Category Archives: self-publishing

poetry, self-publishing, Short Stories, Writing

Works-In-Progress

Leave a comment

Finally, I have a minute, with no other posts pressing on me, to write about what I’m working on in my writing career. I’ve been trying to get to this for several weeks, and another thought for a post keeps popping up and pushing this aside. Not today.

My main work-in-progress is a short story. Titled “Hotel Whiskey Papa”, it’s the fourth in my series about Sharon Williams Fonseca, an unconventional CIA agent. The Agency has another, junior agent who shows great promise, dogging her, for they are concerned that she steps over the line from time to time, doing Agency work in an illegal, or at least unethical, way. In a twist, I’m writing this on manuscript, not on computer in The Dungeon. I sit in my reading chair, with only an end table between me and Lynda, and write on the back of already used papers. I typed what I had last weekend, and some on one other day. On my computer the document stands at about 3,800 words. Since then I’ve written another thousand in manuscript, and am approaching the end of the story. I had in mind that these stories should be 4,000 to 6,000 words, so I’m on track. As soon as it’s finished, proofed, edited, and proofed again, I’ll publish it. I’ll make my own cover for this one.

Then, yesterday I actually wrote a poem, something more than a haiku that is. And I’m not denigrating the haiku form or saying it’s easy, but something longer? I haven’t written one in a couple of years, or maybe even five years. I’ve written some song verses in that time, but no stand-alone poems. This one is for an anthology being put together by the present poet laureate at the on-line writers group  Absolute Write. It will be a themed anthology of contributions by AW members, the theme being a traveling carnival. I told her I would contribute anything I had already written, but that I had no inspiration or energy to write something new. When the theme was announced, I had my poem “Magic”, which sort of fit, so I submitted it. But sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday a phrase and plot came to me that would fit the theme. I quickly forgot the phrase, but it came back yesterday morning. As the morning went on I saw a way to write the poem. During the noon hour I started it, and finished it off and on by mid-afternoon. I quickly posted it to the anthology critique forum before I lost my nerve. I’m not saying it’s good, but it’s done, subject to improvement, of course.

What else? I’m trying to get In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People published in print form. I have the book formatted, and am waiting on the cover. Two different people have given me photos of Wrigley Field to use, and two others have said they would do the cover. Alas, when you’re having people work for free, other things get in the way. Hopefully I can get this done next week some time. I may cobble a cover together myself this weekend.

I’m also improving some e-book covers. Recently I received a notice from Smashwords saying that four of my e-book covers did not meet their minimum standards. These are my older covers, made and posted before they had minimum standards. I guess they are just now getting around to enforcing. that. I completed one of them last weekend, or maybe last week some time, and uploaded it. Yesterday I got the word that it was acceptable, and the book—actually a short story—is back in the premium catalog. Only three to go. I’ll hopefully get one done this weekend.

That’s it as far as writing work. I’ll post something here and elsewhere when HWP is published. And, once things change, I’ll write again. Actually, I just thought of one other thing. I’m working on a Bible study to teach in our adult Life Group. But it deserves a post by itself. Maybe that will be next.

self-publishing, Writing

Where I Stand on Works-In-Progress

Leave a comment

About three weeks ago I said I was going to give an account of my writing life as it exists at this time, and left my few readers know what was going on. Several other posts got in the way, as did life. Finally, I’m here to do what I said I would.

Alas, there’s not much to tell. I’m barely writing. If my count is correct, I have seven works-in-progress, in various stages of completion, all waiting patiently for me to get back to them and finish what I started. So why don’t I do so? Pick the one farthest along, write the end part, and publish it. Then take the next one and do the same. Or, perhaps take the work that appears to offer the least path of resistance and just apply myself and get it done.

Again alas, I find it harder and harder to apply the gray cells and the energy needed to fuel them to writing tasks when I have other things to be done. At this time my mother-in-law lives with us. She’s 91, and is slowly starting to fail. She doesn’t need the level of care a nursing home requires, but she can’t live by herself. For the moment my wife can’t fill the role of care-giver to her mom, so I have to. Not intimate stuff such as washing and personal care, but things like making sure her medicines are in order, helping her to manage her diabetes, making sure she eats right, seeing that she has money, taking care of her mail. It’s not a huge time consumer, but it’s something that must be done, by me.

Then there are the projects around the house.  Recovering our backyard from the encroaching forest took much of the winter and spring. After that it was working on the front yard, neglected while I concentrated on the back (which actually still isn’t done, but is in a tolerable state). Part of that was working on a proposed flower bed. That was a lot of physical work, and still isn’t done, as I await one decision on how to do it. I want it ready for planting in the spring, so I really, really, really want to get it done.

