Behind the scenes of the making of Tracy Loves Ray.

For a complete history from the beginning start at the bottom and work up. The most recent activity will be at the top.

All

Theresa

Glenn

Date	Who	Entry
07/12/2010	GLENN	Well, we tried to think out of the box and tried selling the book at two flea markets. It was fun but didn't sell many books. We met some nice people so it was worthwhile from that perspective. So, like Thomas Edison, we can rule out flea markets as good place to promote the book and move on to trying something else. We have come up with another innovative method, so stay tuned and we will let you now how it goes.
01/08/2010	GLENN	It's been a long time since my last update. Theresa has been extremely busy so our promotional efforts has been minimal for the last six months. But it's a new year an we are planning on getting serious on the promotion of the book. Hope you all had good holiday.
04/14/2009	GLENN	The book release party on Apr 4, was very enjoyable. It's really nice when you can combine a social event and fund raising at the same time. Since Theresa and I are fairly active in our church, we wanted to share her book release with the members. Thanks to all that attended. It was great to have members of the church, friends of Theresa's, friends of Sally and me, relatives, etc. We even had Jay's wife and two of his grand children attend. Please check out the pictures in the Photo Gallery.
02/21/2009	GLENN	It's been a busy two months since the last posting. Theresa was in the hospital which keep us busy. We have started promoting the book. Jay Hitt put the announcement of the book on his web site. We have sold some copies locally and some through Amazon. Thanks to all for buying, reading and passing on the book or info to buy to friends. It's really nice to see our project starting to come to fruition. We are close to a date on the book release party. Stay tuned for details in the next couple of weeks. That's it for now. Hopefully, I can be more faithful to updating this journal on a more frequent basis.
01/04/2009	GLENN	It has been an busy holiday. A few days before Christmas we got the proof back from the publisher, checked it out and gave our publisher the go ahead to make it available. On January 1, the book was available on Amazon. Today, we met with Jay Hitt to talk about how we could help each other to promote the book and his CD containing the song. It was a good meeting. We know it's going to be a tough road but we are determined to give it our best shot.
01/01/2009	GLENN	It's been a long road but finally the book is complete and available. A combination of personal commitments and longer than expected editing lengthened the time to complete the book. I know Theresa is concerned with the length of the book but I the book tells the story as I envisioned it. Besides, there are many examples of classic books which are short in length. I do wish we could have made the price less expensive but with our method of self publishing we do not have control over that. Now the hard part of promoting the book begins.
08/17/2008	GLENN	Time flys. But about three weeks ago we started the final editing process with booksurge. We updated the cover and contents. They prepared the cover and the first three chapters of the book. We reviewed it last week and made some minor formatting changes. In two days, we should get the updated version. If that looks good, they will format the rest of the book and we review and make any corrections. And finally a real book will be ready for sale. I would guess it should be ready the middle of September. Today, we are going to discuss our marketing strategy and work on having the task to support it ready for the launch of the book.
01/15/2008	GLENN	We got back the changes to the cover and it's ready to go. We decided on using Booksurge to publish the book. They are a print on demand shop. That is the majority of our sales will be through Amazon and each order will be printed individually and ship out by Booksurge. We will get some books to sell locally. Eventually, if we do well enough with self publishing, we can switch to a more traditional publishing arrrangement. So, we just need to finalize the content of the book.
12/29/2007	Glenn	Theresa has incorporated Lorna's comments and is making a final revision. Theresa's friend Brett agreed to do the cover. He sent us a draft whic we liked but asked for some changes. We anxiously await the final design. I have been busy researching the actual printing of the book and how we will sell it online. As a group we discussed the options and have settled on the big issues. We still have some details to work out. I redesigned the web site to make it easier for us to keep it updated once the book is released.
08/01/2007	Glenn	For various reasons the project was put on hold. Finally, I think we are rolling again. Theresa finished the draft of the book, we reviewed it. We searched online for a book editor and found Lorna. We sent the draft to Lorna for suggestions on content and received back her comments.
07/22/2005	Glenn	It's been a slow period for me We did have a meeting that was fun. We had discussion on characters as they related to the movie, that is who could play certain parts. This discussion caused us to change a minor character part in the book. Can't tell you the details. If our plan works, I'll let you know later. Worked on the website. The initial version was put up the beginning of June. I will continue refining before officially opening it up.
