Printing and Distrubution

I have added a column on the left about printing my books. I am still researching distribution issues with self publishing. I publish through a wonderful woman in Newberg for the copies I sell myself. To sell online I currently use Amazon's create a space, but that leaves me doing every bit of the advertising unless I want them to hold the ISBN. I own my own ISBN for Sleeping in Dragon Wings and don't want to give it up. I have only sold two books through Amazon and both were people I know. Mostly I peddle my own books at local events. I have them in the local library and at bookstores in McMinnville. Distribution is definitely the difficult part of self publishing. Any Ideas?

Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday

I have been having some problems with my computer. Dan got it fixed late last night. I have been crafting, though never as much as I would like to. I finished the design picture that I was using as a demonstration in my art class on Tuesday. I finished the gourd instrument on Wednesday. Today, I made four dragons, two fairies, a griffin, a mermaid, and a stamp. For some reason I can't get my picture phone to e-mail the pictures of a fairy and the design picture to me tonight, so I will have to post pictures in the morning. I have been doing several projects for the Saturday market and fairs that are coming up. I have not been doing very much writing. Tomorrow the plan is to finish ten more clay dragons, five more faeries, and finish the fourth of July picture. We will see how that goes.

Monday

Today, I started a new gourd instrument and pattern picture while demonstrating for my class. The students had a great time using files to saw the grooves into their instruments and dyeing the rasps. Later I had Jessy model for my dragon picture and took pictures of several different poses. I am finishing up some loose ends for school tonight, so I don't get to be very creative. Let me know what you are working on.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father Day! I am going to spend the next few hours being creative with my husbands fathers day dinner.

Friday, I met with my illustrating group for a final goodbye, since one of our members is moving away and the group is disbanding. Diane, my friend who is moving is the person I stole the quote at the top of my page from. It was on her e-mail. She also gave me the inks and air brush paints that were used for the base color on the gourd in this picture.

Today, I spent the morning creating this gourd instrument for an example, for my class that I am teaching tomorrow. The dyes Diane gave me worked perfectly! My students are going to be thrilled that they go on so easily and are so bright.

A family friend read my blog yesterday and sent this advice:
The best course I ever took in writing pointed out that the best magazine on the market, Time, had sentences with a maximum of about eight words. They suggested one write in short easily understandable sentences. The second point they made was to write as you would speak. Don't go for fancy sentence construction. Again, keep it simple. The last important point was to realize that any project you undertook to write about was going to take you as long to write and rewrite as it did to do the project. I found that if I wrote something and put it in a drawer for six days, it read like poor nonsense when I took it out and reread it. Rewrites are necessary!
Hope this may help.

Thank you for the advice, Bill, and for taking the time to read my blog and send me feedback!

Tonight I am hoping to work some more on my fourth of the July illustration and maybe finish a poem on foster care I started last week. I am also trying to figure out how to add my writing to the blog in such a way that you can click on titles and see all of it, but if you don't click on the titles, the writing isn't taking up all the space. I know I once knew how to do this.

Thanks for taking the time to check in today. What projects are you working on?-Kassy

Why should I blog?

Because I have self-published one book, I am often asked questions about writing and illustrating. I claim to be a writer and illustrator because I think I have to own it to have it happen. But self-publishing is more a matter of money than talent. I think my book should be published, I am too poor to have published it myself unless I believed that, but I would like to have a book published by someone who believed in my talent enough to pay for publishing.
There are thousands of other people that feel the same way I do. We want to write and/or illustrate for a living, but we don’t know how to make it happen. I intend to make it happen. I read books and I go to meetings, and though there isn’t a regular twelve step program there have been hundreds of suggestions of things I should do to make this dream come true. I keep careful notes and I work really hard to make myself into the writer and illustrator I know I can be.
I don’t think becoming a published writer is something anyone should do alone, what would be the fun in that? So this is where all of you come in. Because I am putting my goals very publically out there, I now have forced accountability. If I am not working on something creatively you will know. When I try new things and they work, or don’t work for me, you will know that too. Hopefully if I say I am going to try something, someone else will try it as well so that we can get feedback from a group of us on how effective the effort was. If you try something or hear of something that might interest others let us know too. This blog will keep a running record of ways I wasted time and what really helped.
This blog will:
· Give me accountability
· List events, contests, conferences
· Show current projects and illustrations
· Gather feedback and suggestions about writing and illustrating
· Show that I am moving slowly towards tangible goals
· Show the life of a wannabe writer and artist
· Give prompts, challenges
The goals I have:
· To publish books
· To make a reasonable income in writing, illustrating, and crafting
· To win the Caldecott ( I may be ninety when I get it, but I have wanted it since I was a

little girl).
· To make the “Children’s book Project” a reality

Thank you for reading this. Visit often - we all need support in our dreams!-Kassy

What I am doing today:

1) A friend of mine sent me an e-mail address for children's book writers: http://www.institutechildrenslit.com/ .

I explored their site a little, wrote down the dates for the two contests they had listed, and ordered their two free newsletters.

2) I started this blog.

3) I am working on a dragon illustration for the 4th of July weekend fair.

4) I am cleaning gourds for the Art Conspiracy class I will be teaching on Monday.( I will also be decorating one for an example).