Dear readers,
I'm writing this on the eve of Yom Kippur, an apt time, it seems to me, to reminisce and also
to look forward. It's been a year of travel for me so far; within the first nine months of 2016 I've crossed the Atlantic three times and the Pacific once. For the first time in my life, I feel I've had enough of traveling for a while. But alas, when you have close family living on different continents, you're bound to be going to and fro, right? My sister and I reflected in the window of the former Café Post (Kavarna Posta) in Liberec, where our grandfather and great-uncle used to hang out.
I've just sifted through all my photos from a family-focused trip to London and to the Czech Republic in September. A trip that confirmed, once again, that spending time with family is never frivolous.
My sister and I spent three meaningful days visiting our
grandparents' hometown Liberec in the Czech Republic. Of course we chatted until deep into the night in our room under the roof of the Hotel Praha, a glorious art deco edifice. We had fits of delight just taking the cage elevator up and down!
But the purpose of this trip, aside from seeing each other and tending to the family grave, was to take lots of ambient photos for my upcoming new website, capturing some of
the locations in my memoir Jumping Over Shadows. Which brings me to my next topic, the cover reveal!
The story of the
cover is a lesson in not taking no for an answer. As is customary, I had put together a folder of images related to my book as
inspiration for the publisher's cover designer. They came back asking about this image from a postcard I had found in my photo box while looking for a particular wedding photo. I always liked that postcard (I bought it in Paris at some point in the 1990s). Since it was similar to the photo I could not find (an image of my husband and me on our wedding day, taken from the back, walking away into the night--only his dark figure and my veil and long skirt are visible), I included it in
the folder.
"What is this photo?" my publisher asked, "Do you hold the rights?" When I told her it was a postcard but that the photographer was noted on the back, her response was, never mind. It would probably be too expensive to be able to use that photo, let alone find the guy (a perfunctory Google search on my part had not yielded immediate results). A few
days went by, and I received a mock-up for a cover that neither the publisher nor I liked.
I'll be damned, I thought, if I can't find that photographer. His name, Tilo Rausch, sounded decidedly German, so I dug around on Google.de, using German search terms, and eventually, after stumbling over websites of long gone
gallery exhibits, I found a French hotmail address for him. Not exactly promising, but I could try, right? So I emailed him in German. Two days later I got a response! He had indeed taken that photo, and he was thrilled we were interested, and he wanted to know more about my book. The rest, as you can see, is history! He has since told me that he took the photo in the Jardin du Palais Royal in Paris in the '90s.
Next I received cover mock-ups with this image, but the title fonts were run of the mill. For what, I thought, do I have a brother who's not only a graphic designer but who specializes in typography? I sent him the mock-ups and asked him to come up with font suggestions. He did, and after my husband, kids and friends weighed in, we ended up using
one of the fonts he suggested. So, all in all, the cover was a family collaboration, and I am very happy with it.
The book is now in the layout proofing stage but it has already appeared on amazon. Check it out, please, and if you can't come to my book
launch here in Chicago in April (I still have to figure out the date), do me the favor and pre-order the book. It will help us immensely in determining the initial print run.
Incidentally, I received my first glimpse of its interior pages on the evening of the very day my sister and I had been walking in our grandparents footsteps and were sitting at this window, looking out over
their hometown. If that isn't beshert, what is? One more thing for those of you in Chicagoland: I will be
reading my essay "The Tractor" at the Thread Live Lit event this coming Sunday, October 16, 4-6 p.m. @ Tommy Nevin's Pub, 1450 Sherman Avenue in Evanston.
It would be great to see you there!
So, now it's time to get ready for the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. I actually look forward to Yom Kippur, and I find Kol Nidre especially meaningful, something I wrote about in Tablet a few years ago. It struck me this morning that it is a wonderful thing to have a day set aside for our relationship with God. As with everything else, anything we want to maintain or achieve in life needs a regular time slot in our lives.
With best wishes, |
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