First of all, I must apologize for the lack of communication up to this point. A lot of things have happened in the last two years, not the least of which is 2020 and the dumpster fire that ensued. The translation edit was complete in April 2019 and our talented book designer (Ted) began the book design process while simultaneously working two full time jobs. He is continuing to work on it and will finish by May 2021.

On top of everything else happening in 2020, in August my house burned down in a California wildfire. There was no warning and we lost everything except our cats and three quilts. Months of processing and rebuilding has given me the space and perspective needed to move on from this trauma, but my heart still breaks because the original art and files for this book project were also lost in the fire. The original cover art, the charcoal illustrations, the notebooks with my initial interview notes, everything is gone.

The good news is the stories and charcoal art were saved online in the cloud. The bad news is we cannot find any high resolution files or scans of the cover art. Both Ted (he is also our cover designer) and I have looked everywhere we can think of online, but neither of us can find the files. We are continuing to look, but our back-up plan is to pay the original artist to recreate the art and start over.

The book design will be done in May. After proofreading and finessing, in June we will print proof copies and send them to book reviewers. After that the book launch date will be announced and we will start preparing the book for pre-order and launch.

On another note, we now have a publishing imprint! It’s called Lost Shoe Publishing and I hope we can print more books in the future. Check out our new publishing house here.

I’ve said this before, but this has indeed been a long journey. I want to thank you all for sticking with us and believing in this project. Thank you for your support. This project is approaching six years old and it isn’t even published yet, but we can see the finish line. Please reach out if you have any questions, and we look forward to announcing more updates in the near future.