Say Goodbye to Law and Order with a School Shooting

This week we said goodbye to Television's 20 year long run of Law and Order. There have been so many amazing stories and situations. It was interesting that the plot of the finale was a shooting in a public school. The show was broadcast on May 24, 12 years and 3 days after the shooting at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon and 11 years 34 days after Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado. In the Law and Order episode the shooter was a ruined teacher not a student.
A couple of frightening statistics: Since 1998 there are 119 students and adult deaths in shootings at schools. Those shootings were during a total of 54 shootings in American schools.
As per the usual Law and Order program the setting of the final episode was New York City and in this case the New York Public Schools. It was dramatic in emphasizing our American approach to most things including critical issues such as school shootings, we are reactive rather than proactive. Wait until the shooter is in the building before we try to prevent it.
An interesting part of the plot in the final episode was the "rubber room" maintained by the New York City school system where teachers were required to report and spend all day waiting for their "day in court" for "infractions". The interviewed teachers had in one case defended herself from a student who was beating her, in another had refused a student permission to go to the bathroom five minutes before the end of the period so the student urinated in the trash can in the front of the room and when the teacher approached him the student charged him with sexual harassment. Similar statements went on and on to the dumbfounded district attorney lawyers. Some of the teachers had been in the "rubber room" for two years waiting for their hearing.
I had heard about the "rubber room" from a retired teacher of the New York system. He had not been confined to it, thank goodness. But he had had some choice words to say about conditions that led to teachers landing there.
I can't help but think that this in itself leads to part of the problems kids have who are being harassed. I wonder if a child is having trouble with a bully, can he or she go to a teacher for help, if he or she sees that the very teacher that might give that help is powerless against those same bullies to provide the help. Is the teacher going to be thinking, "Will I end up in the rubber room if I tell Hector to lay off and leave Cliff walk down the hall in peace!"
Fortunately my daughter and daughter-in-law both teach in systems where they don't have to worry about that yet.
Respectfully submitted,
Kenneth Fenter

The Ruin E-Book Editions Now Available

E-book Editions of The Ruin went on sale today online in all formats. The final conversion into the Kindle with the table of contents took place yesterday. I had been worried that the original formatting might not hold but the Kindle for PC viewer showed all the formatting that I wanted to be in place. All that I required was the original use of italics. The main character Clifton's thought process is shown in italic type face in the hard copy. I wanted to retain that in the E-edition. That was relatively easy in the EPUB format through InDesign. The tutorials cast doubt on the Kindle conversions retaining the formatting. But it seemed to work just fine.
Order information is available on the website.
I'll guarantee the performance on your device, or your purchase will be refunded.

Nice write up this past Saturday by feature writer David Jasper of the Bend daily Bulletin and photographer Ryan Brennecke. One thing that makes Bend, Oregon such a desirable place to live is the support that the community gives to the arts. The Bulletin is no exception. I was afraid that my book might not get much attention because it is a novel that is self published. The fact that it is not only self published but published in house seems to be part of what caught the Bulletin's attention. The fact that the book can be done in one spot, start to finish, and be on the shelf indistinguishable from the books coming out of the big publishing houses.

It is a fascinating process to see it grow and to see how far it can go, step by step, inch by inch.

Three local bookstores took it last week, Paulina Springs in Sisters and Redmond Oregon and Between the Covers in Bend, Oregon. The nice thing about those three bookstores is that they are small independent bookstores that know their customers, have repeat customers, don't even try to compete with the big box stores in volume. They probably don't have the book you might have heard of, but go in and ask for it and they'll get it for you.

The Deschutes Public Library is cataloging it. As soon as that process is complete, it will be in the data base that is subscribed to by virtually every library in the US.

Step by step, inch by inch.

It is a timeless story. Right now I'm not going anywhere. Just having a good time.
Respectfully submitted,
Kenneth Fenter

EPUB Edition of The Ruin by Kenneth Fenter

It is done and it works! And if I say so myself it looks just as good as the books right out of the Sony store etc. being offered by the mainstream publishers. 

