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Please save the date! The Ottawa book launch for Muskoka’s Main Street takes place Thursday, September 6, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Bistro Fifty-Four at Amberwood, 54 Springbrook Drive, Stittsville. Snacks and cash bar will be available, and you can also call to reserve a table for dinner, outside on the patio or inside overlooking the golf course and marsh.
I’ll be there with a glass of wine in one hand and a pen in the other to sign books! Hope you can join me in the celebration.
Welcome to my new website! Take a look around and please let me know what you think of the new site – all the latest on my books, events and workshops.
My blog is here too, continuing the conversation started when Muskoka’s Main Street was “A Work in Progress.” The book is now available and you’ll find all the latest news about that here as well. Be sure to have a look at the two dynamic maps of the road on the site – they’re unique, fun,and informative.
Welcome to new readers, and hello again to my faithful “Work in Progress” subscribers.
The adventure continues!
The latest word from the printer is that Muskoka’s Main Street will be printed and bound by July 26. Adding a few days for shipping puts us right on target for the August 1 release date.
Lest you think I’m sitting around with nothing to do in the meantime, here’s what’s keeping me busy until then.
My webmaster Lynn and I are putting the finishing touches on my new website. It goes live August 1 and includes two dynamic maps! The Evolutionary Map shows the Muskoka Road’s expansion year by year from its origins in Washago to Nipissing Township. A counter lets you see the pace of the road’s growth, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes stalled altogether. Very cool! There’s also an Interactive Map for adventurers looking to travel the original road today. It shows which sections are driveable, which are now hiking trails, which parts are lost altogether, and also pinpoints some points of interest. This map will evolve over the next few months as I add photos and video. Isn’t technology amazing?
For those of you in Ottawa, please save the date: book launch September 6. 5:00 to 8:00 p.m., details to follow.
Readings and events in Muskoka are also in the planning stages.
Stay tuned; we’re almost there.
The scope of Muskoka’s Main Street is a territory along the 172 kilometre length of the colonization road, stretching from Washago to just south of Lake Nipissing. My personal Muskoka is firmly anchored in a one-acre cottage property that hugs the shore of Green Bay on Three Mile Lake.
This property has been owned by only two families in the past 150 years. The Shea family – one of the first to settle in Watt Township – took possession of it in about 1862, as part of their 200 acres of free grant land. Just over 100 years later, the Sheas subdivided their land and the lot was bought by my in-laws, Joan and Don Smith.
I love the sense of history that I get from roaming the property. I can stand on the strip of beach in the exact spot where a photo from Bert Shea’s memoir shows the pioneer Sheas in two canoes carved from one massive tree taken off Long Point. They grew wheat on our lot; I can imagine William Shea launching his canoe full of grain in 1863, to be taken over water and portage to Gravenhurst and then by pack over the Muskoka Road to Washago and the closest grist mill.
I can also picture my father-in-law sawing a hole through the ice on a winter trip to the cottage (one of my rare winter trips). And my children as babies sitting in the shallow water, their diapers swelling up to alarming proportions. I can hear the chatter that accompanied my sister and I stirring vats of macaroni salad for “Cousin Fest.”
In Muskoka, it’s all about the land, isn’t it? The craggy grey rock with its distinctive pink grain, rising in sheer cliffs or, as on our lot, poking out from the thin, sandy soil. It’s also about the trees: the mixed hardwood forests that still tower out of that inhospitable base. The Sheas named Green Bay not for the colour of the water in late summer, but for the trees that ringed the bay, and still do.
Maybe above all else, Muskoka is about the lakes. The whole of Green Bay was once the playground of the pioneer Shea and Veitch families. Imagine having that as your back yard! I can imagine it. Because part of this bay is my Muskoka, rooted in Muskoka pioneer history and now Smith family history.
I used to define my Muskoka within this boundary. Muskoka’s Main Street has given me an even richer scope.
The last six weeks has been a marathon of design, review, editing, fact-checking and proofreading.
I want to say one thing about proofreading. It is a long, painstaking, manual process. Four people proofread the galley proofs for MMS – these are like the proofs you get from a photographer – and every person found something different. If a fifth person proofread them, they might unearth something we left behind – a typo, a duplicated word, a missing word – but I doubt it. Or at least, I hope not. (One professional proofreader I worked with years ago used to read a manuscript backward. Amazing what you find when you are not reading the context, but rather, just the words themselves.)
Today the book was sent on CD via courier to the printer. By next week we will know the printer’s schedule. Tentative publication date is August 1.
My brand-new website will go live about when the book is published. (NOTE TO MY FAITHFUL SUBSCRIBERS: YOU WILL HAVE TO RE-SUBSCRIBE. More on that later.) My blog and website will now be on the same platform, which makes them easier to update, which is a good thing, since we now switch gears from “down and detailed” to “fast and furious.” OH – and the website will include an interactive map of the Muskoka Road! Very exciting, very unique.
Patrick, my publisher at Muskoka Books has already turned his attention to marketing activities. Launch events. Contests. Personal appearances. Magazine articles. Something for everyone along this road!
Hang on to your hats.
It’s been a ride and a half getting the manuscript to the point where Gary, my book designer, can start laying out the pages. By my count, I’ve pressed the send button for the final time three times now. Once to the Dominic, the editor. Once to add more photos. Once to incorporate all the “front matter”: preface, introduction, publisher’s message, endorsements.
This is the process of refinement that gives a book its final polish. As I write this, Gary has done a preliminary layout and in doing that, has read the text through again. He says he can’t help it, especially with a book so interesting,which is high praise from a man who’s already read it twice. I’m busy responding to his questions and suggestions. Meanwhile, editor Dominic has also reviewed the manuscript once more and provided some suggested tweaks to Patrick, the publisher, who is giving the text a thorough read himself. This book will shine diamond-bright from all the polishing!
What you will be dazzled by first, though, is the design. Main Street has so much visual appeal, starting with the cover:
Inside, this is not a simple novel, which consists of page after page of plain text with a header, a footer and some chapter pages. Main Street has over a dozen “sidebars”and 100-plus photos and maps that must be fit into the right places in the text, enhancing not distracting from the text itself. Every single page is unique, yet follows an overall design that dictates column width, text placement and presentation.
Book design is both creative and technical; every element requires a decision. Fonts are chosen for readability and for a style that reflects the nature of the book. Page size and paper type are based on the content, the number and size of illustrations, and the cost of printing. Muskoka’s Main Street will be seven by nine inches, printed on high quality white paper, and will run about 230 pages.
Every page will sparkle!