When I travel and meet with people who have my books it is such a thrill for me to hear how much they have enjoyed them and how they are making their jobs a bit easier. I always think about all of the work that goes into writing a book and what it takes to bring it to market.
My Fabulous Editor - Madge Baird When you first decide to write a book, especially one that is going to end up being almost 600 pages with thousands of illustrations, charts, graphs, etc, you really have no idea how much work it is going to require. You also don't know that it would be an impossible goal to achieve without the help of a very talented and hard working team of people who actually know what they are doing to help you along the way. My main miracle worker at Gibbs Smith Publisher is my editor Madge Baird.
Yes, her name is Madge - isn't that perfect?!! If you looked up the word editor in an encyclopedia I think you would find her picture. I love telling people that my editors' name is Madge - it sounds so literary! She is an amazing women who has put together my two books so beautifully from the raw (sometimes very raw) materials that I have given her. I am so excited for you to see what she has done with the Bedding book - it's fabulous. Anyway, thank you Madge from the bottom of my heart for making my dreams come true. I hope we can create more beautiful books together soon.
The Adorable Melissa Dymock My next hero is Melissa Dymock, she's the one holding the "We Work for Books" bag! She has the unpleasant task of keeping all of my illustrations and other content for the book in order. This is no small task. For each book there are about 2600 drawings, half in color, half in black and white. They have to be number separately for the manuscript and then re-numbered for the CD-Rom. She is the poor soul that has to hound me to find or re-draw missing images that I swear I had included but of course I have not! I don't envy her task because it drives me crazy doing it on my end and I think I know where everything is. For her it must be like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle. Thanks Melissa! I'll be mailing that surprise I promised you soon...
I also appreciate the support and encouragement I have received from Suzanne Taylor and Christopher Robbins, two of the big wigs at GS. I think they took quite a chance on me in the beginning as my book was definitely not the norm for them. It had no beautiful glossy photographs or fancy prose. Just hundreds of drawings of window treatments. I am so thankful that they had the vision to see that there just might be something there.
There are many others at Gibbs Smith whom I have never met that contribute to putting my books together and I would like them all to know how grateful I am.
Writing and illustrating my books has been such a fabulous experience for me and it has opened so many doors and allowed me to meet so many wonderful people that I would never have encountered without it.
If you have a dream - don't be afraid to follow it - it could just lead you into a whole new world full of fun.........
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