It’s 2021 and I am finally going to find a way to get this book into the hands of people.
With the COVID pandemic being the biggest news of last year, anything and everything related to my books took a backseat to trying to keep home life sane. Caravan Chronicles came out in February but most of the promotion of that was cancelled due to the pandemic. I am happy to report that the book did pay for itself so I am happy about that.
But with my travel memoire having been sitting on my computer since winter of 2017, it’s now time to get this thing rolling again. So without further adieu, here’s the latest update on what’s going on with this book.
Part way through last year, I re-evaluated my “final” draft of Mugged by Seagulls (yes, that really is the name) and found a bunch of things I wanted to change. I did another overhaul of spelling and grammar checking. I also passed it along to another proofreader who gave some great feedback. I took that and revamped a few chapters, tweaked a few things here and there, and then finally was able to say “IT’S DONE!”.
With the content completed, I then proceeded to do the typesetting or “formatting”. If you have never had to do this for a book, then let me tell you, it’s not as simple as copying and pasting your text into a template. A lot of work goes into getting everything to look just right. That took awhile but eventually I got that completely finished as well.
Lastly, I needed artwork. My trusty artist Norm graciously accepted to do the book artwork for me and you’ll see from this page and the new link on the side, the cover is done. We are finalizing the back and hope to have that completely done soon.
When is it coming out? This is a harder question to answer.
Seagulls is a very special book to me. I really do not want to put it out to the world until I know I can properly promote it. With the pandemic still pretty strong across the globe, I suspect I will be delaying the release of this book until at least July. I have a few ideas in mind but it will completely depend on the state of the world as we move through the year.
The good news however is that the book is done, it is coming, and at some point or another, you will be able to check it out.
For now, I continue to work with my graphic artist on tweaking the artwork, and will be recording the audio for the audiobook version within the next few weeks.
Thanks for all your support and I will post more when I have more news.
– Matt
