The Cabins of Wilsonia book is now available for a special time-limited pre-publication price.
I sold them in Wilsonia over the 4th of July weekend, and now you can order yours here.
The easiest way I know to do this is to use a Paypal Add to Cart button. It will let you choose your quantity on the Paypal page. If you don’t use Paypal, you may use the contact tab at the top of this page and send me an email. I’ll reply to let you know where you can mail a check and how much it will be. Checks still work.
After the books arrive, I will ship them to you.
If you buy the book now, it will come to $70 with tax and shipping. If you wait, it will be $86 including tax and shipping. When? More will be revealed in the fullness of time.
There are more ways to proofread a book than most of us can imagine. I want The Cabins of Wilsonia to be the most error free book around. I know it isn’t possible for it to be perfect, but I am giving it every possible check that I can think of.
Pencil drawing of outhouse on Cedar Lane without any retouching in Red/Green/Blue, AKA RGB
Two different friends read through the book for typographical errors. There were a few words that were omitted, a misplaced quotation mark or two, some comma problems, and a weird typeface problem.
This has no retouching but is converted to grayscale.
Good to go, yes?
No.
After the conversion problem, I decided to keep proofreading. Look at all the checks I thought of to do:
1. Quotation marks – all consistently with the period first and then the quotes? Nope, caught a few of those.
2. Peoples’ names – 3 different peoples’ names had a dash preceding the name. Why? Who knows? Now no name has a dash.
3. Has every single drawing been converted to Grayscale? Nope, one was still RGB, which stands for Red Green Blue.
4. Were the edges of every single drawing as clean as they could be? They were after I redid 12 of them!
5. Are all the files in the TIF format rather than JPEG? Of course! I’m not THAT careless!
Pencil drawing of outhouse, converted to grayscale, and all the imperfections have been removed.
Before I send the book to the printer, I will consider all the other ways to proofread. Who knew there are this many options?
I think I may have been lying on the floor by the end of yesterday’s posting.
Here is what happened next:
Mr. Funny Name sent me more instructions for Photoshop Elements, including a little image of a tool that he thought might return things to normal.
His little image was too small to see so I clicked on it to enlarge it. When it got big enough to see, I saw it had a microscopic switch for “Default Colors”. I clicked on that in my Photoshop Elements and voila! Back to normal!
So, Mr. Funny Name didn’t provide the answer, but he inadvertently gave me a tool to discover the answer. JustAnswerDotCom says they don’t charge if you aren’t satisfied, but they only say that at the beginning. Afterward, there is no obvious way to not pay. They didn’t provide an answer but accidentally showed me the way to figure it out myself. I paid.
Not a fan of Adobe products, nope not me. . . not at all. They do the job, but figuring out how to make them do the job is tricky business. This is the third Great-Big-Obstacle-To-Which-No-One-and-No-Website-Gives-An-Answer that I’ve encountered with learning to use this program, which is supposed to be the simple version.
If I weren’t so exhausted from the battle, I might be laughing.
The good news is this: all the weirdo-wackadoodle drawings have been repaired and The Cabins of Wilsonia is closer to being ready to go to the printer and I am ready to go to the cabin. (That would be in Mineral King, Land of No Electricity or Computers or Adobe anything, so there.)
I converted the whole book, all 176 pages of The Cabins of Wilsonia to a PDF following the printer’s instructions. This is what they require for printing, and they recommend that the client (me) look at this PDF before sending it to them. I did, and about 20 of the drawings looked like sludge. WHAT???
Does this look like a pencil drawing to you?? It looks like a film negative (remember those?) to me.
I made a list of the wrecked drawings and began reworking them in Photoshop Elements. Got about 1/2 done, and my eraser tool went wacko. I don’t know what I clicked on accidentally. The so called “Help” wasn’t helpful.
I called my friend in Seattle who has been my main helper but apparently her smart phone had gotten separated from her, a previously unknown condition; she DIDN’T ANSWER!!
I searched all over the internet, found a place called JustAnswer.com and used my Paypal account to spend $36 to get an answer; this was pure desperation!
I could have gone out to the studio to work on another project, but instead thought about curling up in the fetal position under my dining table, holding my cat and putting my thumb in my mouth. Meanwhile, I reconverted repaired drawings to PDF and saw that what I fixed prior to the eraser tool’s betrayal turned out well. This was encouraging enough that I was able to stay upright and keep working. Breathe, breathe, it is o k a y.
The only urgency was my self-imposed COME ON ALREADY!! attitude as I waited for Mr. Funny Name, the “expert”. I don’t need the books until November. October or September are fine too, but there is no urgency. (This was my self-talk to keep from losing it.)
So what happened? Guess you’ll have to tune in tomorrow. . .
There is one last drawing that needed scanning. I drew the cabin several years before I decided to make the book The Cabins of Wilsonia. The photo taken with my old digital camera just isn’t good enough for the book!
I called the customers/friends/cabin owners (all those roles and titles have blurred) to ask if I can borrow back the drawing. The wife and I discussed a trip to Clovis or a trip to Wilsonia. The drive to Wilsonia is prettier, and it is actually closer, so that’s how we did this.
It meant leaving Three Rivers at 9:30 and just blasting up and back quickly (Driving 245 down fast was FUN!!) because I needed to get to Exeter to work on the mural on Rocky Hill Antiques. After retrieving the drawing, I did a short drive around Wilsonia.
Look! The road signs used to look like this:
Now they look like this. AND I saw 2 roads that are NOT in the book – Kearsarge and Muir. it’s okay – there are no cabins on them. Probably used to be. . . sigh.
