Fast Light & Free

[Just Bill]

And when you're old, tell me what they'll say
Tell me what they'll say on the inside

So be still, you will find out
From living down on the inside
I'm easily amused, by what you use
By what you use for the outside

And it's silver and gold and diamonds
I suppose, on the inside
You're silver and gold and diamonds
I suppose, shining, from the inside

So I'm sorry just the same
Sorry just the same from the inside
It's taken me long, to realize this song
Realize it happens on the inside, oh.

Leona Naess, "Shiny on the Inside"


I had the great honor and pleasure of assisting one Matthew D. Kirk in the writing of his book:

Fast Light & Free- On the Appalachian Trail.

At least that’s what I should say, but truthfully, it was a pain in the butt.

As an accomplished spinner of yarns, tall tales and outright lies it was tough working with Matt.

With such a fine backstory as his sub 60 hike in 2013 I drooled over the anticipated ample opportunities for wondrous tales of epical proportions. An over twenty year old mythical record falls to a super hero hiker on his third thru. The man the mighty Jennifer Pharr Davis called, Matt “Freakin” Kirk!

Despite ample opportunity for dramatic moments, tremendously easily launched flights of romantic fantasy, potential heroic battles against nature and tons of chances to set up our champion to snatch victory from the hungry jaws of defeat hiding behind every white blaze…he constantly avoided such moments.

Even when faced with the simple facts of his vast accomplishments leading up to this hike; just a casual mention of the other FKT’s both recognized and unknown that he holds. The multitude of opportunities to further reinforce his super-duper MEGA badass speed hiker status as he steadfastly travelled the miles. As the crushing tsunami of his resume built up I thought for sure he would get swept up in the tide and properly twist the tale and shine the spotlight on himself… yet he humbly swam away.

As the pages of the hike flowed on, fatigue in both hiker and writer became apparent. The dog days of the hike became harder to fill. He reached the point that there was little to do but put his head down and plod through the pages, when the initial surge of the attempt gave way to the reality of steadily moving day after day, when injury befell and there was nothing to do but press on. Surely I thought, now is the time, now we can do some REAL writing… but somehow he simply endured.

So all in all I find the writer in me disappointed. There was none of my craft required in the effort. He wouldn’t even let me sneak in a nice piece of marketing splooge for the back cover. Little for me to be proud of as time after time Matt chose honesty, integrity, facts, simplicity, honor, hard work, and above all an almost detrimental to the tale level of humility.

Yar, here and there his deep love for the woods escaped. Moments of the trail truly treating him kindly emerge. Occasionally the record slips away and you’re left with a fella so deeply present in the moment you could easily believe that the trail stopped the clock just for him. Somehow amidst the work, discipline, and truth something monumentally special happened when the individual moments added up and the journey as a whole is laid out.

So it’s fair to say that Matt isn’t much of a writer. That he has little to say about himself, nor does he care to spin even one-sixteenth of a turns worth of the thread of his tale into a yarn. I pushed him hard I tell ya’ truly; but it just wasn’t in him.

When your main character happens to be an amazing fella even though he avoids mentioning it. When incredible things happen despite incredible efforts to not point them out. Well it’s hard to write a proper book. Instead what you have is just an honest fella who couldn’t write worth a damn and simply relied on telling the truth straight from his carefully hidden and humble heart.

But the good news fellow readers is that the unvarnished hike is quite a tale. And it turns out Matt is so bad at this writing thing that despite his best efforts to avoid letting himself take any credit or shine in any way in the process: He’s such a neat fella on such an inspiring journey it’d be impossible to cover it all up.

Despite all these problems and woefully inadequate abilities as a writer, when he wasn’t looking, his heart leaked right out and he accidentally wrote an incredible book.



http://matthewkirk.blogspot.com/2015/07/fast-light-free.html

[CalebJ]

Can't wait to read it. My copy should be here on Thursday. Thanks for your involvement in this!

