Category Archives: Church History Novels

Christmas, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

A Little Progress

Leave a comment
Our Christmas village, in part
Our Christmas village, in part

It’s Christmastime!

I won’t say “Bah! Humbug!” Though I’m tempted to.

We have only two Christmas parties scheduled this year. One was last Saturday, so we can check that one off. The other is next Tuesday. But my wife will be out of town, tending grandchildren, so I told the organizer I won’t be there. He asked why, and I said I didn’t want to leave my mother-in-law alone for all day and the evening. He said to bring her, but she won’t want to go, and won’t want me to miss it. So I haven’t said anything about it to her or my wife. It was fun last year, but I won’t miss it this year.

Our Christmas village is in place; the wreath is on the front door; a manger scene is out; and a few lights are showing in the front window. The Christmas tree is up and the lights are on, but not the ornaments. Maybe I’ll cart them upstairs tonight. I have two other decorations I want to put up. Then it’s get the string up to hang incoming cards on. The only other Christmas thing to do is write a short Christmas letter and do the twenty-five or so cards we do each year. I should have all that done by next weekend.

So Christmas is now manageable. On to other things, mainly writing. Yesterday, Sunday, after a great worship service, excellent but simple lunch, and a nap wrapped around reading, I went to The Dungeon for almost three hours of productive work. I had to re-read my last chapter and see where I’d left off writing two weeks ago. I did a few edits as I read, determined the chapter was complete, and plunged into the next one.

My goal was to write 1,500 words in three hours. That’s less than I can normally do in that time, but, given that I hadn’t written for two weeks I thought that was about what I could do. In fact, I added just shy of 2,000 words in a little less than that time. That brings the book up to over 53,000 words at present.

More than that, however, ideas came to me of how to develop the conflict in the second half of my sagging middle. I had most of the beginning of the book worked out before I started to write it, and I knew where I wanted the end to be, but I was clueless about the middle. How do I put the protagonist in enough conflict to keep the book interesting? Ways and means of doing that came to me yesterday as I was writing. Some of it had come to me during my two-week writing hiatus, but the rest came while I was writing.

Then, this morning, I started to jot down a few notes, and figured how to do some more conflict. It involves adding another antagonist, a trusted new “friend” who turns out not to be. Will it be enough? I’m not sure, but if the book comes in at 75,000 words instead of the 90,000 I originally thought it would be, maybe it will be enough.

In other writing progress, I finished re-reading Doctor Luke’s Assistant, and will soon work on correcting a few things and re-publishing that in advance of the sequel. I had two hours of reading in Civil War documents, which is for the book I’ll work on next: Documenting America: Civil War Edition. I also spent some time brainstorming in the series of which DLA and PTR are the first two (written, not chronologically), and see the potential for 12 books in this series. That would take me out over ten years to write.

So, I’m happier now with my writing productivity than I was last Friday. Oh, and my Thomas Carlyle bibliography is also moving right along.

Christmas, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Friday

Leave a comment

I’m having a hard time getting excited about anything today.

I know I seem to be negative all the time, and that’s poison if you want to attract and keep readers. But it’s true.

I can’t get excited about Christmas. There’s always too much to do, even now that we’re empty-nesters and have less responsibility. Not much of it reminds me of the magical Christmases of my childhood.

I can’t get excited about work. I’m reviewing a project submitted by another engineering company to a city I sometimes provide city engineering services for. This is the third submittal, and they are finally getting it right. I think. I’m not sure because certain aspects of their drawings are hard to interpret. I’m having to slog through it, and can only concentrate for short spurts, then have to pull of and do something else.

I can’t get excited about my novel-in-progress. I haven’t worked on it in over a week. Instead, I’ve been tweaking and tweaking a document I plan to submit in response to an atheist challenge. It’s a waste of time, except for forcing me to concentrate on something. But it’s done. I made some tweaks yesterday, and I’m calling it final. I have no intention of looking at it again. Now, whether I actually submit it or not is another matter. I’ve started that process. Even have submitted it to an outside reviewer before submittal. But whether I submit it or not depends on a number of things, which I won’t outline here. Most likely my literary executor will find it and have to deal with it.

