Category Archives: self-publishing

Adam Of Jerusalem, Bible study, Church History Novels, critique group, self-publishing, Sharon Williams short stories, The Teachings, Writing

Looking Back as the New Year Starts

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The writing of this book was finished in December 2018. Editing took some time, and I didn’t publish it till May 2019.

One year ago I entered the world of retirees. It was unchartered territory for me. I knew I had more than enough interests to stay busy, but how would I structure my days? What would I accomplish? Would it be more or less than I wanted to do? How would writing and stock trading and property upkeep and a dozen other things vie for my time?

At that time, in January 2019, I did not write a blog post about writing goals. It was all too new. I didn’t know what I could accomplish in my writing. I had recently completed the first draft of Adam Of Jerusalem and I was letting it simmer while the Christmas busyness was in progress. So that would be on the table early in the new year. But what else would I accomplish?

I think I will start this year on An Arrow Through The Air by three posts about goals. First will be what I accomplished last month, then will be a look-back at the whole year, then will be a look-ahead to 2020 and what I hope to accomplish. I’m still thinking about the new year, so this schedule will give me time to think some more.

I last posted about goals at the end of October, for November. Not sure why I didn’t do a December goals post. Here’s what I said for November, and how well I did on them over a two-month period.

  1. As always, blog twice a week on Monday and Friday. I may have to write some ahead and schedule their posting. I did fairly well on this. Some of them I did write ahead of time for later posting. I missed one day in each month.
  2. Attend writing groups. One group is considering adding a second meeting in the month, so it might be three instead of two meetings total for the two groups. I attended every meeting available. One was cancelled. Another was a time to wrap books as Christmas presents to go to a middle school. It was a fun time.
  3. Finish Tango Delta Foxtrot. I think this is about two hours of writing. Surely I can do that. I finished this, and gave it to my critique group (Scribblers and Scribes of Bella Vista). Waiting on a full range of critiques, but initial response, but for installments and for the full document isn’t good.
  4. Finish reading in two books that are research for The Teachings. This is quite doable. I’m not reading all of Josephus—just enough to know about a certain action in Jerusalem at the beginning of the war in 66 a.d. Yes, I got this done. From Josephus I have selected the dates and locations for certain scenes. From the other book I have a good idea of the composition of The Didache. From the two I’ve made an outline.  When I sit down to work on it, probably next week, I hope it starts to flow.
  5. Finish the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. This should be doable, in the original concept only. I’ll be working toward publishing it in December, most likely as an e-book only. Another thing finished. I received some feedback about potential changes that would have taken time, but decided not to make them. For now this is an e-book, but I’m planning on making a PDF in 8.5×11 format to give to people who ask.

So, two months of reasonably good accomplishment. Hopefully this will continue into January 2020.

Bible study, critique group, Doctor Luke's Assistant, self-publishing, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

Publishing and Writing Side-by-Side

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The e-book cover for this was easy. At present I’m not planning on issuing a print book.

Well, I missed another blogging day. Yes, I missed last Friday. That’s two Fridays in a row. I tell you, miss it once and it can become a habit. I’ll break that habit this coming Friday.

For now, I’ll just tell a little of my current activities.

Today is the day to publish the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. I made the cover on Friday, finished the editing on Saturday, made one minor tweak yesterday, and let it sit for the night. As soon as I finish this I’ll go to Amazon KDP and do the publishing tasks. Hopefully it will be available for sale before the end of the day, though perhaps tomorrow.

I’ll make the cover for the print edition of the prequel of this look much the same. Delete “Again” and change the photo.

Then, tomorrow I’ll work on my friend Bessie’s book. I did her second book for her earlier this year. Her first book, however, is available from the publisher only as an e-book. She has people in the church who want a copy. At my prompting, she obtained a license from the publisher to make do a print book edition of her own. I have already gone through the text for errors. I think I built the Table of Content, but will check on that. The cover will follow the lines of the last book and should be simple—except print book covers are never simple for me. Publishing it may not be doable on one day.

Salzburg and environs are so nice, with quaint things to see and do—but not when you’re following Sharon Williams Fonseca.

After that, I shift to writing tasks. My short story, “Tango Delta Foxtrot”. It’s now at 5,300 words and is well along with the story. I don’t have a specific word goal, and I didn’t plan out the plot. To keep it from getting boring I need to wrap it up. I may work on that some in the evenings. I did so yesterday evening, incorporating comments from my critique group. I’m not finished yet with that, so may make working through those comments my evening task for a few days. Wednesday or Thursday I hope to be adding words to the story.

