Kevin J Moriarity

 We had a great lineup of readers for this event! You can hear them (and others!) on the Water Street Writers YouTube channel . The emcee: Eric Bodwell Ray Ziemer reading the works of Christopher Kuhl. Christopher could not attend this evening. David W Berner Michelle Donfrio Rick Holinger

 

Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham My rating: 4 of 5 stars I really enjoyed this book. It told of a group of book nerds that made a substantial contribution to the Allied effort in World War II. Well written, it wasn’t as dry and academic as some of the other books I’ve read on this same topic. The final chapter has a section on the downside to the recent cancellation of humanities programs at colleges and universities across the United States. We need all kinds of people: engineers, computer scientists and coders, financial experts – and we also need generalists. We need people who are comfortable reading deeply, who have a knowledge of history and literature and the arts. These folks made a large contribution in last century’s second world war. They are capable of making large contributions now too, during peacetime. View all my reviews

The Night Prophet by Joanne E. Zienty My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Night Prophet, by Joanne Zienty, is the sequel to Children of the Revolution. The story is set in a cruel, dystopian world run by the oppressive Galt corporation. Angel, her daughter Lark and Kuba journey north to strike a blow against Galt. As part of the plan, Angel befriends a woman named Promise, who has an agenda of her own. While attempting to achieve her mission Angel learns more about her past. There is plenty of action and the book is difficult to put down. I highly recommend The Night Prophet. View all my reviews

 

 Formatting What about what I do—formatting? For most books, you should not spend a lot of time or money on the book’s interior format. As I’ve told my clients: no one ever bought a novel because it had an expensive, fancy font! There are exceptions to this rule, of course. I had an author approach me about a picture book. He was also a photographer, and his vision was a high-end “coffee table” book. I had to tell him I wasn’t the right guy for his project. I use Microsoft Word to format books and that is not the right tool for what he wanted to accomplish. In fact, I also told him I didn’t think KDP was a good choice. He wanted heavy, glossy photo-grade paper and KDP doesn’t offer that option. He needed a book designer that used Adobe InDesign, which has better, more precise positioning capability and access to approximately 30,000 Adobe fonts. It is the right tool for his project.  For a novel or non-fiction book, even with some images, Microsoft Word is a good choice to cre...