Book Five: Easy English with Beautiful Music - Volume I

Hi again,
It's time to write about another of my books. There's a lot to write about this book. It's sure to be a long blog entry, but I don't mind writing it if you don't mind reading it.

Book 5: Easy English with Beautiful Music - Volume 1

Pavel Rynt, the owner of Easy English language school (Kralupy, Czech Republic) came to me with an idea. He knew that I was a singer and musician, and he wanted to create a book for learning English with music. I thought it was a great idea. The idea was to go to a music studio, record some songs, and then create translations, vocabulary, exercise based on the songs. While I particularly did not like the title of the book, I agreed. After all he was financing the publishing of the book and the studio time.

Due to licensing issues, all music had to be recorded for the book and cassette. I play several instruments, and I considered this to be the task of my dreams. I also recorded all vocals and harmonies.


Here is the book's track list:

1. Tears in Heaven (Eric Clapton)
   
2. Losing My Religion (R.E.M.)
3. Some Things (James Branam)
4. I Want to Break Free (Queen)
5. America (Simon and Garfunkel)
6. Return to Sender (Elvis Presley)
7. Yesterday (Beatles)
8. Too Much Love Will Kill You (Queen)
9. Married to the Road (James Branam)
10. Love Is All Around (Troggs, Wet Wet Wet)
11. Friday, I'm in Love (The Cure)
12. Everybody Hurts (R.E.M.)
13. Post War Dream (Pink Floyd)
14. Imagine (John Lennon)

After all was said and done, we recorded 14 songs in about 28 studio hours (which must be a record). It wasn't easy having someone standing behind me monitoring costs while I was recording.

As mentioned earlier, I played nearly all the instruments and sang all the vocals on the tracks. Pavel Krumphanzl was enlisted to play bass on Return to Sender, and I invited a student of mine, Martin Hruby to play guitar on Tears in Heaven (Martin's track was later excluded from the final version of the song due to timing problems). I'm satisfied with most of the songs in the book. I'm not satisfied with I Want to Break Free and Post War Dream. I was rushed while recording, and I think this can be heard in the final version.

The book features two of my songs (Some Things and Married to the Road). I'll write more about these later.

All in all, it was a great experience. And subsequent volumes of this project were better because of what we learned while recording this one.

Pavel, the co-author of the book, didn't have a plan fro marketing the book. So, every Saturday I got in my car and drove to a city in the Czech Republic. I found book stores and sold the book to the owners. I was successful in 90% on cases. Soon the book could be found all around the Czech Republic and even in Slovakia.

Pavel and I developed quite a friendship over the years. Unfortunately, we've fallen out off contact in the past few years. I realize that this is mostly my fault. I moved to the U.S. in 2002 for 3 ans a half years and I haven't been as active as I should in rekindling the friendships I had before I left.

See you tomorrow with Volume 2 of Easy English with Beautiful Music.

Cheers!

--James

My Fourth Book

There are a few interesting things about my fourth published book. Here are a couple:

• This book is the only book written for a flat fee
• This book is the book you can't buy in bookstores
• This book was written for Czech Railways

Let's start from the beginning. After the publication of my first book, I was approached by the owner/director of Fragment Publishing. I was asked to write a book for learning English for the employees of Czech Railways. Specialized vocabulary was to be used, as well as certain situations that a Czech Railways employee might be exposed to.

I was offered 40,000 Czech Crowns to write the book ($2,334 at today's exchange rate). I said no. This was a not enough for a book that was supposed to have a least 360 pages. I suggested 160,000 Czech Crowns ($9, 357) for the book which would take at least 8 months to write. The director of Fragment returned to Czech Railways with my offer. They agreed, and I got to work writing.

Months later, after I had turned in the manuscript, I was notified that the book had gone through editing and was soon to be published. Only one page was not seen by the editor. This was a title chapter page, and shouldn't have had any errors, so editing was deemed not necessary by the publisher. Well, guess what. There is a major type in the title of the chapter. They spelled Eurorail E-u-r-o-r-i-a-l.

I was heartbroken. So much work had gone into the book, and the publisher had dropped the ball ... again. You see, I haven't mentioned that in my third book, the cover says The Nosy Neighbor, by the inside cover page says Mistaken Identity.

That's the way the cookie crumbles.

Oh, by the way, I'm writing about these books out of chronological order. Rather than blog about a single book in a blog entry, it's easier to group some books together. You'll see what I mean in my next blog entry where I'll talk about the books Easy English with Beautiful Music, Volumes 1-4 which were published over a period of six years.

That's it for today.

Cheers!

--James