NBC-10-Philadelphia-kimwolterman

good idea

There is a project that has been bouncing around the back of my mind for a few years, and I am ready to go forward with the idea. I obtained the domain names a few years ago and they have been dormant all this time. But after researching blogs for my presentation on Beyond the Blog: Tips for Turning Your Blog into a Book last fall, my eyes were opened to the types of weird and wacky blogs that were either a) being turned into books or b) being sold for huge amounts of money. I think this new blog idea can experience the success of the ones I had been reading about.

I forgot how much decision-making takes place when establishing a new site. What platform do you want to be on? Blogger? Tumblr? WordPress, and if so WordPress.com or WordPress.org? What theme do you want? How about the graphics? So much to consider! I hired an illustrator to come up with a "character" for lack of a better word. We met on Monday and it was so fun to watch her draw up ideas on her tablet right in front of me. We came up with a pretty good sketch of what it will look like. She should have it officially drawn this weekend. Then I decided I want to have a special font for the name of the blog and the tag line that I will be using. So that meant an hour pouring over fonts and determining which one would look good with my "character".

We are on our way though. I am going with WordPress.org, and I have my theme and font selected. My web designer is customizing the theme to be more in keeping with our thoughts of what this new brand should look like. Hopefully by next week I will be able to roll it out. Stay tuned...

This is a very unusual Father's Day. Just like Mother's Day, we have no children here to celebrate the day with. But that is not bad since there is no dad here to celebrate with either. Jim is off on his annual epic motorcycle trip. I was surprised that they picked this week due to Father's Day occurring this weekend. Not so much from Jim's perspective, but the other three guys are all dads as well.

I guess I will be up for the bad daughter-in-law of the year award because I forgot to send Jim's dad a card. I have never forgotten before, so I will blame it on the fact that we were not making any Father's Day plans around here to tickle my memory. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it! I will call Jerry tonight and hope that a phone conversation makes up for my memory lapse on the card.

I find myself thinking about my own dad today, in part because of finally completing the book I was writing about his time period in the war. But also my cousin posted a really heart wrenching story on Facebook this morning written by a man whose dad died at a fairly young age. There were lots of things they wanted to do together, planned during a period when they thought they had all the time in the world. I feel that way about my mom, since she died when I was only 33. But we got to have my dad a lot longer than that, so I was blessed that way.


Dad

You held my hand
to keep me grounded
You let it go
So I could fly
I held your hand
as you lay dying
Then let it go
So you could soar

Around working on my dad's book and all the extra work on the pictures I had to do for it, I have been trying to keep up with this graduation quilt I am making. Now that it is April, I am beginning to feel the squeeze. The mom has not told me exactly what date she needs the quilt done, but I know graduation is May 20th. When I made Lauren's quilt (sister to this graduate), it just needed to be completed by Lauren's graduation party. This bought me a little extra time, which was great. Tommy knows he is getting this quilt, so it is not a surprise like Lauren's was so the deadline may not be that big of a deal. I guess I better ask the question, huh?

Originally I was going to make 70 squares, which is the number I used in Lauren's quilt. But since I cut each of the center fabric pieces larger for this quilt so you could really see some of the larger focal pieces, I realized that 70 would make this quilt huge. (Unfortunately this was after I had already cut all 70.) So I have scaled back the number to 48. I have all the squares pieced and am now just "squaring" them up. After that I'll be ready to start sewing the squares together. When that is complete, I'll decide if I'm going to put on one border or two, depending on the size I am aiming for in the end.

Last night I called my friend who actually did the finished quilting on Lauren's quilt to see if she is willing to do the same for this new one. She has one of the really expensive long arm quilting machines that can handle larger quilts. It just makes a much nicer finish than I can do on my machine. Thankfully, she has the time to take on this project after May 3rd. It will only take her a few days at most, and then the quilt comes back to me to apply the binding. Whew! Could be crunch time in early May, especially since we have to go to Chicago and move Katie home the middle of the month. Always something... No wonder I have been a quilting "b" lately.

Down the street from me lives a woman who is 95 years old and living once again in the house she was born in. It's a fun story in and of itself as she (I'll call her V) is living with her 85 year old boyfriend (I'll call him D), who actually owns the house now. I was thinking that it would be really interesting to interview her to talk about what it was like growing up in Webster Groves. After all, she probably knew the Morton family who built my house. They lived here until 1938. I understand my neighbor's mind is very sharp, even if her body is failing her. And she loves to talk!

