You know, try hard as I might, some of the details of how a blog was converted into a blook are just undiscoverable [is that a word?] So when I finished with my post about Slow Road Home: A Blue Ridge Book of Days, I wrote to the author Fred First and asked him to give me whatever info he could. This is his reponse.
Hi Cheryl, thanks for the spotlight on Slow Road Home.
Regarding the compilation of blog to book.
It [the blog] was never intended to be a book. The idea first surfaced after a year, and a good bit of the book comes from it, though not in simple chronological and unedited order. The book ultimately includes about three years of selected blog posts.
I had to do extensive editing to bring it to book status vs simple off the cuff blog posts stitched together in an inorganic way. And I had to weave the "backstory" that didn't make it to the public as that year unfolded--not entirely joyous and hopeful--just enough to establish the conflict to be resolved as the book progresses.
The blog was more like a writer's notebook than a book, notes from which to weave a narrative someday, fragments that might ultimately come together in something with a recognizable shape, form and purpose. And yet, a "book of days".
A friend did help me edit (he's on a local university english faculty) and as many as 40 blog readers edited parts or all of the book for me.
So how's your eBook doing? I'm considering turning Slow Road into an audiobook (quite a few blog posts became NPR radio essays at our local affiliate).
[First has evidently been to my Senior Center Murders blog! My novel, PARK RIDGE: A Senior Center Murder, is being converted by the State of Illinois Library into an audio file for the visually-handicapped.]
PS:
There are only four small black and white section header images in Slow Road Home. But book two is underway--a full color book that is also somewhat tied to Fragments from Floyd, but more to the images. It will be a kind of visual excursion into nature just out our back door, a field-guide invitation to parents of young children to get back outdoors--for many beneficial reasons!
Image galleries (very casual, nothing fancy) are at Flickr and SmugMug.
-- FF
I'm tickled that Fred took the time to write and clarify a few things. I had assumed incorrectly that his blook included photographs. That makes it more astounding that his blook is for sale by The Blue Ridge Parkway stores.
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