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Release date: “Jasper, Amazon Parrot: A Rainforest Adventure”

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I have come up with a release date for my book, “Jasper, Amazon Parrot: A Rainforest Adventure”. The magical day is September 7th of this year. Unless of course something monstrous occurs.  Just typing that sentence about the date and reading it out loud makes me all warm inside. I plan on buying every version of the book from ebook, to soft copy to hard copy. I want it all!

This has been a long journey and I’m now seeing the fruits of my labor of time, energy and endless meetings with fellow writers whether that be online or in real life.

I look at my bird Jasper and I tell him all the time, “Jasper you are going to be big, I tell ya big. Everyone will be talking about you.” What he normally does is bend his head so I can pat him. The reward for giving me the material for the book. So long I give him plenty of shelled almonds he and I are good.

Now if I can only figure out how to get him to sign the book, then that be perfect.

Author, My characters, Writing

Author: A Solitary Life

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The life of a writer is solitary for the most part. Even if you have an office it serves one. You don’t get to have lunch with the office crew. You don’t get Christmas parties or birthday cupcakes. It is just you and your chosen method of writing whether that be by pen and paper or computer.

The social aspect that comes with working in a job with fellow coworkers can’t be reproduced in your office at home. If I had my way, all the writers I know would live in a 25 mile radius of me. They could come visit and write without us saying a single word to each other. It wouldn’t be required. Just the sheer presence of someone else would be worth it. The distractions are there. Within my reach is my fridge, TV, the internet and a host of other things that can preoccupy my mind as I work on any present WIP. One has to stay focus and prioritize when you work in an office of one. Things that might not get in my way if I had regular hours and an office space outside the home.

The solitude can be hard when humans are deemed social creatures. It does not always hit me as I tend to stay busy so my mind does not have time to think. Though there are those days, few thankfully, that I sit back in my chair and wish my office had a larger staff. Someone I could go talk to for thoughts, ideas and just general chit-chat.

Thankfully my characters draw me in as they beg for me to come play with them. How they want me to come and explore what is on the next page. They are always there for me during the good and bad times. I guess in their own right they are my coworkers sitting right there next to me waiting to talk.

Book Covers, Illustration, Jasper Amazon Parrot

My Book and Images

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This past Friday, the illustrator sent me four images for my book Jasper, Amazon Parrot: A Rainforest Adventure. They were primarily to see if she was on the right track in conveying the image I wanted for him. Opening up the email I was blown away. I knew immediately which one was my favorite. Granted I am going to ask her to make some changes here and there but she is in the direction I had anticipated. Like most anything I asked for people’s advice on which one they liked and didn’t like and why. Just because I have final say on the covers doesn’t mean I know what I am doing here.

So a variety of people looked at them. I had other writers, my family, people at the store where I was making copies of the images to kids who had read the actual book. What I was hearing was that I seemed to be the only one who liked the one image that had stood out to me.

Crap.

This is an important decision, the book cover for your book. It has to be amazing for people to even want to pick up just to read the back cover. If it is not appealing it will gather dust on the shelves. I must have emailed my poor editor at least 20 times, if not more, as we went over each one carefully.

Among the various suggestions a light bulb finally lit over my head. The reason people were not liking the image I liked was due to positioning of Jasper. They loved the side profile he had in the other three images. So I tried this out. I started asking people if image 1 would work if it was a side profile. People liked, they really liked that idea.

I mailed Kim, the illustrator, and asked her if she could make some slight changes to two of the images to see which one really pop. She is awesome and is so willing to work with me in creating something that even Jasper would be proud off. I don’t have the image here for it is going to be work on but when it is ready I will release it. This was a little stressful these last few days as I tried to figure out what worked. We shouldn’t always ignore our gut feelings, it may know something that we don’t already know. Even if that means it has to be tweaked a little bit.