My first book! Really hitting the bookstores!
How to Make a Life: A Tibetan Refugee Family and the Midwestern Woman They Adopted, the story about 15 years of interactions with my Madison friends who moved from a Tibetan refugee “camp” (more like a small town) in India, is out of my hands, on its way to graphic artists, the binder, the printer, and then bookstores.
I laugh that I undertook it because I thought it would be short and easy – a year’s project. Four years later, I’m humbled with the process: a book proposal (amazingly, accepted right away), developmental editors (two), a copy editor, unending revisions, a photo session with my friend Peter Williams and all 12 in the Tibetan-American family, then more revisions. The Wisconsin Historical Society Press chose the title and designed the cover.
No one tells you when you write a book, especially a first one, that you are going to have to read and re-read your own book, in full, at least 11 times. By the end you are sick of the story (not really) and critical of your prose. You want to start again. You can do better than this!
But too late, off it goes, to forever freeze in a moment of time your literary and research skills, your errors and inaccuracies, and the narrowness of your world view.
But it’s out!
Click here to order How To Make a Life from the publisher.
Click here to order How To Make a Life from Amazon.