For those interested, the phases in creating and producing your own audiobook are:

1) creative phase: recording, editing, fileswapping, decisionmaking, "notes" back and forth
2) technical phase: mastering and disc spanning
3) mechanical licensing: copyright, permissions in the print publishing world
4) production: making the discs, pricing, packaging, delivery
5) big celebration!
6) marketing & distribution---see if anyone wants one

I continue to be completely smitten with Scott Kidd as a collaborator. He's a consummate professional. As someone whose career was as a generalist—with the skill of professionalism at the core of that—I truly appreciate that core when I encounter it. I am bragging on him all the time...even offering him as a case study for what really works well. Thanks again for connecting us.

CLICK HERE to read about my Nashville visit on Yvonne Perry's blog WRITERS IN THE SKY when I began work with Scott and met Yvonne and Hal Manogue, two steadfast blogging buddies, for the first time.

1) Send-off Dinner. Before I left, Doreen Hulsey and her fascinating family (including longtime piano teacher) invited me for a going away supper to send me off. I know Doreen through the St. Louis Writers Guild and the Ethical Society.

2) Homecoming Dinner. Upon my return, Liz Sommers and her husband Kevin E. invited me to a welcome home dinner. They both worked for the anti-apartheid movement and asked such intelligent questions, listened so intently, and threw in such great stories of union organizing that it made for a rapt evening in Madison, Illinois.

3) Root Canal. Am I crazy? Maybe. But, I'm so grateful that tooth #20 waited a week to send me signals of excrutiating pain. I hadn't been to the dentist since my move from Northern California a year ago June. Finally, I got dental insurance through Authors Guild on the basis of my literary journal publications. It's gonna save me a bundle now! Plaza Dental got me right in and fixed me right up. I like the folks over there. Nice feeling and ambiance. They even let me wear the lead apron for my security blanket. I like the weight.

4) New Review of Sightlines. Gregory Robson, at Resident Media Pundit, posted a review of "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary"

5) Blogging Award? Yvonne Perry's Writers in the Sky honored me with the Brillante Weblog Premio Blogging Award saying,

Janet Riehl's blog http://www.riehlife.com/ has a wide variety of topics as she takes us all over the world with her poetic writing and daily insights. Her literary journey is dotted with photos, clip art, and useful links to other people's work. She has a great list of resources, too! Her blog is interactive and invites a lot of comments.

I investigated a little further and found that the award was more in the way of a game bloggers play...a blogging meme...rather than a full-fledged award. You can read about this in two excellent posts here: Museum of Hoaxes and Heart and Hands.

When I shared this information with Yvonne, she thought maybe I would be offended or she ought to take it off her blog. I said, "No, the award, coming from you, is a real award." It reveals something interesting about the blogging and internet culture...about memes and the awards game in general.

6) Art patronage on the move. Joseph La Marque came over to install the finished mounts for Lloyd Kleine Harvey's delicate and elegant twig sculptures. We are experimenting with ways to make Lloyd's work more stable and attractive to collector's. I think we have some winners here. Joseph La Marque is an artist in his own right, and when he does work in support of other artists, his minimalist aesthetic and knack for the simple solution comes into play wonderfully. We're viewing these mounts as prototypes for Lloyd to use when he exhibits his work with the Regional Arts Commission...and are thinking he might even use the mounts as he's making the work. We'll see what Lloyd thinks soon.

7) Audiobook nearing final stages. "Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music" is now in in the homestretch of applying for mechanical licenses for the music used on the four discs that are still in public domain, copyrighting my father's songs, and making decisions about packaging and quantities. Hoping for a release in early October. We'll see. Scott Kidd was the audio engineer on the album and now is my point person/project manager who's been a godsend. Scott has a compatible way of thinking and working that's pure pleasure.

Family Poetry Book. My father's been busy while I've been gone. Soon he'll be giving me the files for our next book project: "Worth Remembering: The Poetry" which is an anthology of his poetry, family and friends poetry. Poetry books are a bear to do as the must be spaced properly. Oh, for the novels!

