How the Process Began

Linda’s Monday Morning Moaning’s

I have had two books published by Arcadia in 2019 and 2020, and the process has begun on a third Arcadia book to be published in fall 2021. It will highlight farming life in and around Macomb County north of Hall Road, through out the nine different townships.

When working on my first book I didn’t have a plan other than to stay very organized as that is the only way I can function. I knew I would be gathering a large number of photographic images as for these ‘Images of America’ books, are going to take as many as 240 images.

I decided at first to copy on a piece of paper the photograph and that would also give me room for writing any notes of information about the image. And you will need everything you can find on that image. But soon realized that putting each pile of papers, as each chapter had to have a separate pile, the space was becoming an issue. Also doing it that way I couldn’t rightly tell just what I had or might have needed.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I have worked on my family history for going on 25 years. Although I have used Ancestry, since Ancestry came into being, and a family history program, I have also printed out everything. That makes a lot of paper work, along with the documents, certificates, census reports, etc. I was accumulating. Although it does take up quit a lot of space, I started working with binders for each family grouping, and managed to make sense out of all the work and material I had amassed.

It made me realize I could use the same thought process of putting together these books. Everything fell into place very easy after that. I would use photo protecters and used one for very page the book would have. Side note: count properly! I was able to ‘lay out’ the book, in book form and then found I could move my images around, and it also showed me what I might need to add to the story.

My writing was done separately and when finished I would have it coiled bound to make reading or looking for something much easier. It does not always match with the Arcadia proofs, because of changes that would need to me made that are just part of the normal publishing process.

Next week, similar to last week, I want to tell you about another vintage home I have been able to research, this one is in Romeo on Chandler Street and it’s very interesting history.

On that ‘wee’ note, till next week.

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