It has been a long-hard three months but I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. For those of you who may not know me, my name is Jolene, and I have been the website designer and blogger for the Mrs. Pollifax fan site for over 20 years. It started out as a group on Yahoo, then a free site on their platform and then I moved it to a subdomain but finally in 2004 I purchased its own domain and have been trying to keep it going ever since. Because of Dorothy Gilman’s and a few other authors I enjoyed during my childhood I decided I wanted to be a writer as well. It has taken me over 40 years of a lot of false starts but I have finally gotten started towards my goal of becoming a great story-teller of fiction.
I have published a couple of non-fiction books and have uploaded the beginnings of a history, mystery, steampunk fiction series on Kindle Vella under the pen name, L.G. Green. I am so excited about this new story and I have Dorothy Gilman to thank for it. She has been my inspiration to keep trying and get it done.
Now, I know you are probably asking yourself what all this has to do with getting the earlier works of our favorite author republished in paperback and eBook format. Well, it all sort of ties in together. I had finally been given the approval of her family to republish the older books myself. That meant that I had to get copies of each of them, convert them over to WORD documents, great new covers and setup self-publishing accounts. Well, for anyone who has had to recreate their stories from their physical copies because they did not have any of them in digital format will tell you it is quite a lot of work. Yes, I can use voice-to-text feature in WORD 365 version but it has to be trained for your voice and how you speak. It does not intuitively know that some sentences are conversations. So, you ve to speak all the words, fix the ones that are incorrect and put in all the right punctuation. Which requires the use of both hands and someone to hold the book in place while you compare what you have on the page to what you have in the document. Then disaster struck!
The day after Christmas as I was getting back into the swing of things after the family holidays I went traipsing into my dark living room, my foot caught on a silky bag that was left on the floor and went down into a very, very sturdy side table with my right arm, thus breaking my shoulder in 3 places, effectively making my whole right side fairly useless. I will not get in a rant about the healthcare in this country or the lack of services available for those of us who are self-employed and cannot afford the outrageous prices they want to charge in monthly fees just to have health insurance coverage with a huge deductible and very little else really covered. I was unable to arrange for treatment after the initial ER Visit (which gave me a cloth sling and a couple of pain pills and said to check with my primary doctor for an orthopedic referral), it took 4 weeks to see an ortho doctor because of the holidays, the fact that I have no insurance and no funds to pay for one, so as long as I was not dying I could just fend for myself.
Sorry, that was a rant anyway. It has taken me 3 months to be able to use both hands to type on my laptop. I have found a way to hold the book in place and have 1-1/2 books translated into digital format. Now, I just need to go back and put in the formatting and needed punctuations in order to submit the stories for publication. I have two of the book covers designed and have set=up accounts with the self-publishing company that will be releasing them “World-Wide” as soon as we clear copyright. Which I have to pay for to get updated.
Still Doing the Survey
We are still gathering responses to our surveys, so PLEASE TAKE THE SURVEY and fill it out completely. We will be having some contests and give-aways over the next several months.
If you have one of the older books and would like to convert it over to a WORD doc to help me get more books published quicker use the form below and send it to me. I have the first three almost ready for publication so any of the books on the list below would be so great. THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Assistance With Conversions
RAGAMUFFIN ALLEY Published in 1951
FOUR PARTY LINE Published in 1954
PAPA DOLPHIN’S TABLE Published in 1955
GIRL IN BUCKSKIN Published in 1956
HEARTBREAK STREET Published in 1958
WITCH’S SILVER Published in 1959
MASQUERADE Published in 1961 -(republished under Heart’s Design in 1963)
TEN LEAGUES TO BOSTON TOWN Published in 1963
THE BELLS OF FREEDOM Published in 1963
THE MAZE IN THE HEART OF THE CASTLE Published in 1983
