It has been another week of firsts for the birth of Week Minded. According to Epiphany Creative Services, I am officially an author. More on that in a second.
This past week, I established my book publishing company DBA as BranchWater Press with all the official tax filings and state registrations. We registered the book with Ingramspark, the company who will actually print the book. I have an ISBN, a unique 13-digit code that identifies a book, acting like a fingerprint for publishers, retailers, libraries, and readers to track, order, and manage books. The ISBN also stablished a barcode and a list price for the paperback, which Stephanie at Epiphany says makes me an official “author.” And I signed all the contracts that make the book available on Amazon, Walmart, etc., and with a worldwide distribution.
We worked on the cover a bit more. I am somewhat color blind, so the good folks at Epiphany are going to work on the colors for me, which right now are a medium blue and brown with white letters. We are collapsing the bylines for the Foreword and Afterword authors to one line each and putting them at the bottom of the cover. We are making the third line of the title smaller in type, “One Week, One Story, One Measure at a Time.” And the only illustration on the cover at this time is a chalkboard with the words, “Lessons Learned” lettered on the chalkboard. It sits just under the title. We have removed the cornet horn from the cover and will use elsewhere inside the book. The horn metaphor is not understood well enough to have it carry meaning on the front cover. “One Measure” is the only reference to music on the cover and it is subtle.
There are more than 100 references to music in the book in the 230 or so pages. Statistically, if you open the book up to any two visible pages, there is a music reference there almost every time. Music is a theme in the book and it is uncanny how many times music has appeared in our family’s lives as a game-changer, especially for my sons, Keaton and Josh, and my dad.
The first round of edits is back in the hands of Deb, our award-winning editor. Each successive round should be quicker as the changes should get more subtle. Stephanie identified me as rarely satisfied with my literary work and that I tend to fiddle. She warned me that fiddling will delay the edit process. I have put my fiddler on the roof for now so we can press on. Don’t let great get in the way of good!
I received a great endorsement from Dr. Juliet Breeze, CEO of the huge Next Level Urgent Care. She was so kind to review the book for me. I also received a kind testimonial from my friend and fellow leadership nerd, Liz Townsend, senior partner at Allen Austin Consulting. So many women with super-powers are onboard with this work!
This is Christmas week. I have all kinds of kids, grandkids, friends, and fun beginning in just a few hours. In the book I describe the potiential shock of Dr. Kate marrying into this band of crazies with this description – which still holds true:
Christmas consists of rented bus pub crawls, Lotteria, which we call Mexican Bingo, a late night with champagne (“Shamps” as known at Maison Branche du Lac), eggnog (lactose-free for Keaton), and “Christmas Vacation” in the Theater Room, then a huge breakfast cooked outside on the outdoor kitchen griddle and an all-day marathon of each person opening one present at a time. (Dr. Kate) going from an only child and humming “Silent Night” in front of a crackling fire to a backslapping, yuletide, icicle-slinging, nog-slurping, rocking around the Christmas tree, Cousin Eddy “Shitter’s full,” rowdy hangover-riddled holiday is a bit of a culture shift. She survived just fine.
Happy Holidays!
