Category Archives: Documenting America

Documenting America, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Writing is Like Ingredients in a Bowl

May 5, 2017 David Todd Leave a comment

Battles, weapons, and bodies dominate when you write about war. It's been an eye-opener for me. — Battles, weapons, and bodies dominate when you write about war. It’s been an eye-opener for me.

I was planning on writing a fairly lengthy post tonight, but late this afternoon my equilibrium was upset by a company that is supposed to be providing me service, for which I’m paying top dollar, but which doesn’t give me service. I’m upset, and don’t really feel like writing a post. But it won’t be any easier in the morning, so I’d better do it now.

My current writing project is Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. I know I’ve written about it before. I had set it aside for a while, even after I finished Preserve The Revelation, while I was working on income taxes and home projects. I finally got back to it last weekend—that is, around April 22. It will be the second book written in my Documenting America series.

For each chapter in the book, I have the following items to do.

Identify the subject matter I want to cover;
identify the source document(s) for that chapter;
Load the source document(s) into my book file;
Excerpt the source document(s) down to a manageable length;
Write a historical summary about the document(s)/subject;
Write how the document(s) ties into an issue we deal with today, typically political or social; and
Format the chapter properly.

These are discrete tasks for each chapter, except some tasks have to wait on another. Obviously I have to identify the document I want to use before I can find it/load it/excerpt it. Writing the historical and political/social sections must follow from the documents. But, I have the choice of finishing all parts of a chapter, or work on like tasks regardless of the chapter, or a mixture of these. I’ve been proceeding along the latter path. Sometimes I work on finding a document. Sometimes I do the excerpts. Sometimes, instead, I write the perspectives for chapters I’ve already done the excerpts for.

As of Wednesday night, I had:

Identified all but one chapter subject;
Identified the documents for all but that chapter;
Loaded the documents into my Word file for all but that chapter;
Done the excerpting work for all but two chapters;
Written the perspectives for 20 of 30 chapters; and
Properly formatted about 15 chapters.

This tells me I’m somewhere beyond 50 percent done with the book, but it’s hard to tell, working on it as I am.

This will be the second book in my “Documenting America” series.

About a week ago, as I was proceeding along my hybrid path, I came to realize that what I had was just like ingredients, dumped in a bowl, according to some recipe. I’ve never done baking, and most of the things I cook are simple. Cut, chop, saute, mix in a few spices, fry or cook in the over till done. All nice and safe, nice and easy both to cook and look at.

A few years back, however, I watched my wife fix something—tortilla soup, I think, same as we had the last three nights. She followed the recipe, which she had memorized, and dumped everything in Dutch oven. Chicken breasts, frozen chopped spinach, frozen mixed vegetables, cans of diced tomatoes, cans of two different types of beans, can of green chilies, and a teaspoon each of chili powder and cumin. There they sat, in the pan, a non-homogenous jumble. How does this come out as soup, I wondered?

But I then saw an amazing thing. A little bit of mixing with a strong spoon, and the ingredients were soon a homogenous mixture, suitable for cooking as soup.

I also watched her do this with a cake, or something like that. The ingredients just sat there, in their un-mixed state, an ugly, impossible to understand mess. Then the mixing occurred; it went in the oven, and it came out a beautiful, calorie-laced confection, perfect for whatever the celebration was.

I hope my book turns out the same. Right now it feels like ingredients dumped in a bowl. Most of the research is done, with about 1/3 of the writing yet to go. The ingredients are all just sitting there, waiting to be “mixed”, i.e. completed. It’s hard to see exactly where I stand in the writing, how the book will come together.

But come together it shall. Wednesday night I made the decision to delete the unstarted chapter. The other chapters seem to be running longer than I expected, so I’ll be okay as to length. I’ve typed all the excerpting edits, but still have the one chapter to go with excerpting, and it looks to be a hard one. I should finish that this weekend, and hopefully write the perspectives on three or four other chapters.

