Getting Going

UPDATE:The Kickstarter campaign is now over. You can continue to support this project directly through this website. Learn more and donate by clicking here. WOW!!!

This is exciting. Two and a half days of fundraising down and I've already raised more than $1800 here on Kickstarter. Woohoo. I'm expecting a few hundred more from people who said they'd like to donate but have yet to set up accounts.

I'm thrilled, but not surprised. Mel's story is so compelling, and I'm touched that so many of you recognize it is, and that you are sharing this project with your friends and family and coworkers and social networks. To those already backing this project: even though I'm going to start formally thanking each of you once my project is funded (and it looks like I better stock up on typewriter ribbon!), I definitely want to express my gratitude to you right now for being the first to step in and show your confidence in my ability to tell Mel's story.

I'm already amazed by the Kickstarter experience. I'd hesitated about taking this route. For a long time I wondered whether it might be a better idea to do a traditional pitch to a publishing house. I finally decided to go with Kickstarter because I knew having the deadline to reach my fundraising goal would motivate me. Boy, has it ever. So many new ideas about how to research and tell this story have percolated just since I clicked the "launch" button.

But what a scary moment that was! Had I tweaked the pitch enough? Did I clearly express what I was working on and why I needed help to do it? Should i have made the video shorter? Longer? Higher resolution? Funnier? More serious? Would people commit very hard-earned cash to it? Would people care? Would they tear apart the idea?

Of course, no one has, and of course, Mel's story promotes itself. As I dive deeper, it just gets more exciting. For example, when Mel was a news broadcaster in Chungking, he dispatched his reports by shortwave radio. Those reports were picked up by an amateur radio operator -- a dentist -- in a small, beachside community an hour north of Los Angeles. Someone from NBC would drive up to get the recordings and use them in newsreels. The coolest part (at least in my opinion)? That city where the dentist lived was Ventura, the same city in which I grew up!

It's definitely a small world.

Another cool thing about running the project on Kickstarter is that my backers are also helping me out with ideas for the book. A friend of mine who attended Mel's Alma Mater, Stanford, was an editor of that school's newspaper, the Stanford Daily. She reminded me that Mel's wife, Annaleee Whitmore, had been the first female managing editor of that publication. Mel's thesis advisor, meanwhile, was Chilton R. Bush, who developed Stanford's journalism program.

These tidbits represent just the surface of what's out there to discover not just about Melville Jacoby, but about what the world, and especially the Pacific Rim, was like as World War II loomed.

I can't wait to learn more.

What about you? As I prepare to write this story, and as I seek further support, what questions do you have about Mel, about his story, and about the world in which he lived and worked?

As you think about these questions, check out this cool press card of Mel's!