To inaugurate your book project, we will set you up with a TMC curator who will walk you through our process, explaining how the whole thing works and what you can expect from us before, during, and after your interview sessions.

The purpose of this first step is to understand your requirements, vision and expectations, and establish a level of trust between us which enables our curator(s) to interview, transcribe, write and edit your book while staying true to your unique voice, personality and background.

Our curator(s) will start by tailoring a questionnaire that is meant to revive long-lost memories and create a flexible plan for your conversations with us. These are simple and fun, and will be used as memory prompts intended to glean your tastes, style and information on your family tree or recurring social circle relevant to the book’s narrative – and not to mention – for curating long lost photographs for the book.

Once the scope and vision for your book is in place, we proceed with one or two 45 minute-long conversations per week. Deep and insightful interactive sessions with your assigned curator will form the bedrock of your memoir or autobiography.

In our experience, our seniors love a captive audience. They relish sharing anecdotes and incidents from their lives. These stories often bring forth priceless, enriching lessons for the rest of us. TMC’s interactive interviews allow for your nominee’s memories to unfold in an organic setting.

Remember the questionnaire from Step 1? It will now act as the basis for these interviews. It will help you recall and share incidents and stories, turning them into cherished memories of a lifetime. We also keep some time aside to ask discretionary questions during each session. You can even opt to include sessions with your family and friends to add more depth and dimension to your story.

For team TMC, curation is an ongoing process – we begin curating for you right from our first meeting, till we close all reviews on the prose, art and design and the book is sent off for printing and binding.

Once your interview sessions begin, and as you start sharing your memories and your overarching or underlying story, our curators will take notes and trigger more prompts, encouraging you to share photos and/or mementos – things that could be added to the draft(s).

Each of your interview session with TMC is recorded (for reference) and combined with the curated content and notes, as your story starts emerging. This is molded into a book outline, and we send you a draft copy of sample chapters for review. After you approve the initial idea, we proceed to develop a manuscript by enriching and copy-editing the transcribed material.

Once you give the manuscript your nod, our editors curate and polish it into a rich and vibrant biography, memoir or anthology narrated first-person. At each stage, you get to do a round of revisions and reviews, where you have the opportunity to give your feedback to the TMC team.

Anything that you share with us is deemed confidential and subject to our privacy agreement. You possess the sole authority to define who the contents of our exchanges and of the book are shared with. Each interview session will be recorded, and access to these recordings can be shared with you on demand.

While our curators work on the prose, you can dig up your old albums and smartphone galleries for photographs, and tell us which chapters you associate them with. You can also provide tentative captions with the images, which we will refine and contextualize further down the line.

We always prefer TMC books to include private images that you provide us with, but we also love to have creative illustrations done as cover art (and more) with our in-house talent – with editorial discretion, of course.

You can choose from standard cover design templates and binding styles we offer, or work with us towards your very own custom design!

Once we have all the finer details nailed down, our designers will lay out the cover and interior for your book. The copy will then be proofed one final time by the lead curator, usually one of our TMC founders. You’ll obviously also have the chance to give a go-ahead to this final draft, before it goes to print.

The result of this painstaking process shall be presented to you in a beautifully crafted hardbound book. Your set of copies, per the package you choose, will be delivered to you at an address of your choosing.

What you’ll have in the end is an everlasting memory of a parent or grandparent preserved in their own voice, which you’ll love reading to or with your children. Needlessly to say, this makes for a priceless gift for family, friends, and well-wishers alike!