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Book Signings in Yellowstone Park
I will be signing copies of the Yellowstone edition of Who Pooped in the Park at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone Park on Friday, August 5 and Saturday, August 6. If you’re going to be in or near the Park, stop by and see me! I will be in the lobby, right outside the gift shop, 11:00 to 6:00 Friday and 11:00 to 4:00 Saturday.
The Old Faithful Inn is one of my favorite places to sign books. Since there’s no wi-fi there—and no cell service to speak of—everybody is focused on the world around them instead of their phones. That, of course, includes me. Sometimes, when there’s nobody looking at my books, I’ll just jot down random thoughts. A lot of the ideas for my new book (Gary’s Guide to Successful Book Signings) came from the Old Faithful Inn. I’ve made plenty of book signing observations from Yellowstone Park, so I’ll skip those this time, and just ruminate on the differences in recent book signings.
In June, I was in New York City, signing copies of Who Pooped in Central Park and Myths & Legends of Tea. It’s a very different experience.
The Who Pooped signings in the big national parks generally draw nature lovers, and most of the people that stop by the table are in no hurry to be anywhere. The idea of a book about poop throws a few people, but most are intrigued by it. The crowds at the NYC bookstores that hosted my Who Pooped signings (Book Culture and Bank Street Bookstore) were definitely different. By the time I was done reading, they were ready to buy a book (hopefully) and hit the road. Very few people wanted to just hang around and chat. Quite a few people—including bookstore owners—found the subject matter offputting. My publicist was told by two different stores that animal poop isn’t an appropriate subject for their stores. Luckily, the stores that hosted me were open-minded and fun, and the people at the Central Park Conservancy thought the book was a cool idea.
The Myths & Legends signing in NYC was a whole different world. It was about storytelling and drinking tea. The people who came hung out to chat and ask questions. The store owners prepared different tea samples for different stories from the book. It wasn’t like a national park book signing where I wait for people to stop at the table. I just stood and told stories. If you’ve never visited the Monkey Cup in New York City, stop and see them. It’s worth the visit!
See you in the Big Apple!
Next week, I head to New York City on a book tour. The schedule still isn’t completely nailed down—why have a final schedule a week before the trip?—but I’d love to have you join me at one of these public events that we do have finalized. All of the events are completely free and no reservations are required. I’ll be signing books at all of them.
The “Who Pooped” series goes urban!
Who Pooped in the Redwoods, which is on its way to your favorite stores and websites, is the 19th book in the Who Pooped series. Just like its predecessors, it is focused on the wide open spaces, especially national and state parks. The next book, which I’m hoping will be out by Christmas, is going in a completely different direction.
We’re moving the series from the big national parks to a small city park, a paltry 843 acres in the middle of the largest population center in the United States. That’s right, the next book will be set in New York City’s Central Park!
I’m not going to give away too much just yet, as I just signed the contract last week and things may change a bit. I will tell you a few things, though:
First, this will be the first Who Pooped book that won’t feature Michael and Emily. I’m introducing a new family that lives in New York City, and the book will focus on the adventures of the kids in Central Park, without Mom and Dad there playing teacher the whole time.
We’re also changing the art style a bit, going for a more urban and edgy look.
But what animals can I include when the book is set right smack in the middle of a huge city? A lot! Central Park is teeming with wildlife, including rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, rats, chipmunks, opossums, bats, starlings, herons, geese, gulls, crows, pigeons, frogs, turtles, and more!
With the release of the Central Park book, I will finally have a book set in every state where I’ve lived*, and we’re filling in some of those big gaps on the east coast of the U.S. Here’s what the coverage map will look like:
* Trivia for the day: I was born in New York state.
The next Who Pooped book – the California Redwoods!
Last month, I finalized the manuscript for my 19th Who Pooped in the Park book, which will be called Who Pooped in the Redwoods.
I took this picture of a redwood grove in Hendy Woods State Park during the research trip.
Our intrepid regulars, Michael and Emily, will be hitting the road with Mom & Dad to visit Redwoods National and State Parks in California. Along the way, they’ll meet up with a host of critters, some of which we’ve met in other Who Pooped books, and a few new ones as well, like mountain beavers, fishers, tree voles, and ringneck snakes.
