Most Americans I know have a family origin myth. It’s not uncommon for us to say I’m Italian and Irish, even though we know we’re Americans. It’s really no surprise because, unless you are fully Native American, your family originally came from some other country, whether taken under duress, shipped with a prison colony, or looking for a new start.
At this point in time, most white, and I dare say African Americans, are a complete mutt and mixture of countries, ethnicities, and even races. I don’t come across too many people that claim to be to be from of just one country origin. My dad was one of them. His famous claim was that he was all Dutch. But, there was a little blip on his family tree where he couldn’t be sure if he was honestly all Dutch. His grandmother was adopted. The family lore suggested that his grandmother’s biological mother may have either been Irish or Mexican. She was certainly Catholic and from Texas, but that’s all we knew for sure. Her name was either Mary or Maria. My dad has a nice dark, olive skin tone, and thick black hair – like his mother – and therefore we suspected that her name was Maria and she was Mexican. Or perhaps the biological mother was Black Irish, and therefore my dad had some Jewish blood in him. Otherwise, he was fully Dutch. I grew up learning all about Dutch culture because I was Dutch: All Dutch on my dad’s side, half on my Mom’s. I was, even accounting for the adopted great-grandmother, at least 50% ethically Dutch. But as with many of those now taking DNA tests, this narrative came crashing down. My family knew that not all our ancestors where ethnically Dutch. Before the discovery and eventual rush to The Americas, many refugees sought asylum in the Netherlands. The Pilgrims did this before they came to America. And we knew that my family did the same, it just took them an additional 300 years to immigrate to the US. The furthest I can track my patrilineal heritage is to France in the early part of the 16th century, when my family was called De Tringham. Side note: My maiden name is eerily similar to my married name, so if you’re seeing Ingraham in De Tringham wait a minute and you’ll see where I’m going. Peter De Tringham was a French Huguenot and after his village was burned down by the Catholic church, he and his family escaped to the Netherlands, where he changed his name to Tringham. Somehow in the immigration to the US, an “S” was added and we get my maiden Stringham. During this time, a lot of Huguenots immigrated to the Netherlands instead of Germany, or other Protestant leaning nations, because Huguenots followed a more Reformed theology as opposed to a Lutheran theology espoused by Germany. I also knew that some of my ancestors were from England or general British Isles. They left for similar reasons as the Pilgrims. They were similar to what we call Quakers. Their religious practices were Reformed, simple, personal, austere, and quiet. Huguenots and Quaker/Separatists were welcomed with open arms in the Netherlands, as long as these families became Dutch. You could practice your religion with similar Dutch enclaves as Dutch. The Pilgrims, unlike my family, didn’t want to become Dutch in culture, so they eventually made the treacherous trip across the Atlantic. My family stayed and became part of the Dutch culture. We became proud of that Dutch culture, but due to famine 300 years after the Pilgrims, were forced to make a new way in the United states. While my Dutch heritage has started to fade, my family’s loyalty to the same faith that has caused it to move to Holland in the first place, has continued. Being Quaker is so deep within my DNA, that my offspring could mix with extra-terrestrial DNA and we’d still be Quaker. Back to my dad, and his DNA test: We knew that originally, some of my dad’s DNA was not Dutch, or as the DNA test would lump it together, Western European. But France was still in that broad Western European category, so I assumed he would be at least 50% Western European. And perhaps quite a bit from the British Isles. There was of course, the possibility that my dad would be part South of the Border, or Jewish. I assumed he would be mostly Western European and British, with a touch of Mexican or Jewish blood in him. But, we were all wrong. And DNA doesn’t lie. My dad is just an inexplicably dark, mostly Scandinavian man. I can’t remember the exact break down, but it was something like 40% Scandinavian, 35% British Isles, 18% Eastern European, and only 14% Western European. I’m going to assume that my great-grandmother’s biological mother was just plain old Irish. I have no idea why my dad’s coloring matches my Hispanic sister. It’s an American mystery. That 14% Western European accounts for 95% of what I know about my family, and the stories that we’ve been told, and we’ve continued to tell, but only account for 14% of the DNA. I’ve got plenty of stories on my mother’s side too. I’m interested to get DNA tests done on myself, and my mother, to see if the stories we’ve been passed on match our DNA. Was my matrilineal grandmother a gypsy as I’ve been told? I know lots of Americans have been told stories that aren’t matching their DNA tests. A common story among many Americans is the Indian Princess Narrative. Many families tell a story about a white settler falling in love with and marrying a chief’s daughter. While I know there were lots of tribes scattered throughout America, I kind of doubt 75% of the white population had a Native American princess ancestor. I don’t know why we tell ourselves these stories. Perhaps, to assuage our guilt? If we are part of them, part of that terrible genocide, then maybe we aren’t responsible for what the white part of us did? While I grapple with not being as ethnically Dutch as I thought, and as I prepare to go back to my ancestral lands, which maybe aren’t so ancestral, have you had an upset to a story your family told? Did you think you were Italian to find out you’re were Russian? How are you dealing with it and how will it change the narrative you tell your kids?
