Category Archives: family

expatriate life, family, home improvements, letters, self-publishing

Some Projects Completed

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Transcribed in 2020-2022 and published in 2022, this was my first collection of letters to publish. Now it’s my fourth to be revised and finally completed.

Back on April 3 this year, I posted about what things I wanted to accomplish over the next months, or more likely a year.  A few times since then I’ve reported about progress toward the items I mentioned in that post. Such as getting my income taxes done and in on time.

The list was ambitious. It included not only things I was working on at the time, but also writing projects for once I completed other things. As I look back at that post and list, it’s hard to see myself ever getting all those things done. But it’s time to look back and see how I’ve done in the last few months.

The thing that prompted this was completing, yesterday afternoon, a significant revision to the book of letters from our years living in Kuwait. This included: adding recently found letters; adding in Lynda’s diary from the time she was working in Kuwait as a Red Cross nurse after the Gulf War; and, at the suggestion of our children, adding a bunch more photos to it. All of that took a lot of time, especially with interruptions. But Wednesday I added the last of the photos and began the re-pagination check, yesterday I completed the check. I found I had four blank pages where they weren’t supposed to be, so went scrambling and added more.

I adjusted the cover and uploaded everything. In checking the book online, I discovered some formatting was still off. I spent the better part of two to three hours fine-tuning the formatting and pagination. Finally it was done around lunch time. Amazon’s bot review declared all good, so I ordered my author copy. ‘Twill be here in about ten days.

So what’s next? That April 3 post included grandiose plans of new books to be written. Maybe I will shift to those. But first, I need to find locations on closet and garage shelfs for the things I got out to work on the three books of letters. And I need desperately to catch up on the family budget to see where we stand financially. I’m sure we’re in good shape, but I need to know. And I need to get back to the never-ending job of unpacking and organizing following our move.

I declare the next few days, or maybe a week, as maintenance time. Stowing, budgeting, unpacking, minor household improvements. These shall fill my time until I get to a stopping point and feel released to do some writing. This includes some organization of computer files, which I discovered in finalizing the Kuwait letters book are woefully discombobulated. Hopefully I’ll also be able to up my reading.

books, family, letters, memories, self-publishing

The World War 2 Letters of Wayne Cheney

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The Pacific was Wayne’s war theatre.

Last week, actually around June 13, I finished my latest book project. It is The World War 2 Letters of Wayne B. Cheney. He was Lynda’s dad—my father-in-law, of sorts. He and Lynda’s mom divorced long before I came into the family.

Like many soldiers, Wayne wrote letters home, and received many in return, both from family members, townsfolks, and other armed forces personnel. He wasn’t able to keep most of the incoming letters, given how his base kept changing in the South Pacific. But his parents kept most of the ones he wrote home. When Wayne died in 1996, we brought those letters to our house. There they sat in a green plastic bin, moved from Bentonville to Bella Vista in 2002.

It was about this time last year that I decided the time had come to do something with them. I decided to transcribe them, put them into book form for easier reading by family members, then donate the letters themselves to some worthy institution.

From a Kansas town to an island=hopping war. See the world from the nose of a B-24.

Wayne enlisted in the fall of 1942 at age 18. He was hoping to get on the ground crew in the Army Air Forces, but instead found himself in school to become an air gunner. He was assigned at nose gunner in B-24 Liberators and saw action in the South Pacific. He was either based on or participated in bombing missions over some of the famous islands in the war history, such as Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Truk, Tarawa. His time there was over when the war had moved on to Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

In addition to the letters, Wayne wrote a war diary. He transcribed parts of this over the years, but only the parts dealing with actual combat. He mixed that with later explanations of what his modern impressions were about what was going on in 1942-1945. I did a full transcription of the diary, interspersing the entries with the letters.

Actually, the letters are not exciting stuff. Subject to forward base censorship (and occasionally running afoul of the censors), he couldn’t write a lot about what he was doing in the war effort. So there was lots about doing laundry, rigging something in his barracks, who he received letters from, talk about what must be happening on Kansas farms.

This book is not a commercial project, and I doubt anyone except immediate family members will be interested. Maybe someday a great-grandkid will ask about what their ancestor did in that war they covered in history class and someone will pull a copy of the book off the shelf. But should anyone else be interested in this small piece of WW2 history, it’s available on Amazon.

Fair warning: I have not yet received my proof copy, so I haven’t been able to go through an actual book to make sure the photos and print came out okay. That’s because I had the proof copy sent to the wrong address. Still waiting for it to be forwarded.

 

family, letters, miscellaneous

Hitting the Wall

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That’s what happened to me yesterday. I hit the wall. By 9 a.m., I felt like I couldn’t do another thing. Yet, I had done very little except for Monday morning stock market work. I couldn’t work family finances, at which I’m falling desperately behind, couldn’t work on my three letter projects, couldn’t work on post-move organization. I did manage to get my wife to her cardiology test appointment. I also managed to get a long message chain done with a newly found cousin on Lynda’s side.

