This war-time book was cheaply made, but it has survived almost 76 years and is still in the family.
Our, my wife’s and my, evening reading aloud has included several Agatha Christie books. At first I planned on doing these in the chronological order they were written and arranged them so in the box. But Lynda pulled one out at random. We read that and the pattern was shot after only two prior reads. So when I went to get the next one, I chose Evil Under The Sun. We had just seen the 1982 movie of this with Peter Ustinov. When I say “just” I mean as in the last year.
The book was good, though perhaps not as good as the movie. The plot differences were significant. Since I knew who the murderer and accomplices were I kept looking for the clues Christie must have put in the book to lead us to them. Alas, the clues weren’t there. Poirot’s ending discussion of who the murderer was and how he determined it was not as good as in other Poirot mysteries. I guess that’s what happens when you see the movie first and read the book later.
While I had a few reservations about the book, it’s Agatha Christie, so it’s obviously worth reading. This won’t be my favorite of hers, but it’s worth reading.
Mom signed most of her books, but usually with her first and last name.
One other thing about this particular book. Our A.C. collection, all paperback, we thought were mostly ones our son bought and left here, no longer wanting them. Turns out that’s not the case. Some of them were our son’s, but others appear to have other origins. Some have garage sale stickers on them. One has my grandfather Todd’s name written in it, so must have been his. This one is a cheap paperback printed in August 1945 (a wartime book, printed so as to consume fewer resources), and it turns out to have my mother’s name in it. Just “Dorothy” with no last name. That’s unusual for her to write only her first name in the book, but given the date of publication and what was going on in her life, it makes sense.
This will go back in the box of A.C. books. Someday we’ll get through them and get them to our daughter, which is where they are intended for.
It was about nine years ago—or maybe eight—when I finished writing and publishing a book, I forget which one now. I could probably look back at posts on this blog to see which one. But my point is that I didn’t have the next book or story planned. I didn’t know what I was going to do next.
I had several things in mind that I wanted to write, things that I had outlined at least in part. Which to do? I decided to write the first chapter of each and see which one seemed right. I did this for four full-length books. One just seemed to flow with no trouble at all. One was really labored. The other two were in between. So I wrote the one where the words flowed best and set the others aside until later.
A second Bible study? Might that be next?
That’s where I am now. I finished writing The Teachings in February and published it in May. Since then I’ve been working on the book of the history of our church in advance of our 100th anniversary. I’ve been kind of poking along on it, since the deadline is so far out. I might finish it this month—the words, that is. Illustrations will take a little longer. I do a little on it almost every day. But the end is in sight. Time to be thinking about the next project.
But what to do? As I said before, I don’t have any real sense of what it should be. Therefore, I now plan to do what I did before: write something of each of the projects and see which one seems to flow easiest; that will then be the one I write. What are those projects, and where do they stand at this time?
First is a Bible study. Our Life Group studied the Last Supper over Lent and Easter this year. As I prepared lessons, I wrote notes that would go into a Bible study. Since I teach only every other week, I didn’t tackle this from beginning to end, but as I studied for the weeks I taught and as I took time to do it. In preparation for this post, I looked at my files and find them confusing. I have three Bible study files. The one most recently saved is clearly not the most complete, based on word count. I’ll have to somehow merge the files. My best guess is that I have a little over 8,000 words written. The full study will almost certainly need 30,000 words.
Second is the next volume in my Documenting America series, tentatively titled Run-up To Revolution. As I’ve said before, I completed the basic reading for research, but have yet to do any actual writing. I started outlining the book, and accessing source documents for editing. There’s a lot of work there. But, I actually have two chapters that are borrowed from the first Documenting America book (with a few edits). I expect this book to run 45-50,000 words.
I’ve left Sharon alone for a while. Maybe it’s time to add #6 to the series. It will be set in Saudi Arabia.
Third is a short story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca, Unconventional CIA Agent series. The story line has been rolling around in my head for some time. Sunday and Monday I decided to begin writing it. It currently stands at about 1,100 words, with 6,000 words the probable length. This writing went very easy.