[SteelCut]

I bought it on Kindle this morning and I'm about half done so far. It's a good read.

[Just Bill]

http://www.cvent.com/events/2015-atc...8099713f7.aspx
Matt will be speaking at this year's ATC Biennial as well; Monday Evening July 20th at 8:00pm.

A thank you to fellow WB member Laurie Potteiger and Javier Folger of the ATC for granting permission to Matt to use some photos (on very short notice) for inclusion in the book.

[couscous]

(double post)

[couscous]

The Kindle version has some editing errors. When the books I ordered arrive, I will check these sections. Hopefully the books are correct as the Kindle version "should" be easy to fix.

Day 45 -
Without thinking, I
stepped on one of these slick logs. My boot and leg shot out from
stepped on one of these slick logs. My boot and leg shot out from
year-old, I...

Day 56 -
With phone charged and belly full, I’m hiking south by four o’clock.
With phone charged and belly full, I’m hiking south by four o’clock.
degree view of the Southern Appalachians."

[Just Bill]

The Kindle version has some editing errors. When the books I ordered arrive, I will check these sections. Hopefully the books are correct as the Kindle version "should" be easy to fix.

Day 45 -
Without thinking, I
stepped on one of these slick logs. My boot and leg shot out from
stepped on one of these slick logs. My boot and leg shot out from
year-old, I...

Day 56 -
With phone charged and belly full, I’m hiking south by four o’clock.
With phone charged and belly full, I’m hiking south by four o’clock.
degree view of the Southern Appalachians."

Can you perhaps share what device you are using...
In looking at the Day 45 item you mentioned, I could not find an error in the formatting. And things look decent on our end all around. Unfortunately in my book and others I have read it seems that there are always a few bugs that refuse to be stomped out from device to device. And unfortunately I am no master of the e-book either. The print edition has turned out well thus far and I personally always work on getting that right first, the conversion to e-book though has met with mixed results.

Maybe Steelcut would be so kind as to check his copy- or any other kind reader...

Matt will be traveling for the ATC talk and we planned to do any updates or corrections that pop after his return.

[SteelCut]

Maybe Steelcut would be so kind as to check his copy- or any other kind reader...

I've notice some minor formatting errors as well as some things that look like some form of editing errors. I have access to a couple of different types of Kindles as well as the Kindle reader for Mac. I'll start putting together a list of what I can find. Bill, I will PM this info to you directly rather than post here publicly. Give me a day or two to put the list together.

[Just Bill]

I've notice some minor formatting errors as well as some things that look like some form of editing errors. I have access to a couple of different types of Kindles as well as the Kindle reader for Mac. I'll start putting together a list of what I can find. Bill, I will PM this info to you directly rather than post here publicly. Give me a day or two to put the list together.

Thanks!
Actually- if you're willing you can e-mail them to [email protected]
Probably the best way to track them down for each of us.

[SteelCut]

Thanks!
Actually- if you're willing you can e-mail them to [email protected]
Probably the best way to track them down for each of us.

OK, I will email the info to that email address.

[couscous]

Can you perhaps share what device you are using...
In looking at the Day 45 item you mentioned, I could not find an error in the formatting.

iPad Mini Retina Display. Hopefully the download was glitchy and everyone else's copy is good.

[Just Bill]

iPad Mini Retina Display. Hopefully the download was glitchy and everyone else's copy is good.

Thanks! I know Matt reviewed a few device types on the simulator that Kindle provides to e-book publishers... but that's not exactly the same as downloading it to a device. And for my part, since I don't speak HTML the only thing I know how to do is create the paperback and cross my fingers that the Kindle converter does it's magic. They can be nice, but I have yet to read an e-book that was as nice as a book... especially when there are photos, that was the big challenge with his book that I hadn't dealt with before.

