Meeting Marta Bertello in Germany!

Recently, I quit my job and flew to Germany. It wasn’t originally a business trip– my best friend had moved to Frankfurt a few months prior. But, I realized quickly that I had a seemingly once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet Marta Bertello, my collaborator and illustrator of Et Cetera: An Illustrated Guide to Latin Phrases.

I never thought that I would meet Marta in person. Most of our collaboration on Et Cetera had been conducted over email. Finding a time that worked for our editor (in Kansas), me (in Boston), and Marta (in Italy) had proved challenging.

I needed to meet outside of business hours, and Melissa was only available during that time. That slim one-hour time block meant that Marta would need to meet in the middle of the night. Not ideal.

For the sake of our sleep schedules, we mostly communicated via email, exchanging mood boards and scholarly articles back and forth.

But on my first day in Germany, something dawned on me. Marta had recently moved here! I rushed to DM her, hopeful that she would somehow be in the area and have time in the middle of the week.

It was like fate.

She just happened to be traveling through Frankfurt the day before I was leaving.

We met up for a doner kebab right by the train station and had a lovely exchange of signed books. We had previously planned to do it through international mail. What a special treat to have our books signed by each other in person!

I’m so grateful for Marta’s collaboration on Et Cetera– which would obviously not be as successful without her gorgeous illustrations. That’s not even to mention that it wouldn’t exist without her original Latin Phrases web series!

I hope to work with Marta again… but that project is still in progress for now!