Category Archives: expatriate life

Bible study, expatriate life, family, Genealogy, self-publishing, The Forest Throne

Writing Hopes for 2026

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Editing completed 1/5; hope to publish not later than 1/15.

Having posted a year in review for life in general, and a year in review for my writing activities, it’s now time to post writing plans for the new year. But should I call them plans? I’m in the midst of a move from Arkansas to Texas, a major life change and disruption. Can I even make plans, giving all that’s going on? I’m not going to get a lot done for the next month, and even a couple of months after that, I’ll be busy setting up the new house, finding doctors, learning how to do without CATV, etc.

But I have to have a plan. Perhaps I call it dreams, aiming very high, but probably having to settle for something less. First, I’ll type out my projects in progress, then move on to dreams.

  • Finish editing Vol. 7 of A Walk Through Holy Week and publish it. As of today (I’m wring this Friday evening for posting on Monday), I have two chapters to edit. Then a week of formatting and doing publishing activities. Hopefully I’ll have this published by Jan 15. Update Monday 5 Jan: I just finished the last edit. Next will be publishing tasks.
  • Do the final editing and publishing tasks for Vol. 8 of A Walk Through Holy Week. That will finish the project. All eight volumes will be published, and I can look toward promoting the series.
  • Finish transcribing my father-in-law’s, Wayne’s, World War 2 letters. I’m able to do two of them a day before fatigue sets in. As of Friday, I have thirty letters to go. That means I should finish the transcribing in mid-January. Then I’ll be putting a book together, combining the letters into one file, synchronizing his war journal  with them, and publishing it as a book. I don’t know for sure how long this will take. The war journal is typed but not yet digitized. So I’m not going to put a timeline on this. Plus, this is just a project for family and the hometown museum, not with commercial intentions. So there’s no real deadline. If I find the time, I’ll try to combine the letter files into book format before the end of the month, and be ready to work in the journal once my office is set up in Texas.
  • The clean-up and organizing prior to moving has resulted finding more letters from our years as expatriates in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. So I need to republish those books. Plus my family asked me to add more photos to the Kuwait book. So I’ll do that in odd moments during the year. My loose deadline is the end of the year for these two projects.
  • At some point in the year, I want to get back to writing on The Forest Throne series. Two volumes are published, and two more are planned. These are short, middle-grade books that will be somewhat quick to write. However, I don’t think I’ll put any deadline on this.
  • One other project that is somewhat pie-in-the-sky, is the story of my maternal ancestry. I’ve made some amazing discoveries as I’ve researched my ancestry. Many people have told me I need to write it down to preserve it. So I finally made a start at it. Tentatively titled Stories, Secrets, Legends, and Lies, I’ve written 2580 words in it. Once again, this will be a book for family, not for commercial sales. It’s also a type of book to be written when the spirit moves, rather sitting down and working on it day by day.

There are other things on my writing projects list that I could mention here, but I seriously doubt I can complete everything included in this post. I’ll have to come back in a couple of months, see where I am, and modify the list accordingly.

expatriate life, family, letters, self-publishing

The Saudi Years In Letters

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The work is nearly complete on this non-commercial project. My proof copy should arrive by Wednesday next week.

Family, friends, and regular readers of this blog know that we lived in Saudi Arabia once upon a time. That was in mid-1981 to 1983. Our children were 2 1/2 and 5 mo. when we first went there. The company I worked for at the time, Black & Veatch, had lots of engineering work in the Saudi Eastern Province, and I was one of those sent there for civil-environmental engineering work.

At the time, the Iran-Iraq war was in its second year. The country was still rather primitive. The road network was good, and rapidly being improved. The shops were full of the world’s goods; you could find almost everything you wanted (except when all shipments of peanut butter were held up in customs for a month). Plenty of other expatriates lived and worked nearby, and we struck up fast friendships. And we had a church to go to, meeting with permission of the Saudi government on the condition that no evangelism of Saudi natives take place.

But the one thing we didn’t have was a telephone. That infrastructure was way behind in development, and only offices, stores, government offices, and probably a few wealthy Saudis had phones. We could go to the B&V office and make calls (frightfully expensive), or, if previously arranged, receive one.  So to keep in touch with the home front, we wrote letters. That seems almost anachronistic now, but a fair amount of our time was devoted to writing letters. I wrote about this before concerning our years in Kuwait from 1988-1990.

Transcribed in 2020-2022 and published in 2022, this was my first collection of letters to publish.

