The Angel's Name--Spanish Translation Available

 

The Spanish translation of The Angel's Name is now available on Amazon! El nombre de la angelita was translated by Amy Hernandez and has illustrations only slightly altered from the original ones. Here's a picture of the new book with the angel that inspired the story--she's not made of glass, but she did belong to my grandma when I was a kid, and I remember once asking my grandma why her angel didn't have a name. She was eventually christened Faith, perhaps because I wouldn't sit down to dinner until the angel had a name. There was also a glass music box that used to sit on my grandma's electric organ, with the angel next to it at Christmas time. One day the music box fell off and broke, and I guess that became part of the story, too.

You can see from this picture that the Spanish and English versions are meant to match each other. I added a banner across the bottom with the translator's name, but otherwise it's pretty much the same cover. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

I'm a bit late this year, but I still wanted to wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! And I'm posting my apparently now-traditional group photo of Christmas tree angels, because I think that's fun (here's a link to last year's). I spent Christmas with my sister, and between us we found four matching tree angels this year (or mostly matching, since one of my sister's is blue). The one in the back middle is my grandmother's original angel--the one I thought ought to have a name when I was a kid, which eventually inspired my first picture book, The Angel's Name. I actually misplaced one of my angels and didn't find her in time to pack her for the trip, but my sister recently bought a new one, so the choir is growing anyway.

I had a particularly wonderful Christmas this year, as we were able to spend it with my parents and sister and also my husband's parents. Also, I unexpectedly got a new job right after Christmas and New Year's, so I've been preparing for and starting that instead of blogging. I'll have less time for writing for a few months, but I'm close enough to the end of a couple of projects that I'll be posting about them soon enough anyway. I'm looking forward to an exciting 2025!

The Angel's Name--Spanish Translation Proof Copy

 

Today I got my proof copy of the upcoming Spanish translation of The Angel's Name, El nombre de la angelita. I've had the recolored illustrations ready for years, but it's only just been translated. My friend Amy Hernandez did a great job--it was a new type of project for both of us, but I'm pleased with the results so far. It still needs to be proofread again for typos and accent marks, but it's very close to finished. I'm excited! The Spanish I learned in high school and college is quite rusty by now, but a picture book like this is about at my reading level. I'm having fun with it already and can't wait to be able to share it!

Christmas Angels

Merry Christmas! My internet hasn't been working at home lately, so I haven't blogged as much as I'd like. But I wanted to share this picture of my story-book angel with her real-life inspiration, plus two more "twin" angels--I guess they are triplets now--that I bought on eBay because my sister has the one that belonged to our grandparents (We spent Christmas together this year, so the angels did, too). They do all have their own names, of course. (Faith, Charity, and Mercy, since the book angel is Hope!) Faith was the original angel who needed a name--a previous post with a picture of her and the book she inspired can be found here.  Paper dolls of Hope are here and here, and a printable Nativity stable to go with them is here. Merry Christmas again!

 

The Angel's Name--Another Reversible Paper Doll

 

I've recolored another version of my angel paper doll from The Angel's Name, so I thought I'd share her here since it's the appropriate season. The other two versions are available here. I think it would be fun to print them all out together, along with the matching Nativity stable paper craft, and set them up for Christmas. If printed on stiff paper they should stand up all right. They could also be strung on a garland or have loops added to hang them on a tree. although that would mess up the ability to change their clothes. Anyway, I have fun with these and I hope you enjoy them, too. Merry Christmas!

The Angel's Name--Alternate Illustrations

I've had a set of alternate illustrations for The Angel's Name sitting on my computer's hard drive since 2014, and I finally decided to make the book available with those illustrations also. It's kind of a long story, but back in 2014 I was taking Swahili lessons and thought it would be fun to have the book translated to Swahili. Life got in the way, and then eventually CreateSpace, which did support books in Swahili, merged with Kindle Direct Publishing, which does not. The only part that ever actually got translated was the title, anyway, but the illustrations were almost complete. A couple of people asked why the angel came in two colors on the bookmarks I posted recently, and that started me wondering what happened to those illustrations. There was surprisingly little work left to do on them, so now the book is available with a choice of illustrations. The only difference is that the characters have darker skin tones in the "new" alternate illustrations edition--otherwise the book is exactly the same. The new version can be found here. 

The Angel's Name--Bookmarks

 

It's December now, so I thought I'd make a set of Christmas bookmarks based on the illustrations from The Angel's Name. Just print them, cut them out, and glue them on a backing of construction paper or thin cardboard. These are a bit more straightforward to put together than the paper dolls, which can be found here, and the Nativity stable, which can be found here, but if you enjoy these you might want to check out those, too. Personally I tend to use the paper dolls as bookmarks anyway, which is what gave me the idea to make some more traditional bookmarks also. 

The Angel's Name--Reversible Stable Paper Craft

This reversible paper craft is meant to go along with the angel paper dolls from the previous post. It works in pretty much the same way but must be printed out on two separate pieces of paper due to its larger size. Fold both pieces at the lines (first in half with the colored side out, then accordion style with the top parts folded forward over and showing the back of the paper), cut them out (preferably after folding, so that the guidelines are no longer needed), and glue them together in an X shape (glue each stable to its own back only as far as the fold, then match the front of each stable roof part with the back of the other part). If you've folded and glued correctly, you can flip the stable inside out to show either the Nativity scene or only the animals. If you have trouble with the directions, it might help to look at the previous few posts to see how the paper dolls are put together. Merry Christmas!

The Angel's Name--Reversible Paper Doll

 

These are modeled after the paper dolls from the public domain book The Twelve Magic Changelings--I had so much fun with those that I decided to create a couple of double-sided, reversible paper dolls of my own. So, here is the angel from The Angel's Name, in both color variations. I know she's originally a Christmas angel, but she might come in handy for Easter, too.

The Angel's Name--Inspiration

The angel in this picture next to the printed copy of The Angel's Name is the one from my grandpa's tree--it actually used to be on top of my grandma's electric organ around Christmas when I was a kid, and I have a foggy memory of insisting that she ought to have a name. I don't remember how old I was, but for some reason I thought she looked like either a Susie or a Betty....  My grandma told me that she didn't need a name, but that might have been because I wanted to name the angel before eating a dinner that was already getting cold! It was some kind of awkward time for it, at least, though I don't remember precisely why. She isn't made of glass, obviously (she's wire and netting with a plastic head and a few miniature light bulbs), but she does seem to be part of the inspiration for the angel in the story.  Anyway, a tree topper angel with no name was the first thing that popped into my head a few years ago when a third-grader handed me a pencil and demanded that I write a story on the spot. I only had about five minutes before I was scheduled to work in a different classroom, but I took the pencil and scribbled down what eventually became the first page of text in The Angel's Name.

The Angel's Name--Available!

It's done! The Angel's Name (click to see the listing) is finally available to order. It's only possible to get it directly from CreateSpace at the moment, but it's supposed to also show up on Amazon in 3-5 business days. Royalties are better for books ordered from CreateSpace, anyway (fewer middlemen), but of course more people have an Amazon account.  I keep  meaning to post pictures of the proof copies, but I've been rather busy. There were quite a few changes that I needed to make to the illustrations after I saw how they actually printed out, and I thought that since I just missed Christmas with this book I might as well try to get it out by New Year's.  There were also a few formatting changes, but I'm pretty happy with it now. It feels great to have finished the project!

The Angel's Name--Complete!

 

The Angel's Name is officially completed and I've purchased a "custom ISBN" ($10 and gets Elizabeth's Inventions listed as the publishing imprint instead of CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform) from CreateSpace and had the files approved for printing. I just ordered proof copies, but the estimated delivery date is unfortunately New Year's Eve. I must say that I had a bit more difficulty than I expected getting my files into a PDF that met CreateSpace's printing specifications, and that's what caused some of the delay. I used a template to format my pages, so the layout was never an issue, but I tried to save as PDF from Microsoft Word on a borrowed computer because my Word 2003 won't do it, and that was rather a disaster--I never did figure out how to do it without it trying to "compress" my images and making the file unfit for printing. I eventually solved the problem by downloading Open Office and using that to export as PDF, which was very easy and had the added benefit of making it possible to use my own computer.  Here's hoping the book looks as good in print as it does on my computer screen! And now I've got see if I can figure out how to format an ebook, which I hear is particularly difficult for picture books. Wish me luck!

Also, I would like to thank David, Cordelia, Rebekkah, Natalie, and Kelly for beta reading an electronic draft for me. It was very helpful to have a few pairs of extra eyes to look at it before I submitted the files.

Keep watching for news that The Angel's Name is officially available or has been successfully converted to a readable ebook format. It won't be long now!

The Angel's Name--Front Cover

I'm still roughly on schedule and expect to finish this project in time for Christmas. Here's what I've got for the front cover at the moment--I may tweak it a bit later, but for now I'm going to begin work on the inside formatting. The text and illustrations for all but the very last page are pretty much finished now. 

The Angel's Name--First Page Excerpt

 

"Once upon a time there was a glass angel.  She sat on top of a Christmas tree for a few weeks every year, but the rest of the time she lived in a box.  She was not happy in the box.  It was dark, dusty, and sometimes hot, but the worst part was that she had no name.  A lot of other ornaments lived in the box, too.  The other ornaments had no names, either, but they didn’t care."   

And there you have the opening of my Christmas picture book. There are still three or four illustrations to finish and a little tweaking to the end of the text needed, plus formatting and cover design, but it's coming along quite nicely.

November and Then Christmas

Well, I've certainly been off the radar for a bit, haven't I?  But I've completed another successful National Novel Writing Month (go to nanowrimo.org if you aren't familiar with NaNoWriMo) and am ready to go back to picture book land. It being the Christmas season, however, I'm taking a bit of a break from the photography and am experimenting with what I tend to think of as digital finger painting. That pretty much means using an app on a tablet computer with a touchscreen to "paint" elements for a picture, then Photoshopping those elements together.  The picture above is a bit of an example. I just threw together a few graphics without bothering to resize anything, but I actually kind of like the result; it's bright and quirky, and what better way to describe any of my projects than bright and quirky? If this experiment turns out well, I might actually have a proof copy ready before Christmas, since I already have the text of a children's Christmas story that's been waiting at least three years to have something done with it. I still need to paint and trim a few more elements before I start on the actual finished illustrations, but it's going very quickly at the moment. Expect a few more posts on this project before I go back to doing much with the pipe cleaners, though I am still working on that project also, slowly but surely.