All posts by David Todd

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Preserve The Revelation, self-publishing, Writing

Writing and Publishing

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ftsp-createspace-cover-2016-10-14

Publishing and writing tasks have been proceeding apace. No, that’s passive construction. Let me rephrase. I’ve been able to spend a decent amount of time on writing and publishing tasks of late, with some positive results. No, I’m not where I’d hoped I’d be, not even where I’d planned to be. But I’ve made progress, and that will have to suffice.

I’ve been able to spend time every day working on Preserve The Revelation either writing or researching. Yesterday I added over 2,000 words, and my word count is somewhere around 23,700, I think (my count is at home; I’m writing this at work). If I’m correct that it will take about 90,000 words to tell this story, that means I’m about 26% done. Is that good news, or bad news? If I average 500 words a day, I’ll be done in 133 days (very doable), around the end of March 2017. That seems like a long time from now. If I can bump that up to 750 words a day (doable), I’ll be done in mid-January. If I can do a little better and average 1,000 words a day (a stretch based on all that the world expects me to do), I could be done just before Christmas this year. That sounds so much better. It’s what I need to shoot for.

Apart from that, I continue to work on Thomas Carlyle: A Chronological Composition Bibliography, or whatever exact title I eventually give it. Why? I’m not sure, except I can’t let it go. Most days I spend a little time on it, rarely more than thirty minutes. I’m looking through Carlyle’s letters for references to his publications, checking reference materials for the same, reading a few works by or about Carlyle, and typing/reprinting as I have enough changes to warrant doing so. I have no schedule for completing this. I’m past the most difficult years of Carlyle’s literary life, it seems to me, so maybe this will go fast henceforth. I still have significant editing to do in the years 1823-1832. Right now I’m in 1836-37 and moving forward. I’ll edit those earlier years later.

In late August or early September I wrote a poem for an anthology and submitted it. I found out this morning that the anthology fell through. I still have the poem, a villanelle, that perhaps I’ll do something with. It’s submissions season for many literary journals. What the heck, might as well submit it and see what happens. I’ve written one other poem since, a tanka, that needs some work.

As far as publishing tasks, in September I published the fourth short story in my series Sharon Williams Fonseca: Unconventional CIA Agent. Titled “Hotel, Whiskey, Papa: Sharon Williams Fonseca in Salzburg”, I’ve had one sale of it, no reviews. That’s about par for the course. I had a mere nine sales in 3rd Quarter 2016, and zero sales so far in the 4th Quarter. Since I added to the series, I republished the first three books in the series to include the reference to the new one. All of this was on Amazon. I haven’t done the same on Smashwords yet.

The other publishing task was getting into print my baseball novel, In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I was ready with the interior of the book in August, but have had trouble finding a cover designer who could work me into their busy schedules. I plugged along at doing it myself, and finally, with some help from a man in our office, got it done last Friday. The full cover “wrap” is at the start of this post. I uploaded the book the same day, and within six hours had word back from CreateSpace that it met their criteria. I accessed the online proof, and saw only one place that needed a slight tweak in format. I then tried to order a proof copy, but, somehow I hit the wrong button, and the book was published! This was last Saturday. There was one change I wanted to make to the title page, but figured I’d do this after viewing the proof. Oh, well, I’ll republish it with the correction before too long.

One other item of significance was a contest I ran, through my Facebook timeline, to give away copies of my poetry book, Daddy-Daughter Day. Contestants had to guess the name of my [then soon-to-be-born] latest grandson, which would begin with E, as have the names of his brothers and sister. I allowed two guesses. Seven people got it right. The books have been ordered (it’s only available in print) and should be here Thursday. My hope is that somewhere among these seven will be people who will like the book and leave a review on Amazon and other sites. We’ll see.

So, I’m busy and productive, if not productive enough. Alas, the day job and life in general get in the way of full writing productivity.

Preserve The Revelation, Writing

A Time Crunch is Coming

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My mother-in-law, with Elijah, five days old
My mother-in-law, with Elijah, five days old

This past weekend I went to Oklahoma City to see my new grandson. My mother-in-law went with me, and had a couple of hours with her four great-grandchildren, then I took her to her step-daughters for her to stay the remainder of the weekend. It would have been a bit of a challenge for her to function with three noisy children all around her. I’ll add a couple of pictures to this post.

Esther with Elijah and Elise, previously the baby of the family
Esther with Elijah and Elise, previously the baby of the family

So, I did little writing Friday through Sunday. That evening, after getting home, I managed to bang out a few words on Preserve The Revelation. Last night was the same thing. I think my two-day production was close to 500 words, which was to be my one-day goal. But, I had to go to the store after work, and I’m playing catch-up from the weekend trip, so I didn’t feel that I could dedicate much time to writing. I did sit and plan the next couple of chapter, reading in Revelation for research.

At the “Between The Lines” blog today of Books & Such literary agency, the issue of time logjams was the subject of the post. I wrote and posted a comment, telling of my own current logjam. Here’s what I said was in it.

– find whatever it is that’s dead in my garage and is causing a big stink. That would be easy, except…
– …with the garage full of things, waiting for that garage sale, I need to make a major effort in getting ready for that.
– finish the front yard flower bed project. I’m two hours of work away from that. I think.
– ongoing: be the primary caregiver for my 91 year old mother-in-law while my wife is out of town, helping our daughter’s family following the birth of their fourth child.
– either figure out cover design with G.I.M.P. or find a designer who can do quick work on the cover of my first baseball novel; it would be nice to get the print version out before the Cubs win the World Series. E-book is already published.
– ongoing: finances and filing. Will I ever catch up?
– ongoing: participating in my wife’s home business
– start preparing for the family to come for Thanksgiving; yes, it takes that long.
– ongoing: this pesky day job.
– If time allows, add 500 words a day to my novel-in-progress.

That pretty well sums it up. I don’t think I need to write more than that. The time crunch has caused my blog regularity to suffer. I’ve missed my normal days for the last two posts. You can see “Update blog” isn’t even on the logjam list, so far is it down.

A better day is coming. “All in God’s timing,” as was stated on the blog.

miscellaneous

News

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So, a few of you “tune in” every Monday and Friday to see what news I have to post. I must disappoint you at the moment, for I have no news. Or, actually, I have a little news but no time to write. I’ll hopefully get back here before the end of the day and add what the news is.

commuting, creativity, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Searching For A Metaphor

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It’s approaching 6:00 p.m. on Sunday as I’m writing this, taking a moment away from working on my novel to work on this post. It’s been a busy weekend. My wife is still away, in Oklahoma City, on grand-baby #4 arrival watch. Due date is still more than a week away, but his brothers and sister all came early, so she went up early, and will be there a while after the birth. My mother-in-law is also away, visiting her relatives and friends in southwest Kansas. She won’t be back till around Oct. 3 or 4. So it’s just me in the house.

I’m in The Dungeon, which is where most of my serious writing takes place. After Life Group, church, buying a sandwich and fries from Arby’s, making a quick stop at the Neighborhood Market for something I forgot yesterday, and dropping recyclables off, I got home to the empty house. I ate my lunch while channel jumping between NFL football games that really didn’t interest me and one of the Star Wars movies, which some channel is showing over and over again this weekend. Then I went to The Dungeon to write. I could tell, however, as I started, that I would have difficulty adding coherent words to Preserve The Revelation, so I decided to go to the couch in the nearby family room and take a nap.

My nap lasted a little less than an hour, but I woke up with greater powers of concentration. I guess I was wiped out from Saturday’s labors. While I was working on Saturday it didn’t seem like I was working very hard. Oh, I was getting things done. I went to Wal-Mart early for groceries and building project materials. I removed cut branches and pulled vines from the front and back yard to the forest; worked on the flower garden project in the front yard, getting the edging blocks in place (I think; I may yet modify the layout a little, but it will be minor). Then I came inside and set up a new shelf unit in the storage room, to replace the old, old computer table which took up a lot of room but didn’t have all that much storage capacity. I’m not looking for more room to store more stuff we’ll just have to get rid of some day, but I want a neat storeroom, and the computer desk was frustrating those effort.

All that done, I fixed a salad for lunch, then went to The Dungeon to write. But, I was so exhausted from the work I’d done, I couldn’t write. I added a few words to the novel, but knew I wasn’t going to make major production as I’d hoped. So I searched YouTube for a medley of my favorite oldies, and spent a few afternoon hours just listening to some girl group songs and doo-wop. Then it was drive to town to the church to set up stairs for today’s worship service, then home to cook supper, then to study to teach Life Group lesson, while doing laundry, then to drop into bed and sleep the sleep of the dead for seven hours.

