As I’ve reported before, I almost always have several writing projects on-going at any given time. No doubt too many. I thought I’d use a post to tell what I’m working on, anywhere from “finished and waiting” to “actively brainstorming” to “tweaking.” Here’s what I’ve got working.

– In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People is complete, and I submitted the full manuscript to the editor of a small press who requested it (a very small press). Today is day 10 for it to be in his hands. I’ll let it go at least 30 days before doing anything. Well, I want to re-read a couple of sections of it and perhaps do a few edits. I’m not optimistic it will be picked up by this press, or if it is that they will present me an acceptable contract.

– The Candy Store Generation: How the Baby Boomers Are Screwing-Up America is so close to being finished I can taste it. Each chapter is complete, though for several chapters I’ve thought of an item or two I’d like to add. Had one of those come to mind yesterday evening, didn’t write it down, and this morning it was gone. Hopefully I can get that back. I made an inquiry to the Congressional Budget Office about getting better quality graphs directly from them instead of pulling them from CBO publication PDFs; so far no response. I suppose I’ll have to contact my congressman’s office to get them.

– Documenting America: Homeschool Edition is a new project, begun less than two weeks ago. I already have DA done and for sale. A member of my writers group said she wanted to use it for homeschooling her high school freshman. I’d thought about that as another market for it. It’s not a history text, but could be a history elective for a student more interested in history than the average student. I completed the student sections of the first seven chapters, then put out a call for beta readers at a Facebook Christian autor’s group I belong to. So far no takers. My problem is my history classes were so long ago I’m not sure the questions/comments I’m writing are the right ones for high school students.

– Doctor Luke’s Assistant, my church history novel, needs some tweaking. The table of contents for the e-book didn’t format right, and I finally figured out how to fix it. That’s a tonight project. Since I enrolled this book in the Kindle Select Program, I get to list it for free for five days out of the 90 days in the enrollment. Those 90 days end the 28th of June, so I need to use my five days, but I don’t want to till I get the TOC properly formatted and linked. Hopefully I can have if for free next Wednesday through Sunday.

– Buildipedia.com published my latest article today. I have one more under contract, due June 15 for publishing on June 22. The editor said they will cut back to one per month in July, as the ad revenue isn’t what they want for that “channel,” plus they aren’t getting participation from contractors as much as they’d hoped. However, she said she was hearing good things about the articles.

– I’m approved to write for Decoded Science, and had an article ready but lost it. I began recreating it yesterday, which isn’t really a big process since it’s an adaptation of one of my Suite 101 articles. I hope to finish and upload it sometime this weekend.

– I have begun brainstorming a short story, based on a night-time police action in my hometown of Cranston, Rhode Island a few months ago. At first it was sort of a joke with a former classmate who observed the action, but I saw how I could make it work as a stand-alone story, as well as in a series of short stories. I wrote two paragraphs a couple of months ago, but since then have been just brainstorming. I don’t know that I want to take on a series of short stories that could turn into another major project. But then, if I spread it out over a few years….

– I have also begun brainstorming the sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. This was suggested to me by classmate and good friend Gary. He said I had a lot of loose ends that would make good plot lines for a sequel. I’ve worked those plot lines through in my head, and even typed and printed them. I have a penultimate scene mostly outlined. I’ve worked through a couple of different ways of how to start it, and think I’ve decided on a start. The middle hasn’t come to me yet, but it will once I start writing. I haven’t quite committed to this being a real writing project, but I’m 95% there.

That’s enough, don’t you think?