Laurel segued into writing episodic television including Night Heat, Tintin, Babar, and The NeverEnding Story, with adventures in story editing on Hot Shots and T. and T.
While taking time out for a parenting hiatus, Laurel dabbled in digital image manipulation, web design, blogging, and the Internet, but the siren song of novelling was far too strong to resist.
Inconstant Moon is Laurel's debut novel.
Currently Laurel is editing her second novel, "The Girl In The Blue Flame Cafe" and laying the groundwork for her third.
Inconstant Moon is serialized online and has its own Facebook page
Visit Laurel online
Laurel's Personal Blog
Visual Laurel on Tumblr
Identi.ca
Twitter
NaNoWriMo
LibraryThing
goodreads
Flickr
MySpace
Or drop Laurel a line at [email protected]
read the Libreleft Books blog
acknowledgements
Writing a novel isn't as solitary a pursuit as I once thought. I have been fortunate to benefit from the advice, assistance and inspiration of many who helped make my debut novel become a reality. I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks for invaluable contributions:
NaNoWriMo
provided focus, a deadline, and the impetus to get back in the water.
The Public Domain is a powerful cultural resource. Its existence allows creators to learn and share culture. Because Shakespeare's work is all well within the public domain, I was able to incorporate the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet as the backdrop for Chapter 25.
My excerpts from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet were found online at
the MIT Shakespeare Project.
You can get the classic novel Don Quixote as a free ebook thanks to the fabulous Project Gutenberg, the Free Digital Library
Cory Doctorow, Nina Paley and Allison Crowe
for questioning copyright and leading by example
The Identi.ca free software community shared tech advice:
Charles H. Schulz, Roman Gelbort, Viktor Lindberg,
Kevin Smith, Luke Slater, Matěj Cepl,
François Revol, Brewster Malevich, Paul Philippov,
Mike Linksvayer, Jake Kromer, Jan Wildeboer,
Fanen Ahua, @rpcutts, Fabian Rodriguez,
David Butt, MarjoleinKatsma, Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér,
@agentsmith, @marcelwink, and @openuniverse
The Mobileread Forums are an invaluable resource
for eBook formatting. For specifics, many thanks go to:
jackie_w, JSWolf, Jellby, Toxaris, Adjust, Pablo, HarryT, pholy, and dwig.
Many thanks are also due to:
Graham Linehan
for resolving a last minute "Irish" question, and
Nicolle DeCoppel
for wonderfully depressing movie suggestions
Debbi Mack
for her lovely blurb,
Eric Swett
for the first review, and
Charles Roth
for biblification in the Encyclomundi blog.
But most of all, my wonderful crew of Beta Readers provided invaluable feedback in a ridiculously short span of time:
Larry Russwurm, Bob Jonkman, Nienke Hinton, Wayne Borean, Lawrence Yeh, Sameena Topan, Nicole Russwurm, Enkanowen and @openuniverse
I thank you all for your generosity; I could not have done it without you. But of course, any and all errors are entirely my own.
— Laurel L. Russwurm, March 5th, 2012
notes on the technology
Inconstant Moon was written with OpenOffice Writer running on Ubuntu, a distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system.
The final proof was done in LibreOffice Writer running on Trisquel, another distribution of GNU/Linux.
This ebook version was crafted in Wordpress, gedit, and Libre Office, ultimately using the Sigil WYSIWYG ebook editor in Trisquel.
* * *
notes on the fonts
This is the Default Font Digital Edition of Inconstant Moon.
Digital Editions
The more I learn about proprietary formats, the more strongly I have come to believe in the importance of "free." This is why I wanted Inconstant Moon to be available for reading with free fonts, just as it is in print.
Yet my forays into the excellent Mobilread forums quickly convinced me many people prefer to read eBooks using the fonts they have chosen as the default fonts on their eReaders. The last thing I would want to do is to force my font choice on my readers.
But presently eBook standards are all over the map [no doubt due to proprietary jockeying for supremacy]. This means that some devices allow user overrides while others do not.
So the problem arises: if I publish Inconstant Moon with embedded free fonts, I might in fact infringe on the reader's freedom to choose their own fonts. I most certainly don't want my free fonts to serve as a kind of DRM, but that would be the effect on an eReader reader that doesn't allow user over-ride. The very act of making free fonts available could end by sacrificing freedom. Not at all the desired outcome.
I struggled with the dilemma for a while, but I couldn't get past the thought that we should all be free to choose. I wanted to have my cake, and eat it too. But I'm luckier than Marie Antoinette, because my dilemma is digital. I *can* have both.
The solution was so breathtakingly simple it made my head spin. Why not offer two eBook editions? The effort required to create alternate editions of Inconstant Moon would be a very small price to pay for freedom. Inconstant Moon will be available in two digital editions, the Free Font Edition, an ePub version I hope to make available at Libreleft Books and this,
the Default Font Edition
The Default Font Edition of Inconstant Moon does not have any embedded fonts at all. It defines only serif and san serif text, leaving all font selections entitely up to the reader. In this way the default fonts you've set on your eReader will display according to your preferences. The only formatting I've applied to the type have been a differentiation between serif and san-serif, and some use of bold or italic text for emphasis. If you are interested in trying out the Free Font edition, contact Libreleft Books
Inconstant Moon - Default Font Edition Page 37