I’m at the point where I really, really want to get those ingredients mixed, get the thing finished, let it sit for a week or two, and then edit and publish it.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, Short Stories, Writing

A Jumbled Weekend

April 3, 2017 David Todd Leave a comment

Perhaps I should have spent time cleaning my work area, which is en-route to non-functional.

Weekends are almost busier for me than weekdays. Sure, on weekdays I have to drive 15.5 miles to the office, work a 40 hour week (plus some), fight evening traffic, and come home mentally exhausted. But somehow that seems more organized, more manageable, than do my weekends.

It started with ducking out of the office a little early Friday afternoon. I thought we needed milk, so I stopped by Braum’s on the way. When I pulled into their parking lot my phone rang. It was the wife, saying she was ordering pizza for supper from Papa John’s, and hoping I hadn’t left the office yet. I had, but Braum’s was less than a mile past Papa John’s, so I said I could easily backtrack a little. She placed the order on-line, something she’s tried a number of times before without success, as her computer always locked up at the last step. This time it worked, so I drove back south, and waited the 25 minutes for the pizza. Thus, I arrived home at my usual time.

Friday night I went to The Dungeon after supper. I had numerous tasks I could work on, from filing, budgeting, book research and publishing, and income taxes. I decided to use my time to fix the cover for the Smashwords edition of Preserve The Revelation. It was only 1340 pixels wide, and the minimum width is 1400 for inclusion in their premium catalog. That was graphics work I could do, so I did it. It’s now awaiting Smashwords’ manual check to see that it’s okay. I hope to get that on Monday. The premium catalog is important, because through that the book is pushed out to Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and other vendors. Without that, it just sits at Smashwords, where nobody buys anything these days.

The Dungeon can be depressing, at times. I really, really, really need to spend time cleaning it.

I was in The Dungeon only an hour. Went upstairs, and for the rest of the evening I divided my time between vegging out, a few minor tasks, and research/organization in Documenting America: Civil War Edition. I had printed the book that week, and so had a good copy of what I’ve done so far. I saw that I was farther along than I thought. I made a table of where each of the thirty chapters stand. That will help me to plan what to work on next.

Saturday, I slept in (till 8:00 a.m.). By 9 I was outside, doing yardwork; specifically, continuing to rake leaves in the back yard. It’s a gravel yard, and getting leaves off it is more difficult than off a lawn. I don’t want to rake the gravel off, so I have to be careful how I rake. I had only the lower, rear portion still to go, a strip about 20 feet wide by the width of the lot, which is 120 to 150 feet. I was able to do only a little more than half. The remainder will be an easy task for next Saturday.

Inside, my next task was helping my wife get on the road to Oklahoma City, where she’s to spend a week plus helping our daughter with the grandchildren during an especially busy time. But first I had to make the weekly Wal-Mart run, for groceries and prescriptions she needed for the trip. This included bringing some boxes of children’s clothes up from the basement and loading them into the van. We store quite a few boxes of those clothes. She got on the road around 4:00 p.m.

At that point I went to The Dungeon, and decided that the income taxes were the next thing I needed to do. I had made a good start a couple of weeks ago, so the work I had left was to fill in a few items from the tax forms we received, finish my writing business profit/loss, and hence Schedule C, and plug that into form 1040. I then moved on to our stock trading business taxes. Surprisingly, that went fast. I had those done by around 6:30 p.m. Well, not exactly done, because I’m not sure about one item. Figuring out whether what I plugged into the spreadsheet is correct or not will take a couple of hours, something I’ll probably do tonight. Then all that’s left are the State taxes, and I’m done for another year. Oh, yeah, and the mother-in-law’s taxes as well.

Saturday night I did some more reading and research for DA-CW Ed, profitable research into source documents, and went to bed at a decent time. It helped that I didn’t have to teach Life Group this Sunday.

Today was Life Group and church. I knew I needed to get some walking in, so after lunch walked about 1.5 miles. I didn’t push it. Although I walk a fair amount, I’m out of shape due to having not walked while I had a cold recently. But I got it in, and wasn’t too worn out afterwards. No more, that is, than a 45 minute nap wouldn’t cure.

