Accidental Homesteading

Accidental Homesteading: A Memoir of Surviving Off-Grid, Fighting Anaphylaxis, and Finding Connection

Andi H. Koenig

Andi Koenig has spent most of her life working with education. With one of life's unexpected turns, she is now learning the hard way how to rough it in the wilderness of northern Wyoming, where she lives with her sister and their pets. Around basic survival and writing, she enjoys calligraphy, juggling, photography, and hiking through her new and wild backyard.

Accidental Homesteading is a creative nonfiction autobiography covering the transition from living a normal life, through severe allergy reactions, to homesteading by necessity. It contains the trials and failures of adjusting to this new life, the new chores that come with it, and also what it's taken to turn this weird adventure into an actual life. I discuss the personal investments, innovation, and perspective shifts it takes to grow a better life, build relationships, take healthy risks, and become a better version of myself, exactly where I'm at.

This book is geared toward a general audience, although it will probably appeal most to adult women who like to read about adventures and homesteading. Many of the test readers who have liked it are also fans of Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond). I'm writing mostly for an American audience, but there may be possible attraction for European audiences that still enjoy Westerns.

My vision for the cover would be for it to have a bit of a pioneer feel with a modern twist. I would like the cover to have sort of the feel of a fiction novel, and I would like something that at least hints that it is a woman doing all of the hard work of homesteading. One woman facing the wild. If it helps for cover pictures, my homestead is surrounded by mountains. Silhouettes are okay, or something more abstract, although I do generally find myself more drawn to photos--landscapes to small details, full color or faded down. I have included some photos that you don't have to use, but which you can use. Feel free to change them, through cropping, or making them into silhouettes, etc. The cover should be the standard Amazon cover size (I'm guessing all of you have more experience than I do with this, but this box says to include dimensions--I believe it is 2,560 x 1,600 pixels; which should translate into approximately into 6 x 9 inches I think). I also know it must be less than 50MB. For mood...I see it being clean and professional, but with a slightly casual and whimsical flair. In my initial mock ups that I did myself, I used Californian FB for my main font type, plus a sans serif for the subtitle--it doesn't have to be that, but I like the mix it offers of being legible and professional, but also a hint of something different. Fonts that can stress both aspects as much or even more would be very welcome!

I am open to stock photos of landscapes or details; for people, I don't like those too posed. For more simplistic designs, the stick figure type imagery doesn't usually speak to me--it would have to work really well for me to like it.