My son Tom and I have decided to collaborate on another book. We talked about this during breakfast today. It will be another children’s mystery, but this one we will write in Pilish. The most famous sentence written in Pilish, according to the Writer’s Almanac, was written by English physicist Sir James Jeans:

How I need a drink, alcoholic in nature, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!

Note that “How” has 3 letters, “I” has 1 letter, “need” has 4 letters (3.14… ) which is Pi. So, the entire sentence uses words with the number of letters in the same sequence as the numbers that make up Pi. Because Pi goes on forever, it would be possible to write an entire novel in Pilish. Wouldn’t that be cool? It’s quite a challenge, but Tom and I are up for it. I’m not sure when we’ll find the time to attack this puzzle, but I’ll keep you updated.

Gosh, if we write a book using Pi, will I have to change the subheading of my blog????

Here is the cover design for our children’s mystery. A big thanks to Jillian Noble who did the artwork and design. I’m not sure why there are two images, but it is such a nice cover that I’m going to leave them both in this post!

The copyright holder wanted $50 for the lyrics to appear in a first printing of 2000 books. That seemed reasonable to us, so we have mailed the check. When we’ve signed the contract and all the paper work is settled, we will send The Stolen Goldin Violin to the printer!

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, so I’ll update you on what’s happening.

The Stolen Goldin Violin is ready to go to the printer–except that we have not yet gotten copyright permission to use some lyrics from a Beach Boys song in the book. It took me a long time to discover who owned the copyright, but I did, and now we are just waiting. If we get permission for free or for a very small fee, we will add the copyright permission information at the back of the book. If the lawyers want to charge us too much, we’ll just remove the lyrics. Either way, the book should be at the printers by spring break, which was our goal.

The trick with self-publishing is now we have to market. The background work on this is time consuming and not an activity I find fun or intriguing. In my spare time, I want to be writing my new historical novel.

I find myself fighting myself: shall I write? or shall I look up names of people to contact, emails, music conferences, etc. about the children’s book? This battle is interesting because writing is hard and, in the past, I have done little chores and other little work activities, to delay my sitting in front of the computer to write. However researching marketing is hard and boring and so it is pushing me to write more often.

A good thing and a bad thing at the same time.