Mutton-busting, in which innocents are launched for a wild ride for the amusement of others. At least I’m not the sheep. (Mount Pleasant, Utah)

Dear readers, if I have any readers left after my blogging hiatus,

I have been wrapping my mind around a new direction my life has taken, and I have neglected the blog, rather than go on about stuff that isn’t really at the top of my agenda right now. And I’m not the kind of blogger who works out her thoughts on-line (as we’ve learned recently with the Twitter/Cicsco incident, the internet is forever, or memory-persistent enough to not be the place to post half-baked thoughts).

When I started on the Highway 89 project, my single goal was to find a publisher. I wanted them to take my CD of images and make a book out of it. I even got pretty close to a contract, until this fall’s economic collapse started taking down big box booksellers and everyone in the publishing industry ran for cover.

Why not go it alone, self-publish? I rationally outlined my reasons two years ago. I still think they are valid in an economy that does not require extraordinary measures. But I had another reason: I equated self-publishing with failure. This attitude is unfair to the many authors who have made riotous successes out of their self-published ventures, but my ego continued to win the argument. My loving husband constantly reminds me of many well-respected authors (John Grisham, Irma Rombauer, Edward Tufte and Mark Twain all did all right in the end).

Sometimes when you ask the universal-power-that-is for what you want, you get what you need (that’s sounds so trite, they made a rock’n’roll song out of it). And apparently my ego wasn’t satisfied with whisper of the wheels on the highway, or a simple memo from above, so I have serendipitously acquired a publishing company in hiatus. Its first new book will be my own.

It turns out, I’m pretty good at book design. One of my dearest friends is a former editor. The social media network I have developed since I wrote that “why not self-publish” post (mostly as a result of participating in PhotowalkingUtah) has a robust set of people with all sorts of skills. Everything I need is out there, if I’m willing to go find it.

P.P.S If you care to support the reinvention of Sagebrush Press, please consider purchasing this month’s limited edition print from the Highway 89 project, or signing up for an email notification when my book comes out this fall.