Category: Blog

The Accidental Cover

Huh. I appear to have accidentally made myself a book cover.

A wall mirror hangs on flowery wallpaper. A silhouette of a muscular man leaning in an uncertain pose is cut out of the fog on the mirror. In the silhouette is a mountain and some rocky buildings and some sky.

Honest, I was trying to get over my extreme tendency to do everything myself. I really and truly intended to hire a professional for this. I still do. But I was playing around with some concept art for the cover and it kept being almost right, so I kept tweaking it, and before you know it… three days of no writing and bam, a book cover. The control freak in me says, “YES! ALL THE EDITING POWER IS MINE!!!!” The part of me that is attempting to learn that getting help from other people frequently makes for a better product is retrenching at editors. Negotiations continue.

Credit to Gianella Castro, Anne Nygard, and Vinicius Amano on Unsplash for the images used.

EEM

Fun with Author Photos!

Getting official author photos done is also known as… time to haul out my favorite dress I ever sewed! This is one of the things I miss about teaching. Chaperoning prom is one of the only opportunities for adults to wear super fancy dresses. I had a blast getting these done.

EEM

Childbirth and the christmas story

Picture of the Virgin Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus in the manger

As a child, I gave little thought to Mary’s birth experience in the Christmas story that I heard. She shows up on the donkey, beds down in the manger for the night, pops out the Savior, and shortly thereafter kneels in a neat and tidy manger scene wearing white without a hair out of place.

It was not until I gave birth to my own child that I came to appreciate the audacity that this telling of the Christmas story displays. In a holiday where childbirth is literally the main event, the actual labor and delivery is erased. After going through one of the better childbirth experiences myself – thirty-two hours of no sleep, waiting impatiently until the contractions finally became unspeakably painful so I could go to the hospital for actual labor, six hours of excruciating physical exertion, the usual amount of tearing and stitching, and the standard several weeks of postpartum bleeding – I had a few questions about the details of this story. 

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EEM

First draft of through the mirror done!

For both the first and probably the last time in my life, I finished a task ahead of when I expected to! And not just a little bit early, but almost a month and a half early! With any luck my original estimate of early 2020 for the release will continue to be on target. At least until the inevitable unforeseen delays catch up.

EEM

“he” and children’s literature

Cover of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

It’s always a bit of a shock to realize that social problems I think I’ve overcome still have their hooks in deep. In my case, this realization came as I was at my in-laws’ house watching my mother-in-law teach my two-year-old son about pronouns. Pronouns are inherently tricky. Simply sorting out when to use “I” versus “you” is a monumental cognitive task, and the inevitable errors in the process are normally sources of amusement and amazement for me. This day’s pronoun errors – less so.

Continue reading ““he” and children’s literature” →

EEM