Long Distance Relationships

One of the more compelling attributes of living in the 21st Century is how easy it is to connect to people a long way off-- see Donald and Vladimir-- In our case, in working on On The Rocks (OTR for short) with a third of the continent separating us, technology has been a boon. When we started the project in 1989 we lived about a mile and a tich apart, both nestled in our apartments in Mountlake Terrace, about 12 miles north of downtown Seattle. As the saying goes, life happens, and Rick and his family moved back to Denver, while I stayed in Seattle. Happily we stayed in contact through those dark years before the internet enveloped us, the post office the magic wonder of the day then. We worked on a couple of projects, and put the first edition of OTR together, got together for some sort of food and booze whenever I hit Denver, which was at least once a year, what with my family being back there. (I've driven the route on I-84 and I-80 so many times over the last 30 years that I've learned the bumps, to say nothing of marking the places where one or another of my vehicles broke down midway- Snowville, The rest stop 30 miles east of Boise. the rest stop overlooking Yakima )

When we resurrected OTR in late 2017, we both recognized the work on it still left to be done. Our first edition had many small edits that needed to be done, and a few larger ones. And we zeroed in on character relationships, which sounded fine when we were in early 30's, but which seemed rather too shallow from our currently advanced ages. The smaller edits were hard back in the 1990 world, evidenced when started back to work on it from a scanned copy of the typed pages. A sentence off here, a paragraphs run together there, and we were condemned to re type pages of manuscript to make the changes. (we were working on typewriters and a second generation Tandy-- insert 5 1/4 inch floppy to install DOS before you start.) AT some point we looked at each other and proclaimed that an editor would fix it before publishing it.

After re-formatting the manuscript from the scanned pages to a workable format and then doing the editing only took about two and half months. Not bad for being 1350 miles apart. (Rick did travel to Seattle for a couple of days and we got some important work done-- and finished off some better Bourbon hiding in my liqueur cabinet.) We've been communication one way or another--text, email and (gasp) occasionally calling. The one hour time difference only highlights our individual differences in daily routines; he has a day job, and I, having retired from the world of arts management, have some to like writing between 10pm and 3AM. (11pm and 4AM Denver Time) Besides that the arrangement seems to be working, we connect as we need to.

And as we get some of the marketing stuff together we are both chomping on the bit for the squeal....

Working on OTR circa 1989, Mountlake Terrace WA. Artwork by Miranda, aged 7