Andrew Winkel's Blog, page 7

Belatedly, the Best Santa Letter Yet

I know it's the first day of February and we still have eleven months until Christmas, but I finally got around to scanning the kids' letter to Santa from 2011. When teachers talk about an attention grabbing device, I think we have an excellent, spit-the-cookie-out-of-your-mouth line if I've ever read one.

Done With Errors

Raceboy and Super Qwok Adventures should begin showing up live over the next couple of days at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

The new proof looked good except…

I opened the book up to a paragraph randomly and began reading and found an error. Not a biggie. Just two transposed words. Obviously not big enough to distract me when I (or any of my other readers, for that matter) read the book a couple weeks ago. As I read further down, I noticed a second error where, during the rewriting process, I was choosing between two words and left both in accidentally instead of deleting the redundancy.

Oh, well. If I expect there to be no errors, I will be shocked and horrified to learn that there are. If I go knowingly into publication with errors, I will not be either shocked or horrified because I left them there as a sort of ward against other errors. Because I recognize that as a human, there will be imperfections despite my best efforts to purge them. And to continue to toil against such imperfections will lead to nothing except disappointment. And more waiting.

And I'm tired of waiting. Aren't you? Because now, officially, the wait is over.

Popvox: The Digital Voice of the People

I stumbled across the website www.popvox.com as I read about House Bill 3774 and came away very impressed by what I found.

Popvox presents Congressional bills and allows readers to present their support or opposition with comments. The comments aren't formatted like a forum, where arguments go back and forth between people whose antipodal beliefs will never meet in the middle. Rather, Popvox lets users identify their support or opposition along with their rationale. The totals are tallied in charts and geographic overlays. The design is clean, uncluttered, and easy to navigate; in short, it is simple to the point of elegance.

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Popvox does not appear to allow comments on comments. This is very important to me because I have an opinion and I would like to share it, but at the same time I worry that there are smarter or louder voices who can shame me into backing away from my opinions with circumlocutions or Byzantine rhetoric.

Beyond the comments, Popvox includes lists of organizations that support or oppose a bill, and also the full text of the bill all in a single interface.

All in all, a very cool way to interface with politics on the internet.

Here is the Popvox widget for the bill I was reading about:

Impressions of Raceboy and Super Qwok Adventures

I finished reading the proof copy of Raceboy and Super Qwok Adventures today. It's amazing that despite the number of readers and the number of times I've read and re-read, I can still find corrections! But in all honestly, there were very few overt errors that would stand out. Most were hyphens in place of em dashes, or words that would look better in italics, or even line endings that needed the hyphens revised for readability.

The act of reading a book is never like reading a printed manuscript. A book is legitimized through print, and Raceboy and Super Qwok Adventures is no exception. I expected to read it and say, "Well, it's good enough. It will have to do." But I didn't. The truth is, I read it and said, "Wow. That was really good." No, I'm not pounding myself on the back. It's just that I pulled it off. I managed to take a crazy collection of stories, rearrange them, streamline them, and create a book that is an enjoyable read. It holds together, and in fact, there is a definite flow to the stories that makes the book accelerate as you read it. It picks up speed until you won't want to put it down. Yes, I know. You're saying, "Well, you wrote it. Of course you think it's great." I won't argue the bias factor. But I think I've achieved a smidgeon of impartiality in my long trek from manuscript to proof. And to finally witness your construction backlit against the horizon, bathed in the warm glow of a sunrise for the first time is a humbling and exciting experience.

We will see how other people feel about the book soon enough. Either way, I know what I think about it, and that's the important thing.

Raceboy and Super Qwok Adventures is DONE (Sort of)

I've just submitted all print files and will hopefully have a proof in hand by the end of this week.

Now it's time to finish ebook files.

 

I'm still not sure why I like board games

Lost my first game of Settlers of Catan to an 8 year old.

Maddie 1997-2011

Today we euthanized our dog Maddie. She has been with us for three houses, four children, and fourteen years. While the kids exclaimed what a terrible day it was, I was quietly thankful that the ground was soft, the air was warm, and the rain stayed away. It was the sort of day that Maddie would have enjoyed. As an older dog she loved to sit in the grass beneath the apple tree and let her tongue hang out, tasting the air.

We buried her beneath the apple tree in her favorite spot. Now she doesn't have to come in.

Ironically I was planning to post that Chris had finished all of the illustrations and has decided to revise two illustrations, one a picture of Maddie. This got me thinking about how Maddie's death will change Raceboy and Super Qwok Adventures. Not for regular readers, but for my kids. There's a story titled "Raceboy and Super Qwok, Babysitters." It is one that I particularly enjoy because the boys don't fight villains; they have to babysit their little sister. And in the process, Maddie gets covered with bubbles. The story's humor will be tempered now with the bittersweet memory of Maddie the Wonderdog.

 

How to Fight Zombies

I thought Chris might need some reference shots to illustrate one of the remaining illustrations. Here, then, are the photos of Flowergirl and Dr. Destructo fighting zombies (or maybe they're just pictures of my girls in our kitchen). Notice that Anna does double duty as a zombie fighter and a zombie model as she attempts to eat Katherine. Maddie, moping by the table, looks like she can't believe the things humans do.

Begone, Zombies! Flowergirl reference shot for the short story "All Hallow's Eve"

The zombies didn't stand a chance! Dr. Destructo reference shot for the story "All Hallow's Eve"

 

Update

One of the challenges with school in session is keeping all the balls I'm juggling in the air. Between one book project, two jobs, and four kids, I have been neglecting to post updates or news here. That's because I'm not really interested in posting just to post. One of my greatest concerns with blogging is the potential for a blog to misplace its l and become a bog full of quotidian minutiae. If I don't have anything to say, I don't see the point of saying anything. The result of this has been less and less frequent posts.

Here, then, is a quick update on what is going on in my world:

Chris is down to ten illustrations; he is inking number ten (hopefully as I type), which will leave him with only nine to go.
I'm typesetting the copy. I intend to have my final edits made by this weekend with printed copies to be distributed to some friendly peers for final proofreading while I wait on the remaining illustrations. I will use the waiting time to design the cover.
I am also doing some fine-tuning of some of the illustrations that need minor digital corrections. Chris lent me his Wacom Intuos tablet yesterday, and I really like using it. It is way more efficient than the Macbook trackpad and even a mouse.
November is National Novel Writing Month. Although I successfully wrote 50,000 words in both 2009 and 2010, and although I signed in at the official site for 2011, and although I'm having my seventh graders participate in the Young Writer's Program, I am not going to be successful this year. R&SQA is on too tight a schedule to allow me the two hours per day I would likely require to write 1,667 words per day. There is always next year.
Recently I hit my sixteenth wedding anniversary. 2012 brings me to my twenty year class reunion. I, like anyone reading this, am trying to figure out how all that has happened, how I've gotten here (i.e., the present), and where the time has gone (i.e., all those past presents). Of course, one book project, two jobs, and four kids is probably my explanation.

Journal Review of "Disappearance of Ichabod Crane"

Sr. Editor Phil Angelo reviewed The Disappearance of Ichabod Crane in today's weekend edition of The Daily Journal.

I am very pleased with this review. Not simply because I think it's a positive review, but because Mr. Angelo's review does two things exceptionally well: within a short space he efficiently summarizes the script's relationship to the Sleepy Hollow event (and it's replacement by the new script), and he adds a penetrating explication of the difficulties of translating Irving from story to a script. Click the image below to read the entire review.

His final thoughts are the most satisfying, however, as he explains, "This is a reasonably priced yarn and a good read while you're sitting on your front porch waiting for the trick-or-treaters to come by."