Back in 2020 to 2022, I spent a lot of time transcribing letters from the Kuwait years and making a book out of them. It was just for family members. I think a total of four copies were bought (3 by me) before I removed it from sale. My second-oldest grandson read it and seemed to like it. He enjoyed reading errors in his mother’s letters. She was 6, 7, 8, 9 years-old at the time. His family’s copy of the book is on the bookshelf in his bedroom.

Having completed the Kuwait years letters, I took a break for a while, other than bringing our letters-in-hand to a better state of organization. Then, in early 2024, while recovering from my first stroke and not getting out much or doing original writing, I decided to transcribe the Saudi letters. I had almost all of them done by September when I had my second, bigger stroke and my open-heart surgery. In October, our daughter visited us and began the process of selecting photos to illustrate the book and scanning them.

The letters, along with my 1983 travel journal.

I completed the scanning last month and cropped them and loaded them into the book document over the last two weeks, taking time to arrange the photos in some logical way relative to the text of the letters. I finished the process yesterday. A quick pass through the book showed that my pagination was acceptable. So, this morning I “slapped” a cover together and uploaded the book to Amazon. One photo needed adjusting, which I got done. The Zon then said the book was acceptable. I ordered a proof copy. I’ll use the copy to doing any proof-reading needed, and will have the finished product ready in a month, maybe less.

This book is more richly illustrated than the Kuwait letters book was. I’m coming to learn a little about working with photos and how to use the tools at my disposal. I’m far from an expert, but I’m for sure better at it now than I was three years ago.

I’m scheduled to make a presentation to our letter writers group on letter collections when we meet on June 10. My voice has not fully recovered from the stroke and seizures, but I think it has enough to allow me to make myself legible. Thus, I think I will present this rather than one of the letter collections I’ve read.

book reviews, expatriate life

Book Review: from a land Far, Far Away

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A cheap cover, basic layout, but good editing. But hey, for 91¢ and Tate Publishing, what can you expect?

Sometimes you pick up a book and don’t remember where you got it. This one we seem to have picked up in a thrift store named “Heart & Hand” for the inflated price of 91¢! It’s from a land Far, Far Away: Letters From the Front Line of the War On Terror by Wes Trueblood. He served as an English teacher, a civilian employee for the US Military. Earlier in his life, Trueblood had been in the military. In one letter he mentioned he was “no longer an ordained minister”, so that’s also an item on his resume.

The book is a series of letters Trueblood wrote to a mailing list back home—family, friends, and friends of friends. The letters told his impressions of the countries he went to: first Iraq in 2007, then after a year in the USA, to Afghanistan in 2009. The book looked interesting especially due to our time in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

In terms of information, the book did not disappoint. Trueblood’s impressions and conclusions about the two countries pretty much match my own. He was hampered in learning about the countries because he was essentially in a war zone and could not get out among the local population.

Thus he gave a lot of information about the bases he was at. Who lived with him, as roommate and as other base residents? What were the site rules? What type of recreation did they have? Were they in danger? After a while, it got tiring. Trueblood kept trying to distinguish between miliary people and civilians (such as him) who worked for the military. Those parts became kind of boring after a while. I read them all, but not closely enough to really understand the differences.

One other problem was that the “letters” were really a newsletter sent by e-mail. It reads differently than letters do. That was a little off-putting for me.

So, should you read this book? is it a keeper? How do I rate it? I think you would have to ha e a special interest in these countries or in this part of the world to make this book worth your while. It is now a keeper for me, and will go straight out to the donation pile. And I rate only 3-stars. It is really 3.5 stars for me. It’s well put together, and I’m glad I read it, but the stars rating is for others, not for me.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, expatriate life, letters, self-publishing, Short Stories, Writing

August Progress, September Goals

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Vol. 2 may be published this month—if I can make my goal.

Well, August was another strange month, as I continued to recover from the two freak household accidents I had in July. While my output was certainly affected, I wasn’t shut down from some progress. Here’s how I did relative to my goals.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Did this. I had lots to write about.
  • I’m not making a goal of attending any writers meetings, partly from not knowing how my surgery and illnesses will lay me up, and partly because one meeting may be cancelled due to lack of a venue. I went to one meeting.
  • Complete two editorial passes through A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol 2. I managed to do this. Actually, I made three editorial passes through and have declared it “Done”. Publishing tasks to follow.
  • Figure out any final changes to the latest Danny Tompkins story, then finish and publish it. Did this, and published the short story on Aug 5. Made changes to it over the next few days.
  • Complete the commentary between letters. If I can get that done, begin selection of photos and insert them in the book. Did this. Completed commentary, Introduction, proofreading the letters and commentary, and started selecting photos.
  • And, one more for good measure: Make a start at outlining Vol 3 of A Walk Through Holy Week. Nope, did not work on this at all.
Hopefully, I’ll come very close to finishing my next book of expatriate year letters this month.

