Tag: publishing

Free to Bloom at Wanee

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Terry & Jill RVing at Wanee
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Jill & Cindi

I desperately need to burst outside; leave the home cave, after too many hours inside from taking on the worries of the world, including publishing my book Free to Bloom. I walk out into my yard and start picking fruit. Under an umbrella of mulberries pricked through with sunlight, I pick buckets of sweet luscious berries each facet reflecting a thousand purple insect eyes, the last of the meyer lemons, as big as oranges, one lone papaya from my former tree recently fenced in by the evil neighbors.

I begin to see a different world as my edges smooth allowing the colors, scents, music, smiles and perspective in with the fresh air. Frustration is tempered with fulfillment:

  • Verizon has disconnected my phone and internet, but can’t turn it back on. On April Fool’s Day my luck reverses and they work.
  • I’m unable to upload my bookcover on Amazon, but successfully upload the book.
  • My computer guru son isn’t able to complete my website, but fixes and delivers his RV to us in time for the Wanee Festival, an old hippie extravaganza of musicians running the gamut from headliner the Allman Brothers to Taj Mahal.
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Terry & Vilma way down upon the Suwanee
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Wanee Music Festival

 

And Wanee Fest becomes my perfect tension tamer. 30,000 people mill about under 80 acres of trees on the Suwanee River. In our first RV experience, Terry, Vilma, Cindi and I eventually find our way to the campground and set up. We sit under pines and oaks, music on all sides, skin cool after a morning dip in the river. We’re in an isolated world of friendly smiles, great music, perfect weather, cool breezes with nothing to do but dance, eat, sing, play, laugh, and forget the cares of the outside world.

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I relax, open up and another gift appears – my ebook Free to Bloom is published on Amazon. Thank you everyone, especially my son Ray, for helping me in so many ways to accomplish this feat.

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Robert Plant and Patty Griffin

Free to Bloom – An Adventure in Publishing

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From bud to bloom to fruition

After a long hiatus finishing my first book, Free To Bloom, a series of inter-connected short stories, I return to announce its imminent publishing. (The website is named, but not finished.) It’s a work of fiction, but it all started with real people, places and events that have been molded by memory, changed by time and altered by necessity, like tearing a memoir into confetti then throwing it into the air to let it settle into a totally new pattern. It’s a story of taking risks in life, finding independence, seeking adventure, experiencing sorrow and joy, all mixed up with intimate personal observations. In short, it’s me.

Nope, it’s still not out, but after the writing comes all the nuts and bolts of publishing: public relations, internet exposure, ebook, placement on Amazon, getting reviews, etc… So many books and blogs concern the actual process of creating and writing a book, which one does mostly alone. I thought it might be helpful for others to describe and explain the next steps, especially when there’s no big publishing house doing everything for you, and no advance to help you through quickly accumulating costs.

I do have an editor, Patricka Vaughn and her small publishing house, A Cappela Publishing, Inc. directing me through the process and without her prodding and inspiration Free to Bloom, the book I’ve been thinking about writing through years and years of dabbling with short stories, newsletters, magazine articles, would never have been  ‘free to bloom’, or even more appropriately, free to be born. The birthing of a child is hard enough, but then the real work begins, raising that child to maturity. So keep in touch and I’ll fill you in on all the agony and ecstasy in getting my book to print and ultimately to the readers – hopefully thousands of them.