The Journey of Pink Jasper - How Six Women Wrote a Book Without Even Meeting Each Other
I don't remember the exact date we all hooked up, or whose idea it was first, but I do know that we all met on a now defunct website for writers about three years ago. The website was new, and as writers we were looking for places to submit and somehow we all gravitated there.
Besides submitting to the e-zine, we hung out in their forums. We seemed to be the only ones posting there, and we got to know each other through our messages. We supported each other's writing efforts and read our various works. Eventually the idea came about to put a book together. At that time, we had seven of us in the group and the concept of the book and its focus were different.
We began a flurry of writing and sharing our work back and forth, discussing what we wanted to go in the book and how we would set it up. Dana Smith-Mansell created a cover design concept and we loved it.
However, this particular book was not meant to be. Things began to fall apart fairly quickly and we parted ways with the seventh member of the book, putting the project aside.
The remaining six of us had obviously bonded. We kept in touch with each other, providing support and encouragement for our separate projects. Pam Kimmell created a mailing list on Yahoo so we could all stay in touch.
Our book project would not die so easily. We couldn't let it go. So we put on our thinking caps once again and began the project over with a new focus.
We talked a lot about wanting to share our lives and our experiences with other women. The "personal journey theme" came up over and over again. What have we learned? What can we share?
The original book concept had more of a spiritual focus to it, but we began to discover as we wrote about our spiritual journeys that our life journeys were just as wrapped up in those stories. The more we explored this path, the more determined we became to put this book together and get it published.
Meanwhile, we worked on our own individual projects. Dana Smith-Mansell's book "Stop Bullying Bobby" was published during this time. Pam Kimmell continued to work on promoting her own book, "The Mystery of David's Bridge". Our effervescent Georgia Richardson, completed "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Throne", published it and began promoting as well as expanding her own writing career with several articles published. Eveline Maedel self-published a small book of poetry and devotions, "Heart's Desire" to be sold as a fund-raiser for her church and Jackie S. Brooks also published two volumes of poetry she sold as a church fundraiser as well. Dana provided the cover art for Eveline's book. Carolyn Horton had several of her poems published in the anthology "Cosmic Brownies".
We continued to grow as writers and provide support, encouragement, advice, critiques--you name it. Whenever we could help each other out we would.
The book's journey is not without its own ups and downs. A couple of times we hit some bumps, such as trying to come up with a name for the book. The outline, the chapters, the content all fell into place but the name eluded us for some time. "Pink Jasper", when suggested, at first met some resistance but the more we explored it, the more right it became.
Eventually we had our manuscript and our title, and it was all uphill from there, right? Wrong. As we soon discovered, writing the book came easy, submitting it and getting a publisher to recognize its value was another story.
As we each combed the markets for publishers, we would send our finds along to our email list. Then Pam would send the query out and we would wait. Rejection after rejection came, but we never gave up on Pink Jasper. Finally one day there was that long awaited acceptance!
None of us has met in person. Four of us live in the United States, one of us in Canada, and one in Great Britain. We worked through this book entirely with email. Everyone's had their hand in a piece of this project, from drafting to editing to proofing to doing proposals, etc. It hasn't always been easy. It's hard to take six creative, busy people (who can't actually sit around a table together and work things out) and put together a product that everyone is pleased with and proud of, but we have managed to do that and still be friends.
As Pam so aptly wrote in the introduction to the book, "working on Pink Jasper has brought us together as friends expressing ourselves in writing about our problems, our faiths and our feeling that there is an underlying bond among people everywhere that friendship strengthens. Much like the beautiful pink jasper we are...'Solid as a Rock'."
We care for each other, we support each other, and we call ourselves "Pink Jasper Sisters" because we really feel like "sisters". We hope each person that reads our work will also connect with this "sister-theme" and find a facet of themselves in this journey.
Our dream now is to be able to all get together and actually meet each other in person. Pam and Georgia will finally meet this October at the Book 'Em book fair, but we long for a day where we could wrap our arms around each other in a long group hug and truly celebrate the joy that working on Pink Jasper has brought to us.
As Georgia so aptly put it, "we hope to see the sales of Pink Jasper soar which would in turn, allow us to meet some day, Gem to Gem."