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As I’ve gotten older, especially since I haven’t been in school, I’ve delved more and more into reading nonfiction. I’m sure this has to do with my intense need to learn. I want to learn how to do things better, faster, neater, weirder. I want to learn what keeps the sun a fiery hot mess year in and year out. I had to understand why my kid was screaming in the middle of the night, not just so I could quiet him, but out of sheer curiosity. I had to know why 12 ordinary men from a repressed people would spread one of the most virulent religions ever.
Some of my favorite books are cookbooks. I don’t just cook the recipes; I read the whole cookbook. I want to hear the funny stories, learn the reasoning behind why one did things, and if there are any alternate ways of making a recipe. Every year of my adult life, my grandma Jeannie buys me a cookbook. The first one was Julia Child’s treatise on French cooking. In retrospect, I believe it was Julia Childs who hooked me on nonfiction. My taste in cookbooks has progressed over time. Today, I have an enviable collection of classics from around the world. I can just as easily cook you an authentic borscht as a Midwest meatloaf. Joop claims my pea soup is as good as any Dutch grandma’s. And I can cook a Thai dish so hot it pleases my “I eat pure capsaicin for breakfast” husband. My reading progressed as much as my cooking repertoire. I was as comfortable reading Stephen Covey as I was Charles Darwin. Currently on my night stand are Inklings of Reality by Donald T. Williams—a leading expert on C.S Lewis--I am Malala, Walden by Thoreau, The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonagall, and A Good Housekeeping manual from the 1980s on how to get stains out of everything. On my phone, I am reading an ebook by my friend and editor Deborah Natelson, which is the only fiction, other than for my job, I have read in nearly a year. One of my favorite subgenres of nonfiction is books on habits, and I have fallen in love with the writings of Gretchen Rubin and Charles Duhigg. My mom discovered Rubin for me, and I found myself reading everything Duhigg had to offer after hearing him speak at the Atlanta Catalyst a couple of years ago. But, as my life and cooking skills progressed, my writing did not. I kept writing the same young adult fantasy I had been writing as a child. Literally. The same exact story. Recently, I bought Duhigg’s latest book and haven’t been able to put it down. The reason I’m writing now that something he said stuck out to me. He talks in one of his chapters about the movie Frozen. Whether you like the movie or not, you have to admit the pop culture storm surrounding it was nothing short of amazing. I’ve watched it a dozen or more times because of my son Drake and listened to the sound track in Dutch 40 million times because of Joop. Duhigg gives us a glimpse into the creative process that created the animated giant. And I was surprised to learn that they got stuck creatively on the end. I wasn’t surprised that coming up with the plot was hard, or that making both sisters likable and unidentifiable while creating tension had its difficulties. Duhigg crosses over into the world of biology to explain what happened. The crew had gotten so wrapped up in the way things were in the film world that new, necessary ideas were getting crowded out. Joseph Connel was a biologist studying biodiversity in the 1950s. He was fascinated with the fact that one area could be teaming with life and diversity, but that another only a mile or two away would be dominated by maybe only one or two types of life. Connel’s studies eventually led him to the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, which says that diversity in biology is caused by intermittent, moderate upheaval. Too much and stuff dies and not enough and diversity fails. I’d been stuck in a large, non-diverse universe of my own making. We all get in this rut sometimes and need an intermediate disturbance to wake us up. For me, I needed one in my writing, my personal writing. It’s easy for us to live in a biosphere of dominated by what makes us comfortable, what is just like us. Whether we are a white middle-class Americans living in the white suburbs, attending white churches—Sunday morning is the most segregated time in American culture—or liberal city dwellers hanging out in coffee shops discussing the fall of intellectualism, it’s a good idea to shake things up. Talk to a person from a different background or one who holds more conservative or liberal views. Or you could take things to an extreme and host an exchange student. There’s nothing quite like having a foreigner in your midst to throw a wrench in your cozy, unexamined life. In the case of Frozen, the team decided to introduce new people to the group, people with different expertise. And it worked. Of course, there were still some issues with the ending, but that was to be expected: Frozen was the first Disney princess movie to feature true love of the non-romantic type. And it was revolutionary. I’ve often sought out upheaval. I grew up with it and