So, what to do? Maybe tonight I’ll be able to add a few words to my novel. Or maybe I’ll knuckle down and get our Christmas letter written. Then file receipts. Then file other papers. Then update my budget spreadsheets. Then read a little for pleasure—except now that I write, I find I can’t read for pleasure any more.

Bible study, Carlyle, home improvements, miscellaneous, Preserve The Revelation, reading

Bread and Boxes

Leave a comment

My time is very limited these days, almost all of my own making. I’m working hot and heavy on my novel, Preserve The Revelation. Over the weekend I added slightly more than 5,500 words to it. That exceeded my three-day goal of 5,000 words, so that was good. I was writing a difficult part, where a character dies, and another, closely associated character must carry on. But I’m through the worst of that. The worst going forward is I really haven’t planned out this next section very well, so I may find writing it quite laborious.

Two other writing tasks I’m working on is my chronological composition bibliography of Thomas Carlyle, and further study with writing intentions into my harmony of the gospels, specifically the Resurrection account. When I finished up my latest round of revisions, intended to be my last, in June, I did a little search for references I might add to the resurrection account. I found a couple, which led me to doing some writing on an auxiliary document last week and on the weekend. And some reading on it. This is perhaps totally unnecessary, but it’s something I want to do, something that gives me satisfaction.

Saturday saw me doing the typical chores around our house. I moved a large bookcase from the garage to the basement, to help close-in the temporary bedroom we’ve set up there. I loaded the shelves with Christmas decorations and who knows what all was in the boxes I placed. I now know I need to put a light back there, and will do so next weekend, or I might hire an electrician to do it, as I have a couple of other things I need for one to do.

Sunday was fairly restful. I wasn’t scheduled to teach Life Group, though I always prepare to since my co-teacher (on alternating weeks) is a veterinarian and can be called out at any time), but late on Saturday I received a text from him, saying his on-call weekends had switched and he would be on call Sunday. That meant I did have to prepare to teach. I did that by getting up early Sunday morning (thought in fact I had been preparing during the week). He didn’t get called in, and so he taught; I participated as a student. I napped in the sunroom after church, though not for long before I headed to The Dungeon for my writing.

In the evening we felt the 5.0 earthquake that hit Cushing Oklahoma, about 200 miles from us. That was minor excitement. We got pizza instead of having to prepare food, which was good. I pulled out a writing book to read, since I’ve finished all other books and was ready for something new and since I hadn’t read a writing book in a couple of years at least. But for some reason a wave of tiredness washed over me. I’ve learned not to fight it, so I set my book aside, slouched a little in my easy chair, laid my head against the back, and dozed. Maybe for an hour all together. I woke up about 10:15 p.m. to find a different tv program on.

At that point I tried reading a little more, discovered I couldn’t, so went to the kitchen to prepare for the week. I washed a few dished that needed washing, then packed my breakfasts for the week and my lunch for Monday. Yes, I eat breakfast at work. I leave the house at 6:30 a.m. so as to miss traffic, and have a quiet time at work to read the Bible, pray, and do miscellaneous things (such as write this blog post). I did all of that, finishing right around 11:00 p.m.

At that point I headed to bed. I no sooner laid my head down when I realized I had forgot to put bread for my breakfasts in my food bag. I had done the same thing last week, and got to work and had a boiled egg, slice of ham, slice of cheese, and no bread. I debated getting up to add that, but decided instead to say, “Add bread to my food bag” over and over till I fell asleep, hoping I’d remember it in the morning.

Another unfinished task that crossed my mind as I was trying to lock in remembering the bread was that, during the yard sale last weekend, I moved many empty boxes out of the garage and strewed them on the side of the house or under trees nearby. Lynda reminded me on Sunday that those needed to be brought in. I figured I’d better do them in the morning before going to work, so I started to lock that task in by saying to myself, “Remember the boxes, remember the bread.”

I’m happy to say that this morning I remembered both. I put five slices of bread in two baggies and put them in my food bag. As I left the house through the garage I brought in the boxes and put them where they needed to be, at least temporarily. The need to do that was emphasized to me when I hear on the radio that rain is probable today. These  tasks, and one other within the house, made me about eight minutes late, caused me to be behind two slow moving truck, and then in a long, long line of vehicles heading in to Bentonville. So I was at work late. Alas.