Today has been somewhat better. But here is it not quite 4 in the afternoon and I’m out of steam. I guess I’ll try to read for a while.

family, moving

Being Lazy Today

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The mirror over the piano was tricky to hang, but the guys did a good job on it.

Yes, taking it easy today. Remembering, though, our service personnel who died while serving. No one in my immediate family did. Lynda had a great-uncle killed in the first day of fighting on Guadalcanal in WW2.

We just finished a busy three or four days. Our oldest grandchild, Ephraim, graduated from high school. The ceremony was Saturday evening. Uncomfortable stadium seating, lots of walking, some rain. But the accomplishment was excellent and I’m glad I was able to witness the event.

Also on Saturday, our son Charles and his husband came in for the graduation (also for a birthday in Mario’s family) and became our first overnight visitors since moving here. We went to the furniture store on Saturday and, with their help, finalized the purchase of living room furniture. It will arrive on Thursday.

We bought this grouping on our trip to Greece in 1988.

On Sunday, as Lynda and I skipped church to be with Charles & Mario, and to hang pictures. Or I should say I found pictures stuffed in packing boxes in closets and they hung them. I have no artistic sensibilities and Lynda has no energy. So I got the pictures out, fetched and handed tools, and they found good places and did the hanging. We concentrated on the living room and breakfast nook. With furniture selected, we knew what spaces we had to fill.

Once the furniture arrives, with the walls decorated in the room we use the most, it will seem less like camping out and more like home. There’s still a lot of pictures to hang, but we had done all we could and they are for other rooms that can wait another day.

Cloth items bought in China in 1983 on the left; our kids’ graduation photos on the right.

And this relatively small amount of exertion over a couple of days has worn me out. I expect to do relatively little today. Maybe some household budgeting. Maybe get through 20 or 30 pages in my current read. Re-stow a few boxes and photos; prepare other boxes to go out next recycling day. Empty one box of table games to put in closet spaces no longer occupied by wall hangings. Perhaps work a little on my three books of letters projects. Maybe write a letter. And watch some TV.

Try to come to Tuesday rested up, ready for regular routines with a smidgeon of helping a friend out with transportation to a couple of things.

 

family, stock market, Writing

Getting Things Done, Version N+1

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It’s a mess for a while, but it will all come together fairly quickly.

Retirement sure is a busy time. As much as I have to do, I wonder how I survived 45 years in the working world (not including 8 years pre-college graduation). But I did, and am now—surviving, that is.

By saying “surviving” I’m not implying a lack of enjoyment. I have plenty of enjoyment times: my noon reading time on the covered, screened patio, evening TV time, before bed reading time, morning devotions, church activities, frequent times with our daughter’s family. Yes, in the midst of my self-imposed busyness, I have plenty of time for enjoyment.

Take this last week, for instance.

  • On Saturday, I pulled out a large box of packed photos with the intent of sorting them and finding permanent filing for them. That job is half done, and the office floor is a mess. I hope to finish today, Monday.
  • Last week I made major progress on the book of my father-in-law’s World War 2 letters and journal. As of work completed yesterday, I have only 27 letters left to proofread, a one-day task including adding them to the book file. Between 20-40 letters require comparison to the original letters, a Tuesday task. Hopefully I can get that done in a day.
  • Then I scan to text his war journal, which may not be as many pages as I thought it was. No prediction on when I will get to that, though hopefully it will be this week.
  • Now that our home in Bella Vista AR has sold, it’s time to get serious on replacing the tub/shower in our bathroom with a walk-in shower, and buying the furniture we need (chairs and a table, maybe a replacement couch). I’d like to get the ball rolling on that the week, but fear it will slide to next. I did a little scouting last week on Friday.
  • Two of the ideas for future books, which are far enough out that I can’t predict if/when I’ll ever get to them, have started to gel in my mind. I hope to have some outlines done, at least in part, by the end of the week.

So yes, life is busy. At least in part fulfilling. Oh yes, two more things I should really do this week: Catch up on mail/filing/budgeting/bill paying. And figuring out how much I have to pay the IRS in quarterly payments this year in anticipation in next year’s taxes. That’s a two or three hour, spreadsheet-driven task I’m not looking forward to but which will be very good to have behind me.

America, Bible study, books, Documenting America, family, letters, self-publishing

What’s Next?

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This will certainly be task one, making needed additions and corrections.

As I reported in my last post, my 8-volume Bible study is done. I suppose nothing is ever done for the self-published writer, because there’s always things to do (improve covers, check for formatting errors, fix the dreaded typos once found). But I can lay all that aside for a while and move on to more pressing items.

I hope I get back to this series fairly soon.

But what’s next? I’ve been thinking that through for some time and have been developing a mental to-do list. Monday evening I started writing the items down. Let me list them here. It’s a combination of revising existing works, completing long-planned works, and trying to figure out if anything that’s been keeping my brain from resting is worth pursuing. I’ll give the list as bullet points.

