Jumping in with both feet

Frank Carroll

The first significant memory I have of the Abigail Project is that first meeting with the executive of the McAdam Historical Restoration Commission.

It's important to remember: I had never met any of these people and had no idea how they would react to our crazy idea and the sample books we brought.

If memory serves, Mary O'Keefe helped set up the meeting and she and I drove out to McAdam one Saturday afternoon to meet the group: Frank Carroll, Elsie Carroll, Dave McInroy and one other person whose name current escapes me. It is possible that Gail Swan was also there and that perhaps Elsie wasn't -- my memory has always been quite problematic.

I had written 12 stories already, flawed, wonderful stories that introduced cousins Abigail and Martha, their new friends Alice and Jenny as well as the stern Miss Pierce and the gruff Mr. Fitzpatrick.

Using only the first four stories -- "Passing the Test", "In Trouble", "Behind Bars" and "Canada's Sweetheart" -- my sister Lynn had created a beautiful sample book, complete with illustrations she herself had drawn. I remember being stunned at how beautiful those illustrations were and how the book looked so professional.

Lynn had seven sample copies printed and sent to me specifically for this meeting.

Frank and the team were nothing but kind and supportive and, after I did my brief pitch about what we had done and what we hoped to accomplish, I produced the sample copies with something of a flourish.

Dave, who had been fairly quiet throughout the early part of the meeting, pulled out his wallet, slapped a ten-dollar bill on the table and said, "I'll buy one right now."

At that point, I knew we were in business.

I asked for their consent to use the Station and its history in this way and said that we would print and donate 20 copies to the Station. They could sell those copies, pocket an easy $200 and move on to the next project.

Elsie Carroll

If they felt the idea had promise, however, I would pay to print 100 copies for them to sell, with the Station reimbursing me for the cost of printing if proceeds from sales were sufficient to cover it. I didn't want them to be out any money just because they chose to support our crazy idea.

Frank looked affronted, smiled a slow smile and said, "Print 500".

I sat back as if I had been punched. FIVE HUNDRED copies? That's an initial investment in printing costs of $3000. And I had promised to cover the cost if the books didn't sell.

I swallowed hard, glanced at Mary and caught her grin. She seemed to have caught whatever fever was afflicting Frank.

I looked from smiling face to smiling face and thought: Okay. They know their market better than I do. If they think they can sell 500, who am I to question them?

With that settled, we agreed on a launch date for the Abigail book for early November, with further discussions to be held and details to be sorted.

Then Mary and I drove back to Fredericton and I had the delicious luxury of telling my partner Patti that Christmas was cancelled: all our money was to go into printing 500 copies of Abigail Massey at McAdam Station, Volume 1. 

With the faint hope that we would sell enough copies to recoup our investment!

Preparing for a September launch

 

(L to R) Sariah, Mary and Jen preparing to record

It was an amazing and exciting day at the McAdam Railway Station and Hotel yesterday.

Abigail authors Mary O'Keefe and Mark Walma met with Jennifer Yamazaki, Operations Manager for the Station, and Sariah Murray, newly hired summer student, to start to implement the promotional campaign for Mary's upcoming Abigail novel, Unclaimed Baggage. 

The day started with a lovely surprise: McAdam Historical Restoration Commission mainstays Gail Swan, Frank Carroll and Elsie Carroll joined the group for a coffee and a catch-up chat. It's hard to believe that 14 years ago the first meeting took place involving the Abigail creative team (represented by Mark, Mary and Mark's partner Patti) and the Commission's executive, which included Gail, Frank and Elsie!

Getting set up

So much has happened since then and the morning coffee was a wonderful opportunity for the group of friends to compare notes about their lives and the Abigail Massey journey they have all shared.

There was a lot of laughter, some tears and a number of stories shared, making it hard for Jennifer to get the group refocused on the task at hand: recording a series of videos featuring Mary and Mark in preparation for a summer of promotion for the new novel.

But focus we did. With Sariah serving as interviewer and Jen staffing the camera, Author Mary turned out to be a natural, providing eloquent, heart-warming and fascinating answers to the questions Sariah posed. Mary was so good, in fact, we nicknamed her "One-Take Mary" since she rarely needed more than one try to deliver a wonderful performance.

Mark was almost as smooth and the day, which we expected to be a long one, wound up early with photos on the Station platform and a delicious lunch at the newly refurbished McAdam Cafe.

The new novel!

Now it's up to Jen and Sariah to take the raw video and begin to prepare it (editing, cropping, adding titles) for posting throughout the coming months. This is all in preparation for the Book Launch Event for Unclaimed Baggage, which is now scheduled for late September (likely the 25th).

Even as we were wrapping things up in McAdam, we received word from Lynn Walma in Ontario that yesterday she picked up a printed sample of the new novel at the printers for our final review before the entire run is printed! It's beautiful.

An awesome Canada Day for Abigail

Canada Day in McAdam turned out to be an awesome experience, Abigail author Mark Walma said.

"What a great day we had," he said recently, his face still showing the slightest hint of sun from the day spent outside the McAdam Railway Station. "Lots of people, lots on interesting conversations, lots of kind words about the Abigail books and even a few sales."

Mark spent six solid hours staffing a table at the Canada Day event, taking the project's new point-of-sale book display and audio book out for a test drive and catching up with a lot of friends out in McAdam.

"They've got a great bunch of people out there," Mark said. "The group who make up the McAdam Historical Restoration Commission, people like Gail Swan, Elsie Carroll, Elaina Goss, Kim Dunphy and Dave McInroy, are just wonderful, hard-working, supportive people. And they get great support from the Village mayor, Frank Carroll."

Despite the fact that it was one of the hottest days of the year, Mark said he thoroughly enjoyed the day.

"I was lucky," he said. "My table was in the shadow created by the eaves of the Station and got a nice breeze off the pond. It was quite comfortable."

He said he was especially delighted with the many compliments he received from people from all over (some from as far away as Toronto, Edmonton and even California) about the first three volumes of Abigail stories and the excitement that greeted the news that a fourth book, A McAdam Station Christmas, will be coming out in November.

"One woman actually did a little dance when she saw the poster," Mark said, laughing. "She told me she'd enjoyed the first three volumes but had been worried that there wouldn't be any more coming out. She was absolutely thrilled."

And then there was the little boy from Toronto who complained that he just couldn't wait until November to read the next book. "He was eventually convinced to settle for a photo with the author that his mom could post on Twitter for him," Mark explained.

Next appearance for Mark will likely be at the First Anniversary/Moving Party for Artful Persuasion, the fabulous Fredericton artists' co-operative store that was one of the first sales partners for the Abigail books.

The Artful Persuasion party was planned for this Saturday, July 5 but has already been postponed due to the fact that Arthur (be he a Hurricane or a Tropical Storm by then) is expected to roll into town and dump up to 100 mm of rain on the city throughout the day on Saturday. The new date will be announced soon.