Ooh, it’s nearly finished!

On By Mick CanningIn books, editing, Fiction, India, publishing, women, writing

I’m getting excited, now.

My novel, ‘Making Friends with the Crocodile’ is hopefully ready for its final edit.

This part of the journey seems to be taking a great deal of time, but this might be because it is my first foray into publishing. I know that there is still much to do – formatting, advertising, proof-reading, the publishing itself, amongst a plethora of smaller but no less important tasks – but I am finally beginning to feel that I am getting there.

Curiously, after what I wrote in my last post, I never found any of the characters threatening to hijack the plot in any way. Although I never planned it out in any detail, I had a rough plan in my head, which, remarkably, I kept to. Perhaps it is because the subject matter is strong. I don’t know.

And I think that I have settled upon the cover (the artwork is my own).

Making Friends With The Crocodile cover 1

I may play around with the wording, slightly, for example I might take out the words ‘A Novel’.

For some background; the story is set in a village in Northern India, some fifteen odd years ago. It is about the deteriorating relationship between two women in a family: the mother and her daughter in law. Like this relationship frequently is, it is a strained, fractious one, not helped by that society’s attitudes towards women and their roles in general. And when one of them gets caught up in events beyond her control, these attitudes become dreadfully destructive.

As always, your thoughts would be very much appreciated.

108 thoughts on “Ooh, it’s nearly finished!”

    1. Hi Martin. Good to see you here! It will be published as an ebook, almost certainly Kindle (although nothing is finalised yet), but as for when – I hope it won’t take longer than a couple of months, but all of these other little tasks seem to take me forever!

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  2. Looks good, Mick. Just one thought about the cover. I’d centre your name below and make it much bigger (and yes, drop the term ‘A novel’). Perhaps the title could be slightly bigger as well? You have to consider how it will look when miniaturized to a postage stamp on Kindle.

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    1. That’s a thought, yes. Although a non-fiction book of that title might be more interesting than my novel!
      As for the interview and publicity, that would be very kind, Christoph. Thank you!

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  8. Best of Luck in these latter stages Mick. You”ll really start wanting them to be over soon. I think the cover art is very good giving just a flavour of India but perhaps the lettering could be slightly larger of both title and name. I personally think it’s quite nice to have ‘A novel by’ there.
    When you start your publicity I’ll be glad to copy tweets for you and I’ll reblog your interview with Christoph too.
    Hugs

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  9. Colin Barrett

    This all looks good Mick. I think the title is intriguing and the cover painting is great. I don’t know enough about ebooks to comment on them, but if this is coming out as a hard back or paperback I’d buy it. Good Luck with everything.

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  10. I shall definitely have to buy it on kindle when it comes out! It does seem very exciting for me to get a better understanding for others cultures in a family unit! I think it looks great how it is. The art work is good!

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        1. No, I’m happy to get as much advice as possible. It’s my first time, and there are plenty of published authors out there who have found out what works and what doesn’t. I’m grateful to be the recipient of all that advice!

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                    4. Ho Ho Gentlemen.. ( I use the term loosely, very loosely with regards to one of your males!) I sadly missed this exchange due to something pressing called Work. You know me, Captain of Industry, beating the workers and draining them dry – offering morsels of bread and nothing else. So back to the story, well I like Mikes…I don’t know about the other one!

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  15. How exciting! I love your artwork, though I hate to think how my Kindle Paperwhite might muddy it up. I’m sure it will look beautiful on the Kindle Fire. Good luck on the last leg of the editing/revision journey.

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  20. Interesting cover…
    Even more interesting plot. Daughter in law and mother in law is very popular plot in India. in fact, majority of soap on television run on this theme. Unlike USA,where they centre around two ladies trying to control/influence a man out here, man in question is sandwiched between mother and wife. Anything similar in your novel Mick? 😉

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    1. Not quite, Arv. I have seen one or two of those episodes whilst in India, and in fact another blogger reminded me of this just now, but the plot of my book is focused more on the relationship between the women, and the way that females are treated in society in general.

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  21. Ooh – exciting!

    I’d agree with Hariod on balancing the title, and that would allow you to slightly enlarge the font as well. I like the painting and the placing of “A Novel by Mick Canning”.

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  23. Brenda Fisher

    Hello Mick
    Congratulations and all the best. I hope it goes into print as a book though as I am looking forward to persuading the libraries to supply copies for the two reading groups I run. Also the cover is superb and deserves to be seen in colour. I hope it goes to other e readers too as mine’s a Kobo, also, sadly, black and white so I need a book to savour the cover as well as the contents which sound just my cup of coffee.. .

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    1. Hi Brenda. Thanks for visiting and commenting. I suppose there is no reason why it might not go onto other readers, although I’m still trying to get my head around the whys and wherefores of all this. Print is another matter, since that requires finance upfront, and I’d be surprised if I could get enough people interested. But…we’ll see.

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  24. Congratulations! Nothing quite like the feeling of (finally!) getting your book out into the world. If you’re collecting opinions, I’d go ahead and strike the “A Novel,” unless you get really attached. Your cover doesn’t look at all like nonfiction, so I don’t think you need to be concerned that people will know it’s a novel. 🙂

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  29. Congratulations, Mick. I had a book published some years ago now and I know that’s not an easy undertaking. I didn’t making many pennies (but that’s not why I wrote it) but got much more satisfaction out of getting it all together although I know it’s incredibly complicated.

    As for your book – I love the title and the artwork … brilliant … I think I agree with one of your followers above that leaving the words ‘A Novel …’ in as it’s probably a good idea to distinguish that it is a novel as opposed non-fiction. The ideas are great, though! Good luck, Mick! x 🙂

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  30. Mick interesting story line. Wanna read it when u have published. Do keep all of us informed on this. And don’t worry if this is your first attempt then it will definitely be taking sometime but from there on you would be doing it faster. All the best on all your ventures. Keep publishing. Interesting to know you like India so much and your novel is based on an Indian story. Am impressed. 👍🏼👍🏼

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    1. I am hoping it will be out in approximately 2 months, but that is rather a ‘best guess’ since I haven’t done this before, and I don’t know how long each stage of the process will take (and that is without having to do other things…like ‘life’, for example…). And yes, planning to put in on Kindle, and hence Amazon.

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  33. Cover looks great, Mick, but I agree with the comments about increasing the size of the font.
    You’ve garnered a lot of interest here; it might be wise to use the advance order scheme: that way, all these people who want to read the book will raise the ranking on Amazon as soon as the book’s released. I’ll be one of them.
    Obviously, I’ll tweet stuff as soon as it’s available.
    Good luck.

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    1. Thanks, Stuart. I’ve taken those thoughts on board and re-hashed the cover, which I’ll post again in a couple of weeks with an update. I like the sound of the advance order scheme; I’ll have to take a look at that.

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  34. I know I’m a bit late to the comments, but I just wanted to say that I love the look of the cover! The artwork is wonderful.
    Hope the process is still going along well, this is often the most drawn out part of it, to be honest. Good luck!

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    1. Thanks, Helen. It is a bit drawn out, but I think the final edit is almost there, anyway. I’m now at the stage where I just want to get it out there, but have to be careful not to just press the button before everything is ready.

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