Who knew UPS had a stealth division? Last Wednesday, I ordered proofs for my quirky travel guide Unexpected Texas and I have been patiently awaiting their arrival ever since. Until yesterday, that is, when I decided to look up the tracking info. That’s when all the impatience began! You see, much to my delight, the package was marked “out for delivery.” Squeee! From that point on, my ears became fine-tuned. Who knew I was so intimately acquainted with the specific sounds UPS vans make? They came down our street twice yesterday, and both times they delivered things to my neighbors.…
Tag: ROW80
Book Cover Reveal OK… Here is *basically* what the front and back covers of my paperback will look like. I’ve made a few changes, actually, since these graphics were made, but I am posting them anyway so you can get a general idea of what the look and feel will be for my upcoming quirky travel book: Unexpected Texas. Self-Publishing Update I’ve been cranking away, fussing with book formatting all week. Who knew that the hardest part of all would be getting page numbers set up properly in MS Word? I even lost sleep over the matter! But… I’ll save…
#Row80 Check-in I’m just gonna dive right into my check-in this week. Here’s how it’s going with my writing and blogging goals: Finish my quirky Texas travel book by January 31, 2014: OK. I got the draft done and I sent it to my editor yesterday. As the pages churned out of the printer, I caught several errors right away. Isn’t it funny how much easier it is to spot typos in print than on screen? Does that happen to you, too? Full disclosure: my editor is my dad. Lucky for me, that was his profession before he retired. Like…
#Row80 Check-in Like much of the south, it’s chilly here in Texas. I’m currently wearing fingerless gloves and a scarf as I type. Can’t complain, though, because there’s food in the frig, my espresso machine works fine, and – best of all – I’m making great progress on Unexpected Texas, my quirky travel guide with tips for visiting offbeat and overlooked places in reach of Dallas and Fort Worth. Speaking of writing, here’s my weekly #Row80 check-in: Finish my quirky Texas travel book by January 31, 2014: The book is coming along, but it’s not quite done. I am really…
Sitting is good. No, wait! It’s bad! I know it’s obvious, but here you go: Writers write. It’s that simple. If you want to call yourself a writer, you had better spend a bit of your time putting words onto the page. As Mary Heaton Vorse summed it up, “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” But herein lies the rub. More and more studies are coming out which say that sitting for long periods of time is bad for you, really, really bad for you. If you don’t…
Self Publishing Progress Report My Row80 writing goals are to self-publish my quirky Texas travel guide in March of this year, and to report on my progress each Wednesday, so here you go: The first step towards self-publishing is to simply get my manuscript written. In order to achieve this, over the past several months I’ve spent two hours each night, as well as twelve hours each weekend researching and writing the book. My original plan was to have a finished manuscript by mid-January and for a while I thought I was on schedule… Well, here we are at January…