Exactly a year ago I had this idea about a troubled teenager who’s obsessed by the Apollo 11 moon mission in the summer of 1969, and right away I realized two things:
One, my story was going to be restricted by historical facts and dates.
And two, I was going to have to self-publish - there wouldn’t be any time to peddle this tale if I wanted to get it out there for the 50th anniversary of that unforgettable accomplishment.
So I started scribbling in my yellow notebooks. Bits and pieces, in no particular order. Characters popped up suddenly, like dandelions after a spring rain. I was working on other things as well, but the moon book was where I breathed.
Eventually I had seven notebooks full of….well, notes.
Bits of chapters, dialogues, random rants…. I probably threw half of it away. And now I’d have to stitch the surviving words into a quilt, which was hard enough, and then came the really tricky part: making the stitches disappear.
Don’t know if I succeeded, but I think it’s a fairly seamless story, and as for being restricted by historical facts? Actually, it went the other way. Whenever I felt lost at sea there was always another moon mission event to paddle toward. A literary lighthouse, so to speak.
Anyway, it’s done, with a dazzling cover photo by Dennis O’Brien and a breathtaking design by Catherine Allen.
To paraphrase the late great Neil Armstrong, Moon Cake has landed. Now all I can do is hope it takes off.
Over and out from mission control.
The link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TT8LZ58?fbclid=IwAR23LD2gi_EboUO24l79VROEYpnwKAgMbpw2-zB_oeSr4h9jJl1QlsLy5x8