Where Have I Been?

I've been under a rock. There is no excuse for not writing as often as I could be. However, the great news: I have a new book on the way! I was 99% certain this morning I'd be approving the new book. Instead, I decided to flip through a section of the book, I rarely focused on in previous editing attempts and was stopped by a glaring error. So I had to fix that. Since I was in the mood for re-uploading the file, I went and tried a little experiment and fixed something that was literally trivial but the fix made my heart feel better about layout.
So "On the Shoulders of Giants", my latest book for The Company (not to be confused with the general Hollywood euphemism for the CIA or any other Federal agency) is actually a 3 part book series. I had started in June organizing all three books, I actually thought I could publish all three books by the end of the summer. But I realized, there were some major holes in my research for the bulk of two of the books--so I focused on this third book, the biographies of people who contributed to science, 43 different people in the field of science and their accomplishments written for students who need modified curriculum. For every 1-2 pages of biography, there are 2 different sets of questions. One direct W/H questions (Who, What, When, Where, How--no "Why"..that's a different level of thinking), and the other more about encouraging research and finding answers to relate to the readings. Every biography had a map of the modern birth country of the scientist, a timeline of the scientist's life in perspective of the timeline of history that modern history recognizes, and then one illustration that relates to the reading of something that the scientist is connected with.
This book was intended to be a capstone on an already epic series. And then when I moved it to be my sole focus, I do think it lost a little edge, and then I went into the publisher to start setting the book up for publishing. And then there was a problem. A major problem. At 200 pages, with about 175 pages that had color, the book would have to be priced at nearly $50 for The Company to make any reasonable money-- our usual royalty is from $6-$10 per book. That amount broke our general rule of trying not to charge more than $30 to every customer.
We hemmed and hawed painfully for a few days. There are some things that aren't worth fighting for, we put the customers first. The book illustrations were redone: all to be in black and white. It was challenging at first, because we didn't know what would translate well in black and white-- it turns out nothing did so we threw away a lot of original illustrations and used some very old, old graphic tricks like patterning to get the effects we wanted, not just removing the color from the graphics. We tried just removing color from the graphics. It wasn't enough to be visually clear.
So right now, we're waiting to hear back from the publisher. We're 99% certain we'll be approving the draft as final tomorrow. (Yes we know we were 99% certain we'd publish to day, but give us our hope!)

Getting In For the Long Game

It took me three years to get off my butt and finish converting all the images from "The Bard In Stick Figures" into true graphics. The downside, the print on some of the images became too small to read as a result for digital publication. But the good side of all of this, it means that the graphics are ready to go for the new publication. Other issues we ran into include that the publication works best in horizontal and not so awesome for black and white only tablets which still represents about 60% of the market base (including me!). But it's still better than "nothing".

In my personal writing endeavors, however, I'm stumped. My characters have one sided relationships, they do not share what they like about each other, I suspect that one of my characters, no matter who she would end up with, it would not be easy for anyone.

Despite setbacks, one of the things I really like about writing is the process. Just getting the words on the page and not worrying about the artful imagery, though at times, that proves to be useful. Knowing what I see in my characters and needing to bring that out and share with others is very important to my work.

And I did not win any lottery. So back to the salt mines to do taxes.

So many things

Hi Again!

The irregular posts are returned!

I am actually looking at three short stories that I'm trying to build into a book. I have four books I'm in progress, the hardest with over 500 hand drawn illustrations. And I'm still a little confused why I choose to tackle these artistic challenges.

So I'm about 15 images into 500 illustrations. This may take longer than I anticipated.

I'll be back to blog soon. Lots of work needs to be done.

Things that make me want to quit

I've been really working on focusing on one part of a project at a time. It helps prevent the waterfall of emotion that comes with looking at the list of books I want to release over the next five years.

Today, for example, I finished the first draft of a new Stick Figure book. I don't have illustrations yet. I just put text together. I haven't figured out how I'm going to handle quotations because of the way this particular story is set up. But the whole story is laid out finally, in a feasible framework.

Over the next year, I hope to start drawing the characters I expect will be in the story and then illustrating the story as I go through.

I sat back, I enjoyed finishing that draft. I put it away. I'm not interested in dealing with that text until next summer. It can sit on back up until then.