The book is scheduled to hit the streets in the spring of 2015. That may seem like a long time, considering I signed the contract back in July, but there’s a reason for that. I write these books in a grid: page numbers on the left, then a column for descriptions of the illustrations, one for the text on the page, and another for the “Straight Poop” sidebars. The manuscript comes out looking like this:
This is a section of the manuscript for the Redwoods book.
When I had the manuscript done, I had two people proofread it before submitting it to Will Harmon, my editor at Farcountry Press, who went through it with a fine-toothed comb. He found a few issues, and I fixed most of them right away and argued with him about a couple of others. He does tend to be right most of the time, but I still win sometimes!
Each book is exactly 48 pages long. I put a lot of time and thought into arranging the story so that there will big beautiful color pictures, including two-page spreads, illustrating everything the family finds. But it takes illustrator Rob Rath even longer to actually draw those pictures. As I write this, Rob is sketching up his rough drafts for all of the pages. When he’s done, those will go back to Will, who will check everything carefully and then send it to me. I will look at all of the animals, scats, tracks, plants, and other content to make sure it matches the text and accurately reflects what that area looks like.
My books focus on ten main animals that appear in the scat & track guide at the end, but those aren’t the only animals in the books! I try to find a lot of other species that live in the ecosystem I’m writing about and work them in to the text and illustrations. This means Rob has to draw dozens of different plant and animal species in each book. Just to give you a feeling for it, here are the animals included in Who Pooped in the Redwoods:
Mammals
- Black bear
- Black-tailed deer
- Brush rabbit
- California Grizzly Bear
- Fisher
- Gray fox
- Mountain Beaver
- Mountain lion
- Northern flying squirrel
- Porcupine
- Raccoon
- River otter
- Roosevelt elk
- Sonoma tree vole
- Spotted Skunk
- Striped Skunk
- Townsend’s big-eared bat
Birds
- Bald eagle
- Brown pelican
- Great blue heron
- Northern spotted owl
- Robin
- Steller’s jay
Reptiles
- Northwestern ringneck snake
- Pacific giant salamander
- Rough-skinned newt
Fish
- Chinook Salmon
Invertebrates
- Banana slug
- Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly
- Sequoia Pitch Moth
- Silver-spotted Skipper
- Western Tailed Blue butterfly
- Western Tiger Swallowtail
- Yellow-spotted millipede
And that doesn’t even count the plants! Not to mention the fact that Rob has a tendency to sneak one or two of his favorite critters into the background here and there, which makes it even more fun.
Will and I probably won’t find much during our proofing pass – this is the 13th book Rob and I have done together – but there will likely be a few little things. Once Rob has made any required changes, he’ll do the final drawings and color everything. Then the book goes through one more proofing pass, which will involve a few more sets of eyes. The bar codes will be added to the cover and everything will be finalized. That’s when the book is sent out to be printed, which takes even more time.
By the time the book hits stores, it will have been almost a year since we started. I hope you’ll find it worth the wait!
Upcoming Appearances 2014
This spring and summer is lining up to have a wildly eclectic set of public appearances for me! So far, I have things scheduled all across my areas of expertise: book signings, a TED talk about captioning, and a tea blogger’s panel at World Tea Expo.
TEDxBozeman
Join me at TEDxBozeman on Friday, March 21 for a day of celebrating Pioneer Spirit with an amazing lineup of speakers. My talk is entitled “Does Closed Captioning Still Serve Deaf People?” I’ll be exploring the history and roots of closed captioning and look at the progress it has made, the pitfalls it has encountered, and where it might be going. As of this writing, tickets are still available, but they’ve sold out pretty quickly the last few years, so if you want to be at the talks in Bozeman, Montana, you’ll want to snag those tickets quickly. It will, of course, be streamed as well, and the talks will be available as individual videos on the TED website.
I wrote a while ago on this blog about my talk and included links to some of my favorite TED talks. I’ll add a link here when I post more details about the talk.
Tea Bloggers Roundtable @ World Tea Expo
If you have any interest in tea, head for Long Beach on Friday, May 30. I will be joining a group of other tea bloggers for a panel discussion about the world of tea. There is more detail on my other blog, Tea With Gary.
Book Signings in Yellowstone
I will be signing “Who Pooped in the Park?” books at Yellowstone Stage (the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park) Sunday July 6 from 1:00 to 6:00 and Monday July 7 from 11:00 to 6:00.
