And the winner is...

I'm going with this layout for the cover of the full BC novel. I could futz around for the next six months and maybe come up with something better, even with my limited resources...but why? The cover works for the story. It just needs to be neatened up, a little.

I've combined all three Word documents into the one book and am reformatting it while also still checking for typos and bad grammar...well, inconsistent grammar. I'm just over a third of the way through but have a lot left to go. It's over 192,000 words and 825 double-spaced pages long. Damn...I DO think I'm Tolstoy.

Of course, that's in Courier font. If I shift it to Palatino, page count goes down, and when the book is fixed up for printing and downloading, the number of pages is cut by nearly a third. But that's still Steven King big.

However, I'm using this as a learning process. Sort of test the waters of self-publishing for future reference. I'm weary of letting other people handle my books, especially since I've realized all three publishers I've had books brought out by are using a glorified version of the self-publishing route.

What's worse? None of them are doing any publicity for the books. At all. Maybe Wheelman Press is using its mailing list to announce NYPD BLOOD, and they say they've done more, but it's not translating into sales. So...I couldn't do any worse, I guess. We'll see how this goes.

One thing I will say, as sort of a back-pat to myself -- the story is damn solid. Bobby and Eric have completely distinct voices and grammar and are their own characters. I'm actually proud of parts of the book. Arrogant, I know...maybe a bit egotistical...possibly even self-deluded...but I don't care. I like how it is.

Guess my next job is to find out how to get more people to read it.