Then there was the new kitchen floor preceded by removal of wallpaper and painting therein, then rearranging kitchen things, then the large window in the bathroom that broke. And, I must not forget the electrical repairs, or installing build-in shelves in the basement—merely utility shelves, but still taking energy that included trips to the hardware store. All of these required finding a service provider, obtaining a quote, and supervising the work—or in some cases figuring out how to do it myself.. All consuming gray cells and energy. My current project, related to the kitchen work, is almost complete: a two-level shelf unit on wheels custom made for our pantry. I varnished it yesterday, and have only to add the handles, put it in place, and figure out what goes on it. Then our “things” will be off the floor, and we can pull the shelf forward for easier access.

So where does that leave me in terms of works-in-progress, or, what am I writing right now? I recently had a bad day with knee pain. Actually it came on in the evening. I took a pain pill, and instead of reading, I decided to write, in manuscript. I wrote the first 600 or 700 words in a new short story, “Hotel Whiskey Papa”, the next in my Sharon Williams Fonseca unconventional C.I.A. agent series. Why? I’m not sure. That story has been gestating for a long time. I had the opening scene clearly in my mind, so I wrote it to free up space for other things. Whether I finish it soon or not I don’t know. So that leaves me with eight works-in-progress. Or, I suppose you could say nine if you count the Bible study I’m preparing for our Life Group.

As far as book length works, nada. Volume 2 of The Gutter Chronicles remains midway through the fourth chapter (out of 15). Preserve the Revelation remains dead after one chapter. Documenting America: Civil War Edition remains quiet at about 40 percent complete. My two Thomas Carlyle works are further along than all of these. I work a little on one of them, not at all on the other. I still have much interest in them, and perhaps I’ll take some time before the end of the year to get one or both of them further along. And my next family history book, John Cheney of Newbury is stalled after one chapter. This is because I that one chapter (out of 11) ran to 70 pages before I came to the degree of completion I wanted. When I realized the enormity of the task, I decided to back off.

But I do have a few publishing tasks to do soon, if not new writing. I want to publish my two baseball novels as print books. Today I talked with the cover designer, and he said he could work on them right away. So now I’ll have to scramble to format them for print, decide on back cover copy, etc. That will all feel good. Then, it turns out the covers of several of my e-books have been declared to be an unacceptable size by Smashwords, based on what the sellers they distribute to require. So I’ll have to try to modify those covers—for size only—and upload them. I don’t think that will be too difficult.

So, I haven’t exactly laid down my pen yet. The inkwell is almost dry, and my paper is mainly white, but I’m still marginally in the game.

miscellaneous, reading, self-publishing, Writing

Restless

Leave a comment

Today I feel restless. I felt that way a little bit yesterday. I’m not sure what to do about it. I feel like I have a lot of loose ends, and am barely closer to seeing them completed than I was three days ago.

Yet, this weekend I got a lot done. Friday evening I completed my stock trading accounting for the week. I also moved some dirt and rock from one of the two piles in the front yard. Saturday I started off by cooking pancakes, bacon, and eggs for breakfast for the ladies and myself. That completed, I went out into the heat to move rocks and dirt. I got the pile from the driveway fully moved, using only my spider and a wheelbarrow. The sun having moved to where the piles were, and the temp creeping up into the upper 80s, I went inside to rest a while. But, being restless, I went back out, this time to the back yard, and pulled weeds from the gravel yard. I did this for close to an hour.

At that point I went back to the front yard, and discovered that the sun had moved such that trees were providing shade to the remaining rock pile, the bigger of the two. I decided I could move some of that, reducing the size and making it possible to finish it in a few evenings this week. However, I kept at it, taking frequent, short rests. I kept saying, “Okay, one more load after this one.” Because my wheelbarrow tire is low on air, I didn’t load a lot of rocks/dirt in it. A few shovels full, perhaps a cubic foot of dirt and rocks, and I wheeled it over to the woods, where I’m stabilizing a path for easier walking.

That “one more load” mentality worked well, and before long (well, maybe 90 minutes later), the entire pile was moved. That has sat there since last September, as I made it when digging out a bush we didn’t want where it was, but since we didn’t know what we wanted to replace it, I left the pile there till we decided. I estimate that I moved somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds of rock and dirt. Now, if we can just decide on how to finish out the proposes flower bed, this project can be brought to completion, as much as it can until we plant flowers next Spring.

