Heard from our editor again yesterday. She hasn't started working on our book yet, but she had a couple of things to give me a "heads up" on.
First, they want me to extend the family tree to the present day British royal family. What an excellent idea! I had only included people who were in the book. So the tree ends at George V, Elizabeth II's grandfather. But I think they're right, it will help people to see how the family tree connects to the present day.
We're not going to extend the entire family tree, just the British royal family. I don't think there would be room in the book to trace all Victoria's descendants! However, I've heard that Queen Elizabeth's husband, Prince Phillip, is also a descendant of Victoria, so I'll try to get him in there without making it too complicated. (I guess those jokes about royalty being inbred are more than just jokes! But they're distant cousins, so it's not that bad.)
The other issue is that they've got all that clip art I sent for the book, but they're concerned about it printing well. This is the same problem we had early on with the cards. It was resolved by them finding a printer who could handle the art (the one in Belgium).
Apparently it's a lot harder to make that finely detailed art look good on the page of a book. Plus the book is being done by their regular printer, not the Belgian one. I guess I had noticed before that tarot art never looks as good in the book as on the cards. I just hadn't thought it through.
Anyway, they might be able to work with some of my clip art, but they really need me to try to get better reproductions. The problem is that this art comes from bound periodicals at the Duke library, which can't be checked out. So my copies were all made on the library photocopiers, which range from "OK" to "horrible." Since I can't take them out of the library, I don't know how to get better images.
Well, it looks like I'm going to have to figure it out, if I want any of that clip art to end up in the book. I am going to ask the library people for help. I don't think they'll let me check out the books. But there might be better repro equipment in the library that I could use.
OH! I am such a dope sometimes. We have a laptop and a scanner! I can set up in the library and scan the pages right there! For crying out loud, why didn't I think of this before?
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