So I was finally at my computer, in The Dungeon, for my prime couple of hours of writing work. I spent the time copying source documents into my Word file for DA-CW Ed. That might not sound like much, but I had to look for them on-line, to hopefully save typing them. I was able to do that, as well as find a couple of source documents for the Battle of Gettysburg, documents that had previously eluded me. I also modified the file for my most recent short story, “Growing Up Too Fast”, for Smashwords, and uploaded that. Smashwords accepted it, and it’s now awaiting the manual check for inclusion in the premium catalog.

That brings me to Sunday evening. After some light cleaning that’s been nagging at me, and leftovers for supper, I read in the source documents. The first step is deciding what to excerpt from them to keep in the book. Several of them are long, over 3,000 or even 4,000 words. I’d like the excerpt to be between 700-1200 words, but will go more words when I need to. I made good progress in that. I’m not ready to give a new estimate of how close I am to completion, but definitely got closer to that goal.

So, a busy weekend. With progress. With a fulfilling feeling. Now on to the workweek so I can rest a bit.

Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots, Preserve The Revelation

Research: On to the Next Book

March 31, 2017 David Todd Leave a comment

It's published as an e-book at Amazon; print book and other e-book formats will follow soon. — It’s published as an e-book at Amazon; print book and other e-book formats will follow soon.

Preserve The Revelation is published. It’s not selling, but it’s published. The proof copy of the print book should arrive today. I’ll get the e-book up for Nook, Kobo, Apple, etc. this weekend. Time to move on to something else.

That something else is my next book, Documenting America: Civil War Edition. There’s a long story to this book that I’ll try to make short and simple. My first full-length book to publish, back in May 2011, was Documenting America: Lessons from the United States’ Historical Documents. I enjoyed writing that. I found so many available documents, in this information age where digitized historical documents come online every day, that I knew I could make it into a series. Before long I had more than a dozen titles, all of which I knew I could easily write.

Published in May, 2011, I've sold a whopping 54 copies of this. — Published in May, 2011, I’ve sold a whopping 54 copies of this.

I decided my next one would be on the Civil War. The first one didn’t concentrate on one era in US history. Instead, I selected a variety of documents that interested me, from 1711 to 1898. It was fun, finding the documents, excerpting them, writing something about their historical significance, and tying them to an issue we face today. I had actually written a number of them as published and potential newspaper columns. When I decided, in February 2011 that I would make it into a book, it came together quickly.

Fast forward to mid-2013. I was searching around for what book to write next. The US was in the midst of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. I decided to make that the next one. I decided what the year limits would be, made a quick outline of the first few chapters, and wrote the first chapter. At the same time I was writing first chapters of three other books, to see which one felt right. Alas, Operation Lotus Sunday flowed easiest, and I wrote and published that. Once that was done I picked up DA-CW Ed again, added more to the Table of Contents, and wrote a couple more chapters. For some reason, it still didn’t feel right, and I went on to other things.

The next time I looked at it was early 2015. The sesquicentennial was about over. I had lost that window. Not that such a deadline was critical, but if I wanted to gain a few sales from the Civil War interest that the anniversary was generating…

What am I saying? When have any of my books ever found interest from current events? The election of 2012 didn’t help The Candy Store Generation, even though it included a discussion of that election as the campaign was being waged. The Chicago Cubs’ drive for their first pennant in 108 years last fall didn’t help sales of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People or Headshots, not one bit. The idea that I thought Civil War anniversaries would help my book to sell was, at best laughable, and at worst delusional. I guess one can always dream.

I've already started thinking about the cover to the Civil War Edition. It takes me a long time to make a cover on my own. — I’ve already started thinking about the cover to the Civil War Edition. It takes me a long time to make a cover on my own.

Still, I took up the book again and worked on it, taking it up to about forty percent complete before I once again set it aside, somewhere around February 2015. Why did I do that? I still planned to write the book. But as I dug into the source documents behind the major events of the Civil War, two problems hit me full blast. One, I got tired of all the battles. When you write about a major war, battles will be predominant in the contents; you can’t avoid that. Second, I would read the source documents and start falling asleep. No joke; they were either boring me or I simply couldn’t concentrate on them. Still, from time to time over the years, I pulled the book out, even as I was working on other things, and either researched, wrote, or edited what I already had.