September will be an odd month. My heart surgery will be on Sept 30, and I have lots of pre-op stuff before that. So I don’t plan on any writing this month. Publishing tasks will take precedence.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
  • Attend three writing group meetings. I present at the one on Sept 10.
  • Complete publishing tasks for A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol. 2 and publish it to Amazon. I may have to do so with a temporary cover.
  • Complete adding photos to the Saudi years letters book. A really stretching-it goal would be to do enough formatting to order a review copy.
  • Spend at least a little time organizing Vol. 3 of A Walk Through Holy Week.

That’s it, and it may be more than I can accomplish. But it’s better to have a goal that requires you to work hard and efficiently.

Bible study, Danny Tompkins Short Stories, expatriate life, Short Stories

July Progress, August Goals

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This was a strange month. I expected to undergo open-heart surgery on July 22, but it was postponed when I injured my leg. Still waiting on that to heal so the surgery can be rescheduled. But the leg injury has hurt my movements and kept me from working at my writing as much as I’d hoped. Nevertheless, I did have accomplishments.

  • Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. Got this done, with the help of scheduled posts.
  • Make as much progress as possible on Volume 2 of A Walk Through Holy Week. It would be nice to have the first draft done before July 22. Completed the first draft on July 27!
  • Attend one writing group meeting. The two other meetings are cancelled due to venue problems during the summer. Did this. The other two meetings stayed cancelled
  • Complete the Introduction and occasional commentary of the Saudi letters book. I got the Introduction done in the last few days. The commentary is started but not yet done.
  • Possibly complete and publish a short story I’ve been working on, the next in the Danny Tompkins series. I worked on this some more, so that it’s more or less done. Some comments from my critique group are not yet fully addressed.

Setting goals going forward is difficult, because I don’t know how my healing will go—not only with my leg but with a new shoulder/arm injury. I might have heart surgery late in the month, or, more likely, it will slip into September. So how do I plan for writing tasks with such uncertainty?

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. I may use scheduled posts again.
  • I’m not making a goal of attending any writers meetings, partly from not knowing how my surgery and illnesses will lay me up, and partly because one meeting may be cancelled due to lack of a venue.
  • Complete two editorial passes through A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol 2. I should be able to get this done even with uncertainty of schedule.
  • Figure out any final changes to the latest Danny Tompkins story, then finish and publish it.
  • Complete the commentary between letters. If I can get that done, begin selection of photos and insert them in the book.
  • And, one more for good measure: Make a start at outlining Vol 3 of A Walk Through Holy Week.

That’s enough. I’ll be lucky to get this much done.

expatriate life, family, travel

The Saudi Years Letters: The End Is In Sight

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All our letters from the years in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps not the best way to preserve them, but I think it will work.

Time for my Monday blog post. I recently finished reading one book, and abandoned another. But I’m not quite ready to post reviews on them, so I’ll set them aside for now. What to write about?

Recently I’ve written about two special projects I’m working on. One is scanning and e-filing poetry critiques I did at internet poetry boards. The other was transcribing letters from our years in Saudi Arabia with the intention of putting them in book form for our family’s use. The scanning project still has a lot of work. I am unlikely to finish it before the end of summer.

But the Saudi letters are well along. In fact, I finished transcribing them on May 9. I then set about transcribing the travel journal from our 1983 Asia trip. I finished that on Tuesday, I think it was. That gave me a chance to breath and concentrate on the other project.  In an intense three days I finished scanning the smaller of two remaining notebooks and thumbed through the other to separate the critiques from miscellaneous writing.

Letters and postcards stamped many places as our time as expatriates included travel.

But the work of the next part of the project—loading the Saudi letters into a Word document and making a book out of it—remained. While the transcription work was somewhat daunting, I knew the book organization would also be as well. But I had to get started. Saturday evening, Lynda and I were watching something on TV. I decided this was a perfect time to multi-task. I opened Word, created a document for the book, and began to copy and load the letters into it.