Fourth is the story I mentioned in my last post, The Forest Throne. A short-ish book for 10-14 year olds, this will be my first time writing for other than an adult audience. I’ve brainstormed some of this but am not 100 percent sure how it will come together nor how long it will be. According to plan, I began writing this on Tuesday. the words flowed easy. I worked at it only an hour or so, and was surprised to find I’d written almost 1,400 words.
So what is going to be next? Darned if I know. It will be either the short story or The Forest Throne. I’ll have to write a little more in each. You can be sure I’ll say something about it here.
Our only reason for going to Universal was the Harry Potter exhibit. We didn’t see much of this. We went on the Hogwarts ride and, while it made me a little sick, I managed not to puke.
On May 20, about noon, Lynda and I pulled out of our driveway and began a three-day drive to Orlando, Florida. We had much preparation for this trip, though the decision to make it took a long time. We were to meet our daughter and her family there. They had saved up for a long time for a big family vacation, and this was it. They had invited us to go along, and we were providing the accommodation through a timeshare exchange.
We weren’t sure we were going to go, what with covid and then the gas shortage. But things seemed to be falling into place, and a few days before the time, we made the decision to go. We told our son in a phone call but forgot to tell our daughter. The first night in the motel we let her know via Messenger and she replied, “Oh, I didn’t know you had decided to go.” She wasn’t upset; we just had forgotten to tell her. That meant that she wasn’t able to make suggestions about things we could bring with us that they would need but couldn’t take on the plane.
You go to Florida you expect to see an alligator in the wild, right? We had two in our resort ponds.
Fast forward to Orlando. Our daughter, her husband, and their four kids had four days planned for theme parks: three at Disney and one at Universal. Then they added a second day at Universal. We bought tickets to go to Universal the same day they did. The other days we planned to just stay in the resort (which was very nice), doing the usual things we did at home, plus maybe a little walking, a little shopping, a little sight-seeing. In truth, we did less than that. Other than preparation of meals for everyone, or taking everyone out to eat, we just had a restful time. Oh, yeah, I played chauffer to reduce parking costs.
What’s a vacation without a little trauma? In this case, a foot gashed on barnacle-encrusted rocks at a Gulf beach, requiring 4 stitches.
We had great interaction with all the grandkids. I had several good conversations with Ephraim, the oldest. He and I are sort of planning a book together. I think I’ve mentioned it before in these posts. Tentatively titled, The Forest Throne, it will be a time-travel sort of book. I’m brainstorming it now, trying to figure out how to make it unique, not just a run-of-the-mill time travel story. I talked to Ephraim that I was concerned that I’m too far removed from being a 12-year-old and how to make the book suitable for kids that age. He said not to worry. I should write the book and he’ll make adjustments to make it suitable for kids his age.
The lines and noise level at Universal made the experience less that satisfactory for us boring, old folks.
The day we went to Universal I had problems getting Lynda and me into the park, something about our e-tickets wasn’t right. So the rest went on. Later we all met up. Then Lynda and I got in line to do the Hogwarts Castle ride. That was an hour, maybe more. From there we went to the Three Broomsticks for lunch. That was over an hour wait, most of it in the sun. Lynda was tired, I wasn’t tolerating the noise level very well, the heat bothered both of us, and the walk to find a quicker place to eat took us all the way back to near the park entrance. So we left, getting some ice cream near the entrance.
A big city has a variety of foods. One evening of a down day I sprung for Indian food, which made the day worthwhile.
It was a couple of days later that I was talking again with Ephraim. I don’t remember exactly what it was we were talking about, but probably about my not enjoying amusement parts because of lines, noise, and not liking any rides that are high, fast, or quick turning (which is all of them). Ephraim said, “Grandpa, you’re boring.” I replied, “I try to be.”
He didn’t mean it in a bad way, but I’m very happy to be described as boring. Maybe it isn’t quite true that I’m boring. As I look back on my life, I’ve done a fair amount of risk taking and exciting things. But no more. I’m happy to sit at home, write my books, trade my stocks, walk the streets and trails for exercise or on the elliptical. Let others have their amusement parks. I’ll take boring any and every day of the week.
