Forklifts + Baby = X

Unfortunately, I'm not doing much real work yet this summer. I have been back on a forklift at the ferry dock for a week now, and with our new baby (three weeks old now), I haven't really gotten into a consistent writing schedule yet. I have had some disappointing news about the Arcadia book I've been planning to write. The director of the Historical Society told me yesterday that unless I allow them to be my publisher (through a vanity press, I'm sure) instead of Arcadia, I will not have access to their archives of photographs. I suspect that there is something fishy about that, and I really don't want to self-publish, even if it is the Historical Society who foots the bill. It's just that after my experience at Ram's Head Bookshop, where I worked during graduate school, I realized that no one cares about a book that is not well presented and professionally published. The staff (including myself) loathed and pitied most of the local authors who were perpetually "checking in" to see if we had sold any of their overpriced, shoddy books. What the Historical Society seems to want is a larger share of a smaller profit, which seems somewhat backward to me. I may end up doing two separate books: one through Arcadia with the private Archive I've already been granted permission to use, and another through the Historical Society. We'll see how it all shakes down. Until we meet again then...Cheers.