| I wrote a book! |
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My boyfriend's 30th birthday is today, and I wanted to make him something special. He loves ghost hunting (despite not believing in ghosts; go figure), and he's got tons of books on the subject. But for some reason, although he's lived in the Bay Area for years, he didn't have one about San Francisco. He said there just weren't any good ones. So I wrote it. Unfortunately, because I am a procrastinator, I had to write the whole thing in a week. I did a little preliminary research on self-publishing and found blurb.com, which promised an easy template wizard and a quick turnaround time. So I got cracking. I decided to write about 30 "haunted" locations in the city (it being his 30th birthday and all), so I started off with a ton of research--books, newspaper articles, personal interviews, ghost tours, etc. There's a two-page bibliography at the end of the book, in fact. So once I had my locations narrowed down, I searched Flickr for appropriate photos that were available under a Creative Commons Attribution license. By strange coincidence, I ended up using photos from two people I actually knew in real life: Dave Schumaker and Dan Gies (hi, guys!). So then it was time for layout. As someone who considers herself an artist, it pained me to only have a few hours to pull together the design of the book. I feel like I could have made something a little cleaner and more interesting if I'd had more time, but that's what I get for starting late. Finally, after countless hours, I submitted my 64-page masterpiece at 3am last Wednesday, then waited for the FedEx truck with bated breath. The final result is just as professional and well-made as I hoped, and I totally recommend the service if you're looking to do a similar project. You can even sell your book online if you want, but since some of the photos I used weren't licensed for commercial use, I had to pass. If you're dying to read it for some reason, the whole book is available to read online for free, right there. Enjoy! |
I got a book in the mail today, which I thought was kind of weird since I didn't remember ordering any. It's called The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause. "How interesting!" I thought. "I work in marketing! At a nonprofit, no less! This is right in my area of expertise."
So much in my area of expertise, as it turns out, that I'm interviewed in the book.
Look, it's not like I do so many book interviews that I just forget about them, ok? It's just that I talked to Kivi Leroux Miller months ago, back when I worked for The Marsh and had just implemented a promo for their struggling cafe using a Foursquare venue offer. We were the first business in San Francisco (and one of the first anywhere) to do that kind of thing, and it got us a bunch of press on major sites like CNN.com, Mashable, and TechCrunch. (He's never gotten any credit, but the original idea came from my friend and brilliant entrepreneur Amit Gupta. For the record, his first suggestion was to have U2 play a concert in the cafe. I went with the less expensive option.)
Anyway, I was about to post a scan of my (fancy, two-page) interview when I realized that that might be considered, um, copyright infringement. So if you want to check it out, you'll have to borrow my copy--or better yet, use the link above and get your own! In any event, this brings my total of Books I've Been Published In to four: one book about nonprofit marketing, one book about Neil Gaiman, and two books about learning to use Windows. If anyone ever writes a paper about my life, it's going to have one weird bibliography.
The other day, I was making some bold claims about my prowess as an illustrator, and I mentioned that I had been "published in several books."
Technically true!
My dad is a computer genius, and back when people didn't know how to Google the answers to everything, he used to write books about computers. When I was about 12, he wrote a book called Compact Guide to Windows 95, and he asked me to draw something for the section about MS Paint.
From the Compact Guide to Windows 95
When my fans clamored for a sequel, Dad wrote Windows NT Training Guide and asked me to draw another masterpiece. I called this one "Spraypaint Tool Basketball Shorts."
From Windows NT Training Guide
Dad said that both books were bundled with CDs inside the cover, which seemed pretty cool at the time. But I think we can all agree that the real selling point was the illustrations, am I right?
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