I'm SO excited!

 For those of you who keep "to-do" lists, how many of you have had an item on there that just keeps on repeating...?

My to-do list is in a spiral bound notebook, and I just keep adding to it. When I get something done, I cross it off, and then when that page is all done, I fold it lengthwise so that I don't have to look at the tasks anymore, and I can skip by it quickly to get to pages with un-done tasks.

Releasing the 2nd Edition of My Highland Dance Notebook has been on that list a very long time. Through 2-3 spiral books actually. I distinctly remember transferring the task into a new book at least once, maybe twice.

I don't remember when I started the 2nd Editions, but it would have been after the French editions were released (oh my....I don't think I even blogged about that!) which was 2022. As of the end of summer 2023, I was definitely working on them, and had email communications with Caroline Angus of Angus Academy of Highland Dance. She was advising me on the some details of the revised books, especially with how to handle the Reel of Tulloch dances. Since my daughter didn't reach the Premier level, and developed an injury during her Intermediate level, she didn't do many of those and I just didn't understand them. (true confessions: I still don't!).

I had an email from Caroline sitting at the bottom of my inbox, marked unread (but it had been read), as that's how I keep track of email tasks I need to attend to. It was from the end of August 2024. (!!)

Every time I had "free time" during the year--summer, March break, Christmas break, I would turn my thoughts to jumping back into that revision process and getting it done. But it didn't happen.  I was working nearly full time, still homeschooling my youngest child. One daughter got married and a granddaughter came along...they moved in with us while my SIL was working on a university degree. Then, the biggie...a baby joined our family in the spring of 2025. A bit of a long story, I won't go into it, but understandably, this side gig, on top of my two other music teaching jobs, was definitely not at the top of the list.

So this is why I'm SO excited to finally announce that it's done. They are coming. I hope!

I have just a bit of uncertainty about this, because the KDP rules have changed a bit since I published the original series, and the French translations. As I was taking each book through the submission process a few days ago, I noticed a new check-box: Low Content. I read the guidelines and was reasonably sure my books qualified as low content. But how demeaning that sounded! To me, low content are the notebooks my youngest daughter whipped up and submitted on my account when she was about 14 years of age. Certainly not the kind of effort I've put into these books. Yes, they have repeated content for many sections of the books. Yes, their content requires the user to write it in. But these are specialized. They are targeted. They have a specific purpose. And I've worked darn hard on them!

For the 2nd Edition, I recreated all the manuscripts in Canva. I've fallen in love with Canva the last few years, and pay yearly for the upgraded version. My first edition books were made in Word. It was often super annoying and difficult to make edits and changes to those manuscripts. Canva made it so much easier to change a detail on one page, then delete all the rest in that section, copy the new page and duplicate it fairly quickly. The entire series got a facelift in Canva and I love how they look. I created new covers, although stuck with the original base photo for each one. I think those dancers are too recognizable to change. My back covers got a complete overhaul though.

Despite all this work, after chatting for a good part of an hour with a KDP specialist, I had to acquiesce and click that box. I didn't really have a choice--I had unknowingly submitted the first two books without doing that, and I got an email from KDP saying that there was an "error" to fix.

I also learned that the 'low-content' setting now prohibits me from making them a series. :/ I don't like that, but I'm hoping it won't really affect the user experience. Also, there won't be that "look inside" option for the new books. Again, I'm hoping that anyone coming to buy MHDN is already familiar enough with them that not seeing the innards would not be a problem. That's also why I have this blog, and the website.

Oh, and speaking of the website---it's also brand-new as well! I decided that everything needed a facelift, and I do love making websites on Wix...so after a few days of working on that, it's nearly ready to launch. I just need the links for the new books...

And that leads me back to my "hope" term used above. One other detail new to the low content rating is that KDP can now take as long as 10 days to approve my manuscript. :/ I start back to school (orientation) next week, and will have to start tackling my curriculum plans for the year, so I was hoping to have this all dropped this week. It's just Monday, so that could still happen!

The new proofs should arrive by Wednesday, and then I'm hoping to redo my photo shoots, and the video I made for the original books. Everything will be brand-spanking new. 

Now you can see why I'm so excited! It feels SO great to have this task off that endless to-do list. And I'm so excited for my users to learn about the new editions, and hopefully love them as much as the originals.

WOOHOO!