And you, dear readers? What are your be-gratitudes?

Like three other friends of mine, I'm now, Saturday, 11 a.m., to appear on Blogtalk Radio's Authors Read program hosted by Lillian Brummet (Conscious Discussions talk radio).

Folks, this is a great resource and readily available to any of you authors out there who wanna read from your books!

For my show, what I'm excited about, is that I was able to send files from the audiobook we're making of my poetry book.

So, if you're able to catch the program or listen to the archive afterwards, you can get a preview of the "Sightlines a Poet's Diary" audiobook!

Click here to hear downhome music recorded in my father's parlor mingled with poems from my mother's section of "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary."

The call-in Number for the show is: (347) 215-8319.

So, love it if you check out our music and poetry reading...and make use of this resource yourself!

What's particularly great that I was able to send the files beforehand.

Because this afternoon my father and I are anchoring a major program at the Godfrey Congregational Church for "Gems of Yesterday: The Poetry and Philosophy of Bee Lewis," our tribute book to my father's mentor that contains 274 poems.

We'll have 5 poetry readers, music, stories...and will be donating all proceeds from book sales to the church where Amelia Lewis, Bee's wife, was so active.

Because we had the audio files available, I won't have to stress about calling in and being in good voice.

I'll be there de facto in the pre-recorded files. It's such a freeing way to work. I love it! A brave new world for me.

I love using the new technology to bring out the truth, beauty, and wisdom, of the past.

Click here to read Yvonne Perry's report "Janet Riehl's Nashville Visit" on Yvonne Perry's Writers in the Sky blogspot.

The Riehl Family on the Homeplace...everyone played music or wrote poetry as a matter of course. Anna Riehl, my grandmother, in foreground, wrote the poetry collection "On the Heights."

ADVENTURES IN CREATIVE COLLABORATION

Collaboration means to work together. When I chart the "greatest hits" of my life, many of these experience revolve around rich working collaborations. One of my greatest joys in life is collaborating with friends. I count good ones like the time with sound engineer Scott Kidd on one hand. (Click here to read Scott Kidd's credits on All Music.) He's one of the greats, and so humble. This time working with him was beyond anything I could have imagined or designed.

Recording the audio for "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary" in Nashville with Scott was both collaboration and peak experience. Essentially, I commissioned Scott to work with me in creating an audiobook and the audio for a multimedia ebook (text and links that take you to audio, video, or external locations...an ebook that functions like a website or a blog) for "Sightlines" in what turns out to be a very active collaboration.

Scott is a dream collaborator because he's skillful, relaxed, fun, responsive, and on point. For this project, I couldn't have imagined anyone more right to work with. My father would say, "He has a good touch on it." He understood about the importance of family stories, history, heritage, and legacy. That's the undercurrent of my upbringing, my current collaborative life with my father, and the five sections of "Sightlines" 90 poems. A sound editor like Scott is comparable to a film editor who pulls a project together like a collage.

At the core of Scott's talent for collaboration is his talent for sharing his humaness. I cannot say enough good about the man, truly. At only 31, Scott is a man of heart...a man of soul...a man of quiet, efficient action. He sees the big picture and get the details right while making it all easy and fun. He's an engineer with an artist's sensibility and intuition. He really understands what collaboration is.

ADVENTURES IN COMPASSION

"Sightlines: A Poet's Diary" is a downhome family love story beyond death that won a DIY honorable mention in 2007. My sister's death in 2004 launched the spiritual process that gave birth to the book, but "Sightlines" is more than a dead sister book. It's a book of homecoming...to my family, the homeplace, and to myself and a larger sense of family.

