Category Archives: Preserve The Revelation

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots, Preserve The Revelation, self-publishing, Short Stories, The Gutter Chronicles, Writing

Unfinished Writing Projects

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMy intention for today was to write a lengthy post on the status of several writing projects. However, two things intervene. First, I’m in New Orleans on a business trip. I’m not sure I feel like taking time to do a detailed analysis of my writing-in-progress. Second, since around Sunday my gumption for writing has tanked. At present I don’t know that I care much if I write any more or not. The reasons for that are complicated and I won’t go into them here. Suffice to say these are not the days for me to be making bold plans for adding to my published titles.

I will say a few words about my projects. The easiest one should be to publish my last short story, “Sierra Kilo Bravo“, at Smashwords, making it available to Nook, Apple, etc. That means pulling up the file for the Kindle publication, making a few simple changes, and hitting Publish. Along with that I want to republish the other stories in the series to add a link to this one to it. Also fairly simple. But I haven’t felt like doing it, now a month since it went live for Kindle.

Another fairly easy project will be to correct typos in my two baseball novels, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People and Headshots. I re-read them some time ago on my Nook, found enough typos in each to warrant fixing them. This is a one-day project for each book. So far, I just haven’t felt like it.

SBC book front coverThen, I have some typos to fix and new data to add to my family history book, Seth Boynton Cheney: Mystery Man of the West. This is a little more complicated. It’s a print book, so unless I want to have the cover redone due to pages added I’ll need to add the new data without too much lengthening. The good news is I sort of planned for this, putting a couple of blank pages at the end of the book. So long as the new data doesn’t take up more than them, I should be okay. I have some of these marked, and one of my wife’s cousins also marked some. She didn’t give them to me, but will when I ask her. This should be my priority, I suppose, but so far—you guessed it—I just haven’t felt like it. A related project, some cousins have asked me to publish a color edition of this. That will require rework of the cover, since the page thickness is different when you print in color, but otherwise is a simple thing. I need to do that right after making the corrections to the black & white edition.

So what does that leave as far as w-I-p go? I have three books started:

  • Preserve The Revelation. This is a sequel to my first church history novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant. A couple of years ago, when in a period of uncertainty as to what my next project should be, I wrote the first chapter of this. Since then ideas for the book continue to find their way into my conscious thinking.
  • Documenting America: Civil War Edition. This would be the next in my Documenting America series. I got well into this last year and early this year. I’d guess it’s 40 percent done. I have pushed this far from my current thoughts.
  • The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 2. The first volume was a reasonable success at the office. I’ve completed three chapters in that, and am well along with the fourth. It’s been over a year since I’ve worked on it, but I’d say I’m about 20 percent done. Ideas for remaining chapters of this have been bubbling up of late.

TCEEA print cover 01That leaves my two Thomas Carlyle projects, wanting to join their brother on my virtual bookshelf. These are the two I’m actively working on. At the office I use my free time to work on Thomas Carlyle Chronological Composition Bibliography. At home I use free time to work on Thomas Carlyle’s “Chartism” Through the Ages. Both are well along, though neither is close to being done. They are perhaps silly things to work on, as neither would be a commercial success. However, at least these two are holding my interest.

Well, this post ran longer than I expected. Still, it’s the short version. I write it not so much as to inform you, my loyal readers, about what’s coming, as to help me bring order to the chaos that’s happening in my head and finding it’s way to paper and pixels. May the order come soon.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots, Operation Lotus Sunday, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Looks like it’s probably “China Tour”

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I don’t recommend anyone go about their book writing they way I have for the last twelve days. As I reported in a previous post, because I felt no sense of direction of where to go next with my writing. I could write any one of three novels or one non-fiction book. So I decided to write the first chapter in each and see how the work flowed, how it felt to me during the writing, and choose based on the experience.

First up was Headshots, the sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I labored over a Friday-Sunday period, barely getting about 1950 words and the chapter done. I found that picking up the threads of all the people who were involved in the end of FTSP was tedious. In fact, after finishing the chapter I realized I didn’t have all the threads covered: missed one I need to add in.

Next was Preserve The Revelation, the sequel to Doctor Luke’s Assistant. This went better. I did a little work on Augustus ben Adam’s family tree and children before I started the writing, to make sure he could have two sons of the ages I wanted at the time I wanted them. It all worked fine. Then I wrote the chapter in two evenings. Though I had thought much about it over a few years, it still took me in a different direction as I wrote it. The needed scenes for the second chapter ran through my head as I concluded the first, which is a good thing.

Next was China Tour, a sequel to nothing. In fact, it will be a stand-alone novel. This has run through my mind many, many times over the years. I found our trip diary from 1983, read through some of it (the Hong Kong days), and jumped in to the writing. In two evenings I had my 1,500 word first chapter. It went fairly easy; but then I’ve run that chapter over in my mind many times, and had recently explained the book in detail to a colleague.

Then, to this mix I added another volume of Documenting America. This would be a Civil War edition, in recognition that we are now 150 years away from that event, with somewhat heightened interest in the reading public. Unfortunately, I found this heavy going. I enjoyed the research, but the writing went much, much harder than I wanted. This would be the shortest of the four books, and I would certainly enjoy the research, but I think the writing would be most labored.

Based on ease of writing and flow of words, it looks as if China Tour should get the nod to be my next book. Given that, last night I decided to give the second chapter a try, and in two hours knocked out the entire chapter, about 1,050 words. The problem is, this book makes no sense to be the next one. It’s not a sequel to anything, nor is it in a series or will it ever have a sequel. It might not be all that long (I’m thinking 70,000-75,000 words), though for all I know it could run longer.