Then I moved onto scanning all the illustrations I created. Unlike other times I've illustrated books, especially books I'm publishing, I didn't need that list. Well guess what, I needed that list.

Illustration problems: you go out of your way and create what you think should at least be 55 original drawings for your written work (which is still in the research phase, but the Illustrations are very important to the final product which in early test phases are probably going to be spread out over two books. You spend an hour scanning these original pieces of art to add into your text after digitally adding color. You count your scanned works in the folder. There are 52. 5 of which you can verify immediately as to what they are illustrations of. The remainder will have to individually be checked off a list you thought you didn't need to create. After this series is released: I need to take some serious time off illustration because this drives me nuts.

 I suppose I could always apply and try to get this manuscript taken and published "for real" but I would still have the issues of incomplete data and the fact that everything is just too dense in the real world for the subject matter I create.

Meanwhile, I'm carefully cropping and preparing the illustrations I do have, trying not to go figure out which drawings I'm missing. Who am I kidding? I will be doing that tomorrow.

Long Plot Line of Continuity

A general I have three little "plot bunnies" for fiction work I'm working on. One of which, yesterday, I was about to let out for someone else to claim as their own but I was thinking about how vividly I dreamed and how much I thought the ending would be an interesting twist. So I kept the plot bunny. I'm looking at these three and realizing how much I love the short story. Even with twists, they are to the point, and they don't require elaboration in the case of no one cares what they eat for lunch on Tuesday. Unless it really matters to the plot.

Other important issues before I get to the point of why I'm writing today, I finished submitting and the process for publication of yet another book for the company. Since having finished that book, I continue to bounce around ideas for releasing the second book this summer. I have yet to finish setting it up, I'm afraid of finding a huge error right now. To complicate matters, though I backed up everything and the old hard drive is still accessible, I got a new hard drive in the laptop, but it isn't the old set up which is its own problem. I can't quite find if there was a "D" file and gaps in my research show that I may need to hold onto this book just a little bit longer.

I have eight active projects I rotate through these days. Two on similar topics but are presented differently and the rest are all history based. I will eventually return to science, I have a whole new section to add, but it's also going to be much harder. I am also working on finding illustrations to accompany each section. It's a lot harder than it sounds because I'm mostly preparing all of these photographs for each chapter. Right now, I have an estimate on my hands that one of my books will be 300 pages--pushing its retail price into the $60 range. I'm hoping to bring down the cost, and yet every time I think about cutting a corner somewhere, I realize I'm short changing some piece of the layout.

But all of these are minor plot points in my goals of publishing and writing. Both professionally and informally, my writing forms this grander story arc. Unlike my writings: I don't know where this is headed ultimately. It certainly isn't for fame. And it isn't bound for riches. I've made my peace with those two points. Maybe one day, but certainly not now.

But TV plot lines have gotten a little crazy lately. Sometimes they remember the point of everything. Sometimes they make you remember information from three seasons back. And sometimes, each season might as well be its own thing and have no basis in reality. Some shows are very disjointed from reality to begin with, but others make you wonder how many times they will fire the entire writing team and start over. Just because the writers preserve the characters and their background stories does not mean that the writers understand what they've done the last forty episodes, or even the last two weeks of filming.

I also realize that most people no longer watch an episode a week, instead turning to 'binge' watch in a batch. But then: even having all the episodes with quick turn around means that some things may make even less sense. I am very bothered by this.

Four Hour Work Window

Because it is summer time, in order to conserve electricity for more important uses like air conditioning, I tend to only have a four hour work window. This is from around eight in the morning until noon. During this time I also have things like doctor appointments, getting things set up for the work day, or other errands that tend to occupy my time.

So, those are pretty big stumbling blocks considering I've only been out of official work since Thursday afternoon. But apparently chipping away at a revised edition since last September has finally paid off. Six days after getting out of work: one book is at the 99% completion mark as per my publisher's requirements right now.

Some things I regret about the second edition: I pulled out the beautiful, yet useless, map art work pages. There were ten pages dedicated to just pure artwork. And it took some convincing on my part to let those pages go. They were pretty, as far as computer art without depth goes. But since they didn't really contribute to the book, and they were taking up valuable physical space, they were pulled. I also removed over fifteen pages of communication icons. Those were useful, however, due to the nature of the publisher I am using, I can't leave more than two pages blank and then, the communication icons wouldn't be as accessible as possible. However, they are published through another website and are easily purchased for a few dollars.