Meanwhile, I sold a couple of copies of Acts Of Faith at church yesterday, and last Friday a paperback copy of Doctor Luke’s Assistant sold at Amazon. That bring my sales for the year up to 131, my second-best year so far. About 75 of those are self-sales of books from inventory, and 69 are of books I published this year. That’s good news. I hope to continue the up-trend next year.

Bible study, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots, holidays, self-publishing, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

Now Between Holidays

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Had an on-line sale of this one day, then two days later had another, plus one of the prequel. I’m hoping it means someone bought it, not realizing it was the second in the series, liked it, bought the first, then convinced someone else to buy it.

Thanksgiving is over. Well, almost over. My sister is still in town, and we’ll get together again this afternoon and evening. Our full household, however, is back to two, just me and the wife. We have much after-company work to do yet, but the yesterday we took our rest, and this morning is normal routine. Tomorrow or Wednesday will be full routine.

I gave up writing work during this time, except for a little editing in the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. I rarely went to The Dungeon since two Saturdays ago.

But, now it’s time to get back at it. Complete editing of the Leader’s Guide is step one. Simultaneous with that I’ll be reading for my critique group, Scribblers and Scribes of Bella Vista. I have two pieces to read to get ready for the meeting Wednesday evening. Plus, I need to send out again for critique my short story, “Tango Delta Foxtrot”. I haven’t written any more on it, but still have a few pages of it to read to the group.

I’ll make the cover for the print edition of the prequel of this look much the same. Delete “Again” and change the photo.

Next, I’ll get back on publishing tasks for Bessie Black’s first book, Once Upon An Island. It was a work-for-hire, but she received a license to self-publish it as a print book since it’s gone out of print. I’ve already done most of the formatting. I want to read it through once more to look for typos. I figured out what we’d do for the cover. I hope to publish that for her before the end of the year, which looks very doable.

The other thing that has surprised me recently has been some unexpected on-line sales. I had two sales of Headshots and one of In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, as well as one of Acts Of Faith. Those came about a week ago over a three day period. It’s nice to see sales at the same time from both the back list and new items. I hope this will be a trend.

So, back in the saddle, for three weeks at least, before the next holiday interruption comes.

Bible study, self-publishing

One More Post On Book Covers

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In a recent post I wrote about my hate affair (no love to balance it) with creating book covers. The saga continues. I received the proof copy of Acts Of Faith on Friday. To my pleasure, it was perfect. The cover was perfect. Everything was centered, the colors were good, the text was correct and nicely spaced. It was suggested that I make a tweak to it, changing the cover on the spine and changing the font on one block of text. I thought that would cause a slowdown, so I decided not to and just clicked “Publish”. That was Friday afternoon. And then I waited.

This is what I uploaded. Still waiting to hear if it works.

The wait is for a live body at Amazon to check the files. Typically this takes less than 24 hours. You get an e-mail, either it’s good and the book is published, or it is not accepted and you need to figure out what is wrong with it.

That e-mail came Saturday at 09:50 a.m., but I was outside doing yard work. I saw it when I can in around noon. And the verdict: “We checked your files and found issues you need to fix before your book can be published on KDP”, Sigh. They further said, “Resize your front cover so that the image or background on the front cover extends far enough beyond the edge. Add an extra 0.125″ (3.2 mm) along the top, bottom, and sides of your cover. This prevents manufacturing issues when the cover is trimmed.”

I was hoping to work on the Leader’s Guide for AOF that afternoon, but instead I worked on the cover. Since the proof copy was so good, I couldn’t see what was wrong with the cover. I checked my calculations of the size, which were correct. I went ahead and slightly enlarged it. But it’s more complicated than that. The front cover is a layer that sits on the background and is aligned with the edges of the background. Beneath that is an image size. At least, I think that’s how it works. Don’t ask me. I’m still an amateur with graphic arts software.

I looked the thing over, and realized everything wasn’t quite in alignment, but couldn’t tell what was wrong. I checked the size of each layer and they seemed to be correct. So I exported it to PDF, uploaded it to Amazon, checked the on-line book reviewer. It all looked good, so I clicked “Publish”, and went into waiting mode.

This morning (I’m writing this on Sunday), at 09:34 a.m., while at church and about to start our Life Group class, I received the e-mail: “We checked your files and found issues you need to fix before your book can be published on KDP” for the identical reason. One more sigh.

