It’s Mother’s Day today, so Happy Mother’s Day to everyone out there who is a mother, or has mothered children at one point or another.
I have been properly feted by my children today starting with breakfast and flowers. Mother Nature also celebrated and gave me sunshine and perfect gardening weather. I’m feeling very blessed. I spent some time thinking today about each of the times I became a mother – the births of my three amazing grownup kids. Coincidentally, Halton Health Care posted a piece on LinkedIn (and possibly other social media platforms) yesterday, celebrating the 89th birthday of the OB that I saw during each of my pregnancies. He was never on time in his office, but all of his patients knew about that, and understood that was because he was present for all of his patients’ births. And true to form, he was there to deliver my babies and will always be a small part of my Mother’s Day.
Every spring, my garden goes through a bit of a rebirth. There’s nothing better than clearing away the debris of the previous fall and finding new life growing underneath. I look forward to snowdrops, that bloom in early April – sometimes earlier – followed by crocuses, daffodils and tulips. This weekend, I got out into the garden properly, and started pulling out creeping jenny by the shovelful. This groundcover, used prolifically in summer planters for its long trailing branches, has taken over huge swaths of my garden. It’s time for it to go, and to let other things grow and take its place. I was happy to give some of it, along with some other fast-spreading plants, to my son and his partner as they start their first spring in a rented house with a garden.
There’s another birth – of a sort – coming soon. People have been asking me about progress of “the” book. Over the winter months, I’ve worked with editors to polish the content, with artists to develop the cover, have had professional head shots taken (thanks to the amazing Michael Cooper) for the back cover and for publicity and have been proofing page layouts. The first time I saw the cover art, I was so excited. There’s a barcode on it – only real books have barcodes! It’s getting soooooo close.
Yesterday, though, I carefully read through second-round page proofs and made the last dozen changes. I expect to be signing off on them within a couple of weeks. The design team I’m working with me will probably want to shoot me when they see my final layout comments. You know how the letters f and i get smushed together in some typefaces so you can’t see the dot on the letter i? It’s called a ligature and nobody really pays attention to it.
But it matters for this book, because part of it is set in Turkey, and in Turkish there is both a dotted i and a dotless ı. They’re different letters with different sounds. And so you need to be able to see the dot (or lack thereof). It makes a difference, one that I wish I’d thought of in naming one of the characters. So the team will have to cheat the kearning a bit in these words. Hopefully, it’s a simple copy and paste for them.
In any event, it’s just about time for me to stop worrying about what’s between the pages, and to start developing a marketing plan in the hopes of actually selling this book! Stay tuned here for more, as things progress and I announce my author website and some social channels. When I get them up and running, you’ll be able to follow them for things like a title reveal, a sneak peek at the cover and some stories that didn’t make the final book, along with some other content that will hopefully entice you, and others, to buy the book.
Until then, Happy Mother’s Day!