After a very light lunch, I went to the basement to finish a shelf installation project I came close to finishing last weekend. I saw that the way I was going to finish it was perhaps not best, and that I could do it a better way. I did that, and even installed a spare fluorescent light in the area, and am calling that project done. I even loaded a few things onto the new shelf.

Back upstairs, I rested a while, until Lynda reminded me that she fairly urgently needed a prescription at Wal-Mart. I had two ready, and my mother-in-law had some as well, so I quickly added a few things to the grocery list and headed out. Fortunately the store was no more crowded than usual, and I was back home after an hour and a half. Bought a pizza there for supper, and so finished my labors of the day with that. The rest of the evening was filled with trying to read the Leonardo da Vinci biography I’m working on, but not really having the mental capacity to do so.

Sunday was restful, with breakfast leftovers, church, fast food lunch, afternoon at the computer, evening church picnic, and again trying to read in the biography, but ending up watching a chick flick on Hallmark Channel. My afternoon work consisted in writing an e-mail to a high school friend I recently reconnected with, getting my household budget up to date, and my usual weekend stock market work. Quite late I packed breakfast and lunches for most of the week. By the end of the weekend, I felt that I had accomplished a great deal.

So why am I feeling so restless? Sunday I received a reply to a Facebook message I sent a month ago, to a pastor-author who has written in a similar area to me. I at first confused this man with another, an educator-author I intended to correspond with, but hadn’t yet. I discovered the confusion this morning as I about sent the wrong message to the wrong person. I wrote messages to both men, and posted them. Also this morning, I commented on the FB post by a second cousin I’ve never met (but know about), and reminded her of something. Also this morning I saw, on my desk at work, a list of my works-in-progress that lay abandoned, waiting on an opportune time for me to get back to them. It’s seven different books, and I’m not sure this is really all of them. This weekend I thought of a good new title to add to the cozy mystery series I’m planning. Also, I had been hoping to do an author interview on my next blog post, but that’s not ready, so I’m doing this instead. These loose ends make me restless.

I keep planning books, yet the time to write seems further away than ever. Sales are non-existent. I’ve decided to give a couple of books away, including one to a former pastor who was in town this weekend for our church festivities. I don’t know when he’s going back, but it would be nice to put it in his hand rather than mailing it. Oh, well, another loose end to live with, and a little more restlessness.

self-publishing, Writing

Sales Report for First Half of 2016

Leave a comment

Hello to my loyal reader. Or, if there are more than one of you out there, readers. I don’t believe I made a sales report here at the end of the first quarter 2016. It’s now the end of the second quarter. Time to report sales. At my self-publishing diary thread at Absolute Write, I’ve been reporting sales in this format:

………1Q…..2Q…..3Q…..4Q
2011….2…….7……11…..15
2012…16…..73……45…..22
2013…14…..22……16…..13
2014…..7…..48……27……2
2015…11…..25……38……9
2016…. 9……6

As you can see, 2nd quarter 2016 was far from stellar. Of course, I added no new titles and did no promotion except an occasional post on Facebook, something I’m sure my friends are getting tired of seeing.

I’ll keep plugging along. In a week or two I’m make a post to tell of my current writing endeavors. For right now, the sales report will have to suffice.

miscellaneous, self-publishing, stock market

Back to Normal?

Leave a comment

Yesterday we took our three grandchildren back to their parents in Oklahoma City. We took them to our house to spend Spring Break, intending to bring them back today. However, having a 7 year old, 5 year old, and almost 3 year old proved to be a bit much on the nerves and constitution. So back they went, a day early. That means today we were back to normal.

But what is normal? Is there such a thing? My “normal” I mean usual routines. I am a creature of routine, I must admit. Yet, for the last year or more I have not been able to find or establish a routine. My work at the office is somewhat routine. Leave the house the same time each day; work till lunch; eat lunch at my desk; walk a mile if weather and energy permit; work the afternoon; leave each day about the same time and drive home. The activities on any individual day could shift, but they rotate among predictable tasks.

Evening has become a little routine. I’m hot and heavy into stock trading right now, trying to come upon a winning formula that will allow us to recover from prior losses. Alas, that takes up all of the evening. Or, more correctly, it takes up all the remaining brain energy. By the time I spend an hour or two figuring out what to do with stock trading, I have no mental energy left for much else. I might be able to file papers or update the family budget records. But creative writing? No, won’t happen.

So, I’ve written nothing since October last, other than the Blizzard of 1948 story for the Meade County Historical Society webpage (which they have yet to post; not sure why). Things continue to float through my head, and I continue to suppress them. I have three works that need revision. On is a very minor revision on one page, and applies only to a print version and Kindle version. That should be easy. The other two require a number of typos to be fixed in each, and each having two different e-book versions and no print version. Those are three discreet tasks. They aren’t exactly creative writing, but they will further my writing “career,” so I should knuckle down and do them.