- --Pink Jasper - Gems from the Journey has been published by Heliographica and should be available on their website soon (http://www.heliographica.com/). To learn more about the "Pink Jasper Sisters", including how they choose the name, what they are currently doing, and even enter a contest for a free book, visit their website at www.homepage.mac.com/emaedel
http://www.queenpower.com
disclaimer
Besides submitting to the e-zine, we hung out in their forums. We seemed to be the only ones posting there, and we got to know each other through our messages. We supported each other's writing efforts and read our various works. Eventually the idea came about to put a book together. At that time, we had seven of us in the group and the concept of the book and its focus were different.
We began a flurry of writing and sharing our work back and forth, discussing what we wanted to go in the book and how we would set it up. Dana Smith-Mansell created a cover design concept and we loved it.
However, this particular book was not meant to be. Things began to fall apart fairly quickly and we parted ways with the seventh member of the book, putting the project aside.
The remaining six of us had obviously bonded. We kept in touch with each other, providing support and encouragement for our separate projects. Pam Kimmell created a mailing list on Yahoo so we could all stay in touch.
Our book project would not die so easily. We couldn't let it go. So we put on our thinking caps once again and began the project over with a new focus.
We talked a lot about wanting to share our lives and our experiences with other women. The "personal journey theme" came up over and over again. What have we learned? What can we share?
The original book concept had more of a spiritual focus to it, but we began to discover as we wrote about our spiritual journeys that our life journeys were just as wrapped up in those stories. The more we explored this path, the more determined we became to put this book together and get it published.
Meanwhile, we worked on our own individual projects. Dana Smith-Mansell's book "Stop Bullying Bobby" was published during this time. Pam Kimmell continued to work on promoting her own book, "The Mystery of David's Bridge". Our effervescent Georgia Richardson, completed "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Throne", published it and began promoting as well as expanding her own writing career with several articles published. Eveline Maedel self-published a small book of poetry and devotions, "Heart's Desire" to be sold as a fund-raiser for her church and Jackie S. Brooks also published two volumes of poetry she sold as a church fundraiser as well. Dana provided the cover art for Eveline's book. Carolyn Horton had several of her poems published in the anthology "Cosmic Brownies".
We continued to grow as writers and provide support, encouragement, advice, critiques--you name it. Whenever we could help each other out we would.
The book's journey is not without its own ups and downs. A couple of times we hit some bumps, such as trying to come up with a name for the book. The outline, the chapters, the content all fell into place but the name eluded us for some time. "Pink Jasper", when suggested, at first met some resistance but the more we explored it, the more right it became.
Eventually we had our manuscript and our title, and it was all uphill from there, right? Wrong. As we soon discovered, writing the book came easy, submitting it and getting a publisher to recognize its value was another story.
As we each combed the markets for publishers, we would send our finds along to our email list. Then Pam would send the query out and we would wait. Rejection after rejection came, but we never gave up on Pink Jasper. Finally one day there was that long awaited acceptance!
None of us has met in person. Four of us live in the United States, one of us in Canada, and one in Great Britain. We worked through this book entirely with email. Everyone's had their hand in a piece of this project, from drafting to editing to proofing to doing proposals, etc. It hasn't always been easy. It's hard to take six creative, busy people (who can't actually sit around a table together and work things out) and put together a product that everyone is pleased with and proud of, but we have managed to do that and still be friends.
As Pam so aptly wrote in the introduction to the book, "working on Pink Jasper has brought us together as friends expressing ourselves in writing about our problems, our faiths and our feeling that there is an underlying bond among people everywhere that friendship strengthens. Much like the beautiful pink jasper we are...'Solid as a Rock'."
We care for each other, we support each other, and we call ourselves "Pink Jasper Sisters" because we really feel like "sisters". We hope each person that reads our work will also connect with this "sister-theme" and find a facet of themselves in this journey.
Our dream now is to be able to all get together and actually meet each other in person. Pam and Georgia will finally meet this October at the Book 'Em book fair, but we long for a day where we could wrap our arms around each other in a long group hug and truly celebrate the joy that working on Pink Jasper has brought to us.
As Georgia so aptly put it, "we hope to see the sales of Pink Jasper soar which would in turn, allow us to meet some day, Gem to Gem."
- --Pink Jasper - Gems from the Journey has been published by Heliographica and should be available on their website soon (http://www.heliographica.com/). To learn more about the "Pink Jasper Sisters", including how they choose the name, what they are currently doing, and even enter a contest for a free book, visit their website at www.homepage.mac.com/emaedel
http://www.queenpower.com
disclaimer
posted by Allyn Evans at 7:02 PM
1 Comments:
Great work! Blessings!
Post a Comment
<< Home