Hi Judy,
Both I and the larch are doing well - hope you are too.
The larch, of course, is in one of its most beautiful moods this time of year, with vivid green little bursts of bottle brush foliage. Dan, BTW, seems to think it
could be shipped safely enough to endure some cheaper shipping method. He went over his thoughts about that when he was over here the other day, so maybe we can re-discuss that - send me an email if you'd like me to look into it again either before it gets too hot, or preferably once it goes dormant again in the fall.
We're coming out of hibernation as well, out in the yard, taking walks, enjoying the sun-breaks, etc. A new pair of bald eagles look to be starting a nest in a Doug fir to the south along the water, and my wife saw a family of black bears foraging along the beach the other day as well, so springtime here is full of signs of life.
Yes, Dan was thrilled to be asked to fill in at the Texas convention, although the circumstances were unfortunate. I'll let him know you're doing well.
The little eBook here was fun to put together. The company who does this has an extremely simple - though limited - little program I used. They could make a print book out of this little one as well, but for many of the best photos of my own trees I only had small files I had made for posting on the web, and without the huge raw files or TIFF files I used for Dan's trees in
Gnarly Branches the resolution of printed pictures would be unattractively low.
I'm thinking, however, of making another little iPad eBook, or just a regular eBook, featuring a number of my photos of Dan's trees from
Gnarly Branches - these would be printable in a soft or hardcover form as well, if I wanted to do so, and such a book might appeal to people who don't want to read his whole life story, but just enjoy the trees. I'll see how this little one with my trees does, and see if Dan wants to do the other.
Gnarly Branches is still slowly selling - I'll likely sell out the rest of the printing in another year or so. Not bad for a little niche book in today's market, but not likely to inspire me to do a second printing.
Dan and I have talked on several occasions about making another book to augment
Gnarly - you might appreciate this, having toured his garden with him, listening to him explain each tree. My concept is to take ten or twelve of his most ancient and interesting trees, and have him tell their stories, pointing out the little details on these ancient survivors that tell how they grew in nature over the centuries in harsh climates. I would take photos of these little details as he talked, and record and later edit his descriptions.
Each tree would get 10-12 pages, for a doable 120 page book, and the photography would be much more straightforward than the laborious productions for
Gnarly. We could do the initial interviews and photography over a single weekend. He would be the author, not me. The printing would be smaller, maybe 500 books max - just for the true aficionados - but would really capture, in a way that
Gnarly did not, the true depth of his life's work, the stuff that only he knows after a lifetime in the wilds.
Also thinking, along other lines, of a quick little iPad or eBook thingy of some cheesecake photos of my wife's flowers in the yard. She has entire hard drives devoted to this obsession. Some people might like a little book of such on their iPads, and, hey, I'm head of a publishing company (LOL), so what the heck. If she'll take the time to pick out the photos, I'll publish it!
Anyway, email or PM me about the larch if you want me to try again with Dan's shipping methodology.
Best regards,
Will