Now it’s 2017. No meaningful Civil War anniversaries will come up for decades. Yet, with my novel done and published, and trying to decide on what to publish next, I decided to return to DA-CW Ed. In January, I returned to my main source document, the Annals of America, and read. Lo and behold, I was able to read with amazing retention and clarity. I’m not sure what the difference was between early 2015 and early 2017, but it was a huge difference. I went to Atlanta for a conference in February, took my source book with me, and read and read and read and didn’t get tired of it.

So, what’s the status of the book? I have thirty chapters identified, which will be the final count. I have source documents in hand for all but one of those, and it’s possible I even have it for that one, reading it pending. I have my Word file created and correctly organized. I have about twelve chapters fully written (subject to editing, of course), and I have the source documents in my file for all but about eight of the chapters. Last night I added the Siege of Vicksburg source document, and began editing it. In terms of organization, I’m about 95 percent there. In terms of source documents, I’m about 60 percent there. In terms of original writing—hmmm, that tougher to figure. Maybe not more than 20 percent. Still a lot of battles to write about and draw lessons from.

Last December, I established a goal of having this published in May 2017. That’s only two months. I’m not sure I can do that in time. My actual writing will begin this weekend (if I get my income taxes done, that is; otherwise it will be next week or weekend). I’ll blog about my progress from time to time, or will post it on my Facebook author page.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, miscellaneous, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Still Weary, But Will Write On

February 27, 2017 David Todd Leave a comment

My last post, on Feb. 23, was written in Atlanta, Georgia. I was there for a conference, the Environmental Connection 17 conference put on by the International Erosion Control Association. For the first time in years, I didn’t submit a technical paper for presentation. So I was just an attendee, renewing old connections, making new ones, and encouraging one of our younger engineers who did present a paper, his third.

The flights out, via Dallas-Fort Worth, went well. We had a long enough layover in Dallas that it was enjoyable. We got easy transportation to the hotel. The walk from the hotel to the conference center, over two elevated walkways, was just about right. The Wednesday activities were good. Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel gave the keynote address. I went to some technical sessions on things I wasn’t familiar with, and broadened my perspectives. All was well.

But something happened on Wednesday, not at the conference, that wasn’t good. I won’t go into details here. Let’s just say it threw me for a loop. It so affected me I wasn’t able to sleep that night in the hotel. I tossed and turned, and finally got up and read. It was well after 2:00 a.m. when I finally went back to bed, though I’m not sure when I fell asleep.

The next day I made that post. I made it from my company smart phone, the first text-intensive post I’ve made from it. That was something new for me. During the day, the situations that caused me to lose sleep somewhat resolved themselves. By the end of the day, Thursday, I was doing much better emotionally. I blew off the social gatherings at the conference, went back to the hotel, and spent the rest of the day editing my novel in manuscript. I made significant progress on it.

I wish I knew why I let things affect me so. Part of the problem is that I engage in two activities that can put you on the emotional roller coaster. One is writing; the other is stock trading. Stock trading is going well this year. I’ve had a lot more winners that losers, and I’m earning at a rate that I like. Writing is also going okay, though I still get no sales. At this time I’m not ready to put money into advertising, so I’ll likely have low sales.

Once my book is ready and I publish it, I’m sure I’ll get some sales of it, and perhaps of others at the same time. Before I publish it, however, I really need to correct and re-publish Doctor Luke’s Assistant, because it comes before Preserve The Revelation in the series. I made all the corrections to the DLA master file, formatted it for print, uploaded it, and had CreateSpace check it. Alas, it had many formatting errors, all due to lack of recognition (or user error) of inserted section breaks and having the wrong page on the wrong leaf. I was working on that last weekend, but hadn’t finished it. That will be a tomorrow task.

