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Wednesday, July 19, 2017

In Remembrance of Clara May Fitchie Melahn (Born 7-23-1900 Died 7-19-1987)


I am my maternal grandparents first grandchild, and was born on their wedding anniversary. In the image atop this entry, my grandmother can be seen holding me. You might recognize the picture as I have featured it in at least one of my prior entries here on Blogger.

She died on this day of July 19th in 1987; and, her parting words to me were ones that urged me to get back to my writing.

Thankfully I have done this by helping Cam, (the cardinal pictured directly below, in a picture I took of her in my rooftop garden);


write and publish her book, Words In Our Beak Volume One.


In fact, Cam is named for both of my maternal grandparents! Her name, Cam, is short for  Clara Albert Melahn (Clara is my dearly departed maternal grandmother; Albert is my dearly departed maternal grandfather).

Cam is glad that I heeded my grandmother's wishes and that in doing so her story was published. I'd like to be of more help to Cam by moving along to volume two, something Cam is pushing me to do, but I am having difficulty raising awareness about the existence of Cam's book!

It's available in two digital versions (iBooks and ePub) as well as in soft-cover format that has been published by MagCloud. It is featured in the last image posted above.

However, my reach in cyber-space is limited as are my connections to potential buyers. In fact close to twenty-five different people (who don't even know each other) have given me a verbal, "I'll buy your book," but none of them, as of this blog entry, have kept their word.

Moreover, I've tried to get my soft-cover version into a few bookstores in Manhattan (including The Corner Book Store) and into some book shops in Brooklyn (including Unnameable Books as well as  Books Are Magic) to no avail (as of yet).

Yesterday I reached out to another book store in Brooklyn (Greenlight Books) but I've been informed via email that their policy specifies carrying books created by Brooklynites. I pointed out to them that Cam's story is set in my rooftop garden (which is filled with flora from a nursery in Brooklyn). I also made sure that they realized my book has been formatted by a web-master (Chris Deatherage) who lives in Brooklyn, but Greenlight Book Store will not be able to green light my work being include in their place!

I received an email from them stating "Unfortunately, the requirement is for the author of the work to be a Brooklyn resident. We do this because we seek to have our selection of self-published work represent the people who live in the neighborhoods around our store and, because the space that we have available for self-published work is so small, we do adhere strictly to that guideline. That being said, if you would still like to try and have an event at one of our locations, you may email our events staff." 

My current plan is to look into the possibly of doing an event in one of their stores (at the suggestion mentioned in their email, but, I'm super discouraged at this juncture and am having a hard time mustering up the where with all to move forward with volume two when I've had little success with volume one, for as they say, my get up and go got up and went!

If, it's true that the dearly departed intercede for those they loved, I am imploring my grandmother, on this thirtieth anniversary of her death to put in a few intercessions for Cam and my intentions re selling our book!

ADDENDUM FALL 2018: 

The digital versions of Volume One within the Words In Our Beak book series that are mentioned in this entry may only remain available for a limited time, but hardcover versions of Volume One, Two and Three can now be found wherever books are sold. Please click here to go to my blog post that provides details as to where you can get these books.

MY BOOK SERIES

Additionally, I have rendered some images from these books into other formats and they are available via Fine Art America (FAA). Some of my other photographs (Black & White Collection, Kaleidoscopic Images and the famous Mandarin duck who visited NYC) can also be found on my FAA pages.

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