After Life Group, after church, after getting lunch and milk to take home, I went to The Dungeon—once again not to write, but to fix the darn cover. I decided I would invest an hour to fix it, then I’d just find a professional and hire the tweaking done.

I spent about 15 minutes checking the layers, checking all sizing, determining I didn’t know what the problem was. I thought maybe I should just use the Amazon cover building program, but found it was complicated. I searched Amazon for help, and found a way to talk with someone. I then spent a very not-so-pleasant 45 minutes on the phone with an Amazon rep. She was difficult to understand, and ultimately couldn’t help me. She sent me an e-mail of what the cover dimensions should be, which confirmed my calculations.

I had spent my hour, but decided maybe the thing to do was to try one more time, re-building the cover from scratch. I knew what I wanted, I knew the size, so it went quickly. In fifteen minutes I had all the elements in G.I.M.P. file except for the text on the spine. The first time around I created the spine text in PowerPoint and uploaded it to G.I.M.P. I wasn’t real happy with that. So, I decided to try once again to understand how to get the print tool to do what I want.

My problem was getting the text to center vertically in the text box. Horizontal centering is no problem, but I couldn’t see how to center it vertically. I had previously watched a YouTube tutorial on book spines using G.I.M.P. I watched it again, and they said nothing about vertical centering. I noticed he sized the text to the size he wanted, then pulled the limits of the box to match the text size, then aligned the box where they wanted it on the page. I looked at another tutorial, and they did the same thing. I decided I’d better do that.

I opened the text tool, changed the font type and size, selected bold and center, then typed the text and spaced it horizontally in the text box. Then I resized the box to match the text. I rotated it 90 degrees clockwise, and centered it vertically and horizontally on the background. Everything looked good. You can see the results in the illustration above.

One last task was to flatten the file into one layer before exporting the cover to a PDF. That was all done, and I uploaded it to Amazon, checked it in the previewer, and, once again, it looked good. I clicked “Publish” for the third time, and now, for the third time, I wait.

I’m simplifying it somewhat. I created the spine box and deleted what was obviously incorrect several times. I made the other tweaks of color and font, and now have them correct. At several times I had long waits, up to three minutes, while Amazon processed files. I used that time to look at the proof copy, and discovered two errors in the Table Of Contents and one error in a chapter subtitle. I made those changes and checked it in the on-line previewer. This was along with the final cover upload.

As I said, now I wait. It’s possible that an e-mail will arrive before this posts at 07:30 a.m. on Monday. If so, I’ll edit it with the verdict. I’m feeling optimistic. I understand G.I.M.P. a lot better. I understand how to work with layers much better. I feel fairly certain that the next time I go through this it will be much easier. All except choosing artistic elements that look good. Now that’s going to take a long time, if ever.

Bible study, self-publishing, Writing

Does “Acts Of Faith” Make Me Vulnerable?

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“Acts Of Faith” is now available for sale as an e-book on Amazon. The print book and e-book at other retailers will soon follow.

This week, Acts Of Faith: Examples From The Great Cloud Of Witnesses went live on Amazon as an e-book. The print book proof is supposed to arrive today. Assuming it checks out as good, I need to swap out the cover for one with a few tweaks, then I’ll hit “publish” and it will be live, too. My first published Bible study.

Although this is my thirtieth item to publish, in some ways this one is making me feel more vulnerable than all the others. It’s kind of like when I published my first (and so far only) poetry book, Daddy-Daughter Day. That was my eighteenth book to publish, and it made me feel very vulnerable at the time. I remember it as a strange feeling. I had novels and short stories and non-fiction books out there for people to buy and either like or tear apart. Why did poetry make me feel so at risk? Perhaps because I’m not trained as a poet. All I know about poetry I learned through my self-study, late in life. What if I mess it up, if my poems are garbage? Poetry is heightened language, with rules that aren’t needed in prose. All this combined resulted in my feeling vulnerable. I hesitated several months before hitting the publish button.

Although this seems a long time ago, I remember how I felt vulnerable publishing this.

Now I’m feeling the same thing with Acts Of Faith. This isn’t my first Bible study. This is actually my ninth Bible study to prepare from my own research. The other eight I’ve already taught (or co-taught) from my notes to the adult Life Group I attend. One of them, Entrusted To My Care, is being taught right now from my notes in another group. For that study I happened to make more extensive teaching notes, which I gave them to the other teacher. Four weeks in to the fourteen-week study, she says it’s going well.

