In my last post, I promised I would be back soon.... hmm. guess that didn't exactly happen.
What did happen - was the publication of the book, Sophia's Quest I had been working on for many a year. It came to the point, when I finally accepted that I could edit this mythic folk tale for children and families for ever.... or I could say enough and start seriously looking for an illustrator I don't like limiting children (or adults') imagination, but thought some images might be fun.
I met with Ingrid Kallick (ikallick.com) one morning when participating at the Arisia Sci/Fi fantasy con to talk about what would be fair compensation for an artist's illustrations for my book a cover and some black and white illustrations inside. After talking a while, she suddenly said, "wait a minute, here in the art show I have a painting that I created after reading the draft copy of the story you sent me." I had passed around the story to a number of artist friends for feedback. She had not connected it with the story... but clearly it was. We both immediately agreed that it would be a perfect cover for the book. Ingrid liked the idea of making some illustrations as well. The image is not literally from the book, but clearly the spirit of the story about a young storyteller sent on a quest to find the phoenix
The next several months were spent putting the story into a format for publishing while Ingrid decided which scenes she might want to illustrate.(Fortunately my webmistress, Kay Ritter, knew how to create the appropriate format.) We decided to self-publish through Amazon's kdp publishing which gave me control over size, shape, price and publish on demand availability . This meant no major up front printing costs. I initially asked for four illustrations, but Ingrid found she wanted to illustrate five. Since Ingrid loves color, she made them in full color, then we converted them into black and white (less expensive for publishing). Having them in color left open the option for a kindle version with the illustrations in color. The whole process, of course, took longer than we expected, but most things worth doing take time. And time and taking time is a central theme of the book.
So - about a year after my last blog post Sophia's Quest was published - a 5" x 9" ,142 pp. paperback book with 8 chapters "perfect for family bedtime reading." The short description on the back of the book reads: "The Phoenix has disappeared from this world and perhaps all worlds. A gifted young storyteller named Sophia is sent on a quest to find the mythical avian....On her journey, she encounters magical creatures, dives into the Sea of Eternal Depth, does research in the Flying Book Library, and takes a a ride on the legendary P'eng.....Does she find the Phoenix? That is for the reader to decide."
Here is a peek inside
at a couple of Ingrid's wonderful illustrations:
It has been fun to hear reactions to the book...It was aimed at elementary school age children, but many adults have told me how much they enjoy it was well.
Our next task (well really my webmistress's task...) was to put up a kindle version with the illustrations in color. Here is the flying book library illustration seen above, now in color.
Both versions are available on amazon.com. Signed paperback versions with bookmark,are available directly from me. (for $15.00 including shipping.)
Will there be a hardback version someday with color illustrations? Stay tuned..perhaps.
With pandemic quarantine, the past year has been a good time for family reading and sharing stories.I hope copies of Sophia's Quest have been pulled off the shelves to reread. Some new copies have found homes....and hopefully stirred up lots of family story sharing moments.
One of the things that has helped me through these challenging times, is reconnecting with the storytelling community in the US and beyond. Listening to each other's stories, sharing tales of imagination and fun, and honoring lives and the wisdom in story hopefully helps us "see" each other in new ways.... and perhaps even creates new understanding.
For the past few months, I have been working on a Story Dwelling project - a dwelling to symbolically hold and honor the stories of all those we have lost due to the multiple pandemics we have faced and are facing. ...My next post will be about that........I promise not to let years pass before those posts.
Peace and onward, Wendy