Masks and wands at the ready is how you do theme park at the end of a global pandemic.
We were with the kids from Saturday May 22 through Tuesday June 1. They left for the airport and a couple of hours later we hit the road. We made it home in two days this time, as we were in a mind to travel and, except for one major slowdown on I-40 in western Arkansas, the roads were clear. Now having been home for five days, I can say, “It was good to be with the kids, and it’s good to be back to our boring existence at home.”
What’s going to happen with The Forest Throne? If I don’t make it my next book, Ephraim may be too old by the time I get to it for him to help with it. My brainstorming is causing all the parts to come together. I’ve figured out an angle to make the time travel different. I’ve figured out two stories of this unique time travel. The last piece will be how to finish it all, for it won’t be a series that goes on forever. I’m brainstorming that now.
In my last post I gave the results of my writing in May. Not a great month in terms of progress, but not bad either. Now it’s time to think about, dream about, and plan for what I would like to do in June.
Finish the church anniversary book. I think I’m doing well on this, and should be able to add the final portions and declare it done by the end of the month. I made some good progress on it the last two weeks. I have some more interviews to conduct, which may hold it up, and some contributions by some others. I won’t say that I’ll have those contributions, but without these interviews the book won’t be done.
Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. With this post I’m well on my way toward achieving that.
Explore a little more the linking of a series together on Amazon. I have four series among my Amazon publications, none currently linked. This was on my list of things to do last month but didn’t get done.
Work on this website, creating a new landing page and updating some content.
Work with the cover designer concerning new covers for the Church History Novels series. This is somewhat out of my control, based on her schedule. I haven’t checked with her in a couple of weeks.
Watch some Amazon videos on how to better do Amazon ads. They keep sending me e-mails about available webinars, several of which look beneficial. I’d like to watch at least one a week.
Continue work on the next volume of Documenting America. I’m still mainly in the reading for research phase, though I also did some of the book planning and created the book file. I want to at least complete the basic reading (40 more pages) and move on to some other sources. I think that is very do-able.
Some of these are more writing career items than strictly writing. That’s fine. I’ve somewhat neglected the career aspects for a while and it’s time to work on them.
I’ll check in near the end of the month and let you know how I did.
This month, due to busyness with some alternate activities, I’m going to split my writing progress for this month and writing goals for next month into two posts. Today will be May writing progress; Friday will be June writing goals.
Republish the three prior books in the Church History Novels series. This will be the contents, adding information for the full series, including links to all the books. The switch of the covers to be consistent across the series may not happen this month, so the full process may take a little longer. I didn’t get this done. Don’t have the covers yet, though I thought I would. Hopefully soon, at which time I should be able to do this quickly.
Create, in Amazon KDP, a true series of these books. People have told me this is easy to do. After I get the content updated, I may tackle this, even if the covers aren’t ready to go yet. And, if I’m successful at that, I’ll create true series for my two short story series. And for the Documenting America series. Did not do his. I guess I was waiting on something, though not sure what. Maybe I can do this next month.
Continue work on the church anniversary book. I’m not going to set a word goal, since I can’t seem to meet the word goals I set. By the end of the month I would like to have all my interviews done, information from those interviews worked into the book. I also want to have basic information added to all chapters. This was my main writing endeavor this month. While I don’t feel like I spent enough time on it, I spent a fair amount. I’m now over 20,000 words in a book I thought would be 12-15,000. The end is not yet. I have four more chapters to write and about four more people to interview. The largest chapter, where I look at the church decade by decade, is done (except for photos). The remaining chapters are short and should go quickly. I feel really good about this project.
Continue work on the Bible study. In some ways, this is fill-in work when my mind can’t wrap around other writing tasks. That tells me that maybe my heart isn’t really in this project. Or maybe it means I simply need to get other things off my plate before I can really concentrate on it. I looked at this briefly early in the month, and may have added a few hundred words. I think I also brainstormed it a little. But, I let this slide while other writing and many life events and activities took precedence.
Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday. I ought to be able to do this. Done, done, done.
Continue research reading for the next Documenting America I’ve read over 100 pages so far, with around 200 to go. I made major progress on this, as I didn’t do a lot of other reading this month. I’m down to about 50 pages to read in my main source book. I also started the file for the book, finding a couple of source documents and creating a computer file for them.
So, all in all, I’d say it was a good month—not great, but good.
At the moment I’m on vacation. That sounds strange for a man who is retired, as vacation is time away from work. Or, is vacation a time away from home? Dad always said that vacation was time off work. Maybe that’s because we never went anywhere on vacation; we just hung around and relaxed. When the last Saturday of his vacation came, he would say, “Well, my vacation is over.” It would be two days before he would go back to work, but he was now on weekend off days rather than vacation days.
What about you? Do you consider vacation as time away from home, or time at work? I’m especially interested in what you retired folks think.
I believe I mentioned on a previous post that I have a few book reviews to catch up on, smaller books that Lynda and I read aloud in the evenings, books that look interesting but that, once read, are not keepers. This book falls in that category.
The concept behind the title is good: by voluntarily uniting with Jesus was joyously become a slave for him. However, in the current times, perhaps this isn’t the best title.
Love Slaves by Samuel Logan Brengle was first published in 1923. Our copy is a mass market paperback from 1982. Brengle was with the Salvation Army, a man of considerable rank in that organization that took its titles from the military. The back cover copy describes that book this way.
Here is an encouraging message—calculated to incite us to seek the highest. Side by side there goes the force and light of love…words to clear the thought as well as to strengthen the Will and guide the Heart.
Alas, the book fell a little short of this intended goal. At least for me it did. The description indicates this is a discipling book, aimed at making Christians more aligned with the message and work of Jesus Christ. It does attend to that goal, but for me there were two main problems with it.
The language was archaic. Thought written in the early 1920s, the English use—especially sentence structure—was from a period a century earlier. Now, I’ve read a lot of works from the early 19th Century, so I’m no stranger to difficult English and have learned to pull the message from it with no problem. This book was more difficult to do that. I bogged down often with the long sentences and the strange way of saying things.
Since this is a Salvation Army book, which we probably picked up at a yard sale or thrift store, it includes terminology and practices unique to them. Thus, the book didn’t really seek to make the reader a better Christian but to make the reader a better Salvationist, as they call themselves.
I don’t want to mislead anyone. It’s not a bad book, just not as good as I was hoping for. If you want to read a discipling book and improve your Christian walk and service, I think you have a choice of a thousand books more modern than this that will help you more.
Thus, my original expectation was met. Not a bad book, but definitely not a keeper. Off to the garage it goes for sale or donation.
The name of David Livingstone has been famous for years. I was a boy when I learned it, understanding him to have been an explorer. Stanley’s famous line, “Doctor Livingstone, I presume”, while perhaps not historical, was familiar.
An introductory biography is just the thing for learning a little about a life your only marginally familiar with. This book filled that need.
So, when my wife recently gathered up some small books for our evening reading, I was glad to see that she pulled one about Livingstone from our shelves. David Livingstone: First To Cross Africa With The Gospel, by Mrs. J.H. Worcester, was first published in 1888, fifteen years after his death. We read a 1987 mass market paperback reprint of it by Moody Press.
Having said that Livingstone was practically a household name at one time, I have to admit to being ignorant of details of his life. This book provided them. Born in 1813 in Scotland, he had first thought to go to China as a missionary, but that nation closed due to war, so he went to Africa instead in 1841. There he married Mary, the daughter of fellow missionary Robert Moffat, who had inspired Livingstone to go to Africa. They would have six children together.
Livingstone’s work in Africa began as a Christian missionary for the London Missionary Society. Over time, the mission work was mostly turned over to others and Livingstone became an explorer of the interior of Africa. His reason for doing this was, at least in part, because of the horrors of the slave trade. Even though most European countries and the USA had outlawed it by the time Livingstone arrived in Africa, it was still going on in large numbers. He thought if he could help Africans have different economic opportunities they might cease cooperating with the slave traders. But the alternate economy required ports and roads to the interior. Livingstone looked for these.
