I’ve been working on The Visalia Electric Railroad: Stories of the Early Years with Louise Jackson. Books take a ton of work AFTER the writing: a lot of talking, editing, tons of computer time, decisions, decisions, decisions, emails, phone calls, meetings, more editing, proofing, more decisions. And it is all very fun, especially when you get to work with people you love.

One of my tasks as Louise’s book shepherd is to gather photos and make them usable for the book – change all the mysterious computer things, clean up the fuzz and hairy stuff and tears and stains, resize them, and figure out where they belong in the book.

Yep, book shepherd is a real job, and it is what I did for her Trail of Promises book and am doing for The Visalia Electric Railroad. There is another book by another writer coming soon, but I won’t be telling you about that until January or so. 

Time out for a quick commercial: Trail of Promises: Packing the Backbone of the Sierra is available here. Here is the entire cover as it would look if the design guidelines didn’t show, and if you smashed the book flat and open. (This is not recommended behavior.)

But I digress. Have a look at a photo that won’t be in The Visalia Electric Railroad. There will be a similar photo, but this is too precious to not show you.

Hi, Mom!