I also took advantage of some formatting changes and aligned the glossary to look more like the glossary of the Just the Words series and the upcoming books that may partner with Finding It in the World: Geography.

But I'm pretty excited. I should be able to "sell" the book soon. Meanwhile, my four hour work window has closed. Time for me to find non-electronic work to focus on.

What Is My Brand?

I've been entrenched in branding for the better part of nearly four years now. I had to "brand" a company when I first created it. This means I had to (and my partner would have to agree at the time),

• What colors would be used in the company logo?
• What direction would the company head?
• What social media platforms would we use to communicate with the world and why?
• How to convey messages through the platforms?
• When to update and why?
• How to document the journey of being a really small business doing some pretty big things.

This is completely separate, and why we bothered to set up the company, and why when my business partner left, I continued on and had to do the extra leg work to get the company back up to speed as a sole proprietorship.

But as an author who publishes separately from the company: what is my brand?
Is it me?
Is it the professional me?

Sure, me the person and me the author share a LOT in common. For example: we are both HIGHLY motivated by awesome chocolate chip cookies. I like to write. I've enjoyed it even when I didn't know which words were going to come next on a page or when I typed. And yes, I'll say "we", went to architecture school.While I currently Tweet as myself online, it doesn't necessarily mean I've tweeted as an author, nor does it mean I've set up a Page as an author through Facebook or even Google+.

But how much of "me" am I sharing? Did something I do with my characters resonate with the way my life went? Certainly not always.

"Me the author" really likes to write romance. And it took "me the person" a while to come to terms with that fact. In fact, perhaps, this may be the first time I've publicly admitted that fact although I've not made that the focus of my previous publications.Look, there is no more poerwerful force on earth than love. Love between family, love between people willing to tough it out and start a life together, or love between a person and their pet. [Please do not confuse that previous statement with "having sex with".] Love is a binding force of our universe. Perhaps greater than all four of the types of gravity that are recognized in physics. (Oh, by the way "me the person" is a pretty astute geek and nerd on the side in case sometimes you forget.)

I can also admit, "Me the person" often decides that "me the author" will just have to "wait" while I play video games, run a million errands, or spend time with friends.

I find that my brand as an author takes a different roll every time I open the first draft of my latest work. And I am writing again. Perhaps it will work out this time and I will get a chance to publish. But first come ParaEducate's publications. I publicly announced two months ago, I would be releasing at least one book. I'm nearly ready on a second book which means I should probably start designing covers. Or other projects. Or video games. Or family, eating, sleeping, working jobs that pay a regular paycheck, or friends.

I think I found my brand: Always busy.....

Two books, one summer, and onto other things

First, don't let the title scare you. I'm going to keep going here.

But my "paying job" has begun. I use the paying term losely. While I make more than minumum wage, I shouldn't complain as I am employed, but I honestly don't make enough at a shade under 40 hours a week to be successful and financially careful.

But here to announce book #2 of this summer: The Bard In Stick Figures. It has 130 illustrations, of which 110 are original illustrations. By the third story, I had a really good method for getting the characters into the scene and into position.

It includes both interpretation and direct quotes.

I might be able to re-release that book I wrote last summer in a second edition, but not before December.

I've started the first new books, prepping for release next summer.

This life of publishing is awesome.

Onto NaNoWriMo.

What it's like to solve problems when you're a writer AND an illustrator

My primary background is in graphics. Which is odd because I have this degree that says I can build things that people can live and work in. But the thing I walked away having learned and evaluated the most of, was simply graphics. The visual way of convincing someone I'm right. If I can fool you with what you're looking at, then I've done a good job. And I need to do it in the most professional way possible.

So when I moved into the world of illustration for Project Beta for ParaEducate, it was sort of a no brainer. Part of the beauty of "Bard in Stick Figures" is that it literally looks slapped together. this accomplishes two things.  The first is reminding my primary target audience, that some of our work needs to be "slapped together" at the last minute. The second is addressing the fear most people have about drawing. If I had a penny for every time someone said, "I'm not very good at drawing"; I'd be insanely rich at this point.

