G.E. Sherman's Blog

Fortymile (formerly titled The Interior) is the second novel in the Life on the Alaska Frontier series. It is coming some time in 2014.

Three steps in he knew he was in trouble. The frigid gray water piled up
against his legs, threatening to sweep his feet out from under him. With the
walking stick on the downstream side, he leaned into it and tried to shuffle
his feet slowly forward to avoid rolling an ankle on a boulder. The cold
water had an instant numbing effect—already his muscles were
tightening and resisting his efforts to move forward. The current washed the
gravel from beneath his feet, making him unsteady and forcing him to move
faster than he wanted.

In an instant he was underwater, the walking stick failing him and the
current sweeping him under before he could react. His heavy pack pulled him
to the bottom as he struggled to free his arms. The .45-70 was slung over
his shoulder and across his chest, preventing him from dropping the load.
His lungs were burning, screaming for oxygen.

Scene from Fortymile

Price: $0.00

The Plow is now freely available. This short story is a prequel to Forging North.

His father wants him to be a farmer. Thomas wants more, his dreams calling him west to make his own way. The tension between father and son comes to a head as an unspoken tragedy tears them apart.

You can read The Plow on your computer or mobile device. Just download the version(s) you want from the links below. Each format is DRM-free.

PDF
MOBI (works on Kindle)
EPUB (works on Nook, Kobo, and others)

“A few more feet and the gun would be his. He stopped and looked up, first
towards the gun, then back towards the fire—then he saw it. No, he saw them.
Spirit-like shadows moving just beyond the fire. He stared to see what they
were but the more he tried to look past the fire, the less he could see.
There was nothing to do but get the gun. Thomas lunged the last few feet,
grabbed the .45-70 and rolled to a sitting position, his back against the
small spruce. He hadn’t reloaded after the shot at the moose; racking the
lever action he pointed past the fire and pulled the trigger only to be
rewarded with a sickening click as the firing pin struck empty space. The gun
was empty. Amateur! he thought as he fumbled in his pocket for
cartridges.”

—From Forging North

The Kindle version of Forging North is now on sale for $2.99.

COMING SOON: Nook and Kobo versions of Forging North will be available begining February 9, 2013.

Today and tomorrow you can get The Plow, a short story free on Kindle:

His father wants him to be a farmer. Thomas wants more, his dreams calling him west to make his own way. The tension between father and son comes to a head as an unspoken tragedy tears them apart.

This story gives insight into what led Thomas Thornton to travel west, and ultimately seek his fortune in Alaska as told in Forging North.

In the early days, miners heading to the Interior from Valdez had one
option: up the Valdez Glacier and down the Klutina Glacier to Klutina Lake.
They had to drag all their supplies with them, often making more than one
trip.

Once they arrived at the lake, miners were tasked with building a boat
sturdy enough to travel across and enter the Klutina River; from there making
there way downstream to Copper Center.

This was a dangerous route, even in summer. Glacier travel came with a
number of hazards, including crevasses and avalanches. It was nearly eighty
miles from Valdez to Klutina Lake.

The image below shows the approximate route from Valdez over the glaciers to
Klutina Lake:

Coming from a software development background[1], when writing, I was
naturally drawn to the tools with which I was familiar. This post describes
my approach to creating both print-ready PDF and Kindle formats, as well as
the advantages and disadvantages of going this route.

Simple Text Editor

Writing is done using a simple text editor—any editor of your choice. That’s
right; no fancy word processors or authoring software. The document consists of
a “master” file and each of the parts, chapters, or sections. This allows you to easily manage
editing since you don’t need to load the entire text at once. The master
document has directives to include each chapter in the order you want them to
appear in the book.

No Formatting

Rather than worry about fonts, titles, chapter headings, and headers, I use a
markup language [2] that defines how the document should be formatted. When generated, the software formats the document, ready for both print and Kindle.
I haven’t ventured into other e-book formats but those can be easily generated as well.

Examples

Here are two examples of books generated using this methodology: one a technical book and the other a novel:

The Geospatial Desktop (Locate Press) describes the use of open source GIS software to produce maps and analyze data. This text is fairly rich in illustrations and code listings. The generated document was print-ready with embedded graphics.







Forging North is a work of historical fiction. Both print-ready copy and a
Kindle mobi file were generated from the same source text. The mobi file is a
format accepted by Amazon when submitting a book to Kindle Desktop Publishing.








Advantages


Simple, familiar editing tool(s)
Automatic generation of print-ready PDF and e-book formats
Automatic generation of table of contents, index, and cross-references
Easy document management
Since all files are plain text, they are suitable for use with a revision control system



Disadvantages


A learning curve involved with using the markup language and generation tools
Many/most editors prefer to review using change tracking in Word or other word processing software. An extra step or two is required to convert the generated document to a suitable format
Some level of geekiness is involved

[1] GeoApt.com

[2] reStructuredText - http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html

On August 14, 1901, the S.S. Islander departed Skagway for Seattle, carrying
nearly 200 crew and passengers. Many of the passengers were successful miners
returning from the Klondike with their horde of gold. Later that night, the
Islander struck a rock near the southern tip of Douglas Island and sank
within twenty minutes—forty lives were lost.

In 1934, an attempt was made to salvage the ship and recover the six tons of
gold presumed to be present. During salvage, the bow broke away and
was not raised to the beach. It is assumed that most of the gold was in the bow
section of the ship and remains on the bottom.

In 2012, Ocean Mar Inc. was granted rights to initiate a salvage operation. If
indeed the wreck contains six tons of gold, it could be worth over $230 million
dollars.

The S.S. Islander is mentioned in Forging North.

The entrance loomed before them as the Northwestern turned and increased to full power. The captain prayed the engines wouldn’t fail him now. As they neared the entrance, the effect of the incoming current could be felt at the helm…

—From Forging North