Finley Sails Down East
It is funny how this empty, even sad, feeling lays over me, like a blanket, when I finish a big project. My to-do list gets one less thing to cross off and I walk around like I just lost a friend. However, it usually doesn’t last long before finding that new spark to ignite my next big(or small) project.
It is documented that back in September 2022, I started putting this project on the to-do list. It all really started with a book about Södermalm, Stockholm. This is also how Finley was born. I had this idea to make a book explaining Södermalm, in a pictoral map, sharing some history and fun facts. I want to incorporate Flatcoats, well, Dexter of course, and other breeds too. It is much easier to draw animals than people. I have started the sketches and layout of this book but it is a lot more complex than a simple family island with a few cottages. Back in Sept. 2022, I was procrasta-browsing a picture book on the bookshelf outside my Grateful Studio and the lightbulb went off. The idea to make a book about Pond Island, to share with kids, grandkids, friends, and myself, when I am older. It naturally evolved in my brain that Finley could sail there and the rest is history.
But for the next year, it was sketches and artwork and layout. It evolved to over 100 pages. Childrens picture books are most often a standard 32 pages. So to triple that, is a lot of paintings. The first thing you need to narrow down and NAIL IT down is the size of the book. I work with KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing, and if you want to know why you can refer back to this post. Now KDP does offer hard covers, but offers a very limited amount of sizes (and the book has to be a minimum of 75 pages). Whether my brain was in fart mode or I just didn’t think anyone would want a hardcover at the time, I chose a size that did not come in a hardcover version. This turned out to be a big problem(a year later).
This is a compilation of some of the characters in the book. The far left dog with a red hat is my father and he is looking at his father, my grandfather. My uncle Chris was always walking around with a pencil in his ear and chewing on a toothpick or straw. There was a dog named Bear, that was a big, furry, well, bear. Dexter reminded me a bit of Bear. And well, the other characters are for me to know.
The art included lots of sketches and is painted digitally on my iPad Pro using Procreate. I use Pages on an iMac to layout the book and honestly it is all you need. Pixelmator Pro can do all the appropriate photo enhancements and adjustments. So, at this point, April 2024, the book is very, very, close to being done, so I upload KDP and request a proof. You have to pay for the proof, but it is just the printing cost and can’t be resold, as it has an ugly stripe on the cover. Unfortunately, they cannot send proofs to Sweden. My husband was traveling to the USA and I was able to get one in his hands to return with to Sweden. It is vital to get a proof. Here I learned that I saved all the files as RGB, and they needed to be CMYK. Rookie mistake and I was very mad at myself. I also saw that the transparency faltered in some of the graphics and I learned that I really didn’t like my hand written text bubbles on each page. Seeing a book or any printed material on actual paper gives you a whole different feel to the work.
Proof number two awaits my arrival to the US, as I was visiting there the lucky month of September 2024. Two years after procrasti-browsing and igniting that spark of an idea. My daughter notices a few more mistakes (she is my very talented editor!!!) and I now realize I really want to offer this in hardcover. This is where a painstaking amount of time was spent reworking every page. You can’t just make it bigger, or you will lose artwork, and you don’t want to skew it either. It has all worked out and I am really pleased. It is quite a feat to get one hardcover book printed at a time, for the price, as well.
So if your interested in this book or any of my books you can find them all on Amazon, just plug in my name or follow this link.