So, I’m no stranger to Bible studies. Why then this feeling of ill ease?

It’s probably the same thing as with poetry. I’m an amateur in this field, a layman playing against a host of trained clergy, teachers, professors, evangelists. Look at all the Bible studies published that have become popular. They are published by those who could be called professionals. Is there room on this field for an amateur to step up and make an impact?

I didn’t take any of those other Bible studies the next step and turn them into publishable products. When I prepared Bible studies and taught them to our group that’s been together for a long time, if I made a misstatement as I taught, I could cover it over with a joke and keep right on rolling. Now, however, if I have a mistake in my book—and I would think that, as a layman, I’m more likely to make a mistake than a professional—it’s out there in print for everyone to criticize. Yes, and that makes me feel vulnerable.

But is that bad? In a recent sermon, our pastor talked about this. He said that God made Himself vulnerable when He came to earth and faced the same temptations as we do. One of pastor’s key points was, “Vulnerability deepens relationships.” He added that we need to be willing to make ourselves vulnerable. If he didn’t say it outright, he implied that being vulnerable is necessary to do effective work for the kingdom of God.

That sermon came as I was in the midst of publishing tasks for Acts Of Faith but had not yet hit the button. I had some but not all of the publishing files created. Didn’t have the covers finished. I was at the point where I could easily have decided to stop publishing it, shrinking back into my comfortable world of fiction, etc. But the idea of making myself vulnerable as a way of doing great things for the kingdom of God pushed me forward, and hit the button I did.

What’s to become of Acts Of Faith? I have a somewhat captive audience in my Life Group, and should have ten to fifteen sales there. I know of another five to ten people locally who will want a copy. That puts me a little over average for my sales. And, who knows? Perhaps this will be my breakout book.

 

Bible study, self-publishing, Writing

Closing In On “Acts Of Faith”

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Last week I put the finishing touches on Acts Of Faith: Examples From The Great Cloud Of Witnesses“. That’s not to say it’s perfect, but I think it’s in good shape. I’m pleased with it as it is. On Thursday, I think it was, I formatted the book for print, completing that in a few hours.

As reported in my last post, I set about trying to make a cover for it, and failed miserably. But fortunately I had the earlier cover for it and was able to take that, make a few modifications, and I had a more acceptable cover. People I showed it to thought it was acceptable. On Saturday I set about making the cover wrap for the print book. Here’s what I came up with, still subject to a little tweaking.

Here’s the print book cover. I’m not claiming it’s great, but I think it’s acceptable. It also starts a theme that I can use for future Bible studies if I publish them.

Yesterday I uploaded all this to Amazon for the print book. For the third straight book the files I uploaded, both book interior and the cover, met Amazon’s technical specifications and they said I could order the proof copy. I did so, and it should arrive Thursday or Friday. By that time I’ll have the print cover changed with any tweaks needed. I e-mailed the basic cover to my critique group, Scribblers and Scribes of Bella Vista, and will show them the full wrap when we meet on Wednesday.

So, yesterday I also began the work on the e-books. This is the opposite of my normal order. Usually I do the e-books, which I find easier, first, then do the harder print book. Since I’m under a tight deadline for having the print book available I didn’t want to delay that even a day, so I changed up my normal routine. I finished the Kindle version interior yesterday. The cover is, I think, all ready. Later today, after I complete a few chores and errands, I’ll upload the e-book. As soon as it’s approved I’ll publish it. That could be later today or, more likely, tomorrow. Then it will be on to the Smashwords edition.

It’s kind of exciting, but also kind of scary. I’ll write about that in a future post.

Bible study, self-publishing

I Hate Making Book Covers

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This trial cover does what I want, but looks awful.

Work progressed very well on my Bible study, Acts Of Faith. I wrote it in a little over a month in June-July this year. I found a couple of beta readers, got some comments, did several rounds of edits, and wrapped it up early this month—sandwiched in between getting Documenting America: Making The Constitution into print.

This week, on Wednesday, I called it a wrap and began working on publication files. Then Wednesday night I thought of one more thing I wanted in the Introduction. I did that Thursday morning, yesterday, and called it a wrap again. I went back to building publication files. By the end of the day I had the print edition files complete, all except for the cover.