A Hodgepodge post

 I suddenly realized that it's been quite a while since I've posted. Not a huge deal, since I know I don't have this huge fan base following me, expecting to see new stuff put up all the time. :) My main goal for this blog was to have a place to easily post up detailed info about the five notebooks, and any new developments that come along that I don't wish to change my website for.

One of the reasons I've not posted for a bit was because I was putting my energies into another book launch. This time actually related to my career field!  I finished my masters degree in music education last fall and to celebrate it, I launched the Celebrate series--a set of musical devotionals I wrote a few years ago when I was teaching online. Of course, along with this comes another website creation, a new Facebook page, and various other social media outlays in order to get some attention on my books.

These are somewhat seasonal though, so I don't intend to put the same kind of consistent attention into the Celebrate series as I do my Highland dance books. I have two Celebrate books for the Christmas season, and then one other that is not related to a holiday, although it would be nice for Holy Week leading up to Easter. If I'm feeling inspired in the next couple months, I think I might like to write a new one specifically for Easter, based on St. Matthew's Passion by Bach.

Over this Valentines/Family Day weekend, I turned my attention back to MHDN with a new general ad to post on Kijiji and Facebook Marketplace.

I also did a bit of editing and adjusting to my website. I find it a bit annoying that I can't get the exact same font for my titling as I did for the books. Canva has it, so lot of my advertising has the right font, but Wix and Blogger do not so my website just has a similar font.

Lastly, and most excitingly, I'm teaming up with another Instagram account for a month long campaign! Fling Together is an account MHDN follows and a few weeks ago I had this idea of making a poster that promoted both their practice challenges, and MHDN. What a perfect pair--a practice challenge, and the tool to track it! Well, they must have thought so too, because they asked me if I'd like to sponsor their March challenge. I will be offering a free book to Fling Together's practice challenge winner, and they will be promoting my posts during the month. I'd better get posting!

~LK

The Premier Video Spotlight

 We've reached the last week of the video spotlight campaign. The Premier Level!

I considered re-recording the audio for this one, because the sound of the locks dripping is SO loud, but I decided that I liked the character of it. Plus, it would be a lot of work to get all my words to match up to the video exactly.

I'm so pleased with how all the videos turned out. I'm excited that now I have video explanations of each book to which I can refer customers. Many thanks to my hubby over at JK Sound Studios for the video work and editing, although I created all the intros and outros using Canva and Lumen5.  The soundtrack is also from Lumen5; I found the track when I created my first Lumen5 video and just fell in love with it.  

I'm even more excited about my next promotion however: a contest! More details to come, but free books and gift cards will be on the table!

Week five of the Video Spotlight Campaign: The Intermediate Level

 Excited to share the next installment in the Video Spotlight series today: The Intermediate Level.

As I remarked on Facebook, the background we shot this in front of is my favourite of all five videos. To film these, James of JK Sound Studios (and also my husband) and I wandered around Fair Havens Ministries in Beaverton, Ontario, and just let inspiration strike.  I had an idea for the first video, and from there we just scouted around until a setting struck our fancy.

The previous video (Novice Level) was filmed at the bottom of the hill in front of the Gamebridge locks of the Trent-Servern Waterway, or the Trent Canal as most of us call it. For this video, we pivoted about 70 degrees to the cameraman's left (ok, I have no idea what direction we would have been in) and found a really beautiful spot where the rock shoreline, the canal, and the trees on the opposite shore just came together in this really lovely scene.

The only problem was that there were fishermen and picnickers nearby; a few kids racing around. We didn't feel we could ask them to be quiet since it was a public space, so we just took a deep breath and started filming. The final take has the sound of a manual air pump, as some guy was inflating his rubber dinghy, but I decided not to let it bother me. The sounds of real life, right?!

Video Spotlight: The Novice Level

 And here she is, the Gamebridge lock station of the Trent-Severn Waterway. I filmed the Novice level in front of this beautiful, and fascinating man-made wonder of engineering, in Ontario, Canada. I have been coming to these locks for so many years, I could probably wander around blindfolded and not fall in. 

Some families picnicking nearby added a bit of ambient conversation noise, but I decided not to let it bother me. This is life, right!?

Video Spotlight: The Beginner Level

 The location for this video was a last-minute inspiration. We had left the Trent canal location, where the Primary video was shot, and were heading to the locks. This is technically off Fair Haven's property, but anyone who has camped there as long as I have considers it all one and the same.  We had to take a couple takes of this, as campers came along the path as I was filming!

Video Spotlight: The Primary Level

As promised, here is the first of the spotlight videos. I filmed all these on the second-to-last day of our vacation up at Fair Havens Bible Conference, in Beaverton, Ontario.  It's located along the Trent-Severn waterway and in future videos you'll see one of the locks.

The Primary Level video was shot in front of a section of the Trent canal, probably only about 25 feet from where my husband proposed to me. 💓

Video Spotlights

I'm very excited to show you the face behind the Notebooks...me!

I'd received some feedback from possible customers that they really couldn't decide on purchasing until they could see the inside of the books. I have segments of the contents on the website, but I didn't want to post entire pages, for security reasons. 

After the photo shoot, I thought of another idea using my author copies, and took advantage of being up at my campgrounds with its beautiful scenery. James of JK Sound Studios assisted with his new GoPro camera and recorded a brief video for each book, featuring yours truly doing a little show and tell. Earlier this week I created this poster to announce the reveal date...tomorrow!

My Highland Dance Notebook Coming to the Big Screen!

After the photo shoot, I was musing on how I would present the pictures, wondering about the most interesting and attractive way to do it. I was inspired by the idea of making the pictures into a short movie...but I had never done such a thing before! As a number of things in relation to this entire project however, I decided that I would learn how. Lumen5 to the rescue! I had seen Lumen5 advertised on Facebook for creating movies. I figured there were likely a number of similar apps out there, but I'm not picky--as long as I could figure out how to navigate the functions, I'd give it a try. Here is the result!

Please see my website for links to order any of the levels of My Highland Dance Notebook!

 

Photo Shoot Sneak Peak!

 After my author copies arrived, and I was assured that the books all looked the way I wished them to, I began considering what I was going to do with them--I didn't want to let five good copies go to waste!

I decided that I would use them all for further promotion by sending them to some vendors as demo copies. But before that, I wanted to get one other project out of them: A photo shoot!

I looked around the internet at book promotion ideas and actually, didn't see much out there like I was imagining. Most book launch photo layouts were of stacks of books sitting on tables that may or may not have had a nice tablecloth on them. A few books would be propped upright in front, or perhaps on a mini-easel. I could find no better inspiration than what I had in my head already, so I decided to forge ahead with my own plans.

I employed the services of an award winning photographer...my daughter Honour. :) She has won numerous first and second place ribbons at the Ancaster County Fair for her beautiful photography. 

Then, I thought of the prettiest place I knew of for a backdrop. It happened to be the place where the above photo was taken--Fair Havens Bible Conference in Beaverton, Ontario. We've camped there for years.

I gathered a few props--mostly some of Honour's highland dance costumes and accessories. I was really hoping to find an old pair of ghillies, but none were to be found...I must have donated her shoes back to her dance studio. 

Today we finished the last of the photos and I decided to release one as a sneak peek. In a few days, I'll have the rest ready in a special presentation!

Canva is really cool!

For a few months, I'd been hearing about an app/website that assists you in creating promotional materials for Facebook, Instagram, etc. You can also use it to create slide shows like Powerpoint, and I recall one of my teaching assistants mentioning that she used Canva to create a checklist hand-out for my choir kids. I decided to check it out a few weeks ago, and I'm SO pleased with the amazing looking stuff I can make!  

You've actually already seen one of my first Canva projects--back on June 11 when I posted the green backgrounded quote from "Claire H." about My Highland Dance Notebooks. I'd also posted a 9-block poster on Facebook that interspersed the covers of the books with beautiful shots of Scotland (Canva provides those!).

Of course, like many of these online services, there is a free version that gives you the basic capabilities, but if you want anything advanced, you'll have to upgrade to "Pro". I have only once purchased a photo that I really wanted (and needed for a school assignment) but it only cost me $1.39. That's WAY better than any of these stock photo websites that you have to sign up for, or pay huge dollars for a one-off.

I'm especially loving these posters I created, one for each book, and especially that they employ a bit of animation (didn't mean to do that, it was the just the template I chose, lol!). I'm not sure if they will animate here on the blog, but if not, you can just hop over to my Facebook page, and see them animate there. :)