Early in our work together Scott shared that his family had also experienced a sudden death (his uncle) and that he had found "a soft spot that wasn't there before." This statement so struck me becuase it's the very essence of the Tibetan Buddhist teachings on compassion: "The times when you are suffering can be those when you are open, and where you are extremely vulnerable can be where your greatest strength really lies. Say to yourself: I am not going to run away from this suffering. I want to use it in the best and richest way I can, so that I can become more compassionate and more helpful to others. Suffering, after all, can teach us about compassion. If you suffer, you will know how it is when others suffer. And if you are in a position to help others, it is through your suffering that you will find the understanding and compassion to do so."

In his own direct and honest way, this is what Scott has done. He's infused his technical expertise with such gentleness that you may enter as a client, but walk away feeling as if you've made a friend. Scott said that in the beginning of his career he'd tried to model someone who was extremely businesslike. But, that just wasn't him and caused undue stress. "I just had to be myself," he told me. That's been the cornerstone of his success in working with many of Nashville's music royalty.

Our work sessions were bookended by playing with his Boston Terrier Tucker, eating Sushi together at Peter's, and marvelling over the pro-quality wedding album his father-in-law gave them as his present.

What I learned about doing business in Nashville from working with Scott, listening to his stories, and lunching with Hal Manogue and Yvonne Perry at the Yellow Porch (where it felt like we were just hanging out on our front porch, jabbering, watching the world go by) is that it's very relational...very old school...old world.

BLOG DUET WITH YVONNE PERRY OF WRITERS IN THE SKY

Click here to read Yvonne Perry's report "Janet Riehl's Nashville Visit" on Yvonne Perry's Writers in the Sky blogspot.

Find out:
1) Why I wanted to make an audiobook of "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary"....and how long I've had this dream.
(Yvonne is one of the folks who inspired me in that direction when I appeared on her January 12, 2007 podcast)
2. Audiobook and multimedia ebook products from the recording session...what's next?
3. The music and poetry and stories and humorous asides used.
4. The recording session and process.
5. Did I practice?
6. Why go all the way to Nashville? Relational business as a way of life.
7. Hints for tackling an audiobook project

A LONG DRIVE IN THE COUNTRY

It's a pretty drive from St. Louis to Nashville (routes 64/57/24) that takes around 5.5 hours and crosses three rivers (Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee) and passes by many gorgeous large lakes (Rend/Egypt/Barkley) where I wanted to just stop and camp. The routes down are so aesthetically constructed without billboards and with so much foliage embracing the roadway, that it feels like a highspeed Sunday afternoon drive in the country...which is what it was, with, amazingly, only one stop around Paducah, Kentucky.

My drive glimpsing the first cutting of new-mown hay (now rolled up in huge columns) and Angus cattle reminded me of our Sunday drives up to work on my grandfather's farm outside Carrollton, Illinois when I was growing up. Marring the lyricism were the bodies of deer and smaller wildlife on the side of the road as they'd dashed out of the surrounding roadside woods.

Enhancing the lyricism of the drive, though, was the fullness of the moon that first announced itself in ghost curves, and then in forthright moon-ness after the long twilight ended at 8:20 p.m.

VIEW FROM HOTEL INDIGO, aka HOTEL HAIKU

The view from my ninth floor room at Hotel Indigo on the night sky of Nashville (which likes to call itself "music city") is as glittery as a country music stage. (When I take the stairs, I find a dime, a cigarette butt, and a coffee spill on the levels going down. I love looking behind the scenes.)

Hotel Indigo bills itself as for the traveler who yearns for the uncommon experience. It's high-design with all it's communiques to guests written in Haiku structures consistent with the line and syllable count of the form.

I like the one on their note paper best:

A thought changed the world
It was on paper then grew
Doodles are thoughts too.

Ooooooooo-Kay! They call their customer communication project "A Haiku for You." If you want to find a more interesting version of that phrase, click here....Haiku for you, a collaborative project.

WHAT I'M DOING IN NASHVILLE

I'm here to record an audiobook for "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary" that will also be available to download from my site as a multimedia ebook, the newest, most versatile use of the web I've seen which can incorporate text, audio and visual files, as well as external links. It will take awhile, but eventually, you'll be able to see and hear it on Riehlife.