Finishing Up Our New Book!
The original plan for Matthew's new book, "The Broken Table", was to release it before Christmas. But due to other projects happening because it was so close to Christmas, we are just now in the final stages of finishing the book. There is one final correction that needs to happen to one of the illustrations, and we will be able to submit it for publication! Yay!
We received a proof copy of the first draft, and other than a few minor editing corrections I needed to make, it looked better than I imagined! I was wanting the biggest size I could publish through Amazon, and was bummed the biggest available size was 11" x 8.5". I now know that what I imagined that size to be was quite a bit off, haha. The book is just as big as I wanted it. And I unintentionally forgot to select the gloss option for the cover over matte, but to my surprise I really love the matte look and feel. It adds to the vintage look we are going for. Most of the time mistakes waste time and create frustration. This was one of those times that I am very glad for the mistake.
All in all, I am pleased with how this book turned out. It is now the 5th book Matthew and I have worked on, and with each book we grow and slowly enjoy the whole process more and more. We look forward to creating more books!
In the filming world, Matthew just put out another improv story. This time I filmed it, and let's just say I have a lot of learning to do. I am very good at making lots of mistakes and needing to do lots of takes, which isn't exactly what we want when trying to do improv. We filmed another one today, and I didn't make as many mistakes. So hopefully next time I will get it right.
Matthew is also finishing up filming Book Wars 5! As his wife, I probably shouldn't have favorite content, but if I were to pick a favorite, Book Wars wins hands down! I love how they aren't too long, and keep me laughing. I am super picky over comedy, so that is really saying something! I am super excited for this one to come out. As a general rule, I prefer to not know anything about the script when Matthew is filming one of his stories, because I like to watch the completed videos as if for the first time along with his other viewers. I learned that after watching Auto-Correct 1 dozens of times before it was ever released. Anyway, so since I know nothing about the new Book Wars, I am super excited to see it!
An upcoming project that I will be leading in filming and editing is a video of Matthew reading his first children's book "I Will Share". We are hoping we can use it as a tool to gain more attention to his books.
As far as family life goes, all is well. 😊 We stayed in Utah for Christmas this year, and it was nice and quiet, just the way we like it. I cooked all the traditional yummy food, and we played plenty of rounds of boxing on our Kinect sports game. The boys are obsessed! Hopefully it is just a phase...
Ean tries to copy Matthew more and more. Earlier this week, he put on Asa's rubber boots, grabbed a baseball hat, gave Matthew a baseball hat, and asked to put on some dance music. Then proceeded to dance around like Matthew. He even looked like a regular B-Boy by wearing no shirt. I guess that makes it easier to dance. 😂 I would attach a picture because he is so cute, but since he IS shirtless I better not.
Ean also has been practicing baking in the oven when it is not on. Yesterday when I turned on the oven to preheat it for pizza, I started to smell plastic. He put his "pan", or rather a plastic tray for eating, in the oven and I noticed too late. Now I will just need to develop the habit of looking before I preheat. 🙄
Well, that is it for this week!
Kelsey