CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Take a look at your scanner. Down the bottom, in the right-hand corner, is a button marked COMMS. Open it up. Now, see how the agent names are kind of in bold with a line under them? Press on one. Keep pressing until two options appear on your screen: View Player Profile, or Send Message. Touch View Player Profile. Now, you can see that player’s badges, their mission badges, and their stats. Wait! Can’t see their stats? They must have their profile locked down. Why would they do   that? Well, I keep mine locked down, too, and I have done since choosing the portal I was hoping to get to black guardian with, but there are a number of reasons. To Keep it Private. Some players like to work quietly towards their goals. They don’t like the stress of comparisons and competition, or they’re just very private people. Locking down their profiles means only the basics of their progress can be tracked, and not every little detail. I’ve kept mine locked down, because I like it quie...

If you decide to go independent, don’t expect to get rich overnight. It takes on average 5-10 years to make a living and that is if you do everything right. Again, there is a lot of advice out there, but it boils down to this: Produce a professional, well-written, enjoyable, well-presented product. And therein lies the rub. You can control three of those four elements. You can produce a professional product; you can control the quality of writing within your ability, and your editor’s ability; and you can present it well. What you can’t control is if a reader finds it enjoyable, or not. Also, beyond your control, is if a reader picks up your book in the first place. Depressing, right? Those are just the facts you have to live with. You can do your best, but you cannot guarantee sales, or enjoyment, because you are not your readers. All you can do is tell a story you enjoy, and tell it well. The chances are good that someone else will enjoy it, too. There are als...

Step 4: Export the Cover as a .jpg File The final step is to save your cover as a file you can upload to sites such as Smashwords, Amazon, Draft2Digital or Kobo. To do this, you need to click on the ‘File’ tab at the top of the page, then select ‘Save’. This will allow you to save your image as an .xcf file. It is useful to have this saved so you can easily make adjustments to your base cover. Once you have saved your .xcf file, you need to click on ‘File’ again. This time, you need to select the eleventh option down, the ‘Export’ option. This will cause a pop-up window to appear. GIMP will default to two things. Whatever title you gave your .xcf file, will become the title of this document AND it will have a .png extension. As most sites require .jpg files. you will need to go in and change this. It’s as simple as placing the cursor in the ‘Name:’ box and making the adjustment manually, as you would for any other file name change. When you are happy with wh...