I had done the cover on Tuesday-Wednesday. Or rather, let me say I did a cover on Tuesday-Wednesday. You can see it here. It’s awful. My thoughts as I began pulling it together were:

  • Since it’s quite possible I’ll prepare more of my Bible studies for publication, it would be nice, with this first one, to create some sort of graphical branding. I looked at a couple of printed Bible studies we have here at the house, and at some other books that are parts of series, and though the colored band with the words “A Bible Study” in the band would work, preferably across the top.
  • I thought maybe the other words on the cover, the title, subtitle, and my name could also be in bands. So I put them in the same color bands of the same style.
  • Then I played with the background color and texture and came up with something.
  • Then I thought, how about putting some of the names of those covered in the book on the cover, somewhat randomly, as if in a “cloud”. I did that, finding a font I liked. I decided to make each one a little bit more or less opaque and putting them on top of each other. I liked that effect.
Better? Perhaps, but still not good.

Then I looked at it all, and it was terrible, as you can see from image of it I put in above. Bad colors. Bad contrast of graphical images. A couple of friends whose advice I trust agreed with my assessment. Alas, I don’t know how to make it better.

I had played with a cover earlier, which I posted here. That was just a trial, to have something to show. However, it’s probably better than what I came up with this week. I like the cloud effect of the names on gray, so I clipped that out of the new cover and pasted it in the old in the space reserved for a graphic. You can see how those two work together. I think I like this a little better, but I’m still not sure it’s what I want.

A few extra touches make it look a little better, perhaps.

Sigh. I may just go with a generic black cover with white or yellow lettering, no graphic, and not worry about whether it looks good or not. Just so long as it doesn’t look awful. Or, maybe I’ll have to just find a professional and turn it over to them. I’ve contacted one, and am waiting on hearing back.

Bible study, Documenting America, self-publishing, Writing

Publishing My Next Book Getting Closer

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I finished writing Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition in mid-June. I let it sit a little, then began the editing process. The editing took a while as I didn’t go overly fast. Plus, in late June I finally decided I should write and publish my Bible study, Acts Of Faith, and so pulled off DA for a while. I meant to have it published in August. Alas, with only nine days left in the month, I think that’s unlikely to happen.

But where do I stand with it? I have completed all passes of edits. On Wednesday I ran Chapter 5 through our critique group, and have a few comments to go over and perhaps make changes. I’ll do that today. The next step will be the cover, which I’ll do myself using G.I.M.P. I already have the series theme, so all I have to do is change the title and use a new center image, which I already have picked out. I may need to load G.I.M.P. onto this computer. Doing all that is a tomorrow task.

That cover work, of course, is for the e-book cover. Before I can do the print book cover I have to format the print book so I know the thickness. The interior formatting will be the next step. I might do the e-book formattings (one for Kindle, one for Smashwords) on Sunday, or it might slip to Monday. At that point I may upload the e-book to the platforms, thus getting it published in August. Then I’ll tackle the print book formatting. That always takes longer, and I’ll have to dedicate a day or two to that. I hope I get it done before the end of the month so that I can order a proof copy.

So, when will the next Documenting America be published, you ask? With any luck and sufficient diligence on my part, before the end of August for the e-book, and before September 15 for the print book. Stay tuned. I’ll announce it here. I’m working simultaneously on the leader’s guide to AOF, so we’ll have to see how the time goes.

self-publishing, stock market, Writing

Rainy Days and Mondays

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The Carpenters had a major hit with their song “Rainy Days and Monday“, the lyrics saying that they “always get me down.”  As I look out The Dungeon window, through an opening in my computer desk, through the vertical blind slats, through the glass and the screen, I see a cloudy day. When I awoke at 6:30 a.m., a gentle rain was falling. The rain has mostly ended now.

Exactly what I see out The Dungeon windows as I type at my computer.

Yet, I’m not depressed by the dark day. Nor am I depressed by this Monday, or any Monday. Being retired helps with that, but I was never one to rue the end of the weekend and start of the workweek. And I do have my work to do. Monday through Friday I work on our stock trading business. Since nowadays I’m mainly trading for income rather than wealth building, it’s less intensive than it used to be.

But seeing as how I mostly liked my engineering career, and was enjoying the work I did those last few years of that, Mondays were never a drudgery. Nor were the weekends necessarily better than the workweeks. So much work to do at home in just a few hours, I never felt like I was on top of things.