And this charming, mysterious, always boarded up, and never occupied cabin now looks like this:
Well! Who knew that the book would be outdated before it even goes to press??
5. What to do with the extra pages that will be necessary now that I’ve written the Acknowledgments and it ran to two pages and now I need to add seven more so there are multiples of eight (not sixteen, thank goodness) but really only six because I forgot about the About page. Phew. Breathe, chicky-babe, breathe!
I’m sure there will be more decisions ahead. Every time I think I’m almost there, the location of “there” changes! That is the world of self-publishing, and I’m THRILLED that I get to make the decisions instead of a publisher.
Doesn’t this deer look a little baffled? I can relate.
Did you know that it is proper to spell “acknowledgments” with an “e”? “Acknowledgments” or “acknowledgements”: either one works.
I spent an afternoon reading acknowledgment pages in different books and saw that not a single one used an “e”. I guess I won’t either.
By reading all those pages, I learned what not to say.
“I wish to thank” – really? How about just thanking, rather than wishing to do so.
“My most sincere gratitude goes to. . .” Really? Who does your least sincere gratitude go to?
“So-and-so must be thanked. . .” This is an obligation to you?
“I must mention. . .” Is someone forcing you?
The worst thing I heard about an acknowledgment page was from The Book Designer. He told me that some people list all sorts of big names that didn’t actually participate so that those people will want to buy their books!
Now that I know what not to do, maybe I’d better get on with what needs to be done. Who knew that this would be a difficult part of building a book? And, I’d better stop asking people for help, or I’ll never finish that page.
Getting closer every week. . . closer to what? Getting the book, The Cabins of Wilsonia, to the printer, that’s what!
Shooting stars are small, but in great numbers they make an impact, just like all the tasks left to do before the book goes to the printer.
What’s left?
1. Figure out how to align the page numbers perfectly so when you flip through the book, they don’t jump.
2. Redo the page numbers, which are off because I added 4 more pages in order to have multiples of 16.
3. Make sure the page numbers match the table of contents.
4. Write the acknowledgements page (and stop asking people to help because the page will need to be revised every time someone new helps!)
5. Decide if I want a Library of Congress Card Catalog Number.
6. Figure out how to convert the whole thing to the format required by the printer.
7. Count my pennies to see if I have enough to start the printing process.
8. Oh yeah – choose the paper for the pages. They don’t have my first choice, so I will have to be sure that I don’t get careless and accidentally choose my third choice instead of my second.
Small stuff, except for that page number repair business.
See how all those small shooting stars make an impact when assembled in a meadow. Very soon all my small drawings will be assembled in a cover!
The process of building a book on the cabins of Wilsonia began in the summer of 2011. It seemed too big, too many tasks to break down, too many decisions, too many cabins.
I started by getting to know the layout of Wilsonia and becoming familiar with one area at a time, taking photos at different times of day. I spent lots of time walking around and studying the details, reviewing the lanes, taking notes along with the pictures.
It was quickly apparent that it would be impossible to make a manageable book if every cabin was included in its entirety. It was impossible to even include a detail from every cabin.
Decisions had to be made: typical and atypical had to be chosen.
Sometimes I chose a view because the light was so beautiful. Sometimes it was because there were interesting roof angles. Sometimes a place looked so charming, so inviting, so irresistible that I photographed it over and over, time and time again.
Sometimes the light wouldn’t cooperate: the shadows were too strong or the light was too flat. Sometimes I couldn’t find a good angle or a pleasing detail, no matter how many times I returned. Sometimes the cedar trees obstructed the view and there was no way to capture a place. Sometimes a cabin was occupied, with too much porkadelia, and I didn’t want to intrude. Sometimes a cabin looked too much like another, and I don’t want the book to be repetitious, so I made a decision. Sometimes there were barking dogs, and I respected their warnings.
The end result is that not every cabin will be in the book. Every lane, every road, every street will be represented. Every style of cabin will be represented. Most of the folks who talked to me about cabin life and gave permission to be quoted will find their words in the book. I said “most”. . . please don’t misread that last sentence.
This book is my doing – my idea, my design, my work, my risk. It is both for me, because there is nothing as satisfying as a project completed well, and it is for you, because you have a treasure of a cabin community that should be preserved and celebrated.
It is my hope that most people will be pleased, excited, and proud. It is inevitable that a few people will be disappointed and maybe even angry. So be it. Please forgive me for the use of an irritating cliche, but here goes: it is what it is.
The design is complete (in spite of having to do 5 more drawings) and The Cabins of Wilsonia will be published. I hope you and your family and friends and guests will enjoy it for a very long time.
Yeppers. I have to draw five more pictures for the upcoming book, The Cabins of Wilsonia.
But WHY??
When books are printed, they need to have their total number of pages divisible by 16. (That means 8 pieces of paper, in case you were getting confused.)
My book had 164 pages, 4 short. I thought it was no big deal – just put a little page here and another one there.
Wrong.
The design is locked up with chapter headings designed just so. One added page, and everything shifts from the one side to the other, and it looks wrong there, because it was very very carefully designed to fit the side it is on.
I did a tally of cabins per street from looking at a map and then counted the numbers of pages per street. Alta didn’t have quite enough pages for the number of cabins, so I am adding two more drawings and rearranging the others to fill. President’s Lane also didn’t have enough pages for the number of cabins, so I have three more to draw for that chapter.
“Unknown Dog on Porch”, sold
Good, bad, or indifferent, it is now necessary to put down the computer and pick up my pencils.
