Amalthia's recs and fan works

I've seen more requests on how to use Calibre plugins to download fic from archives into Calibre and how to merge series into a single file. This tutorial will first cover how to install plugins. As well as how to use the plugin Fanfiction Downloader to download fic from archives into Calibre and then the use of the plugin Epubmerge to merge series into a single file.

( Install plugins )
( How to setup Fanfiction Downloader )
( How to use Fanfiction Downloader )
( Plug-in Epubmerge )

The following info may be of interest to those writers and artists who are posting - or want to post – their Supernatural Big Bang fic and art to A03. Posting fan fic and artwork to A03 is not a requirement for the Supernatural and J2 Big Bang Challenges and neither Amalthia or I are part of the Supernatural and J2 Big Bang nor the A03. We’re just two very very eager and helpful readers with an organizing gene.

Tagging Your Fic On A03
We have set up a tag collection on A03 to help authors who are posting their Big Bang fiction to A03. Only authors can add their stories to the collection. Instructions and more info are here. Note: Big Bang stories are tagged by year. We’ve set up collections for all 5 years (2007-2011) and you can add your story to the collection even if it has already been uploaded to A03.

Readers looking for SPN J2 Big Bang stories on A03 – go to here to read stories that are part of the Collection.

We are not very knowledgeable about A03 so if anyone has problems with uploading or tagging, your best bet is to contact A03 support or check their FAQ.  Ditto on questions about how Collections or the A03 works, its features or how to get an invite.

Artwork on A03
We also want highlight two issues that may benefit SPN J2 Big Bang artists. First, authors can include Big Bang art in their stories on AO3– they have to host the images elsewhere (like LJ, PhotoBucket or Flickr). Here is an example of a SPN J2 Big Bang story that includes artwork. (scroll down to see the art).

Secondly, artists can also upload their artwork separately (again hosted elsewhere) and tag it as part of the SPN J2 Big Bang collection. Here is an example of artwork from the SGA Big Bang. When posting to AO3 artists add “Artwork” to the title of their work to help it stand out. The artists are then including their artwork in the Big Bang Collections as stand-alone works. If we get enough stand-alone artwork, we may be able to set up a separate SubCollection for them among the AO3 SPN Big Bangs.

Regards,
Morgan Dawn and Amalthia

PS. Accessibility Tips For Writers Not Using AO3
If you’re interested in improving accessibility for your fiction to help fans with disabilities (and even fans without) here are few tips:
*Design tips for your website/blog (basic stuff about color and fonts). These tips are actually helpful for everyone, but if you post your fic to A03, some of the design issues have been addressed.
*For fans who need to read offline, consider offering both a PDF and an ePub (include an ePub because not all readers can handle letter sized PDFs). If your fic is posted to AO3, PDFs, ePubs and Mobi files are automatically offered.
*If you don’t have time/knowledge to create a PDF and an ePub file, there are fans who will help (you can include a request for help in your Master post on your LJ). Even better if you offer your fic on a single webpage or a Word doc, fans can make their own PDFs/ePubs by using halcyon shift’s Squeebook – simply load the webpage URL or the .doc file and it is converted automatically.


EDITED to ADD: You can add your story to the collection when you first post it or add it afterwards (no need to reupload).

and thank goodness! I was ready for this semester to be over a week ago if not sooner. But I still have 3 more assignments plus my leadership project to complete, and my boss had jury duty this week so my ability to get some school work done at work went to crap.

Now onto the bright side of things, my big bang is almost at 20k mark.



I didn't think that would happen, not with everything else going on.

After this semester my goals of things to do are:

- revise my big bang
- install Ruby and learn how to code!
- continue formatting stories
- start merging stories again
- test out embedding fonts into epub files.
- add stories to the Ebook Library.
- post recs more frequently
- read again! (and new stuff at that) with all my assignments I tried to stick to re-reading fic instead of reading newer stories because my self control is rather non-existent once I get into a story.