I discovered an easy way to do this on my laptop. During a one hour TV program, I was able to copy in all the letters from 1981, a total of 65 letters. They ranged through all twelve months, but most were from June (when I went to Saudi before the family) to December. I was pleased with the progress.

Sunday night, while watching two programs, over about an hour and a half, using this efficient copying process, I was able to copy in all the letters from 1982 and 1983. This was 159 additional letters, making for 224 for our Saudi adventure.

Unlike the letters from the Kuwait years, this collection includes a fair number of incoming letters from family and friends.

I felt good about this and sat back, feeling a weight off my shoulders. Then I remembered that I had transcribed three letters from 1984. That was after we were back in the States. But these were letters from friends from our years in the Kingdom, from people who recently left for their home or were still there. That will bring the number of letters to 227, close to the same number as the Kuwait years.

As the document now sits, it consists of 102,000 words. When I add in the travel diary and the last three letters, it will come to about 109,000. That compares to 112,000 words for the completed Kuwait book. But once I add an introduction, and bits of commentary along the way, I suspect the word count for the Saudi book will be closer to 115,000. Strange, perhaps, that the two books should be so close to the same length. Sure, we were in both places almost exactly the same amount of time, 2 1/2 years each. But in Kuwait we had a computer and tended to write longer letters. I expected the Saudi book would finish out shorter than the Kuwait book.

For the Saudi years, we had a lot more incoming letters in our collection, the bulk of them from our two maternal grandparents. When we were in Kuwait, both ladies were too old to write, and indeed both died while we were there, a week apart. But we also had a phone part of the time in Kuwait, which tended to reduce the number of letters by a little.

So what’s next? First, adding the three letters from 1984. Second, adding the travel journal from 1983, which must be spread out over the dates the entries were made. That will actually be a mere hour’s work, which I hope to accomplish today. Next will be writing an introduction. Probably another hour or two. After that, the commentary to be spread around the letters, giving a little context to what was going on in our lives. That’s going to take some time, and I’m not committing to a timeline for completing it.

After that will be proofreading the whole thing. I’m not looking forward to that. It’s tedious comparing the transcription in the book to the original letters. That will take a couple of weeks. Last will be adding photographs and putting the book into publishable formatting. I’m thinking of doing that in late July and August when I’m convalescing. Oops, I haven’t told you about that, but that story will have to wait.

If all goes well, I should have the book finished and published before Christmas. I’ll print off enough copies of it then unpublish it, but leave it uploaded to Amazon just in case the family wants more copies.

Thus, I see this second letter transcription project coming to an end. It was sort of a labor of love, with perhaps a little more emphasis on labor than on love. Will there be another transcription project in the future, maybe of the couple of hundred pre-Saudi letters Lynda and I sent to parents and other relatives? Almost certainly, but don’t hold your breath. I need to breathe a little first, and concentrate on my regular writing.

Bible study, expatriate life, letters, poetry

Will Be Writing Again Soon

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Vol 1 is published, Vols. 4, 5, 6, and 7 are written and edited. Vol. 8 is written and asking to be edited. When it will happen if somewhat of a mystery to me.

I finished writing A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol. 8 on April 1st. That’s the first draft. I need to do at least two editing passes before “putting it on the shelf” to await my writing Vols. 2 and 3. In the past I’ve found getting a little distance from the first draft to help the editing to go better. Normally I would start on the next writing project, but given that it’s another Bible study in the same series I decided not to rush into it. I did, however, take an hour or two one morning to do a little planning and programming on Vol. 2.

Meanwhile, during the last two weeks of Life Group lessons, which my co-teacher taught, I got some ideas that I need to work into the last two chapters. I think I may incorporate those either tonight or tomorrow.

My time has been taken up with my two special projects. I think I wrote about these before. One is transcription of letters from our years in Saudi Arabia. I try to complete two or three letters a day. After a slow start, I’m in a groove this. Letters from 1981-1982 are done, and I’m four months into 1983, the last year. It looks as if I have another 40 letters to go. That means I will likely finish this around early May, so long as interruptions are minimal.

The other special project is scanning and e-filing the many poetry critiques I did at various poetry boards around 2001-2009. I printed a lot of these and saved them in 3-ring binders. Most of these were at the now-defunct Poem Kingdom, but I also hung out at several other sites and critiqued. My estimate has been that I critiqued somewhere between 500 and 1,000 poems. No, that’s not an exaggeration. I saved many, but not all, of the critiques I made.

