I started writing seriously in 1980 and have slowly progressed(and I emphasize slowly)!  Here it is 2016 and if someone would ask me, “How well known are you as a writer?” How would I respond?  Well my hometown of Clinton, MN is one county south of where I presently live and I did teach school at Herman High School one county east so I guess I am well known in a three county area.  But for twenty years I did travel the four state area of Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Iowa doing teacher workshops with my first three books, Children In The Outdoors, Volume I, II, and III.  So if we left off the word “well” and just used known my fame could possibly have spread as far as the four state area. 🙂

Well that all changed today when I went to the mailbox.  Among the junk mail I discovered a large, brown manila folder with a return address that I couldn’t read.  The reason that I wasn’t able to read it was because it was in the Ukrainian  language.  Excitedly I opened the envelope and removed a signed contract from the Publishing House Smirna which is located in the city of Cherkassy, Ukraine.  The contract spells out the guidelines for Smirna to publish my book “The Easter Sparrows” in both the Ukrainian and Russian languages.  Now isn’t that exciting?

Now the most challenging process remains.  I must send the book in a JPEG file over the internet to the Ukraine.  Me, the guy who has to remind himself how to turn on a computer much less operate one successfully!  I have already screwed that effort up as I had my publishers, WestBow Press send me a download of “The Easter Sparrows”.  With help from my computer experts at Prairie Computers in Morris, MN I was able to download a dropbox and send the book to the Ukraine.  My editor congratulated me several days later with good news and bad news.  The good news…..the book arrived successfully.  The bad news……it was in the wrong form.  It needed to be in JPEG file form.

Again I contacted WestBow Press and they are in the process of putting the book in the JPEG file.  Once they send it to me I will again attempt to send the file over the internet!  Yikes!  I’m not worried because I know Prairie Computers will be on standby and ready to assist me at a moments notice.

So if everything goes well in several months “The Easter Sparrows” will be released in the Ukraine in Russian and Ukrainian.  It will be the first time I will not be able to read a book that I wrote myself!

Once the book is released I will become an official international author.  I will probably be the least well known international author in the world but what the heck, I’ll still have the title. 🙂

What’s next?  I wonder if I could sneak a JPEG file on the next flight to Mars?  What would my  title be then?

Until next time. 🙂