What, you ask, does all of this have to do with the title of the post, “Searching for a Metaphor”? Perhaps it’s a weak connection, but I have been searching for a metaphor for my writing for a while. As I read other people’s writing, such as Mark Twain’s short stories, or Thomas Carlyle’s non-fiction, I find them to be rich in metaphor. As I look back on my own writing, especially my poems, I know the ones that are best are those which are rich in metaphor. My poems of late, alas, have been more focused around imagery, not metaphor. Images are important too, but I think metaphor is a higher use of language.

I look out The Dungeon windows. The tall oaks are swaying, so it much be windy outside. Now they’ve stopped, so obviously it’s intermittent wind. There they go again. Dusk has come upon us, plus, it’s cloudy. We were supposed to have rain this afternoon, but it has never come.  I find no metaphor in the trees, however; nor in the lack of rain, the busyness of the weekend, the usefulness of a nap, or the significance of writing with good, solid production.

I wrote a poem on Friday. It started out as a haiku, based on the eastern sky during my morning commute. This is often a time that inspires a haiku. However, I wanted to make a little more out of the poem. The tanka poetic form takes a haiku and expands it by two lines. It’s supposed to have only more information on images already presented, not present new images. Friday evening I worked on it, being just a few words short of the complete tanka. In the evening I was able to add those lines. But the tanka, while probably not too bad, is not a metaphor.

Alas, I will keep searching. Perhaps by the time winter comes, I’ll have much less work to do around the house and property, and will be able to quiet my mind for a while, and train myself to think in metaphors, instead of, at best images, or at worse to-do and to-purchase lists. One can always hope.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, home improvements, letters, Preserve The Revelation, reading, self-publishing, Writing

Staying Busy

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I’m a day late with this post. The last two months, since I established my Monday and Friday posting schedule, I normally try to write my Monday post on the weekend, or at worst on Monday morning before the start of my workday. I’ve missed a couple of times, but I’ve been doing better about regular posting.

This weekend, however, I did nothing concerning a post. By the end of Sunday I realized that, but it was too late in the day to write it. I decided I’d do it Monday. Monday came and went, and alas, I did nothing on it. Shame on me. I’ll do better going forward.

So what’s keeping me so busy that I didn’t do my blog post? On Saturday it was first work around the house, followed by writing on Preserve The Revelation. The house work included a major cleaning job on the refrigerator, thinning the blackberry vines, cutting a lot of low hanging branches, and weeding in our back yard. I also had chair set-up at church, and trips to Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Sunday was Life Group and church, followed by lunch at a community event. That put me home around 1:45 p.m. I should have written.

Instead, I began work on the print cover of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, using G.I.M.P. to assemble the graphics. As always, G.I.M.P. defeated me. I was able to create a palette the size of the cover, and add and size the front and back covers. But on the back cover I needed to hide three corporate logos. I had planned how to do this, and got two done quite easily. However, when it came to the third one, I stalled. I was using the same procedure as for the first two: cover it with an opaque layer. Only on this one I had to add text. Somehow the layer that is the back cover was deselected, and I couldn’t add the opaque circle. Without the circle, the text was meaningless. I worked more than three hours on it, and finally quit in frustration. I went back to Wal-Mart to pick up one thing I hadn’t the day before, then spent the evening reading.

Yesterday was the normal busyness of work and house. In the evening I went to The Dungeon, intending on writing. But there, on my work table, was the box of photos from our time in Kuwait, with several batches of photos out on the table. I had dug into the box last Wednesday to select some photos to scan and post on Thursday. In the box I found batches of photos not in envelopes, hence not matched with their negatives. I decided getting those photos matched was a better use of my time than writing. I don’t say that facetiously, either. Some day we’ll pass those photos on to our children, and having them properly organized is critical. It was a good use of my time—not that I finished, but I made significant progress. But by the time 9:00 p.m. came I wanted to be about my evening reading. No time to write the blog.

So here I am on Tuesday, writing Monday’s post, and it’s about nothing but why I didn’t write on Monday. But it lets my few readers know what’s going on in my world.