I think I'll stop there, these are the activities I truly enjoy and I don't want to put too much on my plate. (Okay I just realized my brain is scary if this is what I consider fun! except for the fic reading and stuff of course)

I also just realized that the Ebook Library is past 1000 stories which kind of amazes me when I think about it. :)

I've also concluded that at some point I'll phase out LRF as a format the site supports. The Ebook Library Poll results speak for themselves. Including myself, only 4 people actively use the format and technically they can also use Epub. Since I'm one of the 4 people using the format it's going to be hard to let go. My original plan was to wait for Sony to release a firmware upgrade that would fix the issues I currently have with how epub displays on the Sony PRS-505/600. However, I've been waiting over a year already and I'm not sure it's going to happen.

That's it for tonight, I think we'll catch up on Glee and watch SPN soon. It's probably good to take a break from the computer.

I've also been avoiding reading many SPN fics because I found it made writing my own SPN story more difficult so does anyone have any non-spn recs? I'm a fannish butterly so I'm easy when it comes to other fandoms and pairings.

For those who are curious as to why I'm not adding new fics to the Ebook Library. It's because I'm currently going back and converting stories already hosted on the archive to epub/lrf/and mobi.

For anyone that would like either of these formats I'm posting the updates at the News page.

I still plan on adding new fics to the archive it's just not going to be as fast or as many as in the past.

If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask. :)

P.S. School also started and I'm taking two classes so that'll certainly eat into fandom time. :(

Saturday I was pretty much gone the entire day. Did the monthly meetup with the Houston Browncoats at this really good chinese resturant and ate lunch, then went to a birthday party for a slash writer (pros fandom mostly I think) along with other fannish friends and we went to a Magic Show resturant. The food was awesome, I loved the company, and the magic show was neat. Afterwards, we headed back to the b-day woman's house and had cake and talked for a few more hours and finally at midnight I had to leave because I was getting kind of tired. it's just way too much fun hanging out with fan fiction people.

Then on Sunday, woke up messed around with trying to find the best way to convert RTF's to PDF (tried Times New Roman size 12 font it was too small, then tried size 14 and that was too big. Tried Arial and it just never looked right. Ended up settling for size 13 times new roman because in the wise words of my elder brother, sometimes you just have to leave things at "good enough") I was floored by this concept and it's amazing how many revolutionary ideas I get standing at the deli waiting for someone to slice ham for me. I've been trying so hard to make things "PERFECT" and I spent HOURS and felt like I got nothing done.

So decided to settle for good enough for now. I did mange to fix the margins which I was very happy about. So I think over the next week I'll check out the other PDF/LRF files hosted at the Ebook Archive. And with the PDF's I created I'll go back through and re-master them. As for the LRFs, while waiting in the IMAX theater to see the Dark Knight (which by the way was PACKED and we got there 40 minutes early!) I had my ebook reader and decided to see how the LRF fan fiction files looked. The font was VERY TINY so I'm going to over this upcoming week gather all the LRF files and use a slightly larger font with converting. (thankfully, I think this number is less than 4)

What really weirds me out about converting documents is that I'm converting novels to LRF using the exact same settings as I used for the fan fiction stories and those novels turn out readable. So not sure what is up with that. I'm predicting that because most of the novels are starting out with LIT and HTML containers that it makes a bit of a difference from my fan fiction RTF master copies. (at this point I think I should add a disclaimer to the archive letting people know that the RTFs are the REALLY GOOD copies and the other file types are less predictable) Though I am now trying to change that. But I really want good PDF versions for me if no one else. Because I like having graphics embedded in my stories and RTF is still buggy on my PRS-505.

So anyways, back to the Dark Knight. It was my second time watching and omg it was still riveting. If this movie isn't nominated for Best Picture I'll be VERY DISSAPOINTED. As far as I'm concerned this is the best movie I've seen this year in every way that counts. Iron Man comes close second but it's just not the same...and i'm not a movie critic so I can't say why I feel that Dark Knight deserves Best Picture Nomination (and win) and not Iron Man.