A day-after-tomorrow task will be re-reading PTR in manuscript. I had enough edits on this round, my second round of edits, that I believe I need a third round. This will delay publishing, but I’m having that delay anyway due to the DLA problems. Alas.

One good thing did come of this trip. When I was packing Monday evening and Tuesday morning, I had to decide on what reading matter to bring with me. I have several books on Google Play and on my Nook, so I didn’t need to bring any print book. But at the last minute I stuck in the Civil War volume of the Annals of America. , just in case I wanted to read that. It’s research for my next book, whereas everything on my electronic devices is for family history, research for later books, or recreation. On the first flight I pulled out AoA and read the entire flight. I did the same on the next flight, and in the hotel room the first night. I often have trouble focusing on the entries in this book, but on this trip I didn’t. I was able to focus on each article I read, making marginalia, finding great quotes, and possibly adding to my civil war book. It was a good choice. Not sure why I could focus this time when I’ve had trouble doing so most times, but I’m glad for the result and won’t question it.

Life is an emotional rollercoaster. Sometimes I don’t handle it very well. Wednesday was one of those days. I’ve recovered (mostly), and am ready to plow ahead. Hopefully my Friday post will be an author interview. Next Monday, maybe I’ll be able to report good things about DLA and PTR.

Documenting America

Book Review: The Civil War

February 10, 2017 David Todd Leave a comment

The damaged cover is an inducement to not keeping it.

As part of my research for Documenting America: The Civil War Edition, I picked up a used copy of The Civil War, by Harry Hanson. Originally published in 1961, my paperback copy dates from 1991. The book is about 650 pages, with a dozen maps and a fair index.

My overall recommendation: If you must read a book about the Civil War, I think you can do better than this. However, if you like battles and details about military conflict, you might like this.

I picked this up used (like so many of my books) for $1.00, thinking it might be a good reference for my book. About four or five months ago I started reading it, but laid it aside. When I picked it up again in December, I started reading where the bookmark was, in the chapter on the Monitor and the Merrimack. I continued on, through endless battles.

That’s what this book mostly was, the battles—between the Union and the Confederacy, and between the Union generals and their superiors. Much time was given to McClelland’s difficulties with Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck. Once McClelland was given the book, the battles became between his successors and their commander-in-chief.

The battles are interesting, of course, but the book bogged down on them, focusing on them, almost to the exclusion of politics and other national issues. The materials I’ve gleaned from the Annals Of America have been much more useful for my book. When reading of battles, it becomes impossible to keep the generals straight, except for the few top dogs. So I was reading about some battle, an important battle, and how Brigadier General Smith pushed back Major General Jones’ division, with the help of General White’s cavalry and Colonel Black’s artillery. But which side was which of these on? At the beginning of the battle description the author gave the main units for each side, and who their generals were, but remembering all of them by the time you get a few pages into the description was impossible; at least for me it was.

The paperback has a few maps, none of which are particularly readable. A map with the units and their commanders on it would have been most helpful. Even just a simple map with cities and the location of armies would have been good. But the book didn’t have that.

When I got to the end of the book, I went back to the beginning to refresh myself on the Introduction/Preface/Forward—whatever was in the book. When I did so I discovered I hadn’t started from the beginning. I must have skipped the first few chapters and gone right into the battles. Silly me. So I read those chapters, which were about everything that happened before Fort Sumter. They were actually pretty good.

So, if I go to Amazon or Goodreads and rate this book, what will I give it? Certainly not better than 3 stars. It’s not a bad book; just not what I was looking for or needed for my research, not did I think it was a good general history of the war and the times. If I need to know something about a battle, I can go to Wikipedia (don’t laugh; for things like battles it’s actually quite accurate and useful, with good maps on the screen) for everything I need, supplemented by my two encyclopedias. So, I won’t be keeping this book, nor rereading it. Into the yard sale stack it will go.

Documenting America, Writing

My USA Non-fiction History Series

January 30, 2017 David Todd Leave a comment

On January 23, I wrote about the fiction series I’m developing of Christian church history. I recently completed the first draft of the second book in that series, and hope to publish it in about a month.

