Publishing
Many of you may know that it was a (late-) childhood dream of mine to be an author, and that this dream had a bit of a resurgence as I finished high school and entered college. Intensified study in college and especially in seminary have put most of my writing projects and interests on a distant backburner again, but never quelled it.
I finished The Twelve midway through college, but never finished editing it. I still have a few text files of edits offered by friends, mainly Matt Brown, so one of these days (later this year) I'm gonna re-read the whole story, editing along the way as best as I can, and then applying Brown's edits, and whatever other old input I've got sitting around. Then I'm going to ask other people to give it another round of reading & editing, and then I'm going to publish it.
Publish!? Yes, it's pretty easy to do these days thanks to lulu.com. Emily introduced me to it in 2006 when I finished writing The Twelve and thanks to that there are approximately 6 or 7 hardcopies of that book floating around the world. I've actually lost track of them all, including my own copies. They were loaned & given to sundry people: Emily, Tyler, Mr. Mike, my parents?, my sister?, Scott?, and surely a couple other people whom I can't remember. No, I'm not asking for any back; I have the original computer files. :) But I've decided that after I finish graduate studies I'm going to start working on this again and get it published publicly on lulu.com.
What brought all this on, you may ask? Well, I've gotten into homemade bookmaking this past year or so, as some of you may've noticed on facebook. I'd made a collection of prayers (mostly taken from the Book of Common Prayer, but in my own order and better-organized in one source together. I'd made my own psalter (same Psalms from the Bible, just re-arranged for a three-times-per-day-for-four-weeks cycle). I'd made my own collection of songs & prayers from the Bible itself. And all of these I'd been using to rebuild the Anglican Daily Office into a slightly different flavor - keeping the same format but expanding the content. I eventually realized that it'd be much easier to put all these pieces together into one book, especially if I want to do this with someone else. The problem with that was that it'd have to be huge - 466 pages! That's a bit too long to stick together a homemade book the way I'd been making them, so that's when I turned to lulu.com and published it there.
So now if you search for "A Pocket Prayer Book" on lulu.com, you'll find an old-school-looking book like this: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/a-pocket-prayer-book/15262439
I fear there are a few typos still in there; I was a bit excited at the prospect of publishing it and rushed a bit more than I should have. I was also trying to get it done before a sale ended, so I could buy a bunch of copies without having to break the bank. (Becca's car had some running issues recently and we spent over $400 on repair work!) And because this pocket prayer book is so long, it's not as cheap as I would've preferred. At least for its length, $15 isn't too unreasonable.
So I am excited to present to you A Pocket Prayer Book, by Matthew Brench; my first public publication! Hopefully later this year I'll be able to roll out the Twelve too. Incidentally, if you have any cover artwork ideas for that story, I'd love to hear them.
I finished The Twelve midway through college, but never finished editing it. I still have a few text files of edits offered by friends, mainly Matt Brown, so one of these days (later this year) I'm gonna re-read the whole story, editing along the way as best as I can, and then applying Brown's edits, and whatever other old input I've got sitting around. Then I'm going to ask other people to give it another round of reading & editing, and then I'm going to publish it.
Publish!? Yes, it's pretty easy to do these days thanks to lulu.com. Emily introduced me to it in 2006 when I finished writing The Twelve and thanks to that there are approximately 6 or 7 hardcopies of that book floating around the world. I've actually lost track of them all, including my own copies. They were loaned & given to sundry people: Emily, Tyler, Mr. Mike, my parents?, my sister?, Scott?, and surely a couple other people whom I can't remember. No, I'm not asking for any back; I have the original computer files. :) But I've decided that after I finish graduate studies I'm going to start working on this again and get it published publicly on lulu.com.
What brought all this on, you may ask? Well, I've gotten into homemade bookmaking this past year or so, as some of you may've noticed on facebook. I'd made a collection of prayers (mostly taken from the Book of Common Prayer, but in my own order and better-organized in one source together. I'd made my own psalter (same Psalms from the Bible, just re-arranged for a three-times-per-day-for-four-weeks cycle). I'd made my own collection of songs & prayers from the Bible itself. And all of these I'd been using to rebuild the Anglican Daily Office into a slightly different flavor - keeping the same format but expanding the content. I eventually realized that it'd be much easier to put all these pieces together into one book, especially if I want to do this with someone else. The problem with that was that it'd have to be huge - 466 pages! That's a bit too long to stick together a homemade book the way I'd been making them, so that's when I turned to lulu.com and published it there.
So now if you search for "A Pocket Prayer Book" on lulu.com, you'll find an old-school-looking book like this: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/a-pocket-prayer-book/15262439
I fear there are a few typos still in there; I was a bit excited at the prospect of publishing it and rushed a bit more than I should have. I was also trying to get it done before a sale ended, so I could buy a bunch of copies without having to break the bank. (Becca's car had some running issues recently and we spent over $400 on repair work!) And because this pocket prayer book is so long, it's not as cheap as I would've preferred. At least for its length, $15 isn't too unreasonable.
So I am excited to present to you A Pocket Prayer Book, by Matthew Brench; my first public publication! Hopefully later this year I'll be able to roll out the Twelve too. Incidentally, if you have any cover artwork ideas for that story, I'd love to hear them.