After the movie, my brother and I stopped by Best Buy to pick up more memory for his computer, then went shopping for food, and came home. (memory was a bust, will have to return to store tomorrow) and we just had a make it yourself dinner night. I think I ate too many twizzlers and my stomach felt unsettled...which sucked because my left over spagetti was AWESOME.

Then we spent the rest of the night watching Full Metal Alchemist which is still my favorite anime series I've seen in years. I love the Elric brothers and the first time I watched I cried my eyes out so many times! this time i'm prepared for the angst but it's still heartwrenching. So anyways, I dug up my old favorite FMA icon. :) I'm glad I'm allowed 1200 icons at JF now. I keep finding more icons to add. :)

Supernatural

Now We Are Come to Our Kingdom by cormallen (Sam/Dean Dean/OMC Sam/Ruby) INSTANT REC!!!!! I don't even know where to start on how good this story is I couldn't stop thinking about it after I finished reading last night. I LOVED the plot, character voices, and I really loved Sam's desperation and the lengths he was willing to go.



And in other news, I upgraded the Angst Archive from efiction 2 to efiction 3!!!! It actually went rather easy this time, no site implosions which is wonderful. It left me more time to adjust the skin (I'm totally borrowing from what I made for the Ebook Fan Fiction Archive I'm hoping to add a few more skins...but honestly I really want to write porn! I have this spanking story idea that's only 4 paragraphs long and it's inching along, literally! And there's this Narnia story I want to write that's completely hot to me and just no time. I feel like that's the story of my life lately, I never have enough time, and then when I do I can't get motivated to start and instead watch the Nanny Diaries because I was on the computer all day at work and my mouse arm was hurting.)

( this is your chance to back away and run very very fast to another person's possibly happier journal post... )

For the last five to six months I've been working on creating an archive for fan fiction that's already formatted for ebook readers, such as the Sony PRS-500/505. This is just one example. At the moment there are 4 or 5 other ebook readers on the market not counting people reading on PDAs and cell phones.

Truthfully, I didn't actually spend all that time on the design of the site, mostly it took so long because I kept going back and forth debating how would be the best way to share all the fan fiction I've already formatted for my reader and yet at the same time encourage authors to start sharing their work in a slightly different format. At this point in time there are no archives or websites to download fan fiction in the formats ebook readers would accept. Mostly because of the size of the ebook screens the font has to be somewhere near size 18-20, metatag information has to be entered, and ebook readers don't read html so the stories have to be saved in RTF/LRF/TXT or some other format which varies depending on the book reader.

I finally came to the conclusion that I was wasting time worrying that authors would reject this idea out of hand and went ahead with setting up an ebook archive. This morning I finally took the password protection off the site.

This archive will host Gen/Het/Slash fan fiction. It's not limited to just one fandom. Right now the only stories hosted are from Supernatural because Supernatural is my current fandom but I hope to expand upon that.

Here is the link to the archive: Ebook Fan Fiction Archive

I am currently looking for co-admins to help run the archive. Mostly, I need help contacting authors to request permission, uploading stories from authors who do grant permission, and converting stories into ebook ready formats. Anyone that is interested helping can email me at amalthia at gmail.com

I'm willing to accept help from anyone that's willing, even if you don't own an ebook reader.

I accidently deleted the database for the Angst Archive so for now the site is down.

I have the sql file but am getting an error message #1044 - Access denied for user 'amothea'@'localhost' to database 'amothea_archive'

I have no clue how to fix this.

None of the files are gone or damaged the stories are all there but I think I lost the tables or I backed up the wrong file.

going off to my room to cry. Like seriously I'm trying very hard not to panic. Next time I swear I'll experiment with upgrades on my personal fiction site first.



EDIT: database is restored, but the site is still screwed up because I was in the middle of upgrading to 331 efiction in order to combat the spam attacks the archive was getting. Though at this point I've come to the conclusion that I was not prepared to upgrade the site after all. This is just one big mess and I don't have time to fix it because I have work in the morning. I should be able to get the archive restored by this weekend or during the weekend. (I hope)