I’ve got my books!

Today was an exciting day.

Today was the day I collected 50 shiny new copies of my very first REAL book, Gold Mines, Elephants and Foefie Slides*: An adventurous Weekend on the Garden Route, from the printers – appropriately named The Printing Press – in Little Mowbray this afternoon.

They came out beautifully. Look:

My books - waiting to be read!

I think that Paula of Paula Wood Design did a superlative job with the cover. I couldn’t give her that much to work with, because, at the time of our holiday in Knysna, I hadn’t deliberately focused on taking photographs that could be used for a book cover. Lesson learned!

These are the front and back covers:

Front and back covers

The blurb on the back – in case you can’t read it so clearly – says:

“In May 2008, we spent a weekend on the Garden Route. We stayed in an adorable timber cabin in the forests of Rheenendal, flew through the canopy of the Tsitsikamma forest on a foefie slide, walked trunk-in-hand with magnificent elephants at The Crags, and hiked around some of the abandoned gold mines at Millwood. And there is so much more to explore and experience in this extraordinarily beautiful region of South Africa!”

And, as you can see if you look realllllly closely, my book even has a spine!

Initially, I’d been told that it would be practically impossible to print any text on a spine that was less than 5mm thick.

I became obstinate, Paula the designer persevered and played with font sizes, Shane at the printers did his best, and thus – much to my delight! – the title can now be read on the spine! Yayyy!

It’ll look so much nicer on the shelf, don’tcha think?

Now the next step will be to get them out there into the world!

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* By the way, in case you have no idea what a foefie slide is, it is a South African English word that refers to a flying fox, a zipline or a zip slide. The more primitive rough-and-tumble version of childhood involves a long strong rope or steel cable between two trees far apart, with one being higher than another. Sometimes, it crosses a river or a rockpool. Another bit of rope or something you can grip onto is slung over the cable, and then you launch yourself into the air, holding tight, and slide down at rapid speed. The far safer commercial version involves a pair of steel cables (the spare is for additional safety), a harness, and a pulley onto which you and your harness are clipped, so that you can’t fall off. It’s fast, it’s fun, and it’s a great adrenalin rush!