WE DID IT! The GREAT, the GOOD, the HORRID

Shock and exhaustion are setting in. This morning, after months of extremely intense work, I finally gave the go-ahead to upload Saving Our Oceans to the printer. It took four bar codes before our gifted cover designer, now living in Ecuador no less, could upload the cover. The four bar codes were my doing…couldn’t make up my mind on price…couldn’t decide if I wanted the price on the back of the book or not…couldn’t complete the metadata for the book to even get to the bar code area…couldn’t get an answer from “customer no-service”…but the book now has a bar code, and it’s official.

Hopefully the proof copy will pass scrutiny and then we’ll begin the hard part of publishing…SELLING the dang thing!

So – that’s the GREAT.

The GOOD? Actually the Good is as great as the GREAT. Another staff member and I have been admitted to the MARINE NATURALIST TRAINING PROGRAM held in Friday Harbor, Washington, this summer. We are totally stoked! This is a perfect fit for the new direction I want to take Moonlight Mesa Associates (aka Westerns, Whales, and Oceans). The program is a full week in

July. It's perfect timing since the office here in Wickenburg is closed during Arizona's hell-hot months. I'll be on my tiny tugboat enjoying every minute of summer in the Northwest...hopefully selling books, too.   

The HORRID? You know the old saying, “Haste makes waste.” This is absolutely true in the publishing business. Every time we’ve rushed a book to print to meet a deadline, we’ve regretted it. Well, this saying apparently holds true for rushing websites also. We were in such a manic state to get our WordPress website up and running after losing our 10-year-old website with another company, that we didn’t triple check things. We double-checked, but we were under so much pressure to get the website operational, that we didn’t triple check. I strongly suspect that has hurt us. Nothing quite like a publisher who misspells.

As a result, when I finally took the time to look things over carefully, low and behold I found a plethora of errors in book descriptions. Eeeks. I’d have fired me if I could’ve. Hopefully all is fixed, but I need to go through every written word one last time to make sure.

Meanwhile, Saving Our Oceans  will be released May 15 if all goes well. When (if) you purchase the book, keep in mind that the net proceeds from your purchase will be donated to a great cause! I know the 501c3 recipients will greatly appreciate it, and all of us here at Moonlight Mesa sincerely thank you.