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#HistFicThursdays - Nero and Sporus by SP Somtow - Book Excerpt

 Today for #HistFicThursdays, I am delighted to once again be teaming up with  The Coffee Pot Book Club , this time to share an excerpt from  SP Somtow 's fantastic new book  Nero and Sporus ! First of all, let's meet the book... Finally available in one volume! The decadence of Imperial Rome comes to life in S.P. Somtow's Literary Titan Award-winning novel about one of ancient history's wildest characters. The historian Suetonius tells us that the Emperor Nero emasculated and married his slave Sporus, the spitting image of murdered Empress Poppaea. But history has more tidbits about Sporus, who went from "puer delicatus" to Empress to one Emperor and concubine to another, and ended up being sentenced to play the Earth-Goddess in the arena. Nero and Sporus  is available on #KindleUnlimited via  this  link . And here's an excerpt to whet your appetite: I suppose we were anxious to see who the surprise competitor would be, but no one was as surprise...

NaNoWriMo Day 27 - Formatting

Wednesday 27th November - Formatting

We're getting to the end of NaNoWriMo now. I'm just about on track to complete the 50 000 words by the end of Saturday, but it's been a real trial.

I start so many things that I give up on, so I am thrilled that I have stuck with NaNoWriMo in my very first year of doing it. I think part of the reason is my sister who completed her word count earlier on in the month. She's been very supportive, but also...I just don't want her to beat me!

So, when you've actually finished your book...in fact, when you've finished editing and redrafting, and then editing, and proofreading, and then editing your book, you have to start thinking about putting it out there in book form.

For the sake of this blog, I have concentrated on formatting ebooks.

Now, there's no reason to reinvent the wheel. There are programmes out there which help you format your ebook manuscript, and the best one I've found is Calibre.

Available here, this free programme allows you to change your word file into epub, mobi, or whatever other ebook format you can think of. It's really very simple:

Step 1: Download and open Calibre on your computer


Step 2: Click on "add books" in the top left hand corner.


Step 3: Choose a story from your computer to convert into ebook format


Your file should appear at the top of the list.


Step 4: Click on "Edit Metadata" in the top toolbar.


Step 5: Fill in the appropriate boxes, and choose a cover file from your computer, if you like. The more metadata you fill in, the better.


Step 6: Click on "Convert Books" in the top toolbar.



Step 7: Choose the output format (what format you want your book to be) in the top corner, and then press "OK" in the bottom corner.



The new file format should appear in the right hand side of the programme.



Step 8: If you'd like to save your epub file onto your computer (eg. if you want to upload it to a website later on) then right click on where it says "EPUB" and click on "Save the Epub format to disc"

If you want another format (eg. Mobi) instead of Epub, just choose the correct output format on Step 7.

So, you'll be left with a formatted ebook. You should go through the entire of the ebook checking the formatting before you put it out there. I know it's annoying, but it'll be a lot better in the long run!

Happy Writing!

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