But even though I had finally gotten the text together for the new book, I had been dragging my feet on the illustrations. And I would have really loved to have the book out already. But such is the life of the author/illustrator/publisher. And I couldn't figure out why. I even started flipping through the original text which I was using to work from to help generate ideas. I thought I might have been too true to the original text [wholly possible as I spent many years in theatrical sets], I thought I didn't understand the text [wholly possible as it is Shakespeare], and I thought maybe this just wasn't as cool as I thought it could be.

One of the signs that bothered me was the book was only 80 pages long (40 pages published). Ambitious yes, but not impossible. But when it comes to publishing, this means that it's going to be really tiny. I thought about adding another section to the book, but then I realized, that I couldn't handle the pages where there were actual conversations. And this made me not want to finish the book. Unlike the first second where conversations weren't really a major element of the story, the other plays I had chosen to illustrate were all wrapped in conversations between characters. And then I realized, conversations happen over multiple pages through the illustrations--like a comic book.. Poof. My book is now extraordinarily viable at around 150 pages with illustrations (which means around 75 pages published).

Of course, I'm not sure how this will translate to publication as there are file restriction limits. But I don't care the book is working out finally. Yes that does mean the illustration count has moved proportionally so of 150 pages, 140 pages are original illustrations. But that's okay. I figured out how to solve the issues for the remaining two of three sections.

To give you an idea of how excited I am that this is possible and I'm making progress: I just finished 5 illustrations since 7 AM. While Facebooking, blogging, and spending 30 minutes walking to the Post Office and back (and not illustrating). Yeah. That means that this is the solution.

And now, for a little fiction

I don't remember when I wrote this. But I apparently did so.

My first love has never been non-fiction, it has always been fiction. Characters, emotion, descriptions. I love writing for that simple reason. Those elements don't exist anywhere else in life, but through imagination I can perceive a variety of different worlds, all vastly different from my own.

But this, I'm not sure why I had started, I am cross posting this from my personal blog today because it speaks to the way I start--typically with one character's voice.

So, I give you about 50 words of my mind from I can't remember when..

---

He asked, "How would I know if you loved me?" With saucer eyes and a muddy shirt.

I thought for a minute and put him on my knee.

He kept going while I stalled for my answer. "Mommy loves me with the kisses and the way she makes my lunch. and Daddy loves me with the way he shows me how to do things to help him. But how do you love me?"

I was silent I had never thought of this answer before.

"I love you because I laugh at your jokes, even the ones you don't know that I know. I love you by the way I turn a blind eye to letting you get away with mischief."

"I love you in the way that I answer the problems and you know my work is as important as you are in my life."

"I love your smile when things are just perfect in the world as you see it."

"I love your curiosity."

"But most of all I love you because you remind me of the potential of the future that I still want to work at."

There was silence for a few minutes. I worried that I hadn't said enough. Finally, "I would like it if you loved me with less words."

How many times? And for what integrity?

The thing that frustrates me the most about non-fiction is the amount of detail that needs to happen. With fiction, of course, as an author, "Well that was explored, but not important to ultimate outcome." But with non-fiction, if a little hair is out of place, it's questionable.

I've spent the last week fixing errors after error that were minor. And the things that should have been minor that exploded into reformatting.

What have I learned?

1) Apparently with my multi-platform set up, I can only handle 240 pages total. Anything beyond that, and the document dies.

2) My thoughts for the History set up is going to change a little because of this lesson. In addition, History will be approached with different purpose.

3) Early complaints about the new book included, "It looks like busy work" And unfortunately, yes, busy work does have a purpose in Education. And busy work can lead to some other things. I will defend later. I apologize for being vague, I'm really tired of trying to stand on this leg of defense of busy work.

4) I _really_ hope that this is the last update. I'm glad I've been vigilant in fixing the errors, it'll look better long term. But otherwise, I'm at the desperate "please let it be done" of the design and finishing.

When Is It Time to Fall Short

I look at the work that consumes my life and I know that every day and every minute I don't work: I'm already behind.

I finally got a chance to review my first book I released this year and I look and I found an error, I won't say where because at this point, my few fans that know the difference haven't actually said anything. But that is the trouble that leaves me feeling like I know all the reasons why I won't "make it to the next level".

I struggle with the needs of the work that I undertake. I hope this is only temporary. NaNoWriMo is just around the corner.

