The Trials of Solomon Parker - Getting Crafty

I'm having a hard time finding the enthusiasm to put together that promised post on our experience with the Lolo Peak Fire, but I will get to it. In all likelihood.

IN THE MEANTIME, here's what's been going on around here in regards to Eric's second novel's release earlier this month*: fan crafting!**

The Trials of Solomon Parker has a cyclical plot, rotating between Butte, Montana during the copper wars years, and Stevensville, Montana around 1900. So this year, I got the bug to participate in Stevensville's annual Scarecrow Festival (Oct 6-7) with a TToSP-themed scarecrow!

On Saturday, Oct 7, Eric set up at the Blacksmith Brewing Co. tasting room to talk with folks and hopefully sell some books, which he did.

This was the perfect opportunity to play the awesome book trailer his friend, Patrick of Afflux Films, made:

And of course, this kind of event inspired me to make another book display piece, this time a miniature mine car.

One thing I noticed about the set up at the Blacksmith Brewery tasting room is that it was kind of hard to tell exactly what was going on with that-guy-sitting-there-with-some-books-in-front-of-him. This is especially the case once friends started showing up and visiting. I decided a little backdrop would help make it obvious that Eric was there with a purpose other than drinking and that this could be useful for other only-semi-official-events.

I looked at a few tutorials online for the frame, made size adjustments, then assembled a portable stand out of 3/4" PVC. There are about a bazillion blogs posting the same process, even calling it the same thing, so I won't go into it here. You can search "10 minute, $10 photo backdrop" to find it, but let me tell you two things: you won't get all the materials for $10 unless you find some kind of smoking deal and it will take more than 10 minutes just to clean the writing off the pipe (if you are so inclined) and of course more than 10 minutes to go buy it all. ;) Nonetheless, it is a quick and inexpensive way to make a backdrop stand that could have plenty of uses for plenty of folks. I expect we'll use it for Eric's future books' events as well as for Halloween decorating, etc.

For The Trials of Solomon Parker backdrop, I used the same techniques I used to make the Dr Potter's Medicine Show banner:

• Pre-washed & cut fabric to fit, hemmed sides, sewed rod pockets at top and bottom
• Printed out an image to fit my opaque projector, 
• Traced that onto cloth using opaque projector, 
• Hand-painted where I'd drawn the projected image with acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium

HELP!
You know what really, truly, helps authors and is super easy? Rating their books on Amazon and/or GoodReads. If you think The Trials of Solomon Parker is worth 4 or 5 stars, please follow one or both of those links and click the stars! It truly only takes a few minutes, less if you already have a GoodReads account. No matter where you bought your copy, you can leave stars on Amazon.


* October 3 in US and Canada. 5 October in UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India.
** No kidding.