

We discovered that KDP was using a file structure to read and assemble their .mobi file (the one you can download from them) after you submit your files to KDP. I remember reading about that somewhere in the literature but now I had a concrete example in the zipped HTML files KDP produced for download. I recommend you use those HTML files for further development once most of your bugs are shaken out (i.e., after final edits are long done and most formatting issues have been retired).

You’ll need to package your files into separate folders labeled: image, xml, and html. The image folder contains your image files. The html folder contains your .htm file (if you use one .htm file like I have, up to now). And the xml folder contains your .ncx file. The .opf file should reside with these folders either on the desktop or in your working folder. The files that come from KDP expect this structure (you can see the changes from your original files in the downloaded ones when you compare them).

We used the HTML files KDP generated to finish our development after we went a few rounds with Amazon KDP’s Kindlegen to shake out bugs. This led us to use Kindle Previewer on our .opf file to produce a .mobi file. Kindle Previewer invokes Kindlegen and even produces the verbose error report we use to validate our .mobi files. We submitted the resulting .mobi file to KDP and did final quality assurance (QA) testing with the .mobi KDP produced from our submittal. I plan on structuring my files using this new approach in future books.

After I completed my book, I happened on these two eBooks on Kindle formatting and process. The first, The eBook Design and Development Guide [Kindle Edition], by Paul Salvette (Author), emphasizes formatting using cascading style sheets (CSS). It does a masterful job of explaining in simple terms how to use them. The process that is described bypasses the MS Word to filtered webpage step by copying and pasting the original manuscript into a text file and proceeding from there. I think this approach avoids some errors while enabling others.

The second book, EBook Formatting: KF8, Mobi & EPUB [Kindle Edition] by Matt Harrison (Author, Illustrator), says it is purely concerned with formatting. Heavily programming oriented, I expect it will provide clues for me to format my next book more professionally.

I’m not sure why Amazon’s KDP Systems Architect or chief designers can’t put out a series of books on Kindle book development akin to Microsoft’s series. I’d be first in line to buy the reference (if it’s $9.99 or less, of course).

Mandated Memoranda

A WRITER'S BLOG

Tag Archives: Process