I saw the benefit of it, but I couldn’t see some of my deepest areas of stagnation. Even though I had written quite a few non-fiction books in my ghostwriting career, in my personal writing, I had never written anything other than fiction, specifically young adult fantasy. I was getting pretty bored with it, but it was all I knew. As I close out this chapter, I challenge you to find areas of languish and torpor in your life and introduce, on purpose, an intermediate, moderate upheaval. Is Tuesday always Taco Tuesday? The bland ground meat, cheese, lettuce, sour cream, and salsa? Why not have a friend from an actual taco-eating country come over and show you their family recipe? Or maybe throw a complete wrench in your plans and have spaghetti? Whatever your own area is, mix it up. And if you ever see me around, let me know what you did. I’d love to hear about it. Today is my birthday! I’d say I’m 29, but I just published a book that says I was 31 years of age 3 years ago… My dad told me to change the book because I’m only 24. My mom is not old enough to have a 34 year old, apparently. Someone should tell her that my older sister turns 40 in a month.
I think it’s appropriate that today is the day that Amazon has approved my book for publication. Unfortunately, though, CreateSpace, who I am using to publish the paperback, does not offer pre-orders, which is stupid, if you ask me. What am I going to do? Let it derail my plans? Scream at customer service agents? No. I’m not. I’m publishing it…today. Surprise! Well, you won’t be able to order from Amazon for another couple weeks unless you are a wholesale retailer. I have at least that much control. So, I’m going to offer the pre-order myself. Since I have an exclusivity contract with Amazon, I can’t offer the book through my website, and anyway my website isn’t set up to accept payment. So if you ant to pre-order the paperback, please go to my Gofundme page. It will ask you for your address so I can send it out to you on the day it comes out, which coincidentally is my sister’s birthday. The payment through Godfundme is secure. Just put in the comments on your Gofundme donation that you are pre-ordering the book. The cost is 12.99, which includes shipping within the United States. If you are in the Netherlands and want the paperback, you will get it from Joop or me when I am there starting on the 20th of April. So if you want to support me for my birthday, here are the links to pre-order both the ebook and/or the paperback. I’m currently at 10 ebooks sold, which means I need 40 more to hit my goal. If you could help me reach my birthday goal of 15 paperback pre-orders, and 10 more ebooks, I would appreciate it. And any books pre-ordered through my Gofundme will also go to my goal there too, which means more funny videos. We’re $200 short of me and Joop redo the Rickrolling video he love so much. Paperback: https://www.gofundme.com/joopdoesamerica Ebook:https://www.amazon.com/Joop-Does-America-Exchange-Student-ebook/dp/B07B42Q6NM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520871875&sr=8-1&keywords=joop+does+america The book is being worked on by my staff members the exceptional editor Deborah Natelson and the prodigious proofreader Sarah Awa. It’s a journey, editing, and it takes a lot of back and forth, and rewrites, but I will have the manuscript shipped to the book formatter next Friday. In the meantime, I put the book available for pre-order on Amazon, but just the ebook. If you want the paperback, you’ll have to wait till next week to pre-order. The official publication date is April 12th, 5 days before I leave for the Netherlands. However, I still encourage as many people as possible to pre-order the book. There’s a couple reasons behind this:
Really, reason #2 is why I am offering the book cheaper during pre-order than when it will be available to read. All the books you buy now, will show up as purchases for ranking purposes on the actual publication date, April 12th, instead of the date you bought it. The more pre-orders I get, the higher my ranking will be, and the more visibility the book will get, which means more sales in the long run. So, if you help me, I’ll help you. My goal is to get 50 paperback pre-orders and 50 ebook pre-orders. The second thing that will help me rise in rankings is if everyone that pre-orders writes or leaves a starred review. I realize this probably won’t happen, so my goal is a quarter of those pre-orders converted into reviews. Which brings me to my final point on pre-orders. If you pre-order and promise to leave a review the day the book comes out, I will send you an email copy of the book so you can read it before it comes out. You can be an official beta reader for the book. If you pre-order, you will show up as a “verified purchase” on Amazon, which is super important, so I can’t just send you the book without you pre-ordering it. Lastly, on a different subject, the cover is done! Well, for the ebook anyway. Nada Orlic over at Erelis Designs is still working on the paperback cover, but I’ll be sure to share when it’s done. I decided to go with the map cover for a couple reasons.
Normally, when I am working on a book cover, I keep it pretty under wraps until it’s nearly completely done. Part of this is because I’m a control freak, part I like to give people the element of surprise, and partly, I really respect my cover designer, Nada Orlic. (http://erelisdesign.com/) She really knows what she’s doing and we’ve been working with each other for a long time.
She’s done hundreds of covers, and she knows what works. I have realized from working on dozens of client covers with her what her pet peeves are. And one of the big ones is clients who give bad directions and ruin her beautiful covers with amateur suggestions. She’s been heartbroken a couple times. Me too. I didn't want Joop's cover to break her designer's heart. So I gave her a few suggestions from me and other folks and gave her free reign. Then I worked with Joop to come up with a few final options for our fans to look over. My favorite from the beginning was the Sprinkles cover. I never liked the burger cover much myself, while it was Joop's favorite. And it seemed pretty split among our fans between the white burger cover and the sprinkles cover. But we're not going with either. Why I didn’t go with the original designs:
We went with a few more literal concepts: Maps and Joop, himself. My friend Zu had a great idea of Joop in a bowtie, and I had just the picture of him that I could use. Nada played around with a few covers, and these three covers are the favorites of the rest of my staff, Joop, Nada, me, and of course my mama and Joop’s Pap. Please keep in mind that these covers are for concept only. The font, positioning, and subtitle WILL change. So please vote for your favorite concept. I’m keeping the contest officially open, so if you comment with your thoughts on the cover, or even wish me and Joop good luck, you’re still going to be entered into the drawing for the free signed copy of the book. I’m high-strung. I adore plans, and planners, and sticky notes. I have a meal planner, calendar, and life planner, and yes, they are all connected. I have notifications on my phone for everything: meditating, showering, picking up my kid from school. My lists have lists and my habit is making everything into a habit.
I come by it naturally. My dad is the ultimate list guy. My mom on the other hand writes a grocery list and promptly forgets it on the kitchen counter. To be fair, some of this list making is an attempt to control my ADHD. Like my dad, I just might forget to pick my kid up from school if there isn’t a reminder. So yes, I have an alarm to snuggle with my kid, because it’s too important to be distracted from. But, this listyness – it’s a word now; I made it up – can wreak havoc on my peace. Because, no matter how well I plan, life always happens. Like pretty much every day. Every. Single. Day. And when things don’t go according to plan, I quickly get frazzled, and then nothing happens. This year for Christmas I asked my mom for Michael Hyatt’s new Full Focus Productivity planner. I’m a big Hyatt fan, and I send lots of my clients to his blog when they need to beef up their platforms (and honestly, what writer doesn’t need to beef up their platform a little?). It’s the planners dream come true. It even helps you plan out your off time on the weekends with his Weekend Optimizer. Now I can cram even more into my weeks, but only the things that will actually help me achieve my dreams. My mom, in her infinite wisdom, also gave me a copy of Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist. I love Shauna. She has a way with prose that makes it feel like poetry. She’s also a blonde, slightly older version of me. She’s a Dutch Pastor’s kid from the Midwest who grew up to be a mother, world traveler, and harried writer. As I was setting up my planner for the year, seeing just how much I could smash into this year to make up for falling behind while sick last year, I was also reading her book, chronicling how she realized that doing, doing, doing was keeping her from being. Being with her family, being content, being a woman, person, Christian. How she didn’t listen to her body when it was giving out, when she was throwing up in parking lots, when she was up crying all night trying to hit self-imposed deadlines. Sounds like someone I know… So I wrote in my Full Focus Planner as a goal: Give yourself grace. I underlined it 3 times. And I’ve needed it this year. January has been a mess. The first week back to school, Drake was there for 1.3 days. He was sent home one day for an allergic reaction, which lasted into the next day. Then it was MLK day, with 1 day back to school before there were two snow days, which was followed by my husband having a terrible flu bug, and you guessed it, me catching that flu bug. And no family flu epidemic would be complete without the kid getting it. It's also had other challenges. My mom had knee surgery, my best friend had more health scares, and my husband was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a couple years of worsening mental health. Plus, he’s also in school full time and working full time at the university in our town, leaving me to deal with all the household stuff when school is in session. I’m way behind where I wanted to be on Joop Does America. But, because of my planner, every day I see the goal to give myself grace. And I do. Three days with snow on the ground in Athens, GA is a miracle, so I enjoyed every minute of it with my son. And I would have normally made my self sicker trying to work while puny, but I rested. I even slept 15 hours in one day. Drake went back to school, which is good, because even though I am trying to give myself grace, I still have work to be done. And thankfully this planner shows me all the little victories I’ve made along the way. Even with all the distractions, my final version of the Joop Does America will get to the editor this week and Joop will have it today, after I read through it one more time. And in April, I will be on my way to my ancestral land to visit new family, and maybe find some old family too. And the book covers are here! I took in suggestions from several fans and here’s what we’ve come up with.