Since the weekend, one of my cover designers contacted me, saying he’d done work on it. We discussed it. Hopefully he’ll complete it very soon. In case not, I’ve contacted a third cover designer and am in discussions with her. Today I sent off a letter to an influencer, a seminary professor, concerning Doctor Luke’s Assistant and things he’s written that dovetail nicely with it. This is by snail mail, as the seminary doesn’t post faculty e-mails. We’ll see what comes of it.

Tonight, when the work day is through, I plan on staying about an hour after to do some research and typing on our fact internet and computer. When I get home, I have one small task to do in the yard, then I’ll heat some soup for supper, and descend to The Dungeon. No photos tonight. I need to add at least 1,000 words tonight, and 3,000 in total, before I will allow myself to return to those photos and finish that big task. I’m looking forward to it.

Bible study, books, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, poetry, Preserve The Revelation, self-publishing, Writing

It rains! It rains!

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Today, Friday, we are having band after band of thunderstorms pass over us here in Bentonville. As I’ve mentioned before, I like the rain; it does my heart good. So, on a Friday afternoon, I’m upbeat. I have completed a number of miscellaneous tasks this week, including today, and am ready for the weekend. If the storms continue (as, I believe, they are forecast to do), I shall read and write, file and discard, clean and organize to my heart’s content. If the rain holds off, I have plenty of outside work to occupy my time.

My writing work has been slowly progressing of late. I add a little every now and then to Preserve The Revelation. I do the same to Thomas Carlyle: A Chronological Bibliography of Compositions. Almost every day I review and add to my Bible study titled “Entrusted to My Care”, which we are scheduled to study in our adult Life Group beginning in four weeks or so. Of poetry, I add nothing. The villanelle I wrote last month I hope to get back to in a week or so, tweak it, then submit it to the anthology; the deadline for submittals is Oct 31.

Then, the other major task I have at hand is the cover for the print version of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I’ve been waiting for two talented cover artists/creators to get to it. For a variety of reasons, some legitimate, some not, they haven’t gotten to it in over a month’s time. So, my top priority is to get it done this weekend, uploaded to CreateSpace, a proof copy ordered ASAP, and the book published ASAP. It won’t be as good as if a pro did it, but it will be done, and the book will be available before the Cubs win the World Series—if they do.

My cell phone just gave me a severe weather alert, the first one I’ve received on this. Yet, the thunder has about quit. I may not go by Home Depot on the way home. We’ll see.

Politics

An Open Letter to Colin Kaepernick

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An open letter to Colin Kaepernick:

Dear Colin:

According to Wikipedia, you are in the midst of a 6-year, $126 million contract. I’m sure the contract is complex, may not be linear, and might involve performance bonuses. But that works out to $21 million a year. After your agent’s cut (I assume it’s 20%) and taxes (which I’ll assume are 60% of the remainder after the agent’s cut), that gives you $6,720,000 a year to live on. I’ll go further and assume you are putting away 15% of your gross (i.e. before taxes) income for retirement, which is what financial planners advise prudent people to do. That would leave you with $3,570,000 a year to live on. I realize I’m guessing here. Let me round down, and estimate you have $3 million a year to live on.

That’s a sizeable sum, which should allow you to live quite luxuriously and have a lot left over.

We all know now about your refusal to stand to honor and respect our nation when the national anthem is played before 49er football games. I assume you don’t do this because the USA has been unfair to you, but because you believe it has been unfair to other Blacks, and I suspect you mean more specifically young Black males at the hands of law enforcement. I assume the trigger for you to do this now is the reported police shootings of Black men who refused to comply with police instructions over the last two years. The issue of race relations is complex, thus the issue is complex, and I’m sure your protest actually is more complex than that.

As a talented athlete and a highly paid professional, you are a role model for the nation and a spokesperson for the USA to the world. These are thrust upon you whether you want them or not. It’s a price you pay for the position you hold. As a former pastor of mine once explained, the higher you go up the ladder of success or positions of influence or authority, the fewer options you have in terms of behavior. You have relatively few options in the position you’re in. Oh, legally you have those options and many more. But morally, I believe, you have few.

You have chosen to use your position of influence to disrespect our imperfect nation as a means of protest. You are thus telling others who look up to you that this is how you bring about change where change is needed. I suggest to you that what you are doing will not bring about the results you want; it only draws attention to you. Change doesn’t come from shouting about a problem, but by doing meaningful things that will change behaviors.

So, I’d like to suggest a few things I believe you could do to bring about change that will make the USA a better place, a safer place for Blacks, and actually for people of all races.

