The book takes shape
The manuscript is moving from words on the page into the physical form of a book.
For several years, Learning to Lean Back existed mostly as a manuscript on my computer: chapters revised, photographs scanned, memories checked and rewritten. The shift into layout has changed the way I see it. Pages now have weight and proportion. Photographs sit beside the places they belong. Small decisions about spacing, captions and type suddenly matter.
Where things stand
The manuscript has moved through editing and into book design. The cover has taken its final form, and the interior layout is being refined page by page.
Many of the photographs began as black-and-white negatives and old prints from the 1970s and early 1980s. Part of the process has involved returning to those originals, restoring them carefully and deciding which images genuinely add something to the story.
The cover presented a different challenge. Its starting point was a photograph taken in the Sinai in 1981: a young man sitting on the edge of a cliff at Jebel Milehis, looking across the desert. After many variations, the design gradually settled into something that feels connected to the book without trying to explain it.
The strange thing is seeing a life that once existed in scattered photographs and memories beginning to take the shape of a book.
What happens next
The remaining work is to settle the final production details and then read the book again as a complete object rather than a collection of chapters. Publication, distribution and launch information will be added to this site as it is confirmed.