Just before our Christmas trip I wrote out a schedule of posts for this blog that would take me through around January 13. Today I find myself two days and one post behind, the consequence of spending time with family over Christmas. I don’t regret the time, nor the need to catch up. But family is still in town, activities are still planned at least through January 2, so I’m not sure when, if ever, I will catch up.

The good news is: It doesn’t matter if I ever catch up. A day late, two days late, a week late, or even not posted at all, doesn’t much matter. Today I’ll at least begin the catch-up and see where it goes.

Reviewing 2011, in the area of non-fiction, book-length works, I had only one: Documenting America. I have other posts on this blog where I explain how and why this volume came into being, so I won’t take up valuable pixels to repeat that here. I will say what prompted me to finish it and publish it in 2011.

Back in January 2011, when I made the decision that I would e-self-publish some of my works (while not completely severing the dream to have something accepted at a traditional publisher) to test the process, I figured my completed short story, “Mom’s Letter”, was the perfect item to start with. I could practice formatting and uploading. I could see what went into having a cover made. I could see what it was like to track the work once it was live on line.

Then I looked at what to do next. I could have gone to my completed novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant, but that didn’t seem right. I had these 18 or so newspaper columns I had written, only four of which I had published, or that I even tried to have published. I decided they could serve as the basis for a book. Lengthen each of the 18 to what I wanted them to be without the constraints of newspaper column-inches. Add to them until I had 40,000 words, and eSP it. The research, writing, and editing consumed March and April. By early May it was available as a Kindle book, though it took a little longer to attach the real cover.

Having got that far, I took another two months, with many other life issues getting in the way, to format the book for Smashwords and have it added there. CreateSpace took some more months, with the cover modification being one problem.

During all this time, I was thinking of what to do as a follow-up to Documenting America. I began research for a second volume (in fact, I almost called DA Volume 1), and have material in hand to generate at least 10,000 words. I also began writing a different, though sort of related work tentatively titled The Candy Store Generation. This is based on blog posts I made at a friend’s political blog about the Baby Boomers and how they (we) are not improving the United States. I pulled those blog posts together, and added some additional material. I believe it stands at about 5,000 words, needing to get to at least 30,000 words to be a viable book. I also did some research into the make-up of Congress, when the House of Representatives tipped to being dominated by the Baby Boomers. This turned out to be slow going, but I have the research started and well organized.

That’s it for non-fiction books in 2011. The next year-in-review post will be fiction of all types.