A Ride On A Rollercoaster

I'm pretty honest with this: as a child, and even as an adult, I have a lot of anxiety surrounding things that are considered adrenaline boosting. I don't like being frightened. I don't like things out of my control. And I've only actually ridden 2 real roller coasters my entire life, neither of which I enjoyed.

Last 24 hours has been a wild ride. Actually, the last 3 weeks have been a huge wild ride, but last 24 have been pretty important. And I still don't know when the next loop or drop is going to come.

Most authors can blog AND write on their manuscripts, unfortunately, I let my blogs languish when the pressure is on because I want the moment to be cool when you realize that I've published.

That's right, as of this morning, my company, ParaEducate, has announced the pending publication of Finding It In The World: World Geography Level 2.

Last night with nearly 20 emails as I collaborated with my business partner to finish the first volume of "Project Alpha", I'm certain she was ready to find a way to cut me off digitally. Catching up on comments for edits and then choosing a cover and dealing with the fact that this book had many demands, especially within the last two weeks.

Finding It In The World is an entire adapted curriculum for students with disabilities to use in inclusive education settings for Geography. It reviews the 5 Themes of Geography, the continents, types of maps, natural hazards, geographic features, and selected countries of the world and their cities. We are very excited to have this available for the general public very shortly. I expect it to be available in the next two weeks.

We did choose a cover.

The first book of "Project Alpha". Property of ParaEducate

And as of this morning, we've sent this through social media. The book is now sitting on computers at our publisher waiting for final edits. There will still be work ahead of us, there is publicity and just getting our supporters to understand the material available. But the book is done. I think we're ready to step off this ride.

It Takes A Community

I want to say, as a writer: you can't write what you don't experience. You can anticipate emotions, but you might not know the depths of despair or the heights of plateaus truly until you have lived through it. A few years back, one of the short stories I wrote for my NaNoWriMo was a collection of letters written by fictional parents to their unborn children. I don't think I really captured the depths of worry, sorrow, and fears that parents could bring as well as the joy and the hopes that parents often have. Just around the corner, a co-worker of mine would be a parent for the first time the following year. And then in February, we got a letter from the co-worker about the baby, the baby was going to have a pretty serious birth defect. We rallied around her. And when the baby was born extraordinarily premature, we were as supportive as we could be. When the baby died a few days later, we all came together and helped the family out the best we could.

Again, at my feet lays an experience I never wanted to have. A good friend of mine from high school lost her little boy on July 4th in an accident. And I've challenged some thoughts in another blog and he was a wonderful little boy, but again, the depths of loss leave me floundering for the words to share the truth that community comes together, even a small one for this little boy.

This taints my look at things. And yet today, something else came my way that was much more mundane. One of my NaNo groups had an author who was flustered over the fact that his work was lacking in gender diversity. I am not sure how old this author is, but I was struck by how much he was troubled by this conceptually. He had tried adding more characters, even supporting characters but they weren't nearly as interesting and they were only shells as he had described them. He wanted fully participating characters.

As an author, and especially one who participates in NaNoWriMo, I usually don't give a rip what genders my characters are. Gender eventually comes to the surface and it all balances itself out, though admittedly: I have never written a gender neutral character or a transgendered character. But again I could not ignore the idea that an author had wanted to make sure that his story lived in a gender balanced world.

I look at my own constructed life: I spend a lot of time with women, but I have spent a lot of contact time with men. But each individual representation had elements of stereotypes on both sides of the gender. However, my last 3 published stories all had main characters that were female, with a heavy dose of women surrounding them. The stories that have yet to be published that contain male main characters are surrounded by men. But that is also a result of things that I know about how deep secrets are comfortably shared within genders. A greater trust has to be met to share across genders be it marriage/partnership, siblings, or a long time of friendship.

I sometimes wonder that my own writing is too lacking in diversity due to the fact that my world is the world that I see. To be honest, I have only know 3-4 practicing Muslims, and only 1 Pagan. Of those 5 people, I think only the Pagan would list me within their good friends (a significant difference of best friend). I also do know that in my experience, I am all too aware of the contrived racially, gender balanced writing (High School Musical and upcoming Teen Beach Movie--I realize that these are screenplays, but they address the same things). There was a presentation to me that discussed the limitations of popular media with regards to racial equality (that there is no equality for races), but I am also struck that I know of shows that are specifically targeted at certain ethnicities and yet they are not at all racially balanced. 