However, so long as I crowd writing into my life, so long as I have so many other obligations that can’t be shunted aside, I will have to compromise somewhere. Driving in heavier traffic was this morning’s compromise. Who knows what it will be for the rest of the day, or tomorrow, or the next day?

Oh, and sorry for missing to post something here last Friday. Too many tasks, something had to give.

family, home improvements, miscellaneous, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Recovering From The Weekend

Leave a comment

As I was not too long ago, I’m again a day late with my blog post. It’s not for lack of something to write. Indeed, I have a choice of topics and ideas. Some things I’m not quite ready to write a post on, though, if I needed to, I could break out a short, introductory post, and leave the bulk of it till I’m ready. Other things I’m ready to write on.

So why didn’t I write yesterday? Sheer tiredness and brain weariness. This last weekend we had a yard sale, the one we were supposed to have any time after August 2015 when my mother-in-law came to live with us. We didn’t get it done last fall, and I was too busy this spring with many projects to do it. A summer yard sale works in this part of the world, but not as well as spring or fall.

So, about two months ago I decided I would get it done in October. All I needed to complete before that was the flower bed in the front yard. I completed that in early October. My wife was gone to Oklahoma City for an extended stay helping with grandkids, and my mother-in-law was gone for months visiting in her home town. I got much done during those two weeks, both inside and outside the house, and still more in the three weeks it was just me and the mother-in-law here.

Projects completed, and a visit to OKC out of the way, I began yard sale prep in earnest. My wife returned on Oct 23, and I said we were having the sale Oct 28-29. She didn’t think we could get it done, but I showed her how much I had done, and said we would proceed with it. So we did. Was it a success? I had set only modest goals: sell one box of the old books; sell the old porch swing, old suitcases (from 1981), unused air purifier and dehumidifier, and a box of farm junk left over from the 2009 sale when my mother-in-law first downsized, from a house to an apartment. Oh, I also set a $ goal of $200.

I’m happy to say that each of those goals was met. We netted around $220, and each of the items mentioned in the previous paragraph are gone—sold! I think more of the stuff selling was ours, rather than the mother-in-law’s, but it’s gone, never to take up space in the garage or basement again. However, I have to say that meeting all goals seems to be almost a wasted effort. When we brought things back in the garage, we have just as many tables set up, just as many items we don’t need but don’t feel clear to throw out, and we still can’t get a car in it. And, it was a lot a lot of work for a lousy $220.

Some other benefits were achieved. We found a set of salad plates that were not to be sold. In getting ready for the yard sale I was able to fully clean the storeroom. We had contact with some neighbors and near neighbors we rarely see. I expended a lot of energy, perhaps lost a little weight, which is a good thing even if I didn’t have my annual physical tomorrow.

But I ended the days exhausted. Sunday wasn’t all that restful, as I had to teach adult Life Group, made my Saturday run to Wal-Mart on Sunday, and did some good writing on my novel-in-progress. I had to do most of the work on the sale, as my wife woke up with back spasms on Friday, and wasn’t any better on Saturday (or on Sunday for that matter, though improved some by Monday), but I expected that. I took an extra pain pill or two each day, kept going, got lots of steps in, and then slept well.

But, Monday came, and the rush of adrenalin that comes from a sale was gone, and the tiredness set in. I probably didn’t earn my pay yesterday, though looking back I did get some good things done, including a couple of difficult tasks that involved using a website so changed from what I’m used to it might as well have been a new site. At home in the evening I got supper ready (just leftovers from the roast I cooked Sunday—oh, yeah, that was another energy-sapping thing). After eating I balanced the checkbook, then went to The Dungeon. Stock trading accounting took over a half hour, as there was much to do with it, then I wrote. I only added 625 or so words to Preserve The Revelation, but I crossed another thousand threshold, which was satisfying.

Hopefully today my energy has returned. Just being able to write this blog post is a good sign. Future posts will hopefully get back to my writing career and life lessons. Stay tuned.

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

Writing and Publishing

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment
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.

commuting, creativity, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Searching For A Metaphor

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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!

Leave a comment

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.

holidays, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

It’s A Holiday

Leave a comment

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.