Pull up a chair.
The pre-order price for The Cabins of Wilsonia expired. The new price is $86, which includes tax and mailing (within the USA). If you are someone I see regularly, deduct $5 because instead of putting it in a fancy-pants box and taking it to the Post Office, I’ll simply place it in your hands.
The upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia is an album. It is a collection of pictures designed to show the overview of a cabin community. It is pictures of the typical, pictures of the unique, word pictures of cabin life expressed in stories from cabin folks. It is designed to show the many architectural styles within the community. It is a medley of little details, such as the way the sun lands on something ordinary and makes it beautiful. It shows things that are ordinary to cabin life that may be unusual in “normal” life. It is a picture of cabin life in the 20th century. It is pencil drawings made from photos that I spent days and days shooting, editing, cropping, choosing, and three years putting together. It is the celebration of a very special treasure of Tulare County and Kings Canyon National Park.
It is not a directory of cabins. It is not a comprehensive, all-inclusive list of every cabin. It is not a history book. It is not a complete representation of every one of the 214 cabins in Wilsonia. It isn’t photos. It isn’t a list of cabins that used to be there. It isn’t a collection of cabins that currently belong to the Park. It isn’t a hastily thrown together piece of work.
pencil drawing from the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia
This is a personal note to a friend, but you are welcome to read it. Duh. I posted it on the internet!
Dear Doug,
Thank you for using the Contact button on my blog. I was delighted to hear from you, and meant to set your email aside for a thoughtful response later. Instead, I deleted it. My excuses are that it was at the end of a long weekend away from the computer so there were many emails to read and sort AND in spite of continually changing my password, my email is being messed with by some unknown entity which causes me to manically delete messages (or maybe the unknown entity is deleting them. . .?)
Excuses aside, thank you for contacting me! I have been so curious about that little A-frame – is it Doug’s family cabin? Does he ever go there? Will he be up here when I am? Will he be disappointed that I only drew the funny lounge chair? Will he be pleased that anything from the cabin appears in the book?
My choices about what appears and what doesn’t are not based on historical significance. The book is about cabin life today in pictures (276 of them) and quotes by cabin owners and visitors. Not all cabins are included, because the goal is to show an overview album rather than a cabin-by-cabin directory. It is meant to show a balance of the typical and the unique.
I chose your chair, void of cushions, because it tells me a story about cabin life.
In other news, thank you for sending me a customer named Roger. He is gathering photos of a barn in Michigan for me to draw. (I’d rather he gather me a round-trip airfare, but no one does that.) Receiving a recommendation from such a fine artist as yourself really does my heart (and ego!) good.
Blessings to you, my old (as in long-time, not aged) friend,
Jana
The Cabins of Wilsonia is not yet printed but it is for sale. If you buy it before September 15, the price is $70, which includes tax and shipping. Actually, the price via Paypal is $69.99 because no matter how I manipulate the numbers, I cannot get it to be $70 even! Or, I could if I changed the shipping to $5.01. . . .
Nah. I’m tired of messing with the computer stuff. I think my Adobe InDesign experiences will have me feeling jumpy about computers for quite awhile yet.
So, if you’d like to pre-order your copy, you may do so here using this Paypal button:
While in Wilsonia, a cabin owner asked me if I could fix or change things on the original cabin drawings. I said a very confident and certain, “It depends”.
It depends on what it is, where it happens in the drawing, and if the drawing has been spray fixed so that it won’t erase or smear.
She told me I made a mistake on her cabin.
Really? I work from photos, so I think she meant that I didn’t portray her cabin as she sees it. I drew it as it appeared in the photos, and other than making me look fatter and more wrinkled than I already am, we know that cameras don’t lie.
See the white thing? It is an out-of-place shutter. It isn’t covering a window, because you can’t see a window from this angle. It is just there. It was in the photo and it is in the drawing. Did I make a mistake??
You can see a bit of a window on that back section of cabin in this photo without any visible shutters. It doesn’t show in the angle I drew for The Cabins of Wilsonia, an upcoming book of drawings of Wilsonia Cabins. (Thank you, Captain Obvious.)
I can draw out that white shutter and I will!
What has been sent? The Cabins of Wilsonia has been sent to the printer! A big fat check has been sent too. (They don’t work for free, unlike some artist I could name here. . .)
The cover is designed in my head, but no matter how skilled the printing company is, it cannot see into my head. Dexter, Michigan is kind of far from Three Rivers, California, not that physical presence would make my head more transparent.
So, cover design is next. If it ain’t one thing, it’s anuthuh.
I also need to design a post card to mail out so that everyone has a chance to buy the book at the pre-sale price. That way I will be able to pay the ransom to get the books, The Cabins of Wilsonia shipped to me.
Mid to late September, expect your copy of The Cabins of Wilsonia, if you pre-ordered one.
If not, you may order one here and now:
Special pre-order price has expired.
The Fourth of July is a busy busy time in Wilsonia. When my husband (AKA Trail Guy) and I arrived, our host had posted a schedule of events in our cabin.
We headed over to Grant Grove for the annual parade. It is a parade with few entries, but all are patriotic and enthusiastic.
This is possibly the most impressive horse I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Ever.
Motorized vehicles were more common than horses. They hold more waving people than a horse does.