As a concept: diversity I'm flummoxed by it as a writer. I know diversity, I've lived it most of my life even in its limitations: I socialized with people with multiple ethnic identities and religious choices, I know the difference between being the leader and knowing when to take a supporting role, and I have friends, good friends of several genders and gender preferences. I'm lucky: I live in a state that has a lot of representatives of both mainstream and minorities.

This becomes a sticking point though as I am on the precipice of preparing materials for social sciences to be used with students with developmental disabilities. I know it's the point of educational materials to be as politically correct as possible and be the introduction to the world beyond the four walls of school.

And then I take a breath.

It's the community that will give rise to the work. Both fiction and non-fiction. I can strive for the diversity without purposely putting it to task. I can ask myself to consider to have my characters step outside of prescribed stereotypes, that they will rise to the task. And I know they all will be okay. Because my friends have 2 special angels on their shoulders. And I have more experiences, albeit, experiences I hope no one ever has to see.

90% mark

I have to say, one of my favorite parts about having access now to regular publication: I can publish whenever I am ready. Except when my material isn't ready.

This isn't about the reluctant artist. I will deal with that later.

I'm sitting here with my unedited manuscript knowing that I have to edit it, deal with the issues surrounding the final pages and potentially cutting the introductory chapter because it's a little flat.

I worry about the issues surrounding the fact that I don't have a full publishing house to back me up and I'm entirely stuck with my work being what it is and what I could potentially be missing to support my work.

The worries of what I still am missing are there, but also at this point, I lack motiviation to finish things that I think aren't important or as important as they were when I started the book in the first place. After all, who cares if something didn't make the final cut? I have the finished product. And by hook or by crook: it's done. I have to accept the deadline, even self-imposed deadlines.

Other things keep sucking away my 100% focus, but I suppose my business partner and co-authors from other projects will be thrilled with that knowledge.

But 90%. Missing 5 pages, 8 maps, a complete editing, and citiations. So close.

When It Is Ready, You Will Know

Since I was in college, I've been writing a series on about government service. And most of the short stories there had never really went many places. They were about character development and looking at the past of characters.

Until this week. A reoccurring photo kept creeping up on my Facebook feed. And while I've seen the photo a thousand times, for whatever reason, this week it made sense, this was the image I was going to write about to tie the entire series together.

I find that the one thousand words produced by the picture that emanates silence and reverence was perhaps the most soulful addition to the series. So my next book, not due for at least another year will focus on service and sacrifice both publicly and politically. I can't promise stand alones, but I'm looking at the short stories I generated and perhaps this might be the better way to imagine that these stories all share a common thread.

There have been multiple requests for updates and the companion story to "Putting It On The Line", and while I have been sitting on the manuscript for over 15 years at this moment in time, I am not interested in releasing the continued stories of Jessie and the rest of the Bakers.

I would, however, like to request that if you had the pleasure of reading my books, any of them to date, that you would offer up a good review on Amazon.com. And by good reviews, I mean something that is sincerely useful to someone who might be looking to buy a new story/book. I don't really care if you liked the book, but it is somehow much more useful. The reviews help validate my work, and as much as I like hearing from my readers personally, I think it's infinitely more useful that someone reviews my work honestly and understands that there are all sorts of different readers that I come in contact with.

So to sum up: 1) new book in progress. 2) if you like my work, put a review on it. (Sorry Beyonce!).

Thanks! and stay tuned for more updates on Project Alpha as the summer begins, because now I'm fully immersed in the world of CCSS...

And It's Out of My Hands

I just want to thank you all for your support the past few months as I've prepared my newest book, Sheltered Hearts. It is the first book I've independently published in over 4 years. Sheltered Hearts has just made it to the final check with the publishers, pending a 24 hour review before final publication to go live on Amazon and Amazon Europe.

Sheltered Hearts surrounds Blair Jacobson as she tries to manage the aftermath of her father's recent death. She knows how isolated she is in her life that has been consumed by work, like her father. It is her little inlets to reaching out that helps her and her brothers and sister find that the house they grew up in was more than just a building conceived and built by their father, but the safe harbor they never thought they would ever have.

Still available on Amazon.com: ParaEducate (with Megan Gross, Jennifer Kurth, Ph.D, and Lisa Yamasaki), Putting It On the Line, and Small Voices.

