Category Archives: Short Stories

Church History Novels, Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, self-publishing, Sharon Williams short stories, Short Stories

Hoopla “Sales”

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Three borrows in two months: it’s nice to have new readers for this oldie.

When I first started self-publishing, back in 2011, two organizations competed for authors: Amazon, which distributed e-books and print books to its own store; and Smashwords, which distributed e-books to a lot of retailers. I began by uploading my books to Amazon, but before many months passed I also uploaded to Smashwords.

Over the years, other services popped up. Barnes & Noble made it possible to uploads your books directly to them, bypassing the middle men. Another service distributing to retailers was Draft 2 Digital. I made the decision that it was hard enough keeping up with Amazon and Smashwords that I wouldn’t mess with D2D too.

In fact, I had very few sales through Smashwords, and didn’t bother to upload most of my latest books.

Then, a year or two ago, D2D bought out Smashwords. I waited a long time to transfer my books, but finally did early this year. I spent almost no time learning the D2D system. I had too much on my plate, between writing and household and health, to read up on how D2D did things.

In September, I received an e-mail from D2D saying my August sales report was available. That surprised me. I opened the report and found I found I’d sold 1 copy of Dr. Luke’s Assistant and one of my short story “Charlie Delta Delta”. The royalty for each was 32¢! That couldn’t be. I contacted D2D and learned that Hoopla was a different type of retailer. It’s more of a library service, and a “sale” is really a borrow.

Then, Wednesday I received an email from D2D saying my September sales report was available. I downloaded it, and learned I had five sales, all through Hoopla (so really five borrows. One of Documenting America Vol 1, two of Documenting America Home School edition, and two more of Doctor Luke’s Assistant. The problem is: how do I account for these borrows in terms or recording sales. Is a borrow a sale? or something less than a sale?

A borrow means a reader. A sale means a reader—or so you hope. So in terms of readership, a borrow is the same as a sale, maybe even more likely to result in a reader. So, at least for now, I’m counting each borrow as a sale. If that skews my sales number, I may have to rethink that.

Of course, with the delay in D2D reporting, I won’t know each month’s sales until almost a month after the last day of the month. But that’s okay. I’m glad for the additional readers.

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, self-publishing, Short Stories, Writing

Working Two Projects

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While I’m laid up with accidents, I’m doing my best to get some writing work done. But when I say, “laid up,” I don’t mean lying flat on a bed doing nothing. I’m able to get around with a walker, to drive, attend church, pick up meds at the pharmacy. A couple of weeks ago I did a little yard work, and learned I wasn’t really ready for that. It probably set back my healing for a week.

But there are two things I enjoy doing that are easily done without putting weight on my feet: reading and writing.

I’ve done a fair amount of reading. For my morning devotional time, I read two prayers in Prayer That Avail Much. I’m a third of the way through this book, and mostly enjoying it. For enjoyment, I’m reading two books that are writing related. One is The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals by Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of the famous British poet. I’m not sure I’m really enjoying this one. I’ll write more about this in a future book review. The third book I’m reading is Vol. 3 of The Letters of Virginia Woolf.  I’m enjoying this one a little more, and will surely write a review of it.

As to writing, I’m working on two projects. One is A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol. 2. I finished this one about two weeks ago. I let it sit a while, then came back and did one editorial review of it. My plans are to let it sit for a week, then do one more editorial pass. I’m hoping at that time to call it “Done” and start publishing tasks. However, it’s possible I’ll still have areas in the book that will need more attention.

The other writing project is the book of letters from our years in Saudi Arabia. This book consists of handwritten letters transcribed into print. To those I added an Introduction and a little commentary along the way. That makes the words part of the book done and ready for proofreading. On Saturday and Sunday just passed, I proofread 57 of the book’s 186 pages. I’ll finish it this week. Then I have to find photos to illustrate it. After that will come publishing tasks and having a few copies made for family members. I hope to have that done when the family gathers for Thanksgiving.

So this is keeping me busy. I have other books lined up when these are done. And I have other writing projects waiting when these two are finished.

I might learn to like this life as a semi-invalid.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Short Stories

The Theory Behind the Danny Tompkins Stories

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I had one more Danny Tompkins story to tell. Will this be the last.

My last post told about the latest of my Danny Tompkins stories. But I’m not sure I ever did a post explaining the full series and what my goals are for it. I think, with posting story #7, the series is done. But I thought that after #6, and years later I got the idea for the new story. So I guess I should say maybe it’s done, or maybe it isn’t.

The first story in the series is “Mom’s Letter”. I wrote this back around 2006. A fellow writer told me about a short story writing contest and encouraged me to enter. The word limit was rather short. My critique partners said the story wasn’t well enough developed, and I didn’t submit it. Later, when not governed by a specific word count, I expanded the story. Critique partners now liked it, and I waited for an opportunity to do something with it.

“Mom’s Letter” started it all.

Then came the beginning of 2011. That’s when I made the decision to self-publish. What to self-publish first? I had a history book almost done, but not quite. I still had a couple of months to go before it would be ready. But I remembered I had “Mom’s Letter” ready to go. And so I published it on Feb 13, 2011.