Another series of book-length works that I’m actively working on is my Documenting America series. I have one book out in it, titled Documenting America: Lesson’s from the United States’ Historical Documents. I published this as an e-book in May 2011. I was still learning the ropes of self-publishing, and had only a short story published. I wanted to get a longer work out, but my first novel wasn’t ready, I didn’t think. I wondered what I could do next, and realized I had this book about half done. So I decided to finish and publish it. I added the print book later that year.

I realized I had something here, something that could be expanded. Let me back up a moment, and tell how I came upon the idea for this series. Back around 1998 we—my wife and I—were shopping at Helping Hands, our local thrift store. I saw in the book section a 20 volume set titled The Annals of America. Published by the Encyclopedia Britannica people, it took documents from US history and re-published them. It only cost $25 for the 20 volumes, so I bought it, at the time not thinking beyond the pleasurable reading it would give me.

Then our local newspaper developed a program for guest editorials. I realized I could take an item from the Annals—all of which are outside of copyright—and build them into editorials. I would excerpt the document, write a little commentary about it, and show how it relates to an issue we deal with today. The problem would be doing all of that in 750 words. But I managed to do that, and had four of these editorials published.

Thinking about jump-starting my then-new publishing career, I thought I could develop this into a regular newspaper column. I began writing more. Then I realized the newspaper industry was dead, or close thereto, and learned that self-syndication is a very difficult path. I had written about seventeen of these editorials, however. These became the starting point on the first Documenting America. I fleshed it out to thirty chapters. It was nice not having the word limitation that newspaper columns had.

I wasn’t ready with a lot of new material, but realized DA could be made into a homeschool text, so I went ahead and did that, and published it in 2012. I haven’t sold many of those, though the original DA is my second highest selling book.

I also realized, as I found more and more sources for historical documents, that there was no end to the books I could write in this style. A friend who read the first one in advance of publication said he couldn’t see what aim I was trying to achieve. I thought about this, and decided it was to help people discover these historical documents, and start reading them. We get history filtered, when we can get it unfiltered in original documents.

I don’t know how well I achieved that with Documenting America and the homeschool edition, but they are out there; people have read them; a few have commented. I’m happy with what I developed. Perhaps someday it will catch on better.

As I said, there’s no end to the books I could write along these lines. Back around 2013 I began work on what I intended to be the second (or third) in the series: Documenting America: Civil War Edition. I was hoping to have this out during the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, which was 2011 to 2015. Alas, I didn’t make it. The busyness of life got in the way. Plus, I was finding it difficult to write the book I wanted to. It was hard to wade through documents, except them, and tie them to an issue of today. I got the book about 40% done, I figure. All events and chapters are identified. A dozen chapters are written, requiring only editing. Four more chapters are started, and three more have the document entered and almost excerpted. My hope is to have this finished and published by May.

After that, who knows? I could take any era in US history and do one of these books. Or, I could base them around key people in our history. Or, I could do them on topics, such as slavery, religion, education, defense, foreign affairs. I played around with titles once, and was up to forty before I had to think hard.

Titles are easy to come by; books a lot harder. Still, I can see myself trying to get one of these out a year, and building up a nice set of books. Will they sell? Who knows? And, I doubt if I’ll ever get forty written. If I did ten or twelve, I’ll feel like I accomplished something.

career, Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, Headshots, Preserve The Revelation, self-publishing, Writing

2017 Writing and Publishing Plans

January 16, 2017 David Todd Leave a comment

So, as stated in my last post, 2016 was a dismal year for book sales. And, actually, I had only one new item published in 2016, plus a couple of re-dos, and one print book added to an e-book that was already out. But now it’s 2017. Time to make new plans to feed old hopes. We’re 16 days into 2017, and I’ve already made progress.

I’m going to give two lists. The first is the new material I hope to work on this year, without regards to priority. The second is a sort of to-do list for the first few months. I can’t really see beyond that right now. I’ll need to update that to-do list based on what I actually achieve. I might do that quarterly.

Here’s the first list.