1. Talk to young people, especially young Blacks, about obeying police commands rather than resisting the police. I haven’t dug into the statistics, but I suspect that approximately zero people who comply with police commands are shot and killed each year.

2. While you’re doing this, you might want to say a few things about living within the law and eschewing lawlessness.

3. Speak to police groups, sheriffs groups, and any other law enforcement groups, about better ways to deal with those who fail to comply with police commands. I believe our law enforcement officers want to do a good job, and would respond well to hearing from someone in a position of influence such as yourself.

4. With the $3 million a year you have to live on (if my math is close to correct), learn to live on $200,000 a month, and give $600,000 a year to works of charity that help inner-city youth to break the cycle of poverty and violence, and, through education and having role models to look to, will find a way out of their conditions. I did some research to see if you are doing any of this, and found some articles from a couple of years ago about your charity works, along with a couple of newer ones. This includes a $1 million donation to “organizations that work with the community.”  I also saw that you’re planning on donating recent jersey sale income to charity. Thank you for that. I commend you, and suggest that the more you do of this the more you will change our nation into a better place, the more you will extend your influence.

In the few public statements I’ve seen you make since your first sitting protest, you came across as whining that people would hold you accountable for your actions. May I suggest you rather accept responsibility for what you have done. Explain that your protest is heartfelt and sincere and that, if it costs you in terms of finances and influence you are ready to accept that as a consequence. Maybe you’ve done that and I missed it. If so I apologize. I’m sure I haven’t heard or read every statement you’ve issued.

Of course, if you think that through, you might realize there is a better, more effective, and longer lasting way to achieve what you want. Assuming what you want isn’t just more fame for yourself.

holidays, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

It’s A Holiday

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For years I’ve struggled with establishing a good, sustainable schedule for posts on this blog. I tried five times a week, four times a week, three times a week. Somehow the time to write never materialized. I even backed off to just once a week, and still I found it difficult to blog on schedule. Sometimes I had extra ideas I wanted to blog about; sometimes I couldn’t think of anything on my regular weekly blogging day.

But over the last couple of months I’ve been able to be on a fairly regular schedule. I post on Monday and Friday. For several weeks now I’ve done this and been quite regular at it. In truth, I write my Monday blog post sometime on the weekend and schedule it to publish on Monday morning. Then I have four weekdays in which to write my Friday blog post, and schedule it to be published.

This has been working out fairly well for me. Post ideas have been coming to me with no problem. Time to write has been available. And I’ve found it a enjoyable thing to do, not a drudgery.

So here I am on Monday morning (for real; this wasn’t written earlier), writing a blog post. It’s the Labor Day holiday, and I’m home from work. The household is quite, as neither my wife or mother-in-law are up yet. I have no great topic to write on. My last post on Patriotism vs. Nationalism is still a somewhat incomplete treating of the topic, but I’m not adding to that today. Perhaps on Friday, or even next week. That topic isn’t going away.

So this is just an “hello” to my readers. I’m going to post this, take my coffee back upstairs, leaving The Dungeon empty, go to the sun porch on this cool-ish September morning, and read for an hour or so. My breakfast casserole from Saturday have more than three servings left, and will make a fine breakfast, along with some fruit, around 9:00 a.m. Later, after a few relatively light outside chores, I’ll be back in The Dungeon to work on some writing, most likely my novel Preserve The Revelation.  I’ll do some stock work. I’ll perhaps write a letter—or two.

Yes, this will be a most relaxing holiday, but not without it’s accomplishments. Enjoy it, readers. See you on Friday.

America, miscellaneous, Politics

Patriotism vs Nationalism

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I’m going to write and post this, but it will be far from complete, and I’ll have to follow-up with supplemental posts in due course. I write this during the wave of very vocal public opinion after San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem during a preseason game a week or two ago. Public opinion seems to be against what Kaepernick did, but you can hear voices on the opposite side, ranging from “no big deal” to “he did the right thing.”

For a while now I’ve thought about this. By that I mean long, long before Kaepernick decided to exercise his First Amendment rights with apparent disregard for what impression it would make and effects it could have. Or perhaps he did think them through, though some of his comments since then make me think he didn’t. I’m thinking back to the flap when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama didn’t wear a U.S. flag lapel pin. There was some outrage at the time, but it all blew over; most people won’t remember it without prompting.

