Monday, July 31, 2006

The Learning Curve

Or, "Where Did All My Work Go!?"

Lately, I've been working on creating what is to be a monthly newsletter for a client of mine. The launch is... any day now. August, 2006 will be the inaugural issue -- if it kills me.

The text of the newsletter is finished and ready to go. I've been familiarizing myself with the ins and outs of an online e-mail list manager and auto responder that also allows for customizeable Plain Text and HTML newsletters.

Truth be told, it's not that complicated to work with. But you have to save your work regularly. Otherwise, your log-in will time out, things will revert, and you will LOSE EVERYTHING!

Which is what happened on Friday. At 6:30, after a long but fruitful day of work learning far more about how the newsletter template worked than I thought I wanted to, I happily hit "save," planning to test and then launch the new newsletter. I thought since I was logged in, I was safe.

I was wrong.

So, today, emboldened with the information I learned on Friday, I'm once again charging into battle. I have every confidence that I will prevail. Every new skill involves a learning curve. I've manipulated the formatting, placed the images, found the links, and tweaked the margins for this thing once. I tell myself that it can't possibly take as long to do the exact same things the second time...

Exciting New Developments on the Horizon

The tweak / slight redesign of "Carol of the Horse," including two new pages of text that offer additional insight into the stories occuring around the periphery of the illustrations, is done! It should be in print by Thursday. This is great, since Sharie plans to take the project with her and make it available when she's a featured performer on a TCT network special that will be filmed next week in Tennessee.

Justin Jeffery, our book designer, is a genius. He's done a gorgeous job with the project. We're all very proud of it.

And the Great Canadian Interview that happened earlier this month seems to have gone well. We've heard from the principals that will be involved and they seem eager to move to the next phase. Very exciting. Further updates as events warrant.