Kathy and I have been writing articles for the Wine Trail Traveler website for six years. During the first five years we toyed with the concept of writing a book. Terry began manuscripts for a couple books. One book was about our winemaking experience while the other was a book reminiscent of Ideals Magazine including photos, poetry and short stories.  We didn’t carry through on either of these ideas lacking the motivational spark that would ignite writing.

That spark came in February 2012 at the International Food, Wine and Travel Writers Association conference. At the conference we met Sherrie Wilkolaski on a dine around. Later, Kathy attended Sherrie’s presentation. After three days, Sherrie had a good idea of who we were and approached us with a comment, “You should write a book about what you have done.” This sole statement proved to be our tipping point.

Within a week we had an outline and a teaser for one of the chapters. The outline kept evolving as did the book. Early on we figured out that writing and publishing a book was another endeavor that we wouldn’t know what we were doing until after we did it. For example, our outline turned into five outlines and now additional books are planned. Sherrie provided us feedback and encouragement. Our first book outline evolved into three areas of experiences: learning about wine, winemaking and wine travel.

Terry was able to incorporate his previous writing from an earlier book idea. We were also able to use a couple articles that we previously wrote but didn’t use on our website or blog. Even with the previous works, we needed to write an additional 35,000 words or so. If it wasn’t for a talent spotter, we may have never followed through with writing a book.

Visit A Wine Journey book’s website.

Cheers
Terry