Finish my novel-in-progress, Preserve The Revelation, and publish both as an e-book and in print. When the year started I was about 80 to 85% done (best guess).
Finish my non-fiction book-in-progress, Documenting America: Civil War Edition, and publish both as an e-book and in print. I believe I’m about 40% done with this.
Finish my workplace humor novella-in-progress, The Gutter Chronicles: Volume 2, and publish both as an e-book and in print. I think I’m around 30% done with this.
Write a new story in the Danny Tompkins short story series. I think this will be the last. But, then, I also thought that about the last one. I’ve put a few words on paper, but haven’t yet typed anything.
Write a new story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series. While this series hasn’t sold, I want to stick with it for a while. I know where in the world the next story will take place, but a plot hasn’t yet come to me.
Finish Carlyle’s Chartism Through The Ages, a non-fiction work. It’s close to 80% complete, but the last 20% is going to be a killer.
Continue working on Thomas Carlyle Chronological Composition Bibliography. I’m not sure how close I am to finishing. I plan on working on it a little each morning at work. Perhaps I’ll finish it some day, perhaps not. I’m going to plod away at it for a while.

Here’s the second list. Some of these will have target dates, some won’t. The order is approximately first to last, though with plenty of overlap.

Jan 1: Begin reading for research for Documenting America: Civil War Edition. I achieved this. I’m reading a little almost every day for this.
Jan: Complete the first draft of Preserve The Revelation. I actually did this Saturday, Jan 14, at 8:10 p.m. It’s now with a beta reader while it simmers for a week or two before I tackle the edits on it. However, don’t think I’m ahead of schedule on this. My original goal was to finish it in 2016. I came close, but missed it.
Jan 31: Edit Doctor Luke’s Assistant and republish it. I re-read this in 2016 with an eye toward making edits in it. I’m ready to go with typing. This schedule should be doable.
Feb 15: Edit Preserve The Revelation once
Feb 28: Edit Preserve The Revelation again, which I hope will be the final edit.
Mar 15: Publish Preserve The Revelation. Much must be done for this to happen, some of which I’ve already set in motion.
Apr 1: Publish Headshots as a print book. I’m unclear of where I stand with this. In 2016 I edited and re-published the e-book version of this. I don’t remember how I did my edits, whether to a master file or to the e-book file. I’ll know more when I get back to this, probably early to mid-March.
Apr 2: Resume writing on Documenting America: Civil War Edition. Actually, I hope to write some on this much sooner than that. But I’ll be satisfied with not doing so until early April. My guess is I’ll have two months of writing to do on it.
Blog on a regular Monday and Friday schedule. I’ve already missed a couple of those. I’ll be satisfied if I have 40 to 50 blog posts for the year.

So, that’s my first quarter to-do list. How close I’ll come to achieving it the posts of this blog must tell. Stay tuned.

Carlyle, Documenting America, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Busy Writing`

January 9, 2017 David Todd Leave a comment

Well, I haven’t started 2017 very well in terms of blog faithfulness, have I? I’m trying to establish and keep a Monday and Friday posting schedule. Clearly, since this is my first post in 2017, I missed the first Monday and first Friday.

Yesterday I worked hard on my novel-in-progress, as I had Saturday. Between the two days I added just short of 6,000 words. As I wrote on Sunday, I remembered the blog and made a note to carve out some time to write a post. Alas, I didn’t do so.

Part of the problem is knowing what to write. I need to do a summary of 2016 post, for book sales, and maybe another one for writing progress. I’m waiting, however, on Smashwords to report possible late 2016 sales. I’m not expecting any, but I’ll wait for a little while. I can write a summary of my writing at any time, and will try to do that before long.

Then, I’m brainstorming a “publishing plans” post for 2017, as I’ve done for every year. I’m close to setting my annual goals, after which I can write that post. I think it’s going to be a week or so before I do.

So, for today, I’ll just mention current writing work.