One of the sequels makes more sense. Those 92 people who bought Doctor Luke’s Assistant, or the 5,000 people who downloaded it for free, might just come looking for something similar. Headshots makes more sense because I most recently wrote FTSP, so the characters are all known commodities and fresh in my mind. I’ve thought though what will happen in considerable detail. The problem? With 3 total sales of FTSP, it’s not like the public is clamoring for this book.

I haven’t committed yet, but it is probable that China Tour will be next. I know at least one of my reader/writer friends who will be happy.

Documenting America, Headshots, Operation Lotus Sunday, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Writing Progress

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Or lack thereof. As I reported before on this blog, I wrote the first chapter in three different novels, trying to see which inspired me most, and which didn’t inspire me at all, or at least not much. In this way I could perhaps determine which one to work on next, given that none stood out to me before actually writing.

I did that beginning last weekend (that is, Oct 12-14) and during the next week. It was last Wednesday, I think, that I finished the third of the first chapters. Thursday I did little more than re-read and maybe tweak one of them a little. Or, I could be off by a day. It may have been Thursday that I finished the last of the first chapters. One thing I did this time was to start a writing diary for each of these, so I have the exact dates recorded. Alas, the diaries are home and I’m at work as I type this.

Friday I decided to write the first chapter on one more book. I have always intended to write additional volumes of Documenting America. It’s been set aside for more than a year as I wrote other things, but that was always my intent. Given that it is, right now, the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, I thought that would be the best next volume to do.

I had also figured out where to start on that volume: with a speech before the US Senate in 1850 by John C. Calhoun, staunch defender of slavery. After that I would move forward nine or ten years, into the immediate lead up to the war and then the war years themselves.

So Friday I dusted off some old notes, grabbed the right volume of The Annals of America, and read the speech, which is actually a long excerpt in that book. Then I went on-line and found the complete speech, and read most of the parts left out in the Annals. This took all Friday evening, a shortened evening as I had a few other things to do as well as writing.

So Saturday, after my normal Saturday routine (which included cutting down a small, dead tree and cutting it to firewood lengths, as well as a good walk), I went to work on the chapter. And I didn’t get it finished. I worked on it for over three hours, finding concentration impossible. I managed to get together a long excerpt from the book (about 1250 words), which is longer than I used in the first volume. But writing my commentary on it was most difficult. By the end of those three hours, after shifting back and forth from the chapter to rereading parts of the speech to wasting time because I couldn’t concentrate, I think I had only 500 words of commentary done, short of a full chapter.

It didn’t help that I was feeling poorly. I’m not sure if it was something I ate, or having done too much strenuous exercise earlier in the day, but I didn’t feel good all Saturday afternoon and evening. When you body isn’t well, it’s tough to ge the mind in gear.

So where does this leave me? I can safely say that the time is not right for me to work on Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. Of the three novels, the one that seemed to flow best to the page was China Tour, the one that was most difficult was Headshots. Preserve The Revelation flowed fairly well.

What I think I will do is take a few more days to think about it. I have a lot of non-writing things that have piled up over the last few weeks, things like my budget spreadsheet, filing, and some cleaning. It’s those things that a married bachelor takes time to get to when his wife is away helping with the grandkids. Then Thursday I head to Oklahoma City to help said wife with said grandkids, returning next Sunday. So I don’t think I’ll do much writing till then. Although, tonight and tomorrow, if I have a spare hour, I might try my hand at chapter 2 in one of them.

Headshots, Operation Lotus Sunday, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

New book started; progress slow

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As I reported on Friday, I had hoped to write 5,000 words this weekend just passed. My wife left for Oklahoma City on Friday, leaving me a quiet house and not too much to do. Friday night I arrived home late after eating supper with my mother-in-law. There was still plenty of evening left, and I should have gotten a lot done. Alas, I created folders and files for my three potential new works, and wrote one scene in one of them. Tiredness set it, and I quit for the evening.

Saturday found me in my normal routine. I read in the Bible first thing, then ate a small breakfast, then read some in my current reading book. Then I went outside to do chores, which that day was cutting down a dead tree (only 5″ caliper) and cutting it into firewood length. It was almost too much for this old man, but I got it done. Back inside the house I did some cleaning

That tuckered me out enough that I fell asleep in my reading chair after lunch. I don’t think I slept long: about two touchdowns’ worth in whatever game I had on. Still, I was down in The Dungeon and at my computer by 3:00 p.m. Plenty of time to get a couple of thousand words written.

Alas, I only wrote around 900, taking Headshots up to 1240. I couldn’t concentrate, and kept shelling out to play mindless computer games. I began to write something, wrote ten words in a new scene, and couldn’t think of what to write next. Or, I think more accurately, didn’t want to apply my mind to the scene. So I played games for a half hour, then came back to the scene and wrote it.

Over and over that repeated Saturday, and actually Sunday. By the time I quit at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday I had around 1,430 words written. Well, more than that, I suppose, if you include the two blog posts I wrote for An Arrow Through The Air, my other blog, one which I posted yesterday and one which I scheduled to post tomorrow. That’s another 600 words I guess, bring the total for the three days to 2,000. That’s not bad, but it’s a far cry from the 5,000 I was hoping for.

As I said in a previous post, I’m not sure which novel to work on next, and my plan is to write 1,000 words in each of the three and see which one seems best to me to continue in. I did that in only one, so two to go. Tonight, I’ll be home at a good time. I’ll have to cook supper (stir fry, I think), and do some significant cleaning in the kitchen. That should put me in The Dungeon around 8:00 p.m., giving me time to write the thousand words. I’m thinking of doing so in China Tour, though by the time I get home I may change my mind and go with Preserve The Revelation.

I sure wish I felt some direction in all of this. Possibly the difficulty I had applying myself to Headshots is a form of negative direction. If so, that’s a start.