Monday 1 October 2012

Dinolympics - first edition


The first copy of my non-fiction book 'Dinolympics' came today. I have done it through Lulu Publishing and I am very happy with the quality and price.  This one is just the test copy but it's a thrilling experience to see it in a real book form after so long.  I need to re-arrange the illustrations as on the first run I have them all at the back, rather than with the text. 

This has been a great learning project too as in the next few weeks I will be publishing my novel 'Red Kite' with Lulu as well so hopefully when it comes to loading my novel on, I may know what I am doing.

I started this little book in October 2010 with the hope that I may find a publisher.  I wanted to tie it in with the London 2012 Olympics and hoped that someone may take an interest but it still got rejected on the grounds that they already had enough olympic related material.  I never guessed that I should have planned even earlier than two years ahead but I do now.

I had spent so long working on it I had to do something positive.  I set about trying to illustrate it myself.

They are only simple sketches but at least I can say I did something with it and I have learnt so much as a result.

I didn't put it for sale as I truly believe it's not really good enough to charge money for but it has been great fun to produce it.  I have spent so many lovely hours researching and sketching my sporting dinosaurs so I will never see it as a waste of time.

Below is one of my sketches, the tiny Compsognathus, one of my favourite dinosaurs, not much bigger than a chicken but very fast and agile.



I think the biggest thing I will take from this is planning well ahead, maybe I should send it out again now ready for the 2016 Olympics in Rio!    

No comments:

Post a Comment