I wrote a book!

The month of May seems to be a fortuitous one for me.

Nearly ten years ago (in May), John and I closed on our Eichler home and started our journey restoring our midcentury modern home. That led to our blog… then seven years ago (also in May!) I quit my corporate job to start running Destination Eichler as a full-time business.

Now flash forward to May 2023, and I am officially announcing that my first book, Midcentury Modern Style: An Approachable Guide to Inspired Rooms is available for pre-order and will be on shelves in mid November!

So how exactly did our book come about?

A few years ago (sometime around pandemic-lockdown era) my dear friend and photographer Christopher Dibble and his friend/client designer Max Humphrey came out with the book Modern Americana. It’s a beautiful compilation of Max’s interiors and styling work, along with loads of DIY tips and fully embracing vintage pieces, (which of course I am huge fan of both), and features gorgeous photography by Dibble (I call him Dibble).

I texted Dibble excitedly to congratulate him on a beautiful book and photography and half-jokingly asked, “When is our book coming out?” Well, somehow that conversation turned into more serious conversation and planning and we came up with the concept of our book - a relatable, friendly guide to all things mid-century modern style & design. I spent the next few months writing up different tips and ideas (all MCM design focused) that could go in a book. Then lockdown ended and we both got busy with our lives and work again.

The Book Proposal

It wasn’t until several months, maybe even a year that went by until we started planning out how to put our book proposal together. We started researching how to pitch a book; we both each have some very talented friends who have published books before and were kind to share some of their experiences with us. We put together a small “mini-book” layout (see a peek below), including some of the midcentury modern design tips I had started gathering, along with different chapter ideas and included photographs that Dibble already shot of my past work. Olivia from my design team put everything together in a visual compilation and we shipped (well emailed) it off to contacts we had at our (now) publisher Gibbs Smith. It was so cool to see our work merged together in a cohesive visual and real story.

An excerpt from our original Book Proposal.

The Pitching Process

I truly didn’t think our project/book would get picked up on the first try and we had a list of publishers we planned to reach out to next. But amazingly, it seemed that our idea was a great fit for the publisher and soon we were reviewing book contracts, talking to attorneys and signing a book deal!

We got a Book Deal, now what?!

The excitement was palpable… but then the fear set in. The publisher had a goal for how many words the book would need to be and I had a loooooong way to go. Like really long. I didn’t know how I would be able to write all the copy and meet editorial deadlines, on top of work, running a business and being a Mom. So those next few months were pretty crazy. I tried to stick to an early morning (get up at 5 am kind of early) routine and write before my day started. That lasted maybe a day. I didn’t have a lot of writing creativity at 5 am and felt pressure sitting at my home office desk trying to crank out words. I switched it up and started weekly weekend writing sessions outside of the house at a local cafe (Rooted, if you are local to the Bay Area!) Getting out of my usual office space helped a lot and having an awesome Editor (Gleni, if you are reading this, thank you!) that would coax more detail and information out of me with each and every chapter and manuscript review cycle was invaluable.

All last summer and into the Fall, Dibble and I planned out and completed several more photo shoots, which included capturing design work that had never been photographed. A trip to Vermont to photograph one of my projects (which I designed all remotely) was a definite highlight of our photoshoot schedule. It was my first big travel/trip since pandemic period, so it was a bit stressful and very tiring (but also so much fun!) After that trip I got back home feeling really tired and run down …. turns out I had contracted the shingles virus! I was so concerned with not catching the other virus while traveling, that I wore myself out and got sick. (PS. If you haven’t had shingles it is no fun!)

But we made it through our shoots, Dibble worked through a ton of editing, and we made it through that period, from which there were several and I mean several cycles of writing, copy editing, photo editing, layout editing and review. Over and over, and then repeat again. But we have had an awesome team over at Gibbs Smith (thank you Ryan, thank you Gleni!) helping to guide Dibble and I through the creation of our book.

Pre-Order Time!

So now … we finally get to start talking about the book, which you can pre-order your copy NOW and then we all can’t wait to get our hands on the official book in November! It’s also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble or pre-order through your local bookseller!

If you have read this far, thank you! We can’t wait to share the book with you when it comes out. And we can’t wait to hear what you think, so after you do read it, please leave a review too!