I was trying to figure out how to go about seeing if she would mind answering some questions for me. Well, yesterday while walking the dog I saw the boyfriend (tee, hee!) talking to his next door neighbor, whom I do know. Always one to try to answer when opportunity is knocking, I hurried up my friend's driveway to introduce myself. As I explained why I was interested in speaking with V, D quickly expressed that V would love to talk to me. She loves discussing old times. As she feels best in the afternoons, we agreed that I would just come over one day after Thanksgiving around 1:00. After D went back to working in his yard, my friend said, "You're going to write about this, aren't you?" It ends up that she knows a lot about the neighborhood as well, and she had some suggestions about other elderly people that I should interview before it's too late.

So I may be on to my next book idea. We'll see how this first interview goes.

Jim and I went to the Missouri Botanical Garden this morning, assuming if we went early we could beat the crowds we knew such a nice day would draw. Well, you know what they say about assuming... The place was packed at 10:00, and we parked on the street a couple blocks away. But oh, was it worth it! The place is a kaleidoscope of color, with Mother Nature definitely at her best. This is the time of year when you really need to go to the garden every week to see the landscape evolve.

It was sensory overload with the brilliant flowers and array of scents in the air. I shot a bunch of photos with the new camera Jim gave me for Christmas, giving a heartfelt shout-out to whomever invented digital cameras so I could experiment without guilt. I cannot draw or paint worth a darn, so photography enables me to be an artist in another form. I only wish I had the poetic words to describe what my eyes were seeing.

I should perhaps mention that Jim got me a digital SLR in anticipation of the book I hope to do on the barn quilts of Iowa. Okay...no pressure to get on with that book now. Just because I'm still marketing my first book, and trying to finish up my second...no worries.

We are heading up to see the in-laws for a few days. This is an off year, so we won't see them for the holidays. Since they haven't been here since Katie's graduation, we are overdue for a visit. I have my homemade pickles and peach butter packed to take along, which puts me in position of being the favorite daughter-in-law. Wait...I'm the only daughter-in-law...but no matter, they truly appreciate my canning efforts so I enjoy sharing with them.

Kirby just had a bath this morning, with the bonus that he gave me a shower. He'll smell nice and fresh in the car now. He is a bit of an anxious car rider, so I think I'll give him a small dose of Benydryl to help calm him. He's not bad, he sits on the passenger's lap, but he's squirmy and pants heavily which gets annoying after the first hour. He always acts like we are going to drop him off somewhere.

I have sold a couple more books this week, and my printer has pretty much fired me after I dared to complain about 44 of the newly printed books having streaks of black across the pages. Now I'll have to scurry to find a new printer so that I have an adequate supply of books for my December book signings. It's always something...

I took this picture of the full moon last week, and I feel like sitting here howling at it. My books are still at the printer. "Supposedly" I can pick them up tomorrow morning. If you want to know the whole, sordid tale check out my other blog writeformation.blogspot.com. I may be going back to the local bookstore and taking their copies back to have on hand Sunday. I think I'll put a section for printing companies on my peopleareshit.com website.

In the good news category, aforementioned bookstore has sold several copies of the book, I have my business cards printed, the Webster-Kirkwood Times mentioned my book signing in the Calendar section and my book was discussed on the examiner.com website located at http://tinyurl.com/yjtzn6k so positive things happened this week as well.

As I was driving down to the printers for the third time this week I was struck by the irony that as I passed the Johnny Brock's Halloween billboard on I-44 the radio was playing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year". Remember when the Christmas carols and decorations became pronounced after Thanksgiving?

Yesterday I picked up my books at the printer. As the boxes were too heavy to carry in, I brought an armful in with me to admire. As I set them on the kitchen counter, I noticed an unnatural wave in the sides of each of the books. It looked as though the books had been exposed to humidity. When my husband came home, he confirmed that the books did not look right. Of course that ruined my sleep last night. I kept worrying about the books. If they all had to go back, how in the world am I supposed to do a book signing on Sunday? At 4:30 this morning I gave up and read my new Nora Roberts book. Nothing like some good sex scenes to take your mind off your troubles!

I called my production manager at the printers at 8:30 this morning and broke the news that we have a problem. He asked me to bring all the books back, which I did. They will try to use a dehumidifier on the books, and if that doesn't work they will reprint all of them. I reminded him of my book signing, and he said he will have all the books ready by Friday at the latest.

For a followup on the silver lining to this big, black cloud, see my new blog about writing and publishing my first book at writeformation.blogspot.com.

My books were supposed to be ready by Wednesday or Thursday. I waited impatiently until Thursday afternoon to email the printer as to their whereabouts. "They are printed and in the queue to be bound and trimmed. I hope to have these ready by tomorrow." Again I am reminded of the similarities between birthin' a book and birthin' a baby. "Oh, you'll have this baby by Thursday, for sure," comforts the well-intentioned OB/GYN. Easy for him to say, he wasn't carrying the elephant around on his bladder. And the baby had no intentions of coming on Thursday. Why don't these people just say it will be another week, and then when you get the delivery early you can be happy about it?

