Category Archives: 35 Days to 35

by

35 Days to 35: 10 more days

TEN DAYS.

I only have ten days until my birthday/book deadline.  Jillian and I were originally supposed to meet today so I could pick up the book and we could discuss the revisions, BUT winter has once again taken Kentucky by surprise.

You see, every year it snows, and every year Kentucky officials go “Huh? What’s this white stuff? What should we do?? WE’RE NOT READY!!!”

Then everyone in the world goes to the grocery to buy milk, bread, and eggs. To make french toast. I guess. Yesterday, people were posting pictures of empty bread shelves at our local Kroger by 5pm and it didn’t start snowing until midnight. I really hesitate to think what will happen when the BIG one hits. Whatever the BIG one is.

All snark aside, in their defense, there IS more snow than usual this year. A state of emergency has officially been declared. Unless absolutely necessary, we’re being asked not to leave our homes. This won’t be difficult for me as the driveway is completely covered thanks to a nice drift.

The roof of the porch is groaning under the strain of almost a foot of snow, and my dog Riley, who LOVES snow and spends all day running in and out, went outside, looked around at the landscape, looked back up at me, uttered a silent “NOPE” and trotted back in.

Thankfully, the snow was light and fluffy instead of angry and heavy. With the snow in such a good mood, nothing weighed down the wires and the electricity stayed on.

Hooray! Because seriously, being snowed in with NO ability to work on my book could have been real state of emergency. I spent the afternoon revising/obsessing over the book cover. Two professionals were kind enough to give me their feedback, and I absorbed all their revisions and tried again.

I ended up designing about five alternate covers. I’m not going to post them here, because I’m still not quite happy with them. Thankfully, a friend of mine helped me focus my obsession in a positive way, and I now know what might be missing.

One step closer, friends. One step closer.

Right at 35 days before my 35th birthday, Rachael and I found out that a book we wrote about our experience making our first film “No Lost Cause,” was being returned to us by the publisher after a year of waiting for it to be printed. Instead of wallowing in our collective misery, I committed to blogging every day while I searched for ways to overcome this perceived rejection and obstacle to our goal. I currently also have about three other projects brewing at the same time, and write about the progress of each of them. This is part of that series.

Read the first entry here: https://ashleyraymerbrown.com/2015/01/23/35-days-to-35-dealing-with-rejection/

by

35 Days to 35: Ye Olde Nemesis

It was today. Of course it was today. Today, the day after the national celebration of love, Rachael and I came face to face with our greatest enemy.

The air was palpable with tension. He (for it must be a him) tipped his hat, narrowed his eyes Clint Eastwood style and grinned at us, white teeth gleaming. He stood there, old west style, challenging us to come out to meet him.

We cowered for a moment, remembering all the havoc, all the tears, all the pain he had caused us in the past. And yet, we rose out of the corner and strode into the sun, blinking, but ready for the challenge.

It was him. Our old nemesis Audio.
Continue reading →

by

35 Days to 35: The Gift of Peaceful Geese

Aching muscles and stiff joints were my alarm clock and a tinge of leftover stomach malady was my snooze button.

I had only been awake twenty seconds, and I sat there– just sat there, eyelids heavy with a weariness that usually comes after a long day of work. There’s a lot of things I’m good at. Mornings just isn’t one of them.

Continue reading →

by

35 Days to 35: Historical Love Letters

Yesterday, I asked some of the cast members of our current show to indulge me in a project. I wanted to do an audio recording of some Historical Love Letters. I had originally wanted to create our Spring Show around that theme, but we weren’t sure the subject matter would be appealing to a broad range of people. Not everyone loves history as much as I do.

Another early idea of mine was to read the correspondence between Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband Robert Browning, but that proved much too overwhelming. They wrote to each other….a lot, and they said a LOT.

It was, however, rather darling to read their very first letters to each other, how formal they are, and yet how full of promise. It felt like being in on a secret, knowing how much they would grow to love each other. If you’re interested, Project Gutenberg has them in their archives.

