At Bleeding Last!

I finished the second edition of "A Breathtaking Window on the Universe" in July 2013. Almost immediately, I started work on the Spanish version. But I got interrupted by family holidays, distributing books, and writing "The Seer's Stone" and translating it into "La piedra ocular" (while local government subsidies were available.) That took longer than anticipated, as these things generally do.

Meanwhile I was tour guiding, blogging, writing the odd short story (some of them were very odd) doing an online course about moons, and sometimes even doing housework.

Family holidays came around again. Then I was I was tour guiding, blogging, writing the odd short story, learning about oral story telling, applying for governement business coaching and cleaning up after a mouse.

I sent "La Piedra ocular" off to the printers in October 2014 and re-started work on the second edition of "Una espectacular ventana al universo". Yay!

I got the coaching. Double Yay! And almost the first thing my coach said was, "You really, REALLY need to do something about sheilacrosby.com"

So I abandoned my secnd edition again, and sorted that out, quick before I had to pay for another year's hosting at http://lapalma-island.com. I planned it all out (see http://sheilacrosby.blogspot.com.es/2015/02/working-on-website.html) and got it up, and killed it before I could take a backup. (See http://sheilacrosby.blogspot.com.es/2015/03/disaster.html)

That meant that I had to pay for an extra year's hosting anyway. So I went back to the much-delayed second edition.

And tonight I finally, finally sent the changes off for professional proof correction (absolutely necessary with Spanish)

I still need to buy an ISBN and double check half the URLs, but it feels like a major (and long overdue) milestone.

I'm going to have some champagne.

Really, really finished at last

The files for "Una ventana espectacular al universo" have been sent off to the printers. At last. They should be on sale in 10 - 14 days.

A nice surprise

The Daily Telegraph travel section have a rather good article about La Palma, and they mention my book, right at the end.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/sunandsea/9867981/La-Palma-guide-the-forgotten-Canary-Island.html

Lucky with my friends.

I'm extremely lucky with my friends.

As soon as the printers said I'd have to get the book to them by Friday, the cavalry came over the hill. The friend who's been checking my translation kicked into high gear. the friend who'd polishing the Spanish worked right through the bank holiday - about 12 hours, I think. And the friend who's doing the layout almost kept pace with the other two.  OK, so I'm paying people and doing return favours, but this was way more than they'd signed up for.  Two of them said very similar things: "Well this book's your big dream, isn't it?".

Yes, it's my dream.  And they worked like it was theirs.

On Tuesday, when most people were back at work, I contacted the Tourist Board to ask how many books they wanted for Fitur (which would affect the amount I had t pay the printers in advance).  And I was told that her boss had changed his mind over the break, and he wasn't going to do a presentation on astrotourism, so he didn't want books there.

In one was this was marvellous.  I could take a break.  In another it was extremely embarrassing. People had worked like stink to help me.

It was so embarrassing that I briefly considered not telling people. But I wasn't going to lie to these people, even by omission. So I took a deep breath and picked up the phone.  And explained, ending with, "But I really do appreciate everything you've done just the same as if I still had the deadline."

Every time I got a long, loud silence.

Well, I say long.  I think it was about 5 seconds each time. Believe me, that's a long silence for a phone conversation, and longer when you're on tenterhooks.

And every time, the silence was followed by, "Don't worry about it."

I think the 5 seconds was the time it took to for my friends to work out that I didn't do it on purpose.

Yeah.  I'm very, very lucky with my friends.