Category: Behind the Scenes
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May 14, 2026 Who made these books? Hello. I wrote the stories, painted the illustrations, and built the publishing company, Macchi’s Den, that brought them to market. I did all of this while working full time. It took about a year from the first idea to the books being live on Amazon. How did the…
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May 2, 2026 Tuesday the books went live. All of them. I felt it coming the night before, that particular kind of elation that sits right next to exhaustion, and then I crashed out and slept. Today I woke up and got back to work. Because that’s the thing nobody tells you about finishing something.…
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I had a few setbacks along the way to my target launch date. But, I am happy to say that almost all titles are live across Amazon and IngramSpark. I’ve had to learn not just how to complete a thought, edit it and then walk away because at some point it has to be done.…
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April 4, 2026 Friday. I started work really early, hours early, because I had to make my bank appointment in the afternoon. It turned into one of those days where every call came with long hold times, every form attempted to complete online required research for every question. I practiced a lot of calming breathing…
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March 27, 2026 I spend a good part of my working life handling the business side of things for other people: the paperwork, the setup, the details that others don’t want to deal with so they can focus on what they actually do. I’m generally good at it. So when it came time to do…
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March 24, 2026 One day, fully feeling the stress of the current world, I stepped back and thought about what has made me happy in my life. What have I always wanted to do but never had the confidence to actually try? Not another job where I worked for someone else, but for me. The…
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As I build this site and work on the childrens’ books, I realized that there is so much more. I never thought I would like doing the artwork. I thought AI could help, but that was a disaster. Turned out I had to actually be patient and spend months working on illustrations. Having a full-time…