As I said, I got back to work on Preserve The Revelation this weekend. The last time I’d written on it was Dec. 26. I had been thinking much about it in the interim, and had worked out some plot lines. So I was hoping the writing would go well, but, since getting back into it after a break is hard, I wasn’t sure. It turned out it did go well. I got away from the minutia of the travels of my protagonist, and began the last big external conflict. The last conflict he goes through will be internal. I’ve brainstormed that a little. I’m now down to the last 5,000 words I would say. That will make it an approximately 77,000 word book; shorter than I had figured, but not too short for the genre. If I can add 500 to 750 words several nights this week, I’ll be finished with it next weekend.

In the evenings, after I finish writing, I’m reading in two different books on the Civil War. This is research for my (currently) abandoned work, Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. I estimate I brought it to about 40 percent done in 2015, when I started struggling with it, and laid it aside. When I finish my current work-in-progress, I figure on shifting to that and trying to finish it. I think I can do it. It will be part of my 2017 publishing plan.

The other thing I’m doing is spending a half hour or so each morning, of my quiet time at work, building my Thomas Carlyle Chronological Composition Bibliography. I’m currently working in August 1840. My sense is that most of the hard work is behind me. From this point on Carlyle wrote mainly longer works, more easily traced and documented. He has a few miscellaneous things, but they are limited, and prior researchers seem to have them well documented. The hard part is over. I’m going to keep working on this. With luck, I’ll be able to publish it in 2018.

That brings my few readers up to speed with my current writing. I’m also planning a couple of writer interviews over the next month, so hopefully you’ll see those posts.

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

September 30, 2015 David Todd Leave a comment

My 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.

Then, 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.

That 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.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, self-publishing, Writing

Four Years of Self-Publishing

February 13, 2015 David Todd Leave a comment

February 13, 2011, my first self-published item went up for sale. It’s a short story, “Mom’s Letter”, a fictional piece which has autobiographical elements to it. It was a practice piece. When I made the decision to self-publish, I figured my first novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant, would be first. But it wasn’t quite ready, I wanted to get something published, I had the short story ready from work-shopping and a contest submittal, so I self-published it to practice the mechanics of the self-publishing platforms at Amazon and Smashwords. It went live on Amazon four years ago today.

Then I thought it would be good to do a book-length item, but I still wasn’t quite ready to put up my novel. What else to do? I decided I could put together fairly quickly my historical-political book, Documenting America: Lessons from the United States’ Historical Documents. So I did that, and it went live for sale in May 2011. Later in the year I managed to get out a paperback version of it.

Eventually I published that novel. Then another. Then another. Then a novella. Then another novel. Along the way I added more short stories, and an essay, and three more non-fiction books. By the middle of 2014 I had 17 items published, six of which were print and e-books, the rest e-books only.

I won’t say it’s been a wild ride, but it has resembled a roller coaster at times. Get a day with a sale and my spirits rise. A week with two sales and I’m really high. The come the months with one or two sales, or none, and I’m in the dumps. Just when sales seem to be increasing, Amazon changes something, and what few sales I have dry up like a tumbleweed.

Several things I’ve learned through this. I discovered I really don’t feel comfortable tooting my own horn and promoting myself. This is a disaster for a self-published author. Then, I really hate the process of making covers, doing the graphic arts work. I have no talent in the graphic arts. I’ve done some of my covers. They probably aren’t very good and should be replaced with ones professionally done. But then, I really enjoy the formatting process, both of e-books and print books. Except for the cover, I think I do okay with formatting. And, I enjoy editing my own work, something that most writers say they don’t enjoy.

Last, I have no idea what the future holds, but I know the busyness of life can sure sap what little writing time a person has. I have one completed project—a poetry book from years ago. An artist is working on a cover for it now. If she finishes it, I’ll publish the book within a month. It was done in 2006 and has been sitting, waiting for the right time. I have four other works started, all temporarily abandoned, waiting to see if life will turn in my favor any time soon. I’m purposely suppressing ideas as they come to be. No point in aggregating ideas for works that most likely will never be written.

Hopefully, this will all turn around in a year. Life will grant me time to write again, and I’ll get those four works done and many more. Meanwhile, I seem to be stuck on 345 sales of 17 items over 48 months.

David A Todd