“Mom’s Letter” tells the story of Danny Tompkins, a 13-year-old boy who, on the last day of his first year at scout camp, learns that his mother has entered the hospital for the last time. Danny has the drive home from camp to ponder what life will be like without Mom. The story then fast forwards to the future, the Daniel, the adult Danny has become, finds a letter his mom wrote him during that week at camp, and remembers what it was like in those days.

This story took mw much further into the Danny Tompkins world that I expected to go.

That was all I figured on doing with Danny. But, as my writing continued, I realized I could make a series out of that, with the goal being to help teens who have experienced a loss to recover from the loss. And as I thought about it, the stories started rolling. “Too Old To Play” covered the wake and funeral. “Kicking Stones” was about going back to school. “Saturday Haircuts, Tuesday Funeral” told the story of how his dad dealt with his grief and that of his children. “What Kept Her Alive” told the story of his mother’s illness and suffering. And “Growing Up Too Fast” covered the struggles Danny had navigating his teen years.

The specific circumstances of Danny’s life meant he missed a lot of the typical stuff a teenager goes through.

As I say, I thought that the series was done at that point. I figured I had covered about all the things that a teen had to deal with. I hoped also that the memories of the adult Daniel showing how he got through the times would help a teen is similar situations. What more would I have to talk about?

If you read my last post, you know how “To Laugh Again” covered the return to normal after the period of mourning. That story came to me quite a while after I completed the rest of stories.

So, that’s where the series is. You can get an idea of it at this link. I hope some of you will take a look at it.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, memories, Short Stories

New Story Published: To Laugh Again

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I had one more Danny Tompkins story to tell. Will this be the last.

Some time ago, such as in July 2018, the idea came to me for another story in the Danny Tompkins short story series. At least that’s the earliest I have about it on paper. I thought I was done with the series at six stories and then cobbling them together into a short book.

But the idea sat there from mid-2018 until November 2023. Having just finished two fairly major writing projects, I looked for something to fill in a couple of weeks until I was ready to start the next. This came to mind, so I hog-tied it and whipped it out in a week or so, either November or December 2023.

In January I ran the first few pages past my writing critique group, the Scribblers & Scribes. It was obvious from that that the story wasn’t working, wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be. At another meeting I ran a few more pages by them with the same results. In between other writing, I pulled this story out a few times and made some fairly major changes. I sent it out to the critique group via e-mail and received some comments in return. It seemed that I had the right structure as the comments I received were about smaller things, such as better wording here and a little more detail there.

Last week, while waiting on my Bible study project to simmer a little, I brought Danny’s latest story out and made those final polishes based on comments or what seemed best to me. On Sunday last, I declared it done, or as done as I could make it. Here’s a link to it on Amazon.

I had some trouble writing the book description for the listing on Amazon. Here’s what I came up with.

Daniel Tompkins received word that his sister died, which triggers memories of a day, more than fifty years before, after his mother’s death. He faced a dilemma back then, a dilemma that stressed him out. The memory of what he went through as a 13-year-old helped him deal with his grief now.

So on Monday, after a routine dentist appointment, I got to work on publishing tasks. It all went surprisingly well, including making a simple cover, one that fits in with the rest of the series. Less than three hours after I uploaded it, it went live.

After that, I received some last minute critiques from my critique group (but I had sent it out to them kind of last minute), I made some edits—twice—and uploaded a revised version three times, the last time Wednesday evening. I received one even later critique that I started going through last night. I don’t know yet whether this will result in one last round of edits.

It feels good to get this done and published. I just wish I had better artistic skills and could make a better cover.

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.

America, Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, Genealogy, goals, miscellaneous, Short Stories, The Forest Throne, Uncategorized

November Progress, December Goals

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Ah, the first of the month comes on a regular blogging day. Perfect time to address progress and set some goals. First, the November progress.

  • As always, blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. I missed one day, Friday of Thanksgiving week. Otherwise, I had a meaningful blog post on each scheduled day. 
  • Attend three writers group meetings. I managed to do this. Thought I was going to miss one, but was able to make all three.
  • Finish editing Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, and schedule all chapters to publish to Kindle Vella. Yes! I got this done. All are published to Kindle Vella, no one is spending any money to read them. Alas.
  • Finish the first draft of A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1. This will be a stretch, but I should get close. No, did not quite get this done. As of yesterday’s writing, I still have a little over two chapters to go. I lost more than a week over Thanksgiving. Before that, I had a hard time with some of the writing, often missing my daily goal, occasionally having to spend the day in study and write nothing. But that’s okay; it was still progress in small steps.
  • Get a little more done on the ideas for The Artwork of God. I’m still in the research stage on this project. Ideas continue to come, so I guess I met this goal. I didn’t put much on paper, however, just brainstorming it. Found a couple of good quotes to go in it. So the goal was met, but just barely.
  • Begin writing down some plot ideas for the next volume in The Forest Throne series. My granddaughter and I sat and talked about this one day while she was here. I told her my ideas and she gave me feedback as well as some of her ideas. Since the book will be about the girl in the Wagner family, I will really need her help.