03/12/2005	Glenn	We went to a class on self-publishing today. The class had been rescheduled but we were misinformed about the make-up date. We found ourselves sitting in a non-fiction writing class. Because the error was on the part of the community college, they allowed us to audit the class for free. Even though our project was fiction, most of the techniques were applicable. Becca was an excellent teacher. We talked with her after class about the possibility of hiring her to edit our book. We all believe our being there was no accident.
03/04/2005	Glenn	We had our third meeting. It's going well. Theresa has four scenes completed and progress has been made in other areas. First road trip is planned. We will travel to eastern Ohio to check out small towns, overpasses and diners. Theresa pushing for a road trip to LA for research. I don't think so.
02/23/2005	Glenn	This week I received two more scenes. The opening scene was incredible. I just enjoyed the style. We now have a narrator telling the story about a town and grandfather telling the story of Tracy Loves Ray to a little girl. Cary has been researching screenplay writing and I have begun research on publishing and designing the website.
02/18/2005	Glenn	We had our second meeting. We talked about our personal goals and expectations. On all the major points, we all had similar goals. We all agreed to do whatever was necessary to produce the best book and screenplay possible. Theresa decided to join the team. Thank God! We discussed the financial arrangements with the realization we would be lucky to break even. We then spent some time talking about the storyline and characters. It was amazing how the creative juices began to flow. One idea after another was surfacing. Seeing the excitement build was very rewarding. Lots of work ahead.
02/11/2005	Glenn	Got the first scene from Theresa. How exciting! I knew after reading it, that Theresa was perfect for the project. I could tell she was fully committed by the creativity that she put into the first writing. I could also see the difficulty in telling the story and making all the pieces fit. Reading the first scene immediately gave me ideas to feed back to Theresa.
02/08/2005	Glenn	We had our first meeting. I began the meeting by laying out my thoughts, goals, etc. Theresa would be the writer of the book. Cary would write the screenplay and help in planning. I would help with ideas, etc. I knew that, to be successful, I needed to their help to produce a polished product. Cary suggested we all write more personal goals and expectations for the project. Theresa committed that she would determine in the next few weeks if she wanted to participate in the project. We agreed that Theresa and I would enroll for a creative writing class at our local community college, and all three of us would attend a one day seminar on self-publishing. Whether of not Theresa and Cary committed to the project, these classes would be help their other interests.
09/01/2004	Glenn	For a while I had been mulling over the thought that the best chance I had to see this project through was to find someone to help me write the book and the screenplay. The hope was that the book would be popular enough to get studios interested in the screenplay. I approached my daughter and son with the idea of writing the book. My daughter had always been good at writing, and my son was interested in the making of movies. While there was enthusiasm for the project, my daughter was hesitant because she was in the process of thinking about what she wanted to do with her life, and she had never considered writing a fictional novel. We decided to meet to discuss the prospects.
02/01/2004	Glenn	I created a three-page outline of the scenes for the movie based on the song. I added the telling of the story by a grandfather to his granddaughter. The grandfather lived in the town where Tracy and Ray lived. I asked Jay Hitt for permission to send the outline to the producers of The Bread My Sweet. They said they didn't have the time to invest in this project as they had projects of their own they were working on. However, they were supportive and suggested I make the movie myself as they had done. For some reason, I wasn’t real disappointed. I didn’t envision myself making my own movie, but I thought something might still come out of the idea.
12/01/2003	Glenn	It didn’t take long before the thought of "what a good movie this would make", popped into my head. For the next few years, my wife and I caught Jay at local venues as often as we could. We heard about a new locally produced movie The Bread My Sweet. We went to see it and stayed after for a question-and-answer session with the producers. If you have a chance, check this movie out. It has been re-titled Bella’s Wedding. It was after seeing The Bread My Sweet that I first actively pursued turning the song, Tracy Loves Ray into a movie.
11/01/2001	Glenn	My wife and I first heard the song Tracy Loves Ray at a Friday night event at Southminster church in Mt. Lebanon , PA. We both enjoyed Jay Hitt’s performance. There was something about the song Tracy Loves Ray that immediately resonated with me. So, I bought his album and listened to it often.