So far, I’ve scanned, formatted, checked for accuracy of the scan, and saved 106 poetry critiques. These came out of a 1-inch binder. My estimate is that I have 75 sheets left to process in this notebook, which will probably be 70 critiques—meaning 175 critiques. When I finish that, next to tackle is a 2.5-inch binder stuffed with critiques. That means I’ll be well over 500 critiques. What I can’t remember is if there is a third notebook or if this is it.

If I don’t have another notebook, I will likely finish this project some time in the fall. If in fact there’s a third notebook hiding somewhere on my shelves, then the project will likely continue into 2025.

So the question I’m dealing with whether I can get some book editing done while also maintaining my pace on the special projects. I won’t be able to test that until later this week. I have medical appointments today and Tuesday and two writer meetings on Thursday. I’m sure I’ll make a report on this in a future blog.

expatriate life, family, Genealogy, letters

Progress on Two Special Projects

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Genealogy papers on the left, Saudi letters (from 1982) on the right.

With the after-effects of the stoke having slowed my typing, I’ve now for just under a week been back to writing. Typing is still slow, but improving. It’s good to be back in the saddle. That doesn’t mean just on writing, but also on two special projects.

One of those is continuing to scan my genealogy research papers and safe them electronically. I’ve blogged about this before. More than half of my notebooks are culled and the contents either digitized or discarded. But all the easy parts are done. Most of what’s left are for the four family lines I spent the most time on in my research. I’m having to go through them more carefully. Some of the papers, mainly original documents I obtained, I’ll still save after scanning.

I worked on this last Friday and Saturday. I found that my electronic file saving system works, but also that I had a lot more folders to add. Saturday, beginning work on a new notebook, I realized I had in it mainly ancestors for whom I had no electronic folders. Since my folders are alphabetized first on Ahnentafel number, and also indicate the generation of the ancestor, it takes some time to get the folders properly created. Most of my time Saturday was spent on folder creation and organization, but did get some papers scanned, saved, and discarded.  I also managed to scoop up about a half-dozen sheets that needed filing elsewhere (i.e. not in a genealogy notebook that’s a keeper) and got them filed. It’s those stragglers that are always a hindrance to keeping my work area clean.

The other special project is transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia, 1981-1983. I did this for the Kuwait years, 1988-1990 (and some after that) and put them in a book for family members. I blogged about that several times.

Now I’m on the Saudi letters. It’s quite different. No displacement due to war; the kids were little so no letters by them; no phone so we wrote more letters; but no computer so they were all handwritten.

I collected the letters into one bin and collated them some time ago. In early January (I think it was), I began transcribing 1981 letters. They were all done except for the two Christmas letters we sent that year, and one or two more, when I had my stroke. So, before I started back on my writing work, I knuckled down and, with my right hand still typing-impaired, got them done about a week and a half ago.

The total count for the seven months in 1981 was 53 unique letters. There were other items in the bind, but mainly empty envelopes and duplicate letters, where we photocopied a letter and sent it to several people, usually with a personal note attached.

I pulled out the box of letters for 1982 in preparation for the next phase of this task. I counted 75 letters, I think it was (some of them postcards), and some possibly duplicates. A few envelopes felt like they might have been empty. The stack for 1983 looks about the same size.

I don’t have a deadline for either of these projects. The end of 2024 is sort of a loose goal, and, I think, very doable so long as I don’t get lazy. And so long as my regular writing and home upkeep doesn’t overpower my time.

American Colonial History, Bible study, Documenting America, expatriate life, goals, letters

January Progress, February Goals

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UPDATE: Everything below I wrote last Friday, in anticipation of where I would be at the end of the month. I didn’t know I was going to have a stroke on Saturday. More on that in a future post.

I didn’t really set goals for January. It took me so long to think through what my goals for all of 2024 would be that it was well into the month before I could even think about monthly goals. So I’ll state some goals as if I had made them, or pull them from my annual goals.

  • Attend two writers group meetings. One meeting was cancelled due to weather. I attended the other.
  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. I accomplished this, with a meaningful blog on all days.
  • Get to work on A Walk Through Holy Week, Volume 8. I started this on Jan. 22, a little earlier than expected. As of the end of the month, I’m more than 50 percent done with it. So far the writing has flowed easily. UPDATE: I’m not 50 % donel
  • Finish editing and publish A Walk Through Holy Week, Volume 1. I finished the editing around Jan. 10th and got to work on formatting for publication. Bogged down a little on the cover, as I had to first create a template for the whole series. The e-book template was done on Jan. 26. 
  • Begin reading in a source for the next Documenting America book. I did only a little of this. I enjoyed what I was reading—about debates in the Boston newspapers in 1774-75. But I wasn’t sure, from the little I read, that this was the right subject for the next volume.
  • Finalize and publish the latest short story in the Danny Tompkins series. Nothing done on this.
  • Begin transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia. I’m hoping to start this in February. I started this in January, around the 15th. I’m not sure why; it just seemed right. As of now, I have completed all the letters for 1981 (a partial year), and made a small start on 1982. Lots more to go. UPDATE: I still have 6 or 7 letters to go.

So, all in all a good month. What about February? Here’s what it looks like to me.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
  • Attend two writers meetings.
  • Make major progress on Volume 8 of A Walk Through Holy Week. Based on January progress, I might be able to complete the first draft in February. UPDATE: Probably only 60 percent.
  • Finish all publishing tasks for Vol. 1 of AWTHW, both e-book and print version.
  • Make a couple of new ads on Amazon. Maybe one for There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel and one for A Walk Through Holy Week, Volume 1.
  • Continue transcribing our letters from Saudi Arabia.
  • Continue reading in some source for the next Documenting America book.

And that will do it. My typing is impaired by the stroke. Still not ready to pound the keys at a rapid pace.

Bible study, Documenting America, expatriate life, family, goals, holidays, Writing

A Roaring Start to 2024

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Dateline: Monday, January 15, 2024, Martin Luther King Jr. Day

I was about ready to leave The Dungeon and go upstairs, grab my sledgehammer, and fix the modem that way. Fortunately, our internet came up before such drastic repairs were needed.

It’s my regular blogging day. But I woke up this morning to find we have no internet. Thus, I can’t get to the blog to type in a post. I’m writing this on my computer, and will post it whenever the internet comes back to us.

Actually, it has been a horrible weekend for technology. Friday evening our cable kept going haywire. Picture breaking up, sound breaking up, occasional total loss of signal. We suffered through and saw a few things. Wound up streaming something via Amazon Prime, which worked. Or was that Saturday? The days are running together.

Anyhow, called Cox. They said they would have a technician out between 3 and 5 yesterday, and said it might involve a $75 charge. We had internet all day yesterday, but no cable.

The Cox tech was a no-show. But it snowed yesterday, a little over 2 inches, and the temperature never got above 1°, so I kind of understand why the tech didn’t make it. A call telling us that would have been nice. Alas, service providers of every type have ceased being proactive in communicating with their customers in this age of easy communication. Will it do any good to call the office today, on the holiday?

My post today was to be about January being off to a good start. I am one or two days away from the last editing pass through A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1. Granddaughter Elise got the cover art done. So either tomorrow or Wednesday I’ll begin publishing tasks.

The first week of the year, while in Lake Jackson, I had a conversation with Elise about the next book in The Forest Throne series, and she read the prologue I wrote based on our prior conversations. She loved it, reading it aloud while our daughter was in the room and putting much drama into the reading. So a good start there on a project just a little down the road. Also, youngest grandson Elijah wanted to have a conversation about the fourth book in the series, which will be about the youngest child in the Wagner family. That book is planned for about four years from now. But we had the conversation and I got some ideas on paper. I may type them up and see what that future book will look like.

Sven months of letters from the Saudi years. The ones on the left are transcribed. The ones on the right to be done. It’s a big project.

I began transcribing the letters from our Saudi Arabia years. This was one of my realistic goals. On Fri-Sat-Sun, I typed five letters each day. I’m going to limit myself to five a day so as to keep the project from overwhelming me as the letters from the Kuwait years did. I have no idea how many total letters there are. As I look at the piles, it appears to be about 300, which is close to double the number in the previous project. But as we had no typewriter (or computer in 1981-83), the letters will likely average a little shorter.

I did a little reading for research for the next book in the Documenting America series. Not much, but a little. What I read, however, makes me wonder if I’m on the right track with this volume. I’ll discuss that more in a future blog post.

I also have made a good start on an author interview for a future blog post. Possibly today I’ll be able to pull my interview questions together and send them to him.

Well, our internet just came up, so I will wrap this up and post this. I’ll have to leave The Dungeon to go upstairs to see if the cable TV is up. I’m not optimistic. But I’m still optimistic in general about 2024. I still expect to see those realistic goals met. But we will see.