Here we go!

This is a blog about a little book that could: Ginger Snaps: Photos & Stories.  Photos by David Sweet, stories by Richard May.  Me.

A year ago David and I started on a narrow road which widened and widened and widened...until now we're on the freeway and driving as fast as we can.  It all began when we met at a movie and then ate Japanese food.  I'm a ginger; he takes photos of gingers.  Commonality.  Next, over coffee he showed me some of his ginger photos.  I made the mistake of telling him that his photos told me stories, which they did.  97.9% of my short stories start with a visual telling its to me.

David asked me to write a story.  I did.  He said: LET'S DO A BOOK!  Since my life was complicated enough, I suggested I write three and see how he felt about it then.  It's called putting off.  Unfortunately, he liked them.  That's when the car really hit the streets and we started rolling along.  25 mph maybe.

We picked 20 or so of David's ginger photos--he has many, many--that he was most proud of and starting yakking to me.  I wrote 17 or so stories, which we narrowed to 13 (my lucky number, btw) to fit into the blurb.com format.  Then David put the stories and photos online, designed a cover, and I began playing editor, having been one in New York at Doubleday.  Who knew I'd ever use those two years for my own benefit.

I filled in details like title page, acknowledgments page, copyright page, front flap copy, back flap copy--all that interesting stuff.  I played copyeditor, discovering that blurb.com has intriguing hyphenation rules.  I also discovered my stories were too long so had to edit myself, sort of like performing your own appendectomy: is that paragraph really necessary?

Next installment: The Author Photo