My thoughts at the time were that I wasn’t particularly concerned with outward gestures that people define as patriotism. I’m concerned with actual acts of patriotism. I’m concerned with people living their lives as a patriots, not mindlessly participating in rote ceremonies that have become mostly without meaning.

Don’t get me wrong: I always respect our flag, and think about what it stands for every time I’m involved in a ceremony. Heck, I remember a time at URI, gotta be 44 years ago at least, because I  was living on campus. It was a very cold winter day. I was dressed in my surplus U.S. Navy bridge coat, the one I had my brother get when Cranston High School East declared them surplus, having bought true warm-up jackets for the football team. It was a heavy, heavy coat, but it sure kept me warm. It was late in the day and I was heading across the quadrangle, in the direction away from the dorms (so maybe I was going to an evening class or exam). Wherever the flag pole was on the quad (seems like maybe it was a flagpole close to Bliss Hall), they were striking the colors for the evening. I don’t remember who was doing it; I don’t think it was a formal ceremony, just someone taking the flag down. I stopped, took off my red and black hunter’s hat, and stood at attention with my hand over my heart, until the flag was down and folded and being carried away to overnight storage. I doubt too many people ever did that in the URI quad.

So the flag is important to me, and that wasn’t a meaningless gesture on my part. But, I have to say, that respect for the flag is not patriotism. It’s nationalism. What’s the difference, you wonder? My desk dictionary has a slight variation in the definition of the two. Patriotism is listed as a synonym for nationalism, but not the other way around. Nationalism includes this alternate definition: excessive, narrow, or jingoistic patriotism. Oh, that’s not nice. The definition it give for patriotism is: love and loyal or zealous support of one’s own country. Yeah, I like that.

So is standing for and singing the national anthem, with your hand over your heart—or if you can’t sing just being quiet and respectful—an act of patriotism, or of nationalism? If it’s done for show, or because you’re supposed to do it, or merely because people are expecting you to do it, then it’s at best nationalism, and at worse mindlessness. The best you can say about it is it can be an example to others, and perhaps encourage others to learn to respect and love their country.

So what is patriotism? In a previous post I mentioned that my dad was a patriot, and I gave reasons why I thought he was. However, I’m going to hold off on completing these thoughts. I want to take time to properly develop them. Perhaps it will be my next post, or even one or two after that.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Preserve The Revelation, self-publishing, Writing

What’s Next?

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So, yesterday I finished the short story “Hotel Whiskey Papa”. It’s 5,839 words, though that could change in the final edit, which will start tomorrow and take only a day or two, I think, and then I will publish it. That is, if I can get the cover made with no trouble. That will give me four stories in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series of stories:

  • Whiskey Zebra Tango: set in Cranston, Rhode Island
  • Charley Delta Delta: set in Greece
  • Sierra Kilo Bravo: set in Italy and Switzerland
  • Hotel Whiskey Papa: set in Austria, mostly Salzburg

As far as how many there will be in the series, I have no idea. The number of places I’ve visited give me enough fodder for 50 to 60 stories, if I can get enough ideas to wrap around the locales. That will be a good series. I’m hoping the fact that I’ve been to the places that I will put Sharon and her antagonists in will add authenticity.

Conventional wisdom says I should continue with this series and whip out several more fairly quickly. I’d like to do that, and I may change my mind and do at least one more next. But the fact is that coming up with C.I.A. operations that work as short stories and involve Sharon and seem like they will be interesting has been more difficult than I expected. The inspiration for “Hotel Whiskey Papa” came slowly. It was ten months after I published “Sierra Kilo Bravo” before inspiration came for HWP; and HWP will be published almost a year after SKB. At present I have no inspiration for the next, though I believe I have the title an setting: Tango Delta Foxtrot, set in Paris, France. But I’ve sort of wrote myself into a corner with this last one, and I’m not sure how the next one will flow. So, for now, I’m not going to rush into the next one. Besides, when did I ever follow conventional wisdom regarding what would be best to write next?

No, when I finish editing HWP, the next thing I do will be to edit chapter one of Preserve The Revelation, and start on Chapter 2. I have a little research to do, so I may do that before plunging into the writing.

But that’s my project. It will be good to once again see Augustus ben Adam on my screen, and to add his two sons, Adam and Daniel. I’m looking forward to it.