Meet Elmer. He’s a little shy, and likes staying in his comfort zone, but he’ll be your best giant friend if you give him some greens and a big hug.

I was wondering…What do giant sauropods do when it rains? So I started a quick little comic about Elmer this month. I say started, because I only got halfway through. But we’ll see what happens to Elmer as we go through August. Enjoy!

Making progress…

The progress chart is all filled in! Woohoo! I am super excited about being so close to finished. I decided to make a quick and candid video about it, just to shake things up a bit! Don’t have time for a video, or you’re in a place that needs to stay quiet? Here’s the nutshell…

• All illustrations are finished! They just need final tweaks like darker, sharper lines, to make sure they look how they’re supposed to when they’re printed.
• Fact- checking and typo hunting needs to be done.
• Finish fun stuff like the table of contents, glossary, a list of all my resources, and about page.

Once that is all done to the best of my ability, I will send it to my local printing place for a higher quality test I can show other people. This will be the last step to check for any changes that need to be made. Just because I’m doing it all myself and not hiring any professionals doesn’t mean it has to look like an amateur did it!

I’ll hire professionals for future books. This one is my first one I’ve successfully put together, so I’m doing everything myself since I’m working on a shoestring and I started it from things I already had on the website instead of with a clear goal in mind. I’ve learned a lot from putting this collection together, and know a little better about how I’m going to put together my next books.

With a clearer idea of what I’m going to do, and with full appreciation of what is all involved in editing and formatting, it’ll be worth a professional’s time and energy. I had no idea how much work it was to edit a book (it’s so much more than just finding typos!), and I had no idea what formatting even was! In case you’re like me and never heard of it either, formatting is when you arrange all the words and pictures so that it looks good printed on the page. It’s way more complicated and easier to get wrong than you’d think! I’ve done smaller projects before like little booklets and pamphlets, and a few professionals have seen these and told me I have a good eye for making a page look good. So that gave me just enough confidence to try doing it myself for my first project. Even so, I’m crossing my fingers and praying to high Heaven that my attempt actually works when it finally goes to the printers!

Mid-year evaluation…

In January I determined my list of goals for the year, which I posted for February’s critter of the month. The year is already halfway over, so how am I doing?

• Finish collection and prepare for publication
• Publish short story collection
• New critter for the shop.
• Work out a rhythm for Fossil Friday.

Not too bad! I determined I couldn’t do Fossil Friday every Friday, but I did work out a nice rhythm, and I still post on a more regular schedule than once a month, so I’d say that’s already a success!

The collection is nearly finished and currently being prepared for publication, so that’s another goal done!

That leaves only two left to go! (of course these are Paleopetshop goals, not personal ones)

How are you doing on the goals and resolutions you made in January? Fell off the wagon…determined it wasn’t something you wanted after all…taking longer than expected…or did you find success? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

My take-away for this month…

Celebrate little wins and big wins! Take the time to recognize success in all it’s forms.

Coming Next Week…

I hope you don’t mind getting wet, because this swimming critter loves to splash! 🙂

Share your guess in the comments! She’s one of the critters over on the critter page. 🙂