Then, I went to work and pre-sold some books, The Cabins of Wilsonia. Please excuse me for being redundant here – Google likes to see what a blog is about within the blog because it helps them find whatever people are seeking, and I hope people find this blog if they are seeking the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia. (STOP IT!)
Trail Guy and I took a walk around Grant Grove Village. He found his favorite flower, a leopard lily (AKA Tiger Lily). If you want to know more about Trail Guy and wildflowers, the info is in my other blog. It will open in a new tab so you don’t lose this window of The Cabins of Wilsonia. (STOP IT!!)
I photographed a cabin to draw again. 268 drawings – you’d think there’d be nothing left to draw of the cabins of Wilsonia (not the title of the book here – will Google notice?) However, you’d be mistaken. This will be a commissioned drawing – photos have been ordered, and I’ll provide sketches too so that this very gracious cabin owner is thrilled with her original pencil drawing of her cabin of Wilsonia (I SAID STOP IT!)
It wasn’t all work. We joined our dear friends from Wilsonia on a walk. It wasn’t really a hike because we took no water, snacks or daypacks. Trail Guy is explaining things about the area. He knows a lot and is great to have on the trail.
The Manzanita/Azalea Trail has a great view. The cabins of Wilsonia are down there in those trees. (Would you please just STOP IT?)
Okay, I’ll stop it now. 😎
Until September 15, 2014, the total price of the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia will be $70, including tax and shipping.
On September 16, 2014, the price will become $86, including tax and shipping.
If I were you, I’d order before September 15, 2014, because $16 is Sixteen Dollars, which I consider measurable money.
But, it’s up to you.
There are two ways to order:
1. Use this button and pay with Paypal.
The offer ended 9/15/14.
2. Mail a check made out for $86 to CABINART to my P.O. Box in Three Rivers, which I will send you if you email me using the Contact Button/Tab/Word/Menu Item/Whatever it is called above. That is if my email is fixed. I waited 80 minutes for AT&T to answer and finally decided their phone system is broken. Okay, never mind about using the Contact Button – P.O. Box 311, zip is 93271.
I wrote it all in that convoluted manner because there is something wrong with my email and now I am paranoid. So, real people with working brains can get my address out of that paragraph above, but whatever is causing my email to break won’t be able to.
Does it feel as if we are having a conversation using a shoe instead of a phone??
Life was simpler before the internet came along. Cabin life wasn’t that much different from real life. Cabin life is a simpler life, and that’s part of the story portrayed in The Cabins of Wilsonia.
Did you think from that title that I am waiting for the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia to be printed?
I’m waiting for my email to get fixed so I can send it. I’m waiting for the sales rep from the printer to call me back so I can cement a few details. I’m waiting for someone at AT&T to actually answer my call. “All customer representatives are busy taking other calls. Please hold, and your call will be answered in the order it was received.” Been hearing this over some very irritating cheesey music for 29 minutes now.
Waiting.
Maybe I should proofread the file once more.
Waiting.
AT&T has cost me so much time and money in the past 3 weeks. Hours on the phone with Paypal, hours on the phone with AT&T, hours on the phone with Apple, hours on the phone with AT&T again.
Waiting.
When I began this project, I didn’t picture this sort of scene at the end of the project. Maybe I should go make a batch of yogurt or knit a bit on a sweater.
Waiting for someone to pick up the phone for 31 minutes now. I really really need my email to work.
Waiting.
Last week I spent hours deleting over 60,000 old emails. They used to be on the AT&T email site, but AT&T made “improvements”, which they didn’t bother to tell their customers about. Email quit working, and after a couple of hours on the phone with some very nice person with a very useless script in India, I was told I could pay for more “help”.
Never mind. I called Apple. I’d rather pay them than pay AT&T. That was about 3 phone calls, each one well over an hour. It took 4 days for all the emails to actually load so I could then spend days deleting them.
Thanks, AT&T.
Waiting 36 minutes now.
I sure hope the email at the printing company isn’t AT&T.
Waiting.
P.S. Update on Waiting: I held on AT&T for 80 minutes before finally giving up. Mechanical Man Voice kept reassuring me that my call would be answered in the order it was received. I think he is a liar. I called back and got someone, and it took 99 minutes of messing around before she admitted that I needed to call Apple again. Apple took about 45 minutes the next day, and I wasn’t on hold at all because I emailed my new best friend there who called me within minutes. He fixed another problem that AT&T caused. I love Apple. Bet you can guess how I feel about AT&T.
“No More Proofreading!” is the same sort of command as “No more caffeine for you, Young Man!”
My husband Michael, AKA Trail Guy, has developed quite a fine eye for design and for typos. It may be his innate perfectionism, but I believe that almost 29 years of living with a Typo Psycho has had its influence on him.
He read through the whole book The Cabins of Wilsonia and found a messed up sentence, an ever so slightly sloped drawing and 4 chapter headings that needed tighter spacing.
There couldn’t possibly be anything else to correct!
So, once again, I converted the entire InDesign file to a PDF and am now awaiting a return phone call from the printer, Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan to verify my paper choices.
Then, I’ll send the book off and there will be NO MORE PROOFREADING!
The Cabins of Wilsonia will be printed as is.
I mean it!