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

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

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

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. :)

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

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