Perhaps I will this week. Before starting this blog post I finished my income taxes. I had them almost all done two weeks ago, or maybe three, but then the non-routine got in the way of the non-routine, and I had to lay tax preparation aside. But I just got them done, now needing only printing, signing, copying, and mailing. That’s the last non-routine item out of the way, which should allow me to concentrate more on writing.

May it be so.

books, Daddy Daughter Day, self-publishing

2015 Book Sales Report

Leave a comment

Well, let me start right off with the 2015 sales table, then I’ll break it down. You might have to click on the table and view it full size to read it.

DAT Book Sales 2015

So in 2015 I sold 83 books. That’s one more than I sold in 2014. A few outlets I sell at via Smashwords haven’t reported all of 2015, so it’s theoretically possible I’ll have a couple of more sales. However, I never sell any books at those outlets, so I feel okay posting results now. Here’s some breakdown

  • Titles published in 2015: 51 sales
  • Previously published titles: 32 sales
  • Print books: 63
  • E-books: 20
  • Personal sales: 24
  • Sales through retailers: 59
  • Items with at least one sale: 13
  • Items with no sales: 8

So, I had a better year with print books than with e-books, a complete turnaround from prior years. But that’s not an accurate picture. Two of my news books, Daddy Daughter Day and Seth Boynton Cheney: Mystery Man of the West , I published only as print books. Since they were my two best sellers, naturally that would skew my results toward print books.

The Seth Cheney book was my best seller, at 29 copies. This was a book for members of my wife’s family, prepared prior to a family reunion in Dodge City in the summer. It had about 100 pages of narrative with photos and maps, and 200 pages of genealogical data, also with photos and maps. I completed it a month ahead, had time to market it to the family, and they bought it. I have only one unaccounted for sale that may have been from a non-family member. Sales of this will not be repeated in 2016.

So, was it a good year, or a dismal year? I suppose any time your sales increase, even if the increase was less than 2 percent, you should consider it a good year. On the other hand, selling only 4.17 copies per book published is rather dismal.

Oh, well, onward into 2016. Next post will be goals for the year.

And, I’ll link a smaller image of the table for linking at Absolute Write.

DAT Book Sales 2015 smaller 298x130

family, self-publishing, Writing

Still Not Writing

Leave a comment

I read a post the other day, over at The Passive Voice, about a writer who self-published five years ago, and has sold over 3,000,000 copies of her books since, most of those of her self-published books. While I rejoice at her success, it’s hard to read that and think “Why not me?” Very bad, I know, to compare oneself to another writer. She says her first break-through came without any publicity effort on her part, though actually her publisher (some of her books are with trade publishers) had a promo of one of her books that happened to coincide with her self-publishing release. Hence, she did have what turned out to be an effective publicity campaign.

In another post, a writer who went from trade publishing to self-publishing in a similar, or perhaps later, time frame, made a post about how dangerous it is to check your sales numbers. Dangerous in the sense that it’s useless, doesn’t get you to writing more, and in fact can turn you away from writing. Well, it’s true that I check my sales numbers every day, and it’s also true that seeing those zeroes pile up discourages me from wanting to write.

I was going to write Monday night, but came home and was diverted. My mother-in-law, who now lives with us, needed help with her finances. My wife was helping, but it was a situation where it was better if one person searched through check registers and another wrote. So I helped with that. After we had the data concisely on paper, I went to The Dungeon to put it in a spreadsheet in order to compute the magic number. I had to do a work-around for a couple of missing statements. Sometime close to 10 p.m. I had the number, went upstairs, and gave it to her.

That was too late to go back downstairs and try to shift my brain’s focus from numbers to words, so I wasted the hour before going to bed with mindless Facebook reading.

Yesterday evening was filled with going through a week’s worth of accumulated mail, then watching two television programs and some news. Tuesday is the only evening that has programs on that I want to watch.

So here it is Wednesday morning. This is the first bit of writing I’ve done all week, except for my blog post on Sunday. I realize that, should any fan happen to drop by this page, or even should a casual visitor somehow surf here, or—heaven forbid—a family member come upon this, this will seem like whining. I suppose it is.

Perhaps life will turn around. Or perhaps I’ll learn to be productive in 15 minute chunks of writing time, or learn how to write in manuscript with significant distractions. And then, perhaps someday, I’ll have a reason to check sales numbers.