This was an excellent little book (125 pg) that I highly recommend. I normally like to read more in-depth biographies, but this was a good entry point into the life of Livingstone. I told Lynda we needed to find a larger and more detailed biography. Then, while looking on the bookshelves in our basement family room, I found one. An inch and a half thick, it should be just the thing.
The small book, thought good, is not a keeper. Off to the garage it goes to sell or give away. While a modern reprints of the 1888 book are not hard to find, you ought to be able to find images of the original at several places on-line.
Actually, I wrote that title while it was raining. Right now the sun is shining. No, wait, it’s behind a cloud again. The rain stopped close to an hour ago. The forecast is for more rain during the day, but right now the radar doesn’t show anything close. I’m not sure what to expect.
The forecast for this blog post is also a little uncertain. I still have those three short books to review, but don’t feel like doing any of them today. I have a few book sales I could report on, but nothing earth-shattering, so I’ll pass on that. Stock trading is going ok. We aren’t killing it, but nothing really to report. Engineering has totally disappeared, as CEI no longer calls on me for anything. I guess that’s not bad, as I don’t miss it. The two years of hourly work was a good transition into retirement, but is now over.
Health is okay, maybe even good. Can’t seem to lose any weight but am not gaining any. My heart seems strong, my blood sugar is under control, I had covid19 and I have also been vaccinated for it, so I don’t fear going around without a mask. I still wear it in situations where it is posted that masks are required or requested. I may wear it a few other times as well. It was hard for me to get in the habit of mask wearing and it will be hard (maybe not as hard) to get out of the habit.
Work on the church anniversary book has slowed, but as soon as I finish this post, and maybe reach a new threshold in the book. I think I’m still on target to finish it around the end of June. I’m reading for research in the next Documenting America volume. Otherwise, I don’t have any other writing in my head that is just demanding that I get the words on paper or pixels.
So, this is a good time to work on this website. Not on the layout or the bells and whistles of a WordPress site, but the content. A writer friend recently looked at my site and suggest some improvements. Or, rather, just said it needed improvement. Then, today, a writing blog that I read had a post about improving your website. I’m always hesitant to do any changes to the website content for fear of screwing something up.
I’ve known for some time that I have things to do with this. Maybe this is the time to knuckle down and do them, while other tasks are not urgent. It’s been suggested that I move my bio from the landing page to a separate tab and have different content on the landing page, perhaps news about my books, or links to them. I’ll have to think about that.
One other thing I really should do this week is some Kindle Direct Publishing work on my book series, to turn them into true series, properly linked on KDP. I’ve been told that easy. I don’t think I’ll work on that today, but perhaps over the next couple of days I’ll look into that.
I believe the next three days will be a mix of the anniversary book and the website. After that, who knows? Just as the sun-clouds situation here today (cloudy right now but no rain) has been uncertain and changeable minute by minute, so my writing plans are.
I’m now down to about 125 of Mom’s old books left, from around the 800 I started with. That doesn’t include the 100 or so that I’m keeping and are on display in the house.
This week has been just that: a mixture of things, getting done, adding to the to do list, and either worrying over or brushing aside.
First and foremost was completing our income taxes for 2020. The deadline was changed this year from April 15 to May 17, and since I knew I was going to have to pay (based on my early estimates) I embraced the new deadline and delayed my personal tax work. I did our trading partnership taxes and got them in by March 15, the deadline for partnership filing. I completed them Tuesday, let them sit overnight, found an error Wednesday, re-printed them, let them sit overnight, proofed them Thursday morning and declared them good, signed them, wrote a check, got them in an envelope, and walked them to the P.O. Done for another year.