So I’ve been working on and off for about a month researching these love letters, and trying to find the right mix. I read Civil War love letters, political love letters, and just regular old, “I love you” love letters.  After a while, they all started to sound the same. I suppose that is the mass appeal of reading love letters. We’ve all, for the most part, been there, done that, felt that, and thought that. There truly is, “nothing new under the sun.”
Continue reading →

by

35 Days to 35: Love is Complicated

Today I spent the day in love. Well, sort of. I mean…It’s Complicated.

Ohhhhh…I can already tell the jokes are never going to get old. 🙂

While the book is away being read over by Jillian, I decided to spend my time working on the poster design for our community theatre show, It’s Complicated: An Evening of One Acts About Life, Love and Other Important Things. I’ve written about the origin of the title before, (https://ashleyraymerbrown.com/2015/01/29/35-days-to-35-its-complicated/) so now I’ll tell you the story behind the poster.
Continue reading →

by

35 Days to 35: Have book, will travel

Turned in the book this morning to Jillian, copy editor extraordinaire. She is one of the major forces behind the copy editing/proofing of my Mom’s book, “One Life” (which continues to get rave reviews, to all our delight). She’s already contacted me about some minor details she’s noticed, so I’m confident I’m in very good, very meticulous hands.

While she is busy working on the final draft I thought maybe I’d put out some feelers for people/places that might be interested in our book once it DOES come out. Very interested, mildly interested, nothing better to do interested, I’m really not picky.
Continue reading →

by

35 Days to 35: Life advice from Meg Ryan

In the ‘no news is good news’ category, I don’t have much to report today. Completed reading the book, added a few names to the acknowledgment section and had to think about what to add to ‘the future’ part. As in, what do I have planned for the future. I won’t give it away, but I think I’ve got some ambitious things lined up; because that’s just how I operate.

I actually toyed a bit with the idea of adding an epilogue about our issues with the publisher. I don’t suppose they were issues so much as it was a separation of interests. It does go right along with the actual theme of our book, in that we ended up having to do things the long and hard way. Ultimately, I also feel it ended up being the right way for us, and things worked out better, and for the best, for all involved. That was the pro of including an epilogue.
Continue reading →

by

35 Days to 35: Why so serious?

Today, my goal was to spend a nice, leisurely day rereading the book, in one sitting, from beginning to end. I wanted to update all my sections and make sure the whole piece flowed. I turned on the instrumental movie score station on Pandora to allow Hans Zimmer the opportunity to give me some auditory company, and my furry supervisors soon took up their various posts.

I made it to the second to last chapter of the 168 pages before I had to leave for rehearsal. I have to say, more often than not, I was actually very satisfied with the content. It’s now been nearly fourteen months since I finished the final draft, and while the distance had been good for some real clarity and perspective, my memory of it wasn’t as positive as the content actually ended up being.
Continue reading →

by

35 Days to 35: So many, many shades of grey

Yesterday, I said that it was the most boring entry thus far on my journey blogging about the creation and distribution of our book.

I was wrong.

Today. Today is bound to be the most boring. It was all shades of grey. Not the naughty kind, the literal kind that come from turning about a billion color photographs taken during the filming of No Lost Cause to ‘black and white’ or, more accurately, ‘grey and less grey.’

First, I had to locate all the original photos used in the book. Thankfully for present me, past me had sorted most of those away in a folder. For the benefit of future me, present me then re-saved all those same photos in a different folder, optimistically labeled ‘black and white.’
Continue reading →

by

35 Days to 35: Greyscale Gloom

In possibly my most boring blog post yet, I will update you on the book accomplishments for today. For today, all I did was book.

I finished two of the four items on my to do list from yesterday. Originally, I wanted all of the photos in the book to be in color, but upon investigation on CreateSpace (our likely venue for publishing) I learned just how expensive that luxury would be. So, I had to take my Mom’s adorable, brightly colored dinosaurs and turn their green scales grey. It felt criminal to do so. It’s just not the same. 😦

corner veloci_edited-colorcorner veloci_edited-1

She proposed I name him Arthur (or Author.) I like Veloci. Or Obby, for Obstacle, which is what he represents in the book. He is the illustration of the obstacles we had to overcome when completing our film.

What do you think? Any other ideas? Better ones?
Continue reading →