I have just uploaded the OpenOffice.org Alexandra (ODT) (60), RTF Alexandra (RTF) (70), and PDF Alexandra (PDF) (255) versions of Alexandra.
I had been fiddling about trying to find the perfect formatting before I released these files, then I realised they are editable files and there is no need for me to format the text perfectly. If I format the files as A4 sized, single spaced, Times New Roman with 1cm margins, and you want to print them out on legal sized paper double spaced with 2inch margins then you are free to reformat the files and print them out the way you want to read them.
That is one of the advantages of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License you are free to consume my work in the manor that most suits you. Just as you are free to share it with your friends and loved ones if you think that they would like to read it. You don’t have to worry about infringing my copyright and risk a law suit just for liking my novel so much you wanted your friends to read it as well.
On the topic of reformatting my novel, if you do produce a file in a format for a particular PDA, mobile device or file format that I have not produced, please email it to me at declanst [at] gmail.com and I will add it to my downloads page so that others might use it as well.

I am releasing all my novels and stories as ebooks. The first file I have uploaded is the text version of Alexandra. You can download it here Alexandra (Text) (251). I plan to add more file versions such as PDF, Word, RTF etc. I just have to get the formatting worked out. (I write all my stories as plain text in a text editor, not a Word Processor).
These eBooks are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license in the hope of getting the widest distribution of my work and spreading my fame far and wide across the internet.

I took the first two weeks of October off from writing Alice in order to recharge my batteries regarding that story. Instead I have been writing short stories, so that I have some complete works to post and satisfy you, my loyal readers, and the 50% of visitors that take one look at my site and immediately hit the back button

But I seem incapable of starting a story and finishing with the characters in one short story. I have gotten 3 stories written, well almost they all need a little more polish before they can see the light of day. But already I have at least one sequel for each story. And one story has at least 5 subsequent scenes involving the same two main characters. That’s a novella of 20,000 words in the making.

The same thing happened to me last year when I wrote Seducing a Girl. It was meant to be a stand alone short story, but ended up being 7,000 words long and the first chapter of a Justine. I will be finishing Justine just as soon as I can figure out how to make the three major strands in the story/characters intertwine into a cohesive whole.

But the good thing about writing these new stories, and Seducing a Girl, is that they had a beginning, middle and end of their own and so can be enjoyed as stand alone stories without you, my loyal readers, having to wait 2, or 3, years for me to finish the complete novel.

So look out over the next few weeks to reading these new stories as I post them here on my blog. Subscribe to my newsletter and be the first to read these new stories. Or don’t subscribe and read them a week or so later

OK, firstly the bad news. My September Resolution was to write an average of 1,000 words of Alice every day and finish the first draft by the end of the month. I did not average 1,000 words a day and I did not finish Alice.

But now the good news.

Since records began (19th May this year) I have averaged 170 Words/Day(including September). However my average for just September alone is 275 Words/Day. So I my production (of words) has increased. I started writing Alice two years ago.  At the start of September I had 28% of Alice complete and now I have 74% complete.

As well as quantity we need to consider the quality of the writing. And on that front I have also made good progress during September. I cut out several scenes, rearranged others and generally tightened up the story quite a bit. The middle of the story was really going no where.

This has always been a problem for me. My beginnings are great. My endings are pretty good. But my middles tend to sag. Sometimes I loose the plot completely. And it is always the middle of the story where I tend to get bogged down.

So the good news is that I have upped my daily word count, improved the story and written an additional 46% of the novel. - Not a bad month’s work.

Note: I ment to publish this last week but I hit save instead of publish and only noticed today that the post wasn’t showing - silly me.

My novel Alexandra is now available as an ebook from the SmashWords site.

I have experimented for the past year with putting the full text of my novel Alexandra on this site and running advertising alongside it. This was successful in getting my novel read by lots of people, but it was not very successful in terms of being a professional author as I never made more than a few dollars a month. My goal as a professional author is to provide a sustainable income for myself.

So now I am embracing the “future of publishing” and issuing my novel as a downloadable ebook. I chose SmashWords because they will provide my novel in all these formats:

• Online Reading (Javascript)
• Online Reading (HTML)
• PDF format
• RTF format (Readable by nearly all word processors)
• Kindle (.mobi) format
• Plain Text format (download)
• Plain Text format (in a web page)
• Palm Doc (PDB) format

So no matter how you perfer to read your ebooks there should be a format that suits you.

And what better way to say that you like my work than by paying for it