[Just Bill]

And now for something completely different- http://sub60.wikispaces.com/Story

Not sure if folks noticed or not... For those like my pappy who are deeply terrified of more than one line of text in a row:

Towards the bottom are free AUDIO previews of the book.

I believe Matt has some plans to complete the audiobook- but if you just want to check it out he put part one and two up for free.

[couscous]

Hopefully the download was glitchy and everyone else's copy is good.

I deleted the Kindle copy off my iPad and downloaded it again. This didn't fix the issues so the problem is a bit deeper.

[couscous]

I believe Matt has some plans to complete the audiobook- but if you just want to check it out he put part one and two up for free.

Excellent news. I had searched audible.com to see if the audio version was available.

[SteelCut]

The Kindle version has some editing errors. When the books I ordered arrive, I will check these sections. Hopefully the books are correct as the Kindle version "should" be easy to fix.

Day 45 -
Without thinking, I
stepped on one of these slick logs. My boot and leg shot out from
stepped on one of these slick logs. My boot and leg shot out from
year-old, I...

Day 56 -
With phone charged and belly full, I’m hiking south by four o’clock.
With phone charged and belly full, I’m hiking south by four o’clock.
degree view of the Southern Appalachians."

I also see these same repeated text and trailing sentence fragments on both my Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle for Mac that Couscous reported. So, it's not a due to a delivery glitch or specific to one device.

Also, I noticed that the last sentence in the Day Zero section says: "The adventure is about to begin... Paste body here". I think the "Paste body here" text needs to be deleted.

[SteelCut]

Double post.

[Just Bill]

I also see these same repeated text and trailing sentence fragments on both my Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle for Mac that Couscous reported. So, it's not a due to a delivery glitch or specific to one device.

Also, I noticed that the last sentence in the Day Zero section says: "The adventure is about to begin... Paste body here". I think the "Paste body here" text needs to be deleted.

Hmm...
Matt is travelling but I will try to catch up with him tonight.
One perhaps simple issue- what you should have downloaded was the "second round" of the KDP draft.
The paste body here thing was caught in the first round markups, but it did go "live" first. So it's possible that there was an error or Kindle hasn't caught up with the update. I'm pretty sure Matt did that Tuesday morning before he left. That one was an easy fix so indicates to me there is some "lag". While Amazon is generally pretty quick, they do specify 24-48 hours for changes to go live.

One quick check- you should have some color photos in the kindle edition vs. B&W in the print, and the "paste body here" item was fixed along with some page layout issues in portrait vs. landscape. If not... Matt will probably have to "take the book down" and refresh the file that goes out.

I'll also have to see how Matt uploaded them... While tiny house living is pretty neat, I know he has some internet issues as a result. My first thought is that perhaps the upload didn't go smoothly for some reason and he'll need to get to a stable connection and attempt a reload. He also may have tried to convert the word doc the second time rather than the PDF. Either way- I think it makes sense to attempt a new upload.

Sorry for the frustration, I know Matt will be down about this for sure and do his best to get it cleaned up asap.

And sorry for the talking out loud thing... If anyone knows more about this stuff feel free to share.
Though two books are on the shelf for me at this point and the I feel good about the print versions, the e-book stuff is still a bit of a mystery to me.

[SteelCut]

One quick check- you should have some color photos in the kindle edition vs. B&W in the print, and the "paste body here" item was fixed along with some page layout issues in portrait vs. landscape. If not... Matt will probably have to "take the book down" and refresh the file that goes out.

When viewing on my Kindle for Mac, other than the cover photo there are no color photos ... just B&W.

Like I said previously, the book is a good read. I consider these issues minor and didn't contribute negatively to my reading of the book. But, it would be good to get these issues resolved for future readers.

[couscous]

Like I said previously, the book is a good read. I consider these issues minor and didn't contribute negatively to my reading of the book. But, it would be good to get these issues resolved for future readers.

+1
The printed copies I ordered arrived today.
Day 50 now makes more sense with the printed copy's paragraph spacing.