Now, what about goals for December? It’s the time I’ll have to try to get much done to meet my goals for the year. I haven’t looked at those for a long time. But, without looking back, here’s what I hope to accomplish this month.

  • Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday.
  • Attend three writers meetings. I’m not sure the third one will be held, as it will be getting close to Christmas.
  • Finish the first draft and much of the editing of A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1: To Jerusalem. As I said above, I’m down to the last couple of chapters. If I can maintain my writing schedule, I should finish the writing by December 10. That gives me two weeks to edit, enough time to go through the whole thing.
  • Type up some of the ideas for book 3 in The Forest Throne series. I don’t intend to begin actually writing this for perhaps a year, but I want to lock in the ideas generated so far.
  • Work some on Nature: The Artwork of God. This may be the next book I write (still trying to decide), so I need to expand the notes I’ve already taken.
  • Finish the new Danny Tompkins short story and decide what to do with it.
  • Read for research for the next book in the Documenting America series. Actually, until I do my research, I don’t know if this will be the next one or not.
  • Oh, one more: Finish and submit my article on a genealogical brick wall to the NWA Genealogical Society. The contest deadline is Dec 31. The article has been done for almost two months. Time to dust it off and do a final edit.
American Colonial History, Church History Novels, Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, Short Stories, The Teachings, Writing

So Many Choices, So Little Time

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I’m a little late with my post this Monday morning. The weekend was busy and I didn’t get it written ahead of time. Then, this morning Lynda had to go for a Covid19 test ahead of a procedure on Wednesday. Her appointment was at 7:50 and we were to be there fifteen minutes early. It was a drive-by testing site, and the long line of cars moved quickly through.  A stop for gas and pastries on the way home, and here I am, finally writing this.

Over the weekend and late last week my thoughts began to gel about my next writing tasks. It was Friday (I think; maybe Saturday) that I documented a couple of book ideas and wrote them in a Word document and saved them to my “Ideas” folder. They’ve been bugging me and, while I’m now purposely suppressing writing ideas as come, these two pre-date my decision to suppress, so I wanted to be done with them to free up brain space for other things.

What to do next? I have a novel-in-progress that’s stalled. I have a book I’m updating. I have a short story that’s bugging me. I have the next book in the Documenting America series to begin. And that’s not everything. I needed to prioritize.

So I took a little time to brainstorm that and decide what to do next, and why. Here’s what I decided.

  1. Published in 2011, I really need to do something with this, update it for later publications and correct some formatting errors. So, I began the editing work in early September 2020, and hope to re-publish by the end of September.

    Republish Documenting America: Lessons From The United States’ Historical Documents. I had already done most of the editing. An hour and it would be ready for publishing tasks. My reason for putting this first is I want to run some Amazon ads on it, beginning in about two weeks when I participate in the next Amazon ads challenge. I want an updated book to advertise.

  2. Edited to add: I forgot, when I posted this earlier, that I have to make a few corrections to my second genealogy book, Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Ipswich. A few of the figures were of poor quality. I need to load them into G.I.M.P and improve the quality, put them in the book file, then upload the revised file. As much as I hate doing graphic arts with G.I.M.P. I’ve been putting this off. I think, however, that I’ll slip this in after I finish re-publishing Documenting America.
  3. Return to work on The Teachings, the volume 3 in my church history novel series, which will plug the gap between volume 2 and 4. I’m about 1/3 done with it, and need to get back.
  4. Write, or at least start, the next story in the Danny Tompkins series of short stories. I had once thought the series finished, but an idea for one more story just won’t leave me, so I need to write it to get it out of my head. My problem is I know the main idea I want to convey, but not the full story. So when I start on it I’ll perhaps stall almost right away. I won’t know till I start the writing.
  5. The transcription is now complete (28 Sep 2020). Time to add some commentary.

    Add commentary to the Kuwait letters book. I’ve written about this before. After finishing the transcription, and before I put the letters back to storage and relegated the file to its folder and out of my mind, I added a little commentary. I’m ready to open the file and add some more commentary. I don’t know that I want to take the time to finish it, but I want to add something to it. This may be something for the odd hours between other things.

  6. Begin reading for the next book in the Documenting America series. This is tentatively Run-up to Revolution, covering the period from 1761 to 1775 or 1776. It will be the realization that the Colonies were no longer aligned with Great Britain and a separation was inevitable. I’m not sure how I will research this. Everything I need, just about, is on-line, but how to access it and when to read it is unknown at this time.

I had a couple of other things I wanted to put on this list, but will wait. As I sit and write this nothing else is coming to mind. If it does before the end of the day, I’ll edit this.

Now, if I can accomplish half of this by, say, the end of 2020, I’ll feel like I’ve made progress.

Bible study, Documenting America, goals, Short Stories

September Achievements, October Goals

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Last month I resumed monthly post of setting goals. Time for me to check in and see how I did, and to set goals for October (it’s not too late for that).

  • Blