Friday, October 23, 2009

This lovely is not actually my blog

Perhaps my blogger profile directed you here but...psst...this isn't actually my blog. This blog was created by a group of brilliant college women whose class project was to help me launch my book in spring 2009. If you want to read about their experiences, read on.

If, on the other hand, you're trying to find Janna Cawrse Esarey, author of The Motion of the Ocean, blogger of Happily Even After, maker of Book Club Dirty Little Secrets videos, then you should click on one of those links or go to my website.

Thanks for your interest!

Cheers,
Janna

Monday, July 20, 2009

Book Reading Tonight

Ahoy hoy cruisers!

Just a reminder that Janna will be at Powell's Books in Portland tonight at 7:30 PM. Hope that all of the Oregon fans can make it out there (and people in the vicinity of Vancouver, as well)!

We have also received a comment from a reader, and so hopefully we will have a book review coming soon to post here in the blog.

The blog is for the most part finished, but any reviews that readers would like to send in I will post for future readers!

Thanks for reading and following the blog!
Signing off,
Sarah

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Here At Last!

Sorry for the belated post here, folks!

The Motion of the Ocean was released on June 2nd, and I'm sure Janna was excited (not to mention relieved)! If you have already picked up a copy of the book, send us an email or leave us a comment here at the blog. We'd love to hear your feedback and post it here on the blog!

Happy sailing, and congratulations to Janna for her very first book!

Janna will still be making two appearances this summer:
Mon, July 20th, 7:30 pm - Reading
Powell's Books, Portland

Thurs, July 23rd, 7 pm - BOOK PARTY w/ Midge Raymond,
Richard Hugo House, Seattle

Stay tuned here for any future updates.

Signing off,
Sarah

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Upcoming Author Appearances

Hey there, Cruisers! Sarah here again!

School is out for the summer, and this class project is officially finished! However, The Motion of the Ocean is not yet out, and Janna is still working to promote her book!

Here is a list of dates for some appearances that Janna will be making in the Pacific Northwest to promote her book. Save the dates, and come join Janna!

Sat, June 6th, 6:30 pm - Reading
Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park near Seattle

Mon, June 22nd, 6:30 pm - Reading
Seattle Public Library, Ballard Branch

Thurs, July 2nd, 7 pm - Reading
Village Books
, Bellingham

Mon, July 20th, 7:30 pm - Reading
Powell's Books, Portland

Thurs, July 23rd, 7 pm - BOOK PARTY w/ Midge Raymond,
Richard Hugo House, Seattle

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Janna Gives Some Feedback on the Flyer

The Motion of the Ocean will be available in bookstores on June 2nd, 2009! You can preorder your book right now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders. Or you can wait until June 2nd and go to your local bookseller to pick up a copy of the book!

Hello Cruisers, Sarah here!

Tomorrow is the final class for Publishing Procedures, and Lindsay, Alice, and I are frantically working to complete our project! The three of us have written an awesome (and well-collaborated) paper about our marketing plan, Alice and Lindsay have finished two versions of the book trailer, and here I bring you some updates regarding that flyer!

Have you noticed how nothing is ever quite finished, even when we say it is? How something can always use more work--a few tweaks here and there? There is always room for improvement.

This is certainly the case with our flyer! Janna had given some feedback on our most recent versions of the flyer, and so I went in and made some edits according to Janna's comments.

Here is what Janna had to say about the last flyer that we came up with:

A couple thoughts:
- How about a feisty new travel memoir (instead of exciting)
- Lots of blue and white here; some of the writing fades into the background. What about adding a third color? Maybe picking up the brick red of the sail or something?
- Could you please change the quote (more prestigious than Cap'n Fatty, bless his heart):
"You'll be wildly entertained and glad to be on solid ground.” - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY summer pick
I really like the swervy way you wrote the title with the subtitle above and below. Very cool! Also, I prefer the 2nd flyer visually like you do, but not sure why (I definitely don't need my face on the poster).


So with this in mind, I created this version:


This one, however, still had a few errors in it (including a typo). Janna sent some more comments to us, and I created one more flyer . . . which we all are quite happy with!

- typo: memoir is misspelled
- I agree with Alice that red is difficult to read against dark blue, whereas the white pops so nicely
- can you put the thin outline around the subtitle so it can be better seen against the white clouds?


I love the layout here! Nice how you've lined up waterline on book to match waterline on poster--clever! Also love the curves you have here. You've done a beautiful job. Perfect balance.

My only concern is no info is really given about the book to spark a general female reader's interest. That's why I'd like to include the paint chip quote ("Choosing a mate is like picking house paint from one of those tiny color squares: You never know how it will look across a large expanse, or how it will change in different light"). I understand that adding another block of text will mess with the layout, but here are some ideas on how to do it:
- Move PW quote to where feisty memoir is currently, put in white; I like the imagery of this quote at the bottom; fits with solid ground idea
- One option is to put paint chip quote to upper right block in red, then shrink the subtitle text slightly and move entire subtitle to one line below title and put "an adventure love story by janna cawrse esarey" (instead of feisty new travel memoir--b/c I may use this several months from now) to top line--I might do all lowercase for both upper and lower lines of text to create a streamlined, contemporary look; just an idea.




With these comments in mind, I created the above two versions of the flyer. There are very subtle differences between these two images, and we like them both. Which do you prefer?

This is it for the flyer! It has been through a lot, with many revisions. It has certainly improved, however, and now Janna has a whole selection of flyers to work with while promoting her book. It's been a lot of work, but very fun.

That's all for the flyer and all for now, but we will be back in the near future to update you on our final class tomorrow morning!

Signing off,
Sarah

Monday, May 18, 2009

Preorder Your Copy Now, and a Call For Readers' Submissions!

Ahoy-hoy, Cruisers!

Sarah here, and as my overuse of exclamation points indicates, I bring you exciting news!

First things first: a very important bit of information that this blog does not yet feature! The release of Janna's book!

That's right, folks! The Motion of the Ocean will be available in bookstores on June 2nd, 2009! You can preorder your book right now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders. Or you can wait until June 2nd and go to your local bookseller to pick up a copy of the book!

In other important news:
We would like to feature readers' opinions and reviews of The Motion of the Ocean on this blog! If you are somebody fortunate enough to have read The Motion of the Ocean already and would like to have a bit of fame here on the blog, please send an email to us at motionoceanblog@gmail.com!

We only ask that you do not spoil the book in your review. Feel free to discuss topics, themes, how this book made you think--anything! This is your chance to have a say right here on the blog!

That's all for now! Stay tuned for some final updates on the book trailer and flyer, as well as for fan reviews of The Motion of the Ocean!

Signing off and sailing away (conveniently to the melody of a Styx song),
Sarah

Saturday, May 16, 2009

A Quiet Week in Lake Wobegon

Ahoy, Cruisers! Alice here.

Well, as you can tell from the subject, not much has been going on. At least, not much in the blog category of our lives. That's right: it's coming on to finals week, and the three of us have suddenly remembered that we actually do have other classes to worry about and thus have all been total gestresst--so stressed, in fact, that I can't even speak English properly anymore. Mensch.

I do, however, have a new and improved version of the book trailer to show you. This isn't the final cut, but it's pretty darn close. We've fiddled with a few things in this version--changed the font, changed the pacing, changed some pictures--and all in all we're happy with how it turned out. Just a few more things need tweaking before we're done! Total done! We shall keep you posted.


Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Appearance at Book Club Inspires Conversation!

Hi, all! Lindsay here.

Janna's visit to Garfield Book Company's book club was a huge success! Here is a clip that we got from it:



Stay tuned for more info!

Monday, May 11, 2009

Update on the Web Flyer

Sarah here!

Last week, we completed our e-newsletter masthead. What, you may ask, is that? That's the first thing you see when an e-newsletter is emailed to you: something consistent and visually appealing to start the newsletter.

This was yet another component of our class assignment, so we put one together to go along with everything else we have completed. As you can see, the header there is very similar to our blog header here. We wanted to keep these the same, so viewers could easily connect the newsletter and blog and know they are part of the same marketing scheme. We chose to keep the layout of this very simple so as to not overwhelm viewers. The design aspect was simple and very easy for us to put together, but nothing is ever easy, now is it?

When it came to putting the header in an email, we had all sorts of problems. Technological troubles seems to be a common theme with our project. Our first issue was finding an email provider that would allow us to send HTML-based emails. We have a Gmail account for this blog, and wanted to use that, but Gmail, unfortunately, does not allow sending HTML-based emails. We then tried using a Hotmail account, which will send HTML-based emails. When we attempted that, however, the formatting was incorrect. So after several attempts at tweaking the HTML coding, we gave up on Hotmail and decided to switch to a non-web-based email provider. This time we tried Thunderbird, Firefox's email client. This allows us to send HTML-based emails disguised as our Gmail account. Problem solved!

Luckily, now that we're beyond the technical issues, we are pretty much finished with the web flyer. Now our focus is on fine-tuning and tweaking the various components of our project, focusing primarily on the book trailer.

That's all for now; we'll keep you updated as we finish this project in time for finals week next week!

Signing off,
Sarah

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Reactions to Janna's Book Club

Ahoy! Alice here.

Time for a bit more footage from Janna's book club! After Sarah, Katie, and I had finished filming Janna and her friends discussing the book, Janna turned the camera on us to see what we had to add to the conversation. Here's just a bit of what was said by Sarah,



by Katie,



and by me.


Saturday, May 9, 2009

Technological Difficulties

Alice here. I hope you all enjoyed reading Lindsay's idyllic recounting of our video trailer experience because the followup tale is slightly more harrowing. Are you ready?

About two hours after class ended--so after about four hours of working on the trailer total--we were just about done: we just needed to fiddle with a couple of photos and export the trailer! Sarah and Lindsay headed out and left me in charge of the finishing touches. Little did they know what would ensue. . . .

First, half of our photos disappeared. I'm not quite sure why. They were displaying perfectly, and the next time I ran through the trailer they had been replaced by greenscreen. This was a source of great confusion to me, but, as a veteran Windows user, I simply deleted and reinserted them, and all seemed to be well.

Next I had to render the video. For those of you who aren't video editing whizzes, this just means--well, I'm not quite sure what the technical definition is. Sarah could probably tell you. Basically, before you've rendered anything, the video runs really choppily and skips and is generally unpleasant to watch; rendering fixes all that and makes the video ready for production. So it's something that really must be done. When I told Premiere Pro to render the video, though, it got about 5 percent in and stopped.

OK. I told it to render again. Three percent this time.

I moved the cursor right to the part that needed to be rendered, then asked the program to render again. It got through about ten seconds before stopping. So I proceeded to render the video in five- to ten-second chunks, all the way through.

With that finally finished, I told Premiere to export the file. This normally takes a bit of time--far longer than the actual length of the video--so when the progress bar disappeared after about thirty seconds, I was suspicious. Sure enough, when I opened the exported file, our video ran until just about "Girl dumps Boy" before cutting out. Not a very auspicious ending.

I'll spare you the details. Let's just say it was about 1:45 then, and by 2:30 I had at least six partial versions of the video exported. The computer lab assistant had no ideas, and nor did I, so I left to get some much-needed sustenance, intending to relocate my efforts to a computer in another lab.

Unfortunately, after I got to said other lab, I realized that I didn't have all the files that the video needed. I would, essentially, have to remake the entire trailer. No thanks.

The computer we had been working on, which had all the files we needed in the order we needed them, proved more than a little difficult to reclaim. During my time spent waiting, I came up with a list of possible problems and solutions to fix the trailer and make sure that exporting ran lickety-split. Thus armed, I loaded the file, hit "export," and prepared to do battle.

It ran through it all on the first shot. No problems. I will never understand Windows.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Book Trailer Round Two!

Hi! Lindsay here:

After a long, hard day of work on Thursday, we have what we think is a very close version to a final book trailer. Hooray! We started working on it in class on Thursday, but when class time was up we weren't ready to abandon what we had got going, so Alice and I stayed behind because we didn't have classes for a while. Sarah skipped her class class to stay and work--sshhhhh! She is dedicated! Plus it was fun.

As I mentioned in my very first blog entry, I have no experience with filming or editing. This project is definitely a learning experience for me. On Thursday Sarah was in the driver's seat for a while and then she asked if I want to try. Doing my best to contribute, I said YES! Our work was the repetitive stuff of plugging in Janna's stick figure drawings (see earlier blog post for a glimpse of these in their early stage) and adding the titles and pictures that we mapped out in our book trailer outline a few weeks ago.

My favorite drawings were Janna's stick picture of pink tasks, boy dumps girl (tears), and boy comes crawling back. Don't they all!

We had to resize each picture and center it in the movie Premiere Pro software. Then we added the title to each picture. This part is actually very easy if shown the proper way--and, of course, with two experts beside me.

One of my favorite add-ins to this book trailer was putting in actual pictures from Janna and Graeme's trip to match what idea we were conveying. For example, Janna demonstrates her taking on "pink" tasks with pictures of her sewing, cooking, and doing dishes. My most favorite are the pictures of the animal life and locals on the islands she visited.

After all the pieces were put in order, we edited how long each clip gets shown on the screen and cut it down after we read it out loud. Sarah felt goofy reading the text out loud in slow-mo to make sure viewers will have time to read it before another thing comes on the screen.

As the background music, we have Janna's song called "The Rock Song" that she wrote the lyrics to and a friend sang at her wedding. It was the perfect background music and the perfect sentimental touch to display her and Graeme's love story. I even learned how to fade a song out instead of having it stop abruptly. More pleasing to the ears. :)

All in all we think it is a good second draft and pretty close to ready. We got the video under two minutes which is perfect time for a book trailer to be.

Stay tuned for more updates on the book trailer. :)


Thursday, May 7, 2009

Feedback from a Teenage Boy on Last Night's Book Group

Hey, Cruisers! Sarah here.

Last night, due to extenuating circumstances, I was unable to stick around for the filming of the Garfield Book Company book club discussion of Janna's book! Instead, I asked my seventeen-year-old brother Andrew to come in and help film the book club for me. He wasn't wild about it, but he agreed and was the cameraman of the evening (as Alice was the camerawoman).

Andrew told me afterword that he got a lot out of the discussion. He told me a lot, which I passed on to Janna and now am sharing with you here!

So here is some insight from an unlikely source.

My first impression of the group of ladies was that they're all powerful females who definitely believe that they should have as much say in a relationship as a man, but after a short time in the discussion, it seemed as if they had a view of men almost as if they were Ken-dolls, and that they should be molded by women in the relationship. After listening to this discussion on a deeper relationship level, I realized how this initial prejudice was warped and wrong, and I developed my own ideas for a strong relationship.

It really struck home to me when the author related to a boat race, describing how she realized that even though her husband seemed to be ignoring her, he was still holding her in high regard. She talked about how she didn't see the point in inviting her on a boat ride if he was just going to stand there and think about the race, but when she talked to him about it after the race, he said that he thought she would want to sit back and watch the scenery. The author used this scenario to describe how quickly feelings can change in a relationship as she continued to tell how her mood lightened up when they won first place. To me, this story instead shows how a man tries to relate to his partner. I'm not entirely sure how many women in the group realized this--it may have been all of them--but this man was extending his outlet to his wife and sharing one of his deepest joys with his mate. Many times in pop culture husbands are depicted spending 'man time' with their buddies at a bar or a bowling alley, completely shunning their spouses. This boat race scenario struck me as one heck of a reaching out moment for a man--inviting his wife to go with him in a boat race. As a male myself, I know how many women do not appreciate sports as most men do, and honestly it can annoy us to a great extent how they ask us questions that are so elementary to us. For a man to invite his wife on a boat race is a major step for him, and even though he seems to be shunning you, just the act of having you with him shows how much he cares for you.

The group did a nice job discussing how a relationship must be on an equal footing between each partner, and I strongly agree, with some additions from the male perspective. I am only seventeen years old, but I know from observing my parents that there are really no areas that are truly male or female oriented. To women: ask your husband about a remodel that you are planning and take his opinion seriously. He may not have much experience with interior decorating, but he may have some input that you will find very useful. Also, accept that he will not always talk about his issues with you. I know perfectly well that my family is there for me when I am so upset that I can't control my emotions, but most males and I just need some time alone to reflect on things. And to men: don't seclude yourself from your partner with sports or drinking with your buddies, but spend some time explaining the finer points of the game to your partner, and enjoy the game with her instead of with your buddies. Save that for the Super Bowl. Talk to her about your day when you get home and release some pressure that may build up after the daily grind. And most importantly, at least to me, do your best (both men and women) to totally and completely forget about gender stereotyping. I hate hearing from other teen boys how girls want to be controlled and I hate hearing from girls how all men are sadistic womanizers. We are all people, and the human race is one and the same.

So to summarize what I took from listening to this discussion, we all need to think about our partners as people and not as a men or a women that we will spend the rest of our lives with. If we were to do this, then I believe that we can move on from annoyance at our partners because of small issues to appreciating the fact that we all have someone special to share our experiences with.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Book Club a Success!

Hi, all! Alice here.

Janna's appearance as Garfield Book Company has just wrapped up, and everything went swimmingly! Well, I say swimmingly; I mean survivably. Well, I say survivably--perhaps I should clarify. Everything went swimmingly once we finally got things rolling. Filming turned out to be a bit more tricksy than we anticipated. What with timing issues, lighting problems, getting cameras, getting tapes for cameras, getting tripods, and scrounging up this little doohickey . . .
. . . which is essential for attaching the camera to the tripod and yet, it seems, doesn't come with the tripods. . . . Anyway, once we finally got started, things went great. Lindsay's book club was really excited to have Janna there, and Janna was excited to be there, and a great conversation ensued. And it's all on tape! (Unfortunately, still on actual tape right now--hopefully we'll get that converted to digital format soon to share it with you!)

While I'm on the topic of filming, though, I should talk a bit more about filming Janna's book club a couple of weeks ago. That was actually the first project we did, but then we got so caught up in the rest of this that we never had time to blog about it! Sarah, Katie, and I were all filming (Lindsay couldn't make it, unfortunately), so hopefully we can get their reactions to it in here soon. The main thing that struck me about these two different book clubs' discussions wasn't their reactions to the book--everybody loved it--but what they chose to focus on. Janna's friends focused a lot on all the relationship questions the book brings up and almost not at all on the actual sailing aspect. Lindsay's group, though, talked a whole lot about the sailing--they all loved the romantic adventure! It was really interesting to hear the different takes on it.

With that, I'll leave you with a little sample of our filming from Janna's book club--we got a bit silly behind the scenes with cookies and pizza!


Janna Prepares for Tonight's Appearance!

Janna here.

Giddy because tonight I get to talk with a book club about my book, or hear a book club talk about my book--I don't really know which it will be or what to expect. I hope they like it! Oh, but that's just my ego talking. My true hope is that, like it or hate it, my book provides fodder for a good discussion about the things that matter in women's lives: love, relationships, balance, dreams, and lots of other juicy topics. This will be the first time a book club that's not my friends discusses the book. Biting my nails. . . .

I also want to say thanks to the Garfield Book Club, the store; to Michelle, a manager there, for agreeing to host me; and especially to Lindsay for setting this whole thing up. Lindsay, you rock! And, of course, Sarah, Alice, and our helper elf, Katie, rock too! You can see from this blog that a lot of work goes into launching a book, and these young women are bending over backwards. They are fabulous. I am lucky.

See you at tonight's book club!

-Janna

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

New Flyer and an Early Sample of the Book Trailer!

Sarah here, with a quick update:

We have redone our flyer (yet again), and have two new versions to show you. We're now up to three various flyers. Which one do you like best? Let us know--send us an email or leave us a comment!

I have also put together a very rough, very simple example of part of our book trailer. A lot more work will go in to our book trailer, and it will be amazing when it is finished! But here is our work so far!



That's it for now! Don't forget, Janna is coming to the Garfield Book Company tomorrow at 6:30! See the previous blog entry for further details.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Garfield Book Company Welcomes Janna!

Hi, everyone! Lindsay Here.

Come join us for Janna's appearance at the Garfield Book Company Book Club on Wednesday May 6th at 6:30. For more details please visit our website at Luteworld.

As I mentioned in my bio, I work at Garfield Book Company. What is Garfield Book Company, you ask? Well, it serves many functions to the Tacoma/Parkland community. Garfield is the Pacific Lutheran University bookstore, which means it provides textbooks, supplies, and PLU paraphernalia. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Garfield is also a fully functional, independent bookstore, which means we are mini Borders, so to speak. Our store's mission is to connect and engage with our community, so we offer events for children, author events, and a book club. This is where Janna will come in! Another manager and I run the book club at Garfield. We have a varied and eclectic group of members: the ages vary from twenty (me) to fifty- to sixty-year-old women. As of now, most of our members--well, actually all--are women, but we are looking for men to come make our group more diverse! Some of the books we have read this year are The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Book Thief, and The Thirteenth Tale.

When I started Publishing Procedures, we had a bunch of local authors visit our class and show us various aspects of the publishing industry. When Janna came and gave a lesson, a light bulb went off in my head! I then contacted her to come visit our book club. A couple of e-mails later, Janna was set to come visit us. YAY! Now the next step was figuring out how we could read her book before it was even published to the public . . . hmm. . . . Janna worked her magic with her publishers and got us 11 pre-advanced reader copies of her book. My book club members enjoyed this because they felt they were able to see the transition and process a book has to go through before it is published. As we have several writers in our group, they were very enthused!

After I got assigned to help promote Janna's book, the book club appearance was the perfect time to film a commentary on her lovely book. We originally thought that we could use the footage in Janna's book trailer, but as the process went along, Janna decided she would take the footage into her own hands and make a how-to guide for book clubs. Janna is still tampering with what the purpose of the footage will be at the moment, but we will love having her at our book club nonetheless.

Garfield Book Company's address is:
208 Garfield Street,Suite 101
Tacoma,WA,98444


If you have any question please don't hesitate to comment or e-mail me at mackerld@plu.edu

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Janna Begins Work on the Book Trailer

Hello, Cruisers! (I, Sarah, have decided to name all you fans of The Motion of the Ocean Cruisers. It makes sense.)

Sarah here, posting on behalf of Janna. Last Tuesday, the whole gang met at the Garfield Book Company to discuss our plan of action for this blog and for the book trailer that we are creating. About two hours later, we had everything spelled out beautifully.

Janna has now begun the work on our book trailer. Because we were conversing via email, I have chosen to do this blog entry in email format. Janna is emailing in green, and I am emailing in blue.

At the end, I have attached for your viewing pleasure the images and videos that Janna sent to us for her preliminary work. Remember, the finished product will feature a lot more content, including narration and music!

- Sarah Wise

To: All

I played around with capturing me deleting/adding items (hearts, smiles, etc) all at once (instead of drawing them line by line, which appears pretty slow on screen). It's easiest for me to just screen capture me drawing the stuff, but if that is too hard for you to work with, let me know. Not sure how good I need to make these on my end and how much editing on your end will help.

- Janna

To: All

Janna,

I think this stuff is great! I personally love the videos, watching the stuff get drawn in. To cut down on time and to keep it more visually interesting, we could edit the videos to start with stick figures already drawn, minus their mouths (which create facial expressions).

For example:

We start with two stick figures with no mouths. The narrator explains that they meet, and the smiles pop on. They fall in love, and the hearts appear in the air. They break up, and the tears come.

- Sarah

To: All

Yay! Glad you like it! I absolutely understand what you're saying about the smiles, etc. Brilliant idea.
I'll work on it tomorrow.

- Janna




Monday, April 27, 2009

The Finished Flyer!

Sarah here, once more.

Lindsay, Alice, and I met this evening at school to complete our flyer, which is due in class tomorrow morning (9:55 AM sharp!). We had some difficulty finding a computer we could use with the Adobe Creative Suite on it. Fortunately, I have connections (okay, not really; Jason would have let me on the editing computers in the library even if he hadn't known me) and we were able to get on a computer to finish our flyer.

We chose to keep the basic layout that we already had going. We added the subtitle of the book to the header of the flyer, and that made a difference. Now the title is interesting and visually appealing, and it helps get our message across. Now you can tell at a glance that we are not advertising something solely nautical and sea-related. No, this flyer is clearly about something deeper! We chose to keep all of the text in the flyer; this is, after all, about a book! Our finishing touches were to change the title font color and to add a side-line reading "an exciting new travel novel by Janna Cawrse Esarey."

We're satisfied with our end result, and hope you like it too! Feel free to comment or email us with any comments or suggestions!

That's it for today and all of our flyer updates. I'm off to bed now; I'll talk to you later!

- Sarah Wise

Lindsay Here: After careful deliberation, thought, and advice from Janna, of course, we made even more changes to our supposed final flyer. We changed "an exciting new travel novel" to "an exciting new travel memoir." This was a minor error on our part because Janna's book in fact is a true story and novel is associated with fiction. Oops! We also added--so people would rush to the bookstore--"Coming June 2009!"

Here is hopefully the last and final draft of our flyer:




Don't forget! May 6th, Janna will be appearing at the Garfield Book Company. Stay tuned for details!

Design Updates

Posted by Sarah:

Hello, everybody! Alice, Lindsay and I have been working the last week or so on creating a flyer and an e-newsletter masthead for Janna to use to promote The Motion of the Ocean.

We're not finished yet, but here are the works in progress! We started with something very simple for the flyer. We included a photo of Janna, a photo of the book cover, and a bio of Janna. For decoration, I made up some little waves, which we liked and later ended up using for the e-newsletter masthead, as well. However, we didn't like the poster on a white background, and we could not find a color that we were satisfied with. So we decided to take the photograph from the cover of the book and Photoshop it, allowing us to use the picture as our flyer background.

Janna was kind enough to send me the original photograph, and I Photoshopped the image to add quite a bit more sky to it. Lindsay and Alice provided me with their keen eyes to ensure that no blemishes were in the Photoshop job. We re-did the flyer, eliminating the fun waves in this version. We rather like it, but it is not yet finished. When we presented the flyer to the rest of the class, the common complaint was that it did not look like it was advertising a book. We haven't quite determined what we want to change about this in order to complete our flyer, but the three of us will be meeting this evening to finish. I will post that as soon as I am able!

Lastly, we have our e-newsletter masthead, which I love the most. It is simple, clean, and very visually appealing. This version here is incomplete: it still needs information about the blog and a picture for the blog. However, you get the gist of it.

Our next big project is to create a book trailer video, which I think we all are very excited about! Stay tuned right here to see every exciting thing we are working on!

Don't forget! May 6th, Janna will be appearing at the Garfield Book Company. Stay tuned for details!

Signing off,
Sarah Wise

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Last but Not Least. . . .

Time to meet the last member of the crew!

My name’s Alice Hyde and I’m a freshman majoring in English at Pacific Lutheran University. I’ve run into the same problem as Lindsay with people asking what I’m going to do with my English degree (it got worse when I added the political science minor), but I’ve always loved books, so I’m going to do my darndest to get a job with them.

Of course, the second-best job would be somehow supporting myself off my hobbies, but I’ve talked with enough people to know that’s unlikely to happen—or, if it does, I won’t like the hobby anymore. Which hobbies? Knitting, crocheting, spinning (yes, yarn), cross stitching, dyeing, woodturning (yes, lathe), and far, far too many more. Fortunately, I can also add writing to the list, which is at least slightly more profitable. Unfortunately, I can add traveling, which is negatively profitable—at least in the monetary sense.

I’ve yet to traverse the world like Janna or live abroad like Sarah and Katie, but trips to Britain and Germany have whetted my appetite, and I hope to get out there soon! That’s one of the great things about this book: it’s about getting out there and doing your Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal (as Janna would say) and facing all the concerns that come up along the way.

I hope you enjoy the book as much as I do!

Katie the Helper Elf


My name is Katie, and I've also helped a bit on helping Janna promote her book. My job in this has involved helping with the filming aspect of the project (and getting to read an awesome book before it's released. How cool is that?).

I am currently a junior-year communications (mostly journalism) and Spanish double major at PLU. Right now, I'm a busy little worker bee. I help out when I can at KCNS--as news packager extraordinaire and entertainment reporter-- and I work at the Garfield Bookstore (with Lindsay) and once a week I work at a very delicious Italian restaurant (free food and tips!). In my free time, I try to read for fun, correct people on their grammar (copyeditor in the making), travel when I can, and enjoy the sunshine. Occasionally, I write run-on sentences which would make my journalism profs cringe.

I am hoping, one day, to enter in the world of either broadcast or print/online media. One day. I have volunteered (briefly) with KPLU 88.5, PLU's radio station (not to be confused with KCCR, which is where Sarah has her radio show). I have written for The Mast, PLU's student newspaper, as well.

Like Janna, I have done a bit of traveling (well, not exactly. I don't sail. I've taken the plane/train/bus route). When I graduate, I'd like to resume my cultural education, either in my second-home Spain or in Australia.

What I love about Motion of the Ocean is that it is a travel narrative, but it's not as fluffy and romanticized as others. Janna's book sheds light on the hardships of travel as well. Janna writes about things that I would have never considered as part of traveling, but that I am glad that I now know. I hope that all of you can share the love when Motion of the Ocean comes out this June. :)

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Lindsay Mackert Loves Books!

Lindsay Mackert here!

Hi! I just wanted to introduce myself as one of the behind-the-scenes people who is helping with the promotion of Janna's first book.

