Tag Archives: The Cabins of Wilsonia

Just a LIttle Bit More

I spent a weekend in Wilsonia, pre-selling the book, selling the original drawings, showing the place to my husband, getting reacquainted with cabin folks, and explaining the project and answering questions. (Usually I’m the one asking the questions, so this was a fun switcharoo.)

Chuck and Penny were the successful bidders on this original pencil drawing (with color in the foxgloves) at the annual Wilsonia silent auction.

One of the main questions was, “When will the book be ready?”

It will be ready mid to late September. The printer/binder has said to expect it to take 6 weeks, so I figure it will be 8.

Meanwhile, I wanted to proof yet again.

This is what I found to fix:

1. A fern needed to be moved. Really! It is important to have your ferns properly placed.

2. There were 2 places with an extra space between words.

3. Two sentences got readjusted to look more balanced.

4. I added the word “Inc.” to the printer’s name on the copyright page.

Honestly, I want this book to be PERFECT. It might not be possible, but I will give it my best shot. Next, my husband will proof it for me. After 29 years of marriage, he has caught the Typo-Psycho disease from me.

Meanwhile, the pre-sale price of $70, including sales tax and shipping is good through the months of July and August. If you click the button below, it will take you to Paypal where you can choose your quantity. If you don’t use Paypal, you can click on the Contact button above and I’ll send you my mailing address so you can buy your book with a check.

Pre-order Your Book

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.

Are you ready? I sure am!

How Many Ways Are There To Proofread?

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?

The Rest of the Computer Challenge Story

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.)

Book Report on Small Stuff

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!

Original Pencil Cabin Drawings Available

As I began selling the original drawings for the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia, I knew that the cabin owners should have first dibs on the drawings of their own cabins.

Since I am the one who chose which views and which cabins, there was a risk that some folks would not like my choices.

This means LUCKY YOU! These drawings are now available to anyone who wants to buy them. The link to my website with a shopping cart and Paypal is this.

The drawings vary in size from 6×7″ up to 7×10″ and range in price from $100-$150.

I feel pretty sure that there will be more. . . stay tuned!

It Is What It Is.

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.

What? More Drawings?

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.

Will I ever be finished with this book??

Not quitting.

Ever feel like just quitting on being a grown-up? Maybe on quitting all technology?

I finally ordered Adobe Photoshop Elements. Got version 10, because I don’t need the latest version to do two or three “simple” things.

It came. I looked at the box for about a week.

Okay, deep breath. What could be so dadgummed hard about installing it? What’s to fear? i’ve “conquered” Adobe Indesign; this is a baby program, so “they” say. It is Photoshop for “hobbyists”, said with a sneer.

Open the box. Read the little words. See that for Mac, only the 3rd disk is required. Insert disk. Scan the miles of ALL CAPS TYPE THAT IS SHOUTING TO BE READ AND AGREED TO. Agree.

A serial number?? What serial number??

Look over the box and the disks. No serial number. Or maybe it is that one. . . or this one?

Go to the internet. Ask the know-it-all Mr. Google how to find a serial number on this thing. Find lots of sites. Find lots of answers. Find a simple answer that says to look on the plastic case.

Look on the plastic case – AHA! Enter the serial number.

Adobe User Name? Sign in? Say what?? Okay, I must have done this to be able to use InDesign. Try one eddress with my normal password formula. No luck. Try another eddress with my normal password formula. No luck.

Click on “Forget Password?”

Go to Adobe website. Type in eddress (and hope it is the one I used for InDesign). Get a message that an email is coming.

Wait for email. Get email. Set new password.

Learn that my password has too many characters. Redo the “Forget Password”? Wait for another email.

Wish I could quit.

Nope. Not quitting.

THERE WILL BE A BOOK CALLED THE CABINS OF WILSONIA!

I’m sorry for shouting. This is enough to make a preacher cuss. Self-publishing wouldn’t be hard if it didn’t include all this techie junk.

Beginning to Finish, Remotely

Have you been wondering if I gave up on the book, The Cabins of Wilsonia?

Nope. I’ve been painting a mural, and also did a couple of final little decorative pencil drawings for the book.

Meanwhile, my computery friend north of Seattle has been refining my book design. The idea was to work together remotely. Turns out “remote” is the operative word here. I live in too remote of a place to have decent internet speed, sometimes cannot get my email, could not even buy a particular back-up service for my computer because of the slowness and finally realized chances that we can do this remotely are quite, well, um, remote!

So, I’ll jet off to Seattle and we’ll knock this thing out together.

What is “this thing”? We will be finalizing the computer design. This means I am no longer accepting quotes.

We are making progress here, Folks!!