Nearing the End - The Very Beginning
4 months ago
– Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 05:57:33 PM
Hello everyone, it’s Clara.
With only 6 days to go in our Kickstarter campaign, I’ve been reflecting on how uniquely each person perceives the world. The way our senses work is essential to who we are. While I am easily overwhelmed and distracted by audio, I have friends and family who experience too many words on a page the same way. I am grateful and excited for all of you who have helped (or might still pitch in!) to make Be the Sea available in both hardcover and audiobook formats.
Perhaps approaching the end here also opens a window back to the true origin of Be the Sea. My love for the ocean is firmly rooted in my earliest sensory memories, and those are rooted in Kāne‘ohe on the island of O‘ahu in Hawai‘i.
Kāne‘ohe is a bay, although most people think of the town first.
While Kāne‘ohe only appears briefly in Be the Sea, it is my birthplace as well as Wend’s in the story. When I lived there in the early 1970s, the image most people recognized from Kāne‘ohe was the Island in the opening credits for Gilligan’s Island. That island is within swimming distance from shore and is called Moku o Loʻe or by the nickname “Coconut Island.” I only lived in Kāne‘ohe as a young child and didn’t understand what that show was about. The island was right there!
I have a child’s memories of Kāne‘ohe. Only two of these memories took place indoors. One was the rush of sliding down an odd piece of indoor architecture. The other involved pounding on the window to get out—my mother later explained we had to cover all the windows during a tropical storm.
All my other early childhood memories occurred outside or on a boat. I’m told I only stayed still when something around me was moving. I still love the motion of boats, waves, and hammocks. The baby hammock mentioned in Be the Sea was real, although the one photo I have doesn’t do justice to my memories of the safest, most comfortable place I ever slept.
It may surprise younger generations to hear this, but so far as I know, there are no photos or videos of me learning to swim or playing in the fishponds and tidepools around Kāne‘ohe Bay. Friends and relatives have told many stories of baby me rushing into the ocean, but those stories are the only context I have.
They connect to my strongest memory—or at least the one I revisited most after moving away—the feel of sand and water on my skin. I insisted my toes couldn’t stand shoes because shoes couldn’t match the comfort of very wet sand (ideally still underwater). The memories I took with me were mostly touch-based. Ocean water felt different than freshwater or bathtub water (although I rather liked warm baths, too). Algae floating in water felt great to me, although adults described it as bad and stemming from pollution. That didn’t make sense to me at the time, but I agreed the texture was bad when algae dried out of the water. And I knew I could only pet or hold sea cucumbers when they were submerged in water. Basically, my memories of my first home are mostly about the feel of my favorite things underwater.
It only took me half a century more to put some of those feelings into words and write Be the Sea.
Thanks to all of you who share my love of the ocean and are helping me share that more widely via this Kickstarter!
Clara
First Stretch Goal Achieved!
4 months ago
– Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 08:00:27 AM
Just a quick update to say that we achieved our first stretch goal!
This means that all hardcover rewards will include 4 beautiful Sea Creature postcards from The Dragon of Ynys author Minerva Cerridwen. To see some of the candidates for the postcards, be sure to follow Minerva's #seacreatureoftheday. Xe may even put some to a vote to help us choose.
All backers will get high-resolution digital downloads of the postcards, but consider upgrading your pledge to the hardcover edition if you'd like to receive physical copies of these cards. You can also get a pack (or extra pack) of postcards as an add-on to any physical reward level.
And we're already more than a third of the way toward our second stretch goal! At $5000, all e-books will include a new bonus story from Clara Ward. The bonus story will also be printed in the hardcover. Let's keep this going!
Thanks!!
Chris
Behind-the-Scenes Peek at Hand-Colored Numbered-Edition Hardcovers
4 months ago
– Mon, Jul 01, 2024 at 09:21:11 AM
Hello hello!
This is Matt. I had the honor of illustrating the cover of Be the Sea, as well as the graphics for this Kickstarter campaign, and I’ll ALSO have the honor of hand-coloring hopefully a few hardcover copies of this lovely book!
Since the hardcovers don’t exist quite yet, I took a few photos of my paperback copy, and digitally mocked up some possible approaches to the coloring! The final, actual results will look different than these, because digital tools can only replicate so well what my watercolor/colored pencil work looks like. Each hand-colored hardcover will be one-of-a-kind due to the unpredictable nature of my materials, and whatever mood strikes me while I’m painting and doodling!
I was going to mention an additional disclaimer that what I use to color the line drawings at each chapter header might depend on the type of paper the hardcover is printed on—and it still might, but! I did some tiny tests in my paperback, and the paper receives both colored pencil and watercolor surprisingly well, so I imagine the stock in the hardcover will be similar or better for painting/drawing on!
I plan to add color to each of the chapter-header drawings, and hopefully also do some illustration on the title page, and maybe on each of the three “Act” title pages as well. I’m looking forward to keeping things playful and fun and colorful, and to be honest, even doing these mockups activated the same part of my brain that enjoyed doodling while note-taking in school. My hope is that whoever ends up with these very special hardcovers will have as much fun looking at them as I will embellishing them!
Thanks for the support so far! I’m so excited to hopefully push further past base funding, towards getting these wonderful editions fully funded and beyond!
Matt
Tour the Tidepools - Wallpaper for You from Nature!
4 months ago
– Fri, Jun 28, 2024 at 09:29:44 AM
Welcome all! It’s Clara (with Chris Z providing custom wallpapers!).
First, thank you for supporting this Kickstarter! We’ve had a very positive response to the bonus material offered in our updates…so we’ll keep making more!
Several backers appreciated and linked to last week’s Tour of the Microbiome. That was a guest post provided by our marine biology fact checker for Be the Sea (and my favorite copyeditor/marine biologist), Chris Zable! It inspired me to ask Chris along for a quick trip to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in California to visit our local tidepools.
What would be better than sharing photos from that trip with you? Sharing wallpapers! Chris created cellphone wallpapers from the natural patterns and colors in these photos. If you’d like to use these phone wallpapers, download them in high resolution from this Google Drive Folder! We also included some bonus videos there.
From this tiny preview of the wallpapers, can you guess which wallpaper came from which of the photos below?
This lovely light-colored shell belongs to a gastropod (snail) that Chris thinks might be a dogwinkle, a predator that uses its radula to scrape through the shells of prey (like mussels or barnacles).
Chris appreciated the patterns in these encrusting algae (the name really says it all on that one).
In addition to a closed sea anemone (center green) and hermit crab (with yellow dot), there’s a Pacific purple sea urchin in the upper corner, one of too many we spotted. These urchins are devastating local kelp forests due to a recent population explosion that has unified chefs and biologists in encouraging humans to eat them!
Here’s an underside view of a gastropod (snail) shell beside some coraline algae.
An even more intricate mass of coraline algae.
And finally what we think might be a fossil!
Where will Chris and Clara venture next? The only hint I can give for now is that…it will not involve eating urchins!
Please keep telling all your friends (and foes!) about all the wonders of the sea they can view here, and let's make this a very successful weekend for the Kickstarter—and hopefully for all of you!
Clara
