UNJUSTIFIED! BY K J ROLLINSON

I’ve republished The Rode to Justice (John Rode, 1st-grade detective, murder stories) Kindle book. I have put the book ‘UNJUSTIFIED’ after I got a review on Amazon. As you can see, the reviewer said he would have given it a five-star review instead of a four-star review, if it was not for the wide spacing.

‘I gave this four stars in my review. KJ tells a story from a 51-year-old* detective’s point of view. I found it very interesting and engaging even though the story was several bundled into one with common thread of the Homicide Detective daily life in New York city. You can imagine how busy he was there. His young female partner, he tries to protect and nurture her abilities at the same time. With a little work this could easily become a five star book but needs a little work especially on spacing. There are sudden gaps in the words or a word split apart in the EBOOK version on Kindle. Like I said, I enjoyed the book, still.
Here is the opening page excerpt for your reading enjoyment-
I read the Autopsy Report, the deceased a Mr. Joshua Simpson; heart attack during copulation. I called to Gina Morris, my 20-year-old rookie partner, who, in her eagerness to read it, knocked my brass name plaque which skidded to the edge of the DESK.
‘Whoops, gotcha! Can’t have John Rode, first-grade detective, ending up on the floor.’ I smiled ironically. She didn’t realise how much her vibrant personality had stopped my slide into despair since my wife died. I moved from a South Bronx Precinct two years ago to a Precinct in Manhattan. Gina has been with me for six months. I rib her sometimes about the ‘old guy’ she’s hitched up to.’

*I have put the asterisk myself, because John Rode starts at aged 50, moves through the book to 51 years old. I said in the first part of the book, his wife died after 2 years of illness, and later mention after three years. The twelve month period covers four cases. Is it a large caseload, as the reviewer has implied?

Why the reviewer has put DESK in capital letters, I don’t know. I’ve checked my Kindle version and it is not shown, neither it is shown on my original story when I uploaded it to CreateSpace, and checked their digital previewer.

On my Amazon Kindle Paper White there are only two gaps shown; the other gaps are because a word wouldn’t fit on a justified line. I suppose I could have hyphenated the words, but more than two spaces would occur in some cases.The reviewer doesn’t say what Application he used.

I got in touch with Janette Davies, Entrepreneurial Writer and Self-Publisher, of:
http://www.spanglefish.com/quirkygirlpublishing She has published my children’s book ‘Maranda the Mermaid’. I noticed she had put a WordPlay Writers’ Forum member’s book on Kindle, unjustified. I asked her why she had done that. She replied in an email to me that she had done this because: ‘The paperback version is fine – it’s the kindle version which is set to the left. I did this on purpose for people reading it on different e-readers.’

I remembered the excellent blog, by Chris Mcmullen, headed ‘Styles: The Secret for Word to Kindle’, dated September 2014.(https://chrismcmullen.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/word-to-kindle.png), who said there are five simple rules to achieve very good Kindle formatting from Microsoft Word. He said the number two rule was:’Don’t use two or more consecutive spaces….’

Taking his advice and Janette Davies’, I decided I should alter the book to ‘unjustified’. Although the copy on Amazon shows unjustified, when I looked on the CreateSpace previewer it showed all the stories justified.

I would like comments from any interested reader of this article.

Here is the link to my Amazon Author’s page, where you can see all my books. https://t.co/JB5M7Lgggp. The Rode to Justice is priced on Amazon co.uk at 99p and Amazon.com at $0.99 cents.