  • Do my income taxes. The deadline approacheth. I started on this yesterday. Looks like I owe the IRS.
  • Make additions and corrections to the book of letters from our years in Saudi Arabia. I added the recently found letters on Tuesday and re-formatted the chapter. I need to check the formatting of the entire book, then re-publish.
  • Make additions and corrections to the book of letters from our years in Kuwait. That will include adding a lot more photos.
  • Put together the book of my father-in-law’s service in WW2. This includes syncing up his war letters with his war journal, and finding enough photos to add a little spice. I started on this on Wednesday, loading the first 20-odd letters into a file. On Thursday I proofread them and made corrections. I can see that I’m going to have to do this differently.
  • Write/publish book three in The Forest Throne series, tentatively titled You Can’t Change The Past.
  • Write/publish book four in The Forest Throne series, tentatively titled Lost In Time.
  • Decide if I want to do any more books in the Documenting America series. Ideas for more books have been refusing to leave me alone, but they take a lot of research and writing.
  • Decide if I want to write a book with the tentative title Nature: The Artwork of God. That’s another thing that’s taking up brain space.
  • Get a start on a couple of essays I’d like to write and publish.

That’s enough for both short-range and medium-range planning. I’ll have to see how it goes.

 

 

books, Decumulation, family

A Week and a Day

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The view this morning from my computer desk in The Dungeon. The rest of the house looks more or less the same, probably a little worse.

That’s all we have left at our current home. Just a week and a day. Then we move to Texas.

The whole house is discombobulated now, with packed boxes, half-packed boxes, packing materials, sorted and unsorted stuff strewn everywhere. If you’ve moved anytime recently, you get it. We haven’t moved since 2002. If you’ve downsized, you get it. We up-sized in 2002 and remained in accumulation mode, rather than decumulation.

Ah, well, decumulation began in 2020, when I decided I’d had my dad’s old tools for 22 years, had done nothing with them, and that other people needed them more than I did. I found lots of buyers on Facebook Marketplace. Before long, my garage looked better. With a little help from our son on one of his trips here, we even got to the point where we could get one car in.

Then I tackled the books, and between selling and donating them, we got rid of a couple of thousand. Before long, I moved on to paper items, digitizing my genealogy files and recycling the paper. Then on to writing files, making sure I had digital copies and back-ups, and again recycling the paper. All told, I was able to get rid of about 200 3-ring binders. The last 50 will go in our estate sale, each with a few tab dividers and sheet protectors in it.

I’m not sure whether I’ll get to post again from this side of the Red River, though I’ll try. If not, I’ll be back at it at some point. Y’all be good in the meantime.

 

family, letters

One Special Project Completed

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The box of Wayne’s letters written during World War 2.

My sleeping rhythms have been off lately. If I wake up at or near 3 a.m., I can’t get back to sleep. I’m restless lying in bed. After a half hour of lying there awake, I generally get up and try to sleep sitting in my easy chair. That will work maybe one day out of three. Sometimes I read for an hour then am tired enough to sleep for an hour. Other times I just recline, maybe dozing a little but mostly trying to still my racing mind.

Monday-Tuesday night and Tuesday-Wednesday night was different. Oh, the waking up at an importune time for getting back to sleep happened. But after an hour or so passed, putting me in the 4 o’clock a.m. hour, I decided why the heck am I trying. I got up, got dressed, took my computer to The Dungeon and decided to begin my day. I worked on the letters, and in those two days was able to finish the transcribing work. I also was able to go back and correct one letter I realized I hadn’t completed.

The rest of the work consists of putting the letters into one document file, formatting it, sorting through photos of that era and adding them to the file, then computing publishing tasks. Proofreading will be included at some point.

Unfortunately, all that will have to wait until our move from Arkansas to Texas, plus finding the energy to set up the new house. When I get the book done—perhaps I should say IF I ever get it done—we’ll have to see.

 

family, moving

The Time Is Getting Closer

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The mess is real. Oh dear me.

We move from NW Arkansas to Lake Jackson, TX either Jan 31 or Feb 7. Or maybe a day either side of that.

Where there once was a little organization there is now chaos. Where there was once order that is now…something, I suppose disorder is a good enough word.

But where there used to be areas jammed with stuff, there is now much less stuff. It may all be in disarray, but a lot of stuff is gone. Some was taken on to Lake Jackson before Christmas. So has been tossed out. Paper and cardboard has been recycled. One refrigerator was emptied and moved, the other is much reduced in contents at we consume what was in it. I wonder why we ever bought a 3-lb bag of frozen blueberries. They will be fully consumed by tomorrow. I took a package of what I can only call mystery meat out of the freezer last night. We’ll see shortly if its thawed enough to know what it is, and if we’ll be having it for supper tonight. The pantry is bordering on empty now, although there’s enough canned goods left to give us some interesting meals the rest of the way.

I’m not sure whether I’ll find the time to post again this side of the move, but maybe next Monday.

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.