In the next few months I'm preparing ParaEducate's first adapted curriculum book, Geography, and potentially a release of the US History book.

I'm really excited and cannot wait to see what I will get my hands on just around the corner.

Final Stretch

So I'm sitting in front of the computer staring at the completed manuscript I'm getting ready to publish. I have an "acceptable" cover though that may change shortly pending my mood next week when I finalize all my materials to the publisher.

I cannot tell you how hard it is to sit and summarize a book I've written about for the better part of over a year in only five sentences. Especially since the published version is nothing like the version I spit balled through my writing in a NaNoWriMo over two years ago. But the characters stand, and that's the most important part to me. My characters can weather the changes of editing for any reason. 

And all I know is that this is all (editing, designing, going to regular work) harder than it is supposed to be to upload the final materials and tell the publisher to green light the project. After all, this is my baby. What sort of part of me will now be vulnerable once people start reading my newest book?

I'm also sitting on about three middle drafts for the different volumes of ParaEducate's newest round of materials. This is a different sort of vulnerability as I try to organize all the sources I have for my materials.

All of these things are coming out in the next five to six months right on top of each other. It will take a small miracle to keep them all organized but I'm getting there. And hopefully, they'll all find the audience that I've intended them to be seen by.

There is quite a bit of vulnerability as an author and running a company whose goal is to publish to a specific industry. And it can be confusing at times, even to me as I consider all the parts of my public life. But the best part of my growth as a writer, is the chance to share the stories and materials with more people. And that's where this is all headed. Non-fiction or fiction, that is the greatest joy I have when that finished book is in my hands. That is really what the final stretch is about.

Books Are Precious

One of the reasons I keep writing: I have loved books. I love the journey and the story within books. And even as I have migrated to ebooks for some things, I love the tactility of a book. It reminds me that the knowledge and experience within the book is valuable, not to be overlooked.

As I begin the second round of editing of my first fiction book in over 4 years, I'm looking at the events surrounding its concepts and I was discussing this with my business partner from ParaEducate, Megan Gross.

And I admitted that I had to deviate from the original intent of the book. She did poke fun at me about it briefly and yet, as I examine the esoteric nature of my story for the first time in print as I make suggestions to myself to improve the nuances in the story: the romance still remains. Books, written or otherwise are a romantic nature of themselves. It means that the book itself is valued for simply the attempt to reach someone and pursue a series of thoughts that no one else might have been willing to share in the same manner.

But as my book may not rise to the top of the New York Times Best Seller's List, I am reminded that my story never originally wanted to be shared with the greater population. Even still, the population at hand will only ever see my books when they find the need for them. But I am not discouraged. The remains of my thoughts shall live on and on. And if only a small population sees the book, than I have achieved success.

Books are precious. And will always be so.

Solving Plot Holes

So I've been working on my new book preparing it for publication.

The Fiction book, if you were wondering.

And I realized, that there were horrible gaps in the story, like the details of certain interactions didn't matter. And when I looked at the traditional plot line, I could actually put details about every event in the story but the main purpose of the story. And that really bothered me. So, as an author, my first go to is usually to write all the missing details in. Except, this time, there wasn't anything there that could be filled in.

I wanted the happy ending. I want the sun to shine and birds to fly. And I couldn't do it. In fact, there were five chapters that were started and never got anywhere. They were great moments of tender character exchange that just were that: moments. But they existed without reason.

So last night, I did something drastic: I decided to cut out as much of the main subplot as possible. And suddenly, I only had 2 major issues to address instead of 50. Admittedly: I would feel better about having a word count closer to 30,000 instead of dropping 9,000 words to get the outcome I wanted, but anxiety I was having over getting my resolutions is gone, which is really the most important thing.

Writer's are often told to write about what they know. And to be fair: I do. And as a result, I reveal a lot about myself in the process. But what authors really are good at are drawing distinctions between fiction and fact. The world where my character's live is just that: their world. And sometimes, even if I don't understand why I know so much about them, I need to know that not all the pieces are going to be ready when I am. I consider it much like the way I get to know people in real life. I know all these details about them, I might not understand all the bits, but I know them. I have an idea of chronology. And the other thing about me, I don't usually ask the deeper follow up questions. Which always gets someone to ask me follow up question about what I really do know.

But the book is coming along. I'm going to be ready for June.