Now, that all has changed. I spend a lot of time at the computer between stock trading and writing and promoting my writing, but I’m not chained to it. Any day I can go outside for an hour of yard work. Any day I can work on de-cluttering. I’m able to exercise on the elliptical (strategically placed in The Dungeon) several times, as I do most weekdays and some on the weekends. Any day I can go outside and walk. Any time my mind gets weary I can take a break, perhaps go to the sunroom and read.

So, I sit at my computer, look through the desk and the slats, and am encouraged. This morning, after my Bible reading and prayer time, rather than write I decided to update my writing income and expense spreadsheet. I had last done this in early to mid-May, so I wasn’t too far behind. My mileage is entered; my inventory purchases are entered both in expenses and on the inventory sheet; my sales amounts are entered. I have an exact picture of where I am profit and loss wise. And, since the spreadsheet sums everything and auto-fills lines for Schedule C, may taxes due next April are mostly calculated—so long as the IRS doesn’t change the form.

I have a few more writing related business tasks to do, which I’ll do as soon as I finish this blog post. Tomorrow I’ll do the same thing with the stock trading. That is mostly up to date on a spreadsheet, but I need to transfer it to my income tax spreadsheet. That will only take 30 minutes, and I’ll be way ahead of where I typically am come January.

So, time to get back to other work. I have two books—one finished, one nearly so—that are begging for my attention. I hope everyone will be able to find today productive and enjoyable.

Dateline: July 29, 2019, for posting on August 5, 2019

construction, Documenting America, Engineering, reading, self-publishing, stock market, Writing

Random Friday Thoughts

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Can a graphics duffer create the print-book cover to go with this? Enquiring minds want to know.

As I look out from The Dungeon windows at 06:47 a.m., the sun is hidden by the tall trees at the rear of our backyard. But enough sun gets through I can tell it will be a sunny day, at least to start. Storms are predicted for tomorrow, and might start in a small way sometime today.

Yesterday was a busy day. In addition to stock trading in the morning, I did a few writer things. I’m trying to create the print book cover for my friend’s book. I made a good start on it despite the fact that it’s been a year since I created a cover. Using G.I.M.P., a no-cost alternative to Photoshop, I managed to get the overall sizes of each part of the cover in place. I found some good notes I wrote on that. Alas, I’ve forgotten enough that I didn’t get it done in the time I had. Hopefully I will this morning.

I then at a quick lunch, hopped in the van, and went to do some engineering work, final inspection of one site and monthly inspections on three other sites. I completed the final inspection, with a little arguing with the contractor thrown in. Not bad arguing, just them obviously not appreciating the things I found. I got a little testy at one point when they gave new information about a structure I’ve been trying to get them to modify. Why they didn’t give me that info months ago is a mystery.

I went to the first monthly inspection, walked the site, saw only one or two things out of the ordinary. This has been a problem site, with me constantly finding things they are doing in violation of City codes. They’ve started to get much better. They had installed almost all the handicapped ramps incorrectly. I decided to let the first few go, but I found a new one wrongly constructed. They will have to change that. They also had one where they attempted to construct it correctly, but came up short. Fortunately the correction is inexpensive.

The engineering work to that point took me from 12:30 p.m. to about 3:30 p.m., with two more sites to go. I was beat and dehydrated, as I hadn’t taken water with me. I decided not to do the other two inspections, leaving them to the employee of my former company who joined me yesterday for training purposes. I came home, rested an hour, then wrote the reports for the two inspections.

Then I took it easy in the evening. We had plenty of leftover chili to use for taco salad, so had that for supper, and a slice of turtle pie for dessert. I spent much of the evening on the computer working on the reports as well as trying to find some photos in the company files to prove the point I tried to make on site.

I’ll soon be creating a cover for “Documenting America: Making the Constitution Edition”. It will be a simple re-creation of this one.

I wrote an e-mail to the CEI project manager, telling her my inability to do the two other inspections was “most likely a combination of too much sun, frustration with [the other] engineer and developer and contractor, age, and perhaps a creeping retirement-starting-to-care-a-little-less each month.” I haven’t heard back from her yet. I have trained the other man to do these inspections and had no doubt he could do the remaining two and write acceptable reports.

I spent no time in the sunroom, didn’t work on my own books at all, didn’t make much progress on my to-do list. My wife and I did a little reading aloud, and we took a very pleasant call from our oldest grandson and had evening devotions with him. Our reading carried us after normal bed time.

So, up this morning after sleeping through the night, ready to “awaken the dawn” that I see unfolding out the window. It’s fully light out, though the trees still obscure direct rays. On to other things for a couple of hours, then back to the book cover work.