In fact, I don't need the books by today. But that's beside the point. I want them today. I wanted them yesterday. The sooner I can get a book into the hands of my local bookstore, the sooner I can convince her that my book is worthy of her limited shelf space. Because I have my first book signing on November 8th during the Old Webster Christmas Open House, and I'd love to be able to tell those who don't purchase the book that day to shop at her bookstore for it.

On another note, my birthing coach, AKA Bobbi Linkemer, suggested (strongly, I might add) that I should be blogging about my writing and publishing experience. The topics just don't fit that well with this blog, which is mostly for fun, or with my house history blog, which is mostly to help other people discover the history of their homes. And they certainly won't fit on my MOG Blog, dedicated first to being the mother of the groom and now to being a mother-in-law. So, it is with some trepidation that I announce my new blog, Write Formation (writeformation.blogspot.com). We'll see how many of these I can keep up with.

It's been raining for a year, or so it seems. Today's weather was perfect for taking my boobs out and having them pressed. After all, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Believe me, I was very aware of my breasts at 9:00 this morning! But the dreary weather couldn't keep me down as I headed from the slammogram to Starbucks to meet with a new friend of mine. Anne Collins Milford was introduced to me by a mutual friend from my writing class. Anne has co-authored the book "How to Marry the Wrong Guy". The book has been so successful that it has been picked up by a traditional publisher. Anne was kind enough to spend some time talking to me about what they did right as well as wrong with their first book. I came away with some new ideas on how to publicize my book. And I left Anne with a few stories about a woman in my life who repeatedly marries the wrong guy. Turnabout is fair play!

I feel like a new mom again. Though hopefully this new baby won't cost as much as the other two! After months and months of labor (okay, so it was an elephant pregnancy), I finally was able to pick up a bound copy of my book yesterday. It is just my proof copy, but it looks like the real deal, color cover and all. One of the benefits of using an in town printer is that I can pick things up instead of waiting for them to be shipped to me. One of the downsides is that this printer is not located in the best area of town. A six foot high fence surrounds their property, complete with an electronic gate to keep the unsavories out. The gate was open when I arrived as a delivery van had just pulled into the parking lot.

Once you pass that hurdle, you must buzz at the door and state your mission in order to be allowed entry. After picking up the proof, I was afraid I had come to the Hotel California - "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave". I couldn't get out of the parking lot. Assuming that the gate operated on a sensor, I drove slowly towards it. Several times...I'm probably on a YouTube video somewhere. Fortunately I spied an employee around the side of the building taking a smoke break. When I asked about the gate, she said she would come around and let me out. She had to punch in a code for the gate to open. All of which made me wonder if I was supposed to park on the street in the first place. Sure, protect your employees but let the paying customers fend for themselves.

The first thing I noticed about my book was that the colors were off a bit on the cover. I couldn't quite put my finger on the problem but it just didn't look right. When I compared it to my printout at home, I could see a bit of difference in the color scheme. I know that what I see on my screen, what my designer sees on her screen, what my printer produces and what a professional printer produces can be four different things. I emailed my designer to see if she wanted to take a look. She definitely did, so I drove it over to her house. Actually the printed cover looked much closer to her screen than mine. But she agreed there was too much red on the cover. Ah...too much red, that was the problem.

I contacted my production manager today and explained the issue, and he said he would talk to the art department to see if they could handle the color change. If not, my designer would need to send them a revision. Fortunately, the gods were smiling and it was fixed in-house. I got a revised cover emailed to me this morning, and I gave approval for the printing to proceed. I should have all my babies by Wednesday or Thursday of next week! Does that make me a centuro-mom?

It was fun spending nearly five days in Chicago with Jim and the other people we know from the ASLA. Our hotel was very nice and less than two blocks from Katie's dorm. We had a lot of great food, and I enjoyed the walking, biking and boat riding that we did. Coming back to reality sucks, though. There is so much to catch up on with work. Darn - I hate when work interferes with play! Because I'll be playing again this weekend (a friend and I are driving down to Table Rock Lake Friday to stay at her parent's lake house for the weekend) I have to kick butt and take no prisoners before then. Jim will be off on a motorcycle adventure, so we have someone coming to stay at the house with the dog again. That means I have to clean the house, particularly the guest bedroom and bath, before she gets here.

Around all that, I am finishing up my book. There are a couple of last tweaks that my designer is working on, and then I'll be ready to get quotes for the printing. I really can't determine my pricing until I know what the printing is going to cost. It's the old chicken or the egg syndrome. You need to have the price on the book before you go to print, but you can't price the book until you know what the printing charge will be. There is quite a learning curve in producing your first book. I just hope all the curves result in a nice, straight bottom line.