Author Carol Covin to Speak at Sept. 19 Write by the Rails Meeting

Write by the Rails, the Prince William Chapter of the Virginia Writers Club, meets Thurs., Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. at Trinity Episcopal Church, 9325 West St, Manassas. The meeting is free and open to the public.

After a brief business meeting, the speaker will be Bristow resident Carol Covin, author of “Who Gets to Name Grandma? The Wisdom of Mothers and Grandmothers.” 

The subject of her talk is, “Where Can You Hire a Cartoonist for $5?”

Covin was told by a baby boutique bookstore owner that she needed illustrations for her book of essays about generational  miscommunication between grandmothers and the mothers of their grandchildren. But Covin is not an artist. She knew one thing, though. If she were going to have her book illustrated, the best medium would be cartoons, to soften the sometimes harsh messages the women she had interviewed wanted to convey.

In this talk, she will lead the audience through the process for commissioning services on fiverr.com, an outsourcing website in which professionals offer to perform marketing, design, publishing and artistic tasks for $5. She will describe the advantages and disadvantages of using such a service, the process for getting the best results and will show the cartoons that she received for the 2nd edition of her book, “Who Gets to Name Grandma,” both those she accepted and those she did not to give audience members insight into how to use such a service for their own book tasks.

Covin is now talking to cartoonists on fiverr.com to create a cartoon to print on a teddy bear to launch her upcoming campaign, "Remember Me Bear," to confront the problem described in her essay recently submitted to the Virginia Writer's Club in the non-fiction category, that of children forgotten in hot cars while their parents are at work.

Covin's blog can be found at http://newgrandmas.com.