My name is Lindsay Mackert, and I am a sophomore at Pacific Lutheran University. I am a commuter student at PLU and I drive from Spanaway every day. :) I spent my first year at PLU agonizing over what I would do with my love of literature . . . everyone always asked me what grade I was going to teach, to which I would reply--probably too furiously--I DON'T WANT TO TEACH!!! But, despite my apprehensions, I can't go without reading, so I recently decided that I will be an English literature major and I will find a job somehow. What I really want to do is what I am doing right now in this project: communicating with authors, promoting books, and setting up events. Which brings me to my job at Garfield Book Company at PLU. I am a trade book specialist and my favorite part of the job is helping run the fiction book club. Janna will be visiting our book club on Wednesday May 6th at 6:30, in fact! For more information, please check out our website. I enjoy reading (of course), watching movies, tennis aka Roger Federer, shopping, chai tea lattes, gossiping with Katie, and playing with my dog. That's me in a nutshell. . . .

I hope to bring to this blog encouragement and inspiration for people--although you may know nothing about how to make a book trailer, use InDesign, or work with Photoshop, you can learn! All it takes is passion, and that is something I definitely have for books, especially Motion of the Ocean. :)

Sarah Has No Life...But Let's Meet Her Anyway!

Hello, folks. Sarah again.

I would like to mention a little helper elf with this project by the name of Katie. I do not know if Katie will be blogging like the rest of us, but as she is being very helpful with all of our hard work, I want the blog followers to know who she is too! Following my little bio-blog will be bio-blogs of Lindsay, Alice, and finally a blog on Katie.

But who is this Sarah Wise, you may wonder? I am a college sophomore, majoring in art with an emphasis in graphic design. I hate drawing, but one of Janna's friends informed me (much to my relief) that I am, in fact, not the only graphic designer who dislikes that aspect of art. I am also the brilliant designer behind the blog header--which means I also get the blame for initially misspelling names. Oops!

In my spare time, I am also a radio DJ and a television star. Locally, of course. As in . . . student media. The world has yet to discover my raw talent. But that's okay, because I certainly get a kick out of myself! To hear my radio show, you can mosey on over to my Livejournal, Dead Air.

I recently spent a month in Europe, traveling to England, Germany, and Greece to study philosophy. The picture here is of me by the Mediterranean Sea in Greece! I will be taking a graphic design internship in London during the spring of 2010. I'm also super chatty, so long blog posts are probably by me. I hope I am at least entertaining.

Okay, that's all for me!
Signing off (hopefully for a while now),
Sarah

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

A Swift Introduction by Sarah Wise

Welcome to The Motion of the Ocean: Charting the Course Towards a Successful Book Launch! This is a blog centered all around one incredible book full of adventure, love, and some life lessons--all while sailing around the world. What is this book, you might ask?

Oh, how happy I am that you asked. It is:

The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, and a Woman's Search for the Meaning of Wife by Janna Cawrse Esarey.

This is Janna's real-life experience, sailing around the world for her honeymoon with only one other person: the man she has promised to spend the rest of her life with.

Now, you may be wondering who the lovely, fearless author Janna is, and I assure you, I would love to tell you.

"Janna Cawrse Esarey is the author of The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, and a Woman’s Search for the Meaning of Wife (Touchstone 2009), the true story of a woman who chases love across the Pacific, only to find that navigating the world is easier than keeping her relationship off the rocks. Janna’s work appears in sailing magazines, such as Sail and Cruising World, and travel anthologies, most recently More Sand in My Bra. She also blogs about married life for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer at “Happily Even After”. Janna was selected as a 2008 Jack Straw Writer and currently performs the juggling act of writer, mom, and wife—only dropping a few balls daily."

Janna has her own website at byjanna.com for your viewing pleasure!

Now that I've explained the subject of this blog, allow me to explain the inner workings of this blog. Janna has done an amazing job writing this great book, and now she is working on promoting herself and her book. Enter three publishing students from Pacific Lutheran University. Three bright young women from very different backgrounds are here to help Janna get her book up and running in time for its release date in summer 2009. We are Sarah Wise (that's me), Lindsay Mackert, and Alice Hyde. It is our job to assist Janna with a book trailer advertising her book, as well as some extra promotional assignments for our Publishing Procedures class.

This blog will keep fans of The Motion of the Ocean up to date on all of the work going into promoting it for a successful book launch this summer. Here, you will find announcements about upcoming appearances Janna will make as well as reflections on past appearances. Lindsay, Alice, and I will update here with behind-the-scenes posts about our work on the book trailer, web newsletter, flyer, and any other class work relating to The Motion of the Ocean.

Check back here often for announcements, pictures, and videos. It will all be here first!

Coming soon will be blogger bios of my other Partners in Publishing Publicity, but for now, I'm signing off.

- Sarah Wise