We went with a food theme, in case you can’t tell. While Mountain Dew was suggested, copyright issues prevented us from having his favorite soda on the front. Another suggestion was Chic-fil-A, but again copyright issues. Instead, we picked a giant, juicy bacon cheeseburger. Joop’s second favorite sandwich while here. You can vote here on the blog, or via Facebook. Again, anyone that enters a vote will get their name put into the hat for a free signed copy. If you have a suggestion for a subtitle/tagline leave it in the comments. We’re not married to anything but Joop Does America. Please comment with the number (1-6) that is your favorite, or even your second favorite. To see the full cover, click on the first picture and a gallery will open up. Thanks for your time! I have a client that should have had me write his book from scratch instead of editing it. It certainly would have been cheaper. By about half.
I love all the mentality that everyone can write a book. It’s true: Everyone can write a book. Behind all this hububalu though, is an understanding: you have to hire a good editor and be willing to rewrite the book. Of course, you say, you have to hire a good editor! Yes, I know, every writer, even the best in the world needs a good editor. But here’s the hitch, if you aren’t a great writer – which I hate to break it you, you probably aren’t – that editor is going to cost you an arm and leg and you are going to have to do a lot of rewriting. And then your editor is going to have to re-edit the book at least once. If you hire an experienced ghostwriter, the edits that they need will be smaller because they are a great writer. (At least, that is the theory…) Often, and it’s the case with me and my company, http://www.theghostwritingagency.com, that each writer works with their own editor. I’ve been working with Deborah for so long that she knows what I usually do wrong. She knows my style. She’s also worked with one of my other writers, Emma, enough to know before she starts that she’s going to have to watch out for UK slang. The client that we are working on right now, is a perfect example of the cost of editing vs. the cost of the whole package. He’s got great ideas. He’s willing to listen to our writing advice. He’s brilliant. He’s got a good platform. But he’s a terrible writer. Dry, convoluted. He just doesn’t have the flair. He also struggles with literary organization. The budget for his book started out at $1600 for his 40,000 word non-fiction book about edible botany in sub-arctic climates. About a year ago he came to me and wanted a content, or developmental, edit, line editing, proofreading, and formatting. So I immediately went to work on the content edit. He needed some serious help restructuring his book. It took him almost a year to redo the book after he had spent two years writing it in the first place. (It would have taken me 6-8 weeks to write the book.) I look over it again, and it’s still a mess, but much better than before. So I send it on to Deborah. She realizes that it’s still a mess and attempts to fix all the big things with massive deletions and rewrites. At this point, we’ve pointed out the issue that the client’s contract needed to be reevaluated because he had added an additional 20,000 words to his book. (The book still ended up being around 40,000 when we ended). So the price went up to $2000. Our price for a high quality written from scratch book with light line editing or heavy proofreading, plus formatting and book design is $2000 for a 40,000 word book. Deborah completes her two rounds of line editing that are required for this book and the client reworks everything again. Because he needed to. So, now we are on the third line edit of his book. Which means, he needed to update his contract yet again. I’m having to go through it for content again. And then Deborah is having to do a third line edit. You want to guess how much that raised the cost? By now, it would have been cheaper for this guy to buy our premium package with 2 entire book rewrites, deep line editing, proofreading, 3 formats, book design, and two cover designs with multiple adjustments. And frankly, it would probably be a better book. Yes, you can most certainly write your own book. And yes it can sell. I run up against the idea that a book written by a ghostwriter isn’t really your book. That’s one of the most common arguments for people not hiring a ghostwriter. I understand. You see these fake books on Amazon and associate that crap with ghostwriters. But think of it this way: While you have been working on your expertise in sub-arctic botany, I have been honing my skill in writing. In the end, I just want you to look at the bottom line: If you want a high quality book and have a limited budget, a ghostwriter might not be out of your reach. In fact, it might even be cheaper. My botanist could have saved nearly $1500 and 3 years by having me write it from scratch. Have any of you had a fiasco that could have cost you less if you had hired a professional? (I’m looking at my husband and the mess that is our furnace.) This week, I’ve got a chip on my shoulder. I’ve got a problem with who is allowed to be paid for their work. I’ve heard way too many times lately, especially in this last week, that certain types of professions don’t deserve to be paid or rewarded financially very much. Among these professions are pastors, teachers, writers, artists, musicians, and non-profits.
