up, up and away

I’m off on vacation for the next week or so. First stop is Florida, to visit my friend Lisa Hunt and take in some sunshine (a commodity sorely missed these last few months in NYC). Upon our return, we’ll have family staying with us for a week — kind of an extention on our vacation in a way.

This past week has been a flurry of appointments and preparations for our time away. I met with the good people at Doubleday, who were full of helpful advice and exciting plans for publicizing Doomed Queens. They’ll even be producing a Youtube video for it.

Toward that end, I’ll be relaunching my website, something I’ve been long planning — and equally as long putting off. But I now have no choice. Aside from it getting too close to my pub date, my ISP was hacked into last week, which disabled some of this site’s functionality. One example: I can no longer receive e-mail notifications for comments for this blog. So update I must!

You can grab an advance look at the front page teaser for www.kriswaldherr.com here. It features my new author photo by the illustrious photographer Nina Subin.

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my neck of the woods

The New York Times has an interesting article in this weekend’s City section about the Victorian Flatbush of Brooklyn (a.k.a. where I live). It offers an overview of some of the issues facing preservationists in my neighborhood.

As for myself, I don’t live in one of these fabulous fantasias — my Queen Anne-inspired apartment is decidedly more low key. However, I do pass these two houses on my way to the studio, since they are only two blocks away. I’ve long admired them and was glad to see them get a bit of newspaper attention.

Yes, a tree grows in Brooklyn — and so do full fledged Victorians.

You can read the full article here.

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An unveiling…

The studio/gallery is coming together. Now that the edits for Doomed Queens have been turned in, I’ve been able to focus more fully on getting the studio ready for the world (though I’ve been working there for the past month or so).

Next up, a friend who does exhibition design will be installing my window design. This logo is just one small element within it, which rests inside an art nouveau/Macintosh-inspired (the designer, not the computer) flowering tree that wraps around the front of my store window. I’ve also to hang some art up, though I’m not planning my first “official” exhibition until later this spring. So far, I have three exhibitions planned for the year, including one to commemorate the October publication for my book.

It’s a slow process — I now understand how setting up a retail space can take over one’s entire life. But when I consider how the storefront looked when I first saw it, I know I’m making progress.

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