No, not quite done. Every year, when I finish the taxes, I say I’m going to prepare my spreadsheets for the following tax season. Obviously, the Federal and State forms might change next year, which would necessitate a change in my spreadsheets, but I can’t anticipate those changes. I can at least create the 2021 Taxes folder and save this year’s spreadsheets into it, change all the date, zero-out the manual entries, and have them ready. Also, I have my “Estimated taxes” tab to help me know if I have to send in any payments during the year. I got that prepared and entries made through yesterday. Also, I created my 2021 writing business spreadsheet, overhauled it somewhat to remove some clunkiness, and made all entries year to date. So, I feel pretty good about this.
This photo didn’t come out as well as I hoped. The left side of the street is lined with blackberry bushes awash with while blooms. I’ll be doing a lot of picking in late June and July.
Speaking of writing business issues, I sold four books yesterday. I buyer was coming to get some of my older books that I have listed for sale on Facebook Marketplace—23 of them to be precise. I took the occasion to message her that I was an author, gave her the link to my author page at Amazon, and she said she would get some. Some turned out to be four. That gives me eight sales for the month. And, yes, these are some of the things I entered in my 2021 writing business spreadsheet.
A local writing group I’m a member of, Bella Vista Village Lake Writers and Poets, met in person Wednesday for the first time since February 2020. It was a planning meeting, outdoors at a Starbucks. Only five of us met, but it was good to do so.
Work continues on my writing projects. I get a little done on the church anniversary book almost every day. Same thing with the Bible study I’m working on. This week I’ve had a break-through, of sorts, on how to do one difficult section. The Bible isn’t particularly difficult to understand at this point, but how to present the material a interesting and informative way was a question for me. I figured it out, I think, and will soon move forward with it. Also, my next short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series is starting to roll around inside my head. I think, when I get done with the projects I’m currently working on, I’ll be ready to write that.
Other than selling those books, our decluttering/disaccumulation efforts have slowed. Over the last month we’ve finished four small books that are not keepers. Once I get the book reviews done for this blog, off to the sale/giveaway shelves they will go.
After a two week hiatus from walking, I’m back at it. It started with short walks in the evenings with Lynda, just as much as she has strength to do. Tuesday I think we did just under half a mile, Wednesday two-thirds, and yesterday nine-tenths. Also yesterday I did my afternoon walk to the P.O. and, along with some extra trips down side streets, I did a little over two miles on that walk. How great that was. My walking shoes are almost worn out and I’ll soon need to get another pair, but the ones I have are doing alright for now.
My main observation during my walks was the blackberry blooms. The bushes are covered with them, and the number of bushes with blooms is more than ever. On our street, I tend these bushes. It’s not much work. I cut away various woody plants that compete with them for sunshine; I cut vines that grow up and choke the blackberries, and I cut away dead branches from prior years, giving the new branches a chance to grow. It seems to be working, because our street is loaded with bushes. I’ll be making cobblers and muffins and who-knows-what all July and into August, with some to freeze.
Local lore says that you need some cooler temperatures to cause the blackberries to “set” properly. Most Mays we get those cooler temperatures, and the time is called “Blackberry Winter”. Well, last week and this week we had that. We are past the frost-free date, but temperatures dropped into the 40s for the about six of the last ten nights, with the highs getting above 70 only once or twice. This morning it was 46 when I got up. We had this both before the blackberry bushes bloomed and after. This, I hope, will result in a good crop.
And, last among my miscellaneous activities, is reading. I mentioned the small books above that we’ve already read. We started on another one a couple of days ago, a non-scholarly commentary on the book of Daniel. It’s going well so far. I’m also reading in the Annals of America as research for my next Documenting America volume. Also in a very thick book on the history of the Jewish people. I don’t get a lot of pages done each day, but I’m making a little progress. I may pull off this and read the last 50 pages of a book I can get rid in less time. Also, I have volume 3 of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis for Kindle, and have been reading that on my phone whenever I have a spare ten minutes with nothing to do. So far I’m a 135 pages in on this 1600 page book. It’s probably the most enjoyable of all that I’m reading.
This post is longer than I expected, but I haven’t time to make it shorter. See you all on Monday.