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

Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

books, self-publishing

Book Sales through August 2015

Leave a comment

Book Sales Graph 2015-08Oops! I’m a day late making a blog post. I had planned on something else, but instead I think I’ll give a book sales report. Excuse me a moment while I check my posts and see when is the last time I did that…

…I’m back. It looks as if I’ve not made a formal sales report at all in 2015. If that’s the case, the easiest way is for me to simply post a table from my spreadsheet. There it is above, through the end of August.

I’m on track to sell more books than last year. Sitting now at 71 sales, which equates to a yearly rate of 106. However, my sales this year are mostly driven by my issuing Daddy Daughter Day in April and Seth Boynton Cheney in September. Both of these are print-only books, and have sold mostly hand to hand. Without those, I’d have less than 20 sales this year. But, then, I’m up to over 400 sales all together in 4 1/2 years. I’ll take them.

Of course, that’s with almost zero publicity or promotion. I still don’t know what type of promotion would be effective for the books I publish. Perhaps next year I’ll do more promotion. Or perhaps not. Osmosis isn’t very effective I’m finding out, despite what some of the self-publishing gurus say.

 

 

self-publishing, Short Stories, travel, Writing

A Short Story Completed

Leave a comment

This summer, writing has taken a backseat in my life. I haven’t completely abandoned creative writing, but time to give it much focus simply hasn’t been there.

What have I been doing instead? Well, in early June we babysat our three grandchildren for almost two weeks, then their parents arrived and stayed with us a few days. They went on a ten day road trip, coming back in early July for a couple of days. That has a way of taking up a lot of your time.

Then there was my wife’s family reunion the last weekend in July/first of August. I was reunion planner. I know, that sounds strange, doesn’t it? But I was, and it took a fair amount of work. Part of that was completing a formal edition of my family history book. Seth Boynton Cheney: Mystery Man of the West, focuses on the patriarch of the family, but it’s much more than that. 292 pages of biography, photos, maps, document images, and pages and pages of data I’ve collected on a number of ancestors in the family. My goal was to have it published by June 15, to give people plenty of time to order it before the reunion. I came very close to making it. The book was done by the 15th and a proof copy ordered. It then took me to June 27th to have all the corrections made and have it published.

Then there’s stock trading. That took a back seat to the reunion, but since that I’ve hit it in a big way again, trying to make some money to augment the retirement funds. I’m actually not doing too badly for the year. I have losses, but almost none since April, with a string of winners since then helping to recover from other losses. Unfortunately that work isn’t going to change very soon.

Work at CEI has been about normal. I submitted abstracts for presentation of two technical papers, one of which was due Friday. I came within about two paragraphs of completing it then. I printed it out and have it at home with me. Hopefully tonight I’ll be able to read and edit it and figure out those couple of paragraphs I lack. Tomorrow I’ll be able to type the changes and upload it sometime in the morning. I advised the organization that I’d be on that schedule, and they said that was fine.

So, back to the short story. It is the last in the Danny Tompkins series that explores teenage grief at the loss of a parent. The subject for this story eluded me for half a year. Finally around May I knew what it would be, and I wrote a few paragraphs. The hindrance of the “blank page” having been overcome, I came back to it from time to time, as I could carve out a little time for it. Slowly it came to being.

On Friday I worked on it a little on my noon hour, and realized I wasn’t sure how to end it. This one ends the series of five stories, so the ending needed to be both for the story itself and for the series. This afternoon I sat down to work on it, first editing what I had. As I did that the idea for the ending came, it being a little different than I’d thought it would be. It reads more as a memoir than a story, but it’s done, and it’s as good as I can make it, so I’m going with it. I did the Kindle version formatting this afternoon. I was about to work on a simple cover for it, but realized I can’t get to the photo I was going to use. So I’ll have to take another photo, which I’ll do when I go upstairs. I know exactly what I want with it.

My goal is to have this available on both Amazon and Smashwords by Wednesday, August 19. It will be close, but I think I can do it. Smashwords doesn’t take much more formatting than does Kindle, and the same cover works for both. With luck I’ll have it all done tomorrow evening, and the books will be out in time. I also need to go back and add links to all five stories to the ones already published. That I’ll do before the week is out. Then, next weekend I’ll begin promotion of the new story and the set.

After that, I have another story started in a different series. I need to finish and publish that. Then, I’ll see.  I know which two novels I’ll work on next, and which book-length non-fiction. We’ll see which of those bubbles up to the top. The busyness doesn’t appear to abate in the months ahead. Another reunion that includes a long road trip awaits. A business trip will take me away for a couple of days in September, and another might do the same in October. But I’ll be writing. I’ll keep my few fans updated here.