I’ve discussed earlier that people often don’t see creative type jobs as legitimate jobs, but this is beyond that. This post is specifically about money. (It’s always about money, right?) I’m not sure why it’s okay to pay a football player $1 million to play a game, but we can’t pay teachers decently. I’m not saying let’s not pay football players or even not pay them that much, but why them and not a halfway house executive director? Why does the CEO of a failing company get a bonus, but when a pastor of a thriving church gets a small vacation as a token of appreciation, people cry foul? If you do a good job, you deserve to be rewarded. If you spend 60 hours a week doing a full time job, you should get paid for it. Working in charity is not only for the super wealthy. I shouldn’t have to be independently wealthy to be a writer. That’s one thing I won’t hand over to the 1%! You might be saying that writers and musicians can be tremendously wealthy. You have visions of Beyoncé and J.K Rowling swimming around your head. Here’s the thing though, 99% of us are not. We have side jobs or maybe even whole other careers besides writing or playing music. I also understand you see these super wealthy pastors on TV in gold houses and flying private jets, but your local pastor is not like that. He’s probably giving away the money that he would have spent on his own children’s Christmas for some other kid’s Christmas. It’s personal for me. I’m a writer and the child of a pastor/teacher and a music teacher. “That money you spent on a vacation could go to feed homeless!” I get asked for free books all the time. Those books cost me money to make. So far, I am so in the red on these books that I feel I will never see any profits. I have some writer friends that have instituted a no free book for any reason policy. They’ve been called rude. Would you ask Stephen King for a free book? That leads me to another thought: downloading books, movies, and music for free. Y’all! This really is stealing. How would you feel if you just spent your soul doing something and then people continually stole it from right in from of you? So when, when a friend of yours, even if it’s just an acquaintance, comes out with a book or an album, buy it! Full price. Be a patron of the arts. Support charity. Being a giver or a patron of the arts is no longer something just for the elite. Buy that painting. Please. I love designing book covers. It makes me feel like I am getting somewhere with a book, but I tend to leave it towards the end of the writing. A lot of writers I know design the cover before they even start writing, which seems counter-productive to me. I feel like it gives me a false sense of accomplishment. I’m a writer after all, not a designer.
However…I have hit the point where I think having a book cover will give me a little encouragement in the dark days of editing. I’ve always worked with a designer for the cover, but this time around, I am going to bring my fans, and Joop’s fans, into the fray! Exciting for you. I know not everyone is a designer or has the ability to make a mock design for me, so I’m not asking for open submissions. But leave a comment with ideas below. My designer and I have some basic ideas already and I’ll give you them in a second. Once we have decided on a basic idea we will make up a couple samples for people to pick from. Everyone that comments on Facebook or here will be entered into a giveaway for a free book. Okay, the idea so far is to keep the cover bright, optimistic, and maybe a little sporty. One big idea we have been throwing around is an idea board cover with symbols, images, or pictures of our year together. Our national flags could also play a prominent role. If you have other great ideas, or see pictures you think would work well, leave them in the comments. |
AuthorI live in Athens, Georgia, with my son, my husband, and an ever-revolving list of exchange students, who are a never-ending source of entertainment and writing material. Archives
June 2019
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