Well, dear readers, it is the Day of the Do and I have been Doing prior to the Day of the Do because I like everything to be at the ready when I arise on the Day of the Do. Thus, it is late because I, BK, have been slicing and dicing and chopping and mincing, especially mincing, which I do very well. I mince with the best of them, baby. You want mincing I’m your Guy Haines. And while I was doing all that I was also doing a little project that I thought would be relatively simple and which ended up taking about four hours. Having gone to the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization about licensing Welcome to My World and getting a pass (not their kind of thing and all the people I know there who helped get The Brain licensed are sadly gone), and I also spoke to the head of Samuel French about it – but they’ve become a little rigid about what they’re taking these days – they really only want stuff that’s played New York, although if you look at their catalog that certainly hasn’t been the case. They seemed to like the show, but also passed because it’s just not what they’re doing right now. They do have a new self publishing thing they’re trying, but you know what – why do that when I can just license it through Kritzerland, which is exactly what I decided to do earlier this day.
So, I went to Create Space, which is Amazon’s company so that the hard copies of the script would be available there (I’ll probably also have copies for sale at Kritzerland, too). The big problem, of course, is getting the word out, and I’ll be figuring that part out in January. Now, dear reader Druxy has used Create Space and enjoyed it. I can’t say I enjoyed the four hours, but I got it done. First I tried to upload my final PDF but the size and proportions just didn’t work. So, they have a handy-dandy Word template pre-formatted with the correct specs, so I downloaded that and then cut and pasted in my script. That worked very well. I didn’t like the font that the show proper had, and I also thought it a bit hard to read, so I used Garamond and did it a bit bigger and that worked really well. I wrote a dedication, did the copyright page and all that stuff, then uploaded it to the site. You instantly get a version to go through. It all looked pretty good except something was screwy with the pages, especially at ends of scenes – they wouldn’t be at the top of the page, but resided in the center. It was weird and I couldn’t figure it out. There were some spacing issues that I fixed – I ended up uploading about eight times before finally and hopefully catching all the errors. But the page thing was driving me crazy. Then Doug Haverty got home and called (I’d told him I needed a cover for the book) and I’d sent him the pre-formatted Word version and within two minutes he’d figured out the page problem – it was, in fact, centering all the pages, so I just highlighted the entire text, went to format/document and then was able to unclick “center” and change it to “top” and voila, every page perfect. I uploaded THAT version, the cover, and sent it in. They get back to you with a digital copy pretty quickly from what I understand, so in a day or two I’ll have that to proof.
I then had to fill in all the tax and royalty information and I kept getting irritating error messages, so I had them call me, which they did immediately. I got a really nice and knowledgeable gent from somewhere unknown, and it turned out to be a browser issue, so I did it through Chrome and it all worked fine. So, that’s the news and if you’ve been interested to read the script it will be up for sale very soon. I’m excited. I have to check and see what plays sell for these days so I can price it accordingly. It’s a full color cover, and I even included two wonderful color photos within the text.
That, and slicing and dicing and chopping and mincing was the entire evening. Prior to all that, it was, once gain, seven hours of sleep. The helper came by and got the last of the invoices we’ll ship until the New Year. I did some work on the computer, chose another song (all done but two), and then went and had a cup of soup (chicken corn chowder) and a sandwich with no fries or onion rings. I picked up a couple of packages, did some banking and then came back home. I did a spot of work at the piano and then sat on my couch like so much fish for about an hour.
Last night, I watched about forty minutes of The Da Vinci Code on the Flix of Net. I didn’t like it the first time I saw it, and I’m not finding it much better now (I was hoping to). As I wrote a few years ago, it’s literally all exposition and it’s ham-fisted in its direction. I doubt I’ll finish it this time. And then the project and the preparation began. I also made the tuna pasta salad, which is currently hibernating in the refrigerator. Everything else is all ready to go – plates, cups, cutlery, all out and ready for humans. One thing I forgot to mention – I was really lusting after the I Love Lucy season one Blu and Ray, but was never going to pay $120 for it. Well, it just happened to show up on my Amazon home page – $27. I grabbed it, needless to say and it will be here on Sunday.
Today, once up I’ll do whatever needs doing and at noon I start making the spaghetti sauce. The first part of that takes about forty-five minutes, then it’s just simmering all day until the Do begins. I have to make the decision about the Wacky Noodles – it was quite popular with the populace last year, but it was really hard to negotiate all that pasta at once, so we’ll see. Guests begin arriving at six.
Tomorrow is, of course, a little thing I like to call Christmas. I’ll be relaxing all day, then going to Cissy Wechter’s party. Friday I have a few things to do, and then the weekend is mine all mine, as is next week. I’ll be seeing dear reader Jeanne for a long overdue lunch.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, make spaghetti sauce, simmer, relax, and then have the Annual Christmas Eve Do. Today’s topic of discussion: What were your favorite live theater and concert experiences this past year? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to be done with the slicing and dicing and chopping and mincing.