Today, January 20th, outside it’s cold, 32 degrees and the wind’s blowing 25 with gusts and, after successfully planting my Vidalia and Texas 1015 onions, I have started on a new project. This project is self-publishing my second book, a saga of many of my hunting exploits, appropriately named, “Why It’s Called Hunting”.

My choice of publishers is Createspace, the online publishing subsidiary of Amazon.com. Knowing that Outdoor Odyssey is a blog that primarily focuses on outdoor happenings and expecting many trials and tribulations during my publishing experience, it is my plan to chronicle these on the blog as I go forward.

Why, I ask myself, would chronicling this project be of interest to others? Maybe someone who reads this blog would want to write and self publish a book? Maybe it would be a help to others? Maybe the process would be interesting? At least, it will be a new experience for everyone!

My objective is to self publish a 50,000 word book, with pictures, of many of my hunting experiences and the first thing to accomplish is the development of a plan that covers from concept to the finished product. My first cut at a usable plan follows:

1. Study Createspace’s offerings, be familiar with them and during the process, chose the ones that I’ll use.

2. Organize, rewrite (as needed) and arrange in chronological order the best and most interesting hunting stories from my blog.

3. Write, or rewrite, one word, one paragraph and/or one story per day.

4. Touch up, and if necessary, rewrite the Foreword, Acknowledgments and Prologue.

5. Organize pictures and change to 300 DPI.

6. Figure out the best way to change the entire book from MS Word to PDF.

7. Edit, Edit, Edit, Edit! If possible, have the book professionally edited.

Well, that’s my plan and I’m stickin’ to it (I hope)!