A New Door Opens

Things don't always work the way they started out. Take for example, my experience with KindleVella. The concept seemed foolproof, offer online books a bit at a time. Serial writing. Charles Dickens did it using newspapers as his format. Vella offered the same to authors like me. Upload episodes so the reader can taste a bit at a time. Sounded like a plan to me. 

But this is not London in 1849. It's America in 2025. We are instant gratification people. We don't like waiting. 

KDP of Amazon, Vella's publishing company, learned this the hard way. I received a notification from them that they were ceasing this publishing format. I was given options for my Vellas. One Vella I will not republish, but the other, my passion piece, I moved over to their ebook system. It's too dear to my heart to let it die. It's my memoir.

Or sort of. 

You'll find more about others in my life than you will about me. I was unfortunate enough to be born in the midst of a tragedy. I'd heard the story my entire life and always wanted to learn more about it. I began researching a couple decades ago, put it to the side, and when Vella became an option, I sprang back into action and finished the project. I had no intention of offering it in any other platforms, but here we are. When one door closes, another opens. And here it is. 

When I was designing the cover, I thought about using a picture of smog since that was the gist of the tragedy. Yet I didn't want something depressing because people are steadfast and resilient when they face challenges. That's what I wanted to get across in this book. I settled on fog, not only for the cover picture, but the title. It's actually the Donora Smog story. Industrial smokestacks did that, and I'm not giving that more credit than it deserves, hence fog, not smog.

Here's the picture I selected. It's my daughter following my husband into the fog at a beautiful spot on earth known as Max Patch. I took this photo several years ago and when the time came to find a cover picture, I knew it was the one. It's an homage to the family I have now and to those the stories are about. There are some good stories from my extraordinary family tree. For a mere $2.99 you can see what I'm talking about. Download from Amazon and give it a read. Click over to this: The Great Donora Fog and Other Family Stories. 

In the end, changing from one ebook format to another might make it simpler for those people like me who want the whole book at once rather than bits and pieces one week at a time. At least it didn't die in the clouds!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen