It's nice to be sitting in my office at home, everything's relatively quiet, and there's not much on the docket for the day. I'm going to enjoy times like these while I can ...
Music -- I continued working on a Palm Sunday arrangement, though I took a bit of a hiatus near the end of the week, and sadly will probably have to take a hiatus for the next week or two. With the regular church services, an extra Ash Wednesday church service, the regular events at school, some extra events at school, and a couple of handbell festivals coming up in the next two weeks, I'm just not sure the time's going to be there for that sort of creative work. Of course, life always manages to surprise me, so I may get more written than I think.
Writing -- I've talked with my illustrator, and she says she's about half way done with the illustrations she's working on. I have no earthly idea when I'll be able to release Fealty and Fire, but things are at least moving closer to completion.
Publishing -- I spent time this week looking at two proofs of some upcoming pieces from Beckenhorst, and then just a couple of days ago, I got the proof of my first piece coming out from Ring Out! Press, an arrangement simply entitled Thanksgiving. I try to look over any proofs at least two times, and I tend to do it in several smaller chunks just because there's so much on the page, and so much that is so easy to miss. I do hope, even with everything else going on, to get those done this week.
Too, I received another royalty check, this one from Hope Publishing. Despite how long it's felt like I've worked with some of these handbell publishers, there are still several for whom my pieces haven't been in print long enough yet to have received a royalty check -- Hope was one of those. (From the time a piece is accepted for publication, it can be six to twelve months before it gets released, depending on publisher schedules. Then, if it was released early in their royalty reporting cycle, it could be another six to twelve months before a composer finds out about his royalties.) If nothing else, it lets me plan my yearly budget a bit better when I have the knowledge of when I ought to be seeing royalty checks. (I was actually very pleased with how my Hope pieces sold last year -- not my best sellers ever, but certainly doing very respectably).
That's it for now. A Saturday Summary next Saturday morning is kind of iffy as I'll be in Cary, NC (just outside Raleigh) leading the Capital Area Young Ringers Festival. We'll have over 100 youth all ringing music by yours truly, as well as Michael Helman, Keith Richards, and Matthew Prins. Should be a fantastic day of music making. If nothing else, look for an update on the festival sometime on Sunday.
Until then, have a fantastic week!
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