Busy Week and Another School Visit

I've had a very busy week. There were 13 here for Thanksgiving. Eleven were family and we invited two friends. My sister came the night before to help me with preparations. Everything went well, but it took its toll on my back and legs.
As soon as I recovered from Thanksgiving, I started baking cookies for refreshments for Photo Club on Thursday. There will probably be 75-80 people there and, of course, no one eats just one cookie! I've made seven kinds so far and have two to go. I started doing refreshments for the Christmas meeting when we had about 30 members, and after about fifteen years, I'm still doing it.
Photo Club is Thursday night and on Friday I have to leave about 5:30 AM to drive to Columbus, Ohio, where I'm doing six presentations for the Horizon Science Academy, which is a small middle school. I'll be talking to each grade separately in the morning about writing and publishing a book. In the afternoon, I'll do a program on Pioneer Life for the sixth grade, adapt it for a small group of seventh graders, including an activity, then speak to the eighth graders about some of the Colonial heroes I've written about. The afternoon programs are all new, so I hope they go well. I've made PowerPoint programs to go with them. It should be more interesting than talking on the same topic all day.
When I leave the school, I'll go on to my sister's house, near Akron. We'll spend the next few days doing our Christmas shopping, then she'll come home with me on Wednesday. We'll stop in Dayton for the Photo Club Board Meeting. Her great-grandson, Carson, will be five on Sunday, Dec. 13, so she'll come for the party. On Monday I'll probably take her partway home to meet her husband.
Then I'll get busy with the Christmas tree, decorations, etc.
Oh, as an afterthought, I enjoyed the Buckeye Book Fair in Wooster and sold 30 copies of my book, Heading West: Life with the Pioneers.

Bits and Pieces about my Writing

I've been working on the packets to send out to elementary schools. I wanted to get the website up before I sent them out, but that doesn't look like it will happen any time soon. I'm having no luck trying to put one together. I think I'm going to have to get help. More on that later. I'm glad I don't have any trouble adding to the blog!

I'm also trying to get the house ready for my sister, Kay, and friends Becky and Karen to come. They'll be here on August 15 to scrapbook. Karen can only stay a few days, but Kay and Becky will probably be here 10 days or longer.

We've set up booksignings for Heading West: Life with the Pioneers. September 27 and 28. They will be part of Prairie Days at the Darke County Parks Nature Center. I'll be signing for two hours on Saturday and one hour on Sunday. Roger, the director, wants me to be in pioneer dress. That's fine, because I wanted to make a dress to wear when I give school programs on pioneers. This will get me to atually do it! It's been a long time since I've had my sewing machine out, but I used to make most of my clothes!

I'm continuing to sell books to friends and acquaintances, so that's good news. People seem to really like the book when they look at it. It's already available in the gift shop at the Nature Center.

I need to get to work on the Photo Club Newsletter so I can have it done by Tuesday. The meeting is on Thursday, so this is a busy week for me, with the newsletter and printing photos for competition. Also on the first Wednesday of the month, I have lunch with a group of teachers I taught with at East School. On the first Thursday, which is also Photo Club, I have lunch with teachers I taught with at Woodland Heights School. Will take my book to show both groups.

New Book - Heading West: Life with the Pioneers

Yesterday I got my copies of my new book, Heading West: Life with the Pioneers from Chicago Review Press. It's always so exciting to get a box of books and actually hold the book in your hands, after working on it for a couple of years! I'd seen the galley proofs, so knew the layout, but the photos look SO much better in the actual book! I'd been a little concerned that some were pretty dark in the galleys. My editor said part of it was the paper the galleys were printed on vs the slick paper in the book. I asked them to particularly see if they could lighten the photos of my friend, Marge Pepiot at the spinning wheel, my dad in a dress, and my grandfather with a hoop. They all look good in the book. The book also has 21 activities for children to do that have to do with pioneers.

I'm working on a website, hoping that will get me more school visits. Also making up a brochure to send out to schools. I'm really hoping for quite a few school visits. I love to do them and most children's writers I know make more from their school visits than they do from their books. I think the pioneer book will do well. I'm excited that it's my first book to be sold in bookstores. The others were all school/library books and the expensive library binding made them too expensive for bookstores.

I'm also waiting to hear about my proposal for another book with Chicago Review Press. This one is on environmentalists and will have chapters on a dozen or so different people, such as Thoreau, Audubon, and Rachel Carson.

Back to work on the brochure. I'm designing it in Microsoft Publisher.