Pictured at right is the Sony e-reader entry level device that my daughter does most of her reading on now days. As a busy teacher who involves herself even further in her profession by taking professional enrichment classes and representing fellow teachers in her professional organization, she snatches time here and there waiting for meetings, relaxing for a few moments before the next parent conference, catching a breath at lunch, relaxing over coffee before her day begins. Her little reader is the size of a trade paperback and fits in her purse.
 
She loaned it to me this past week to test out the conversion of The Ruin to the EPUB format that runs on the Sony, Nook and IPAD. After a few trials an errors, looking behind the pages into the HTML coding underneath for reasons why things didn't work the way I wanted them to, I copied the total EPUB book file to the Sony e-book library. It is the same library that shows up when she buys a book from the Sony library. Once there I dragged the file to the reader icon and pushed the synchronize button.
 
This past week the ITune software automatically upgraded to include the drivers for the IPAD to download and syncronize books. The format the IPAD uses, according to all I can find out, is the EPUB.

I returned the reader to my daughter last night with The Ruin installed among her other books. She called this morning to report it was working great. This final version of the book is somewhat different from the earlier manuscript that she read. She started my day off with a smile.

I'm not promoting e-readers, the Sony e-book, or IPad. I personally like the look and feel of a real book in my hands. I don't think the electronic book will replace the hard copy book. But I think that the e-reader for someone like my daughter who uses it when she is on the go, is perfect.

Mostly I wanted you to know that my book is available now. I will be posting it on the website as soon as I get the E-ISBN confirmed. That is today's job.

Respectfully,
Kenneth Fenter

Formating The Ruin for E-book using InDesign

Made progress today formating The Ruin as an EPUB. It is a learning curve. Fortunately the classes in Dreamweaver spent some time on HTML and the coding behind the Graphic Screen. I spent quite a few hours last week trying to get a consistent look in the file from chapter to chapter and even within the chapters themselves. One of the problems in the Ruin is the use of italics I employed to show the thought process of the main character Cliff. Particularly in the early part of the book when he is very troubled with trouble at school and at home. A very easy formatting was to assemble the book without the nice InDesign formatting and let it be pretty much one straight forward document with no indentation for paragraphs, an extra space between paragraphs, no italics, no centered headings, and no breaks between chapters. Or I could use the CSS styles that are available in InDesign. I have tested what I have so far on the Sony e-reader PRS 300 and it is looking good. According to Adobe it should look equally fine on the Nook and the IPad. Apparently I'll need to strip out the coding to convert to the Kindle.
I'm looking for someone with a Nook, and IPad, and Sony Reader to test out what I've got. If you are interested, e-mail me and we'll test it out in an actual download. You can best contact me in the comment section at the end of this posting
Respectfully,
Kenneth Fenter,
Author/publisher of The Ruin

E-book version of The Ruin on the way!

I am so stoked today! I just viewed the first three chapters of The Ruin on a Sony Reader. My daughter got a Sony PRS-300 for Christmas. It is pretty much an entry level on the market. I just got my upgrade to InDesign CS5 on May 1st and along with that the capability of exporting a file in EPUB format. The format read by Sony, Nook, and IPad, according to the guru's at Adobe. Adobe has wonderful online video tutorials, that walk people like me through the process and for the past four days I have been experimenting with my book layout which was done in InDesign CS4.
A print version of a file is different from an e-book file. If I had not taken the classes in web and blog design back last fall and winter then the task would have seemed insurmountable to my 70 year old mind, but all that allowed me to understand enough of what was going on to plow ahead with it. What I've got so far is a pretty good looking file that looks a lot better than what I've been seeing poured through some of the mills offered by some of the services. I'm not sure what will happen with the file when it is converted to the Kindle, which the Adobe advisers say is available. But apparently it won't look as nice as it does in the file that is going into the Sony, Nook, and IPad. From the way the test looked on my daughter's reader, I'm heading into the rest of the book to test it out.
It works even better on the Adobe Digital Reader which can be downloaded and run on any of the small Windows driven netbooks. They are a little large to pack around in the purse, but small enough to carry around while travelling and a lot larger screen to read it on.
I will announce with the book is ready in digital form and how it can be available and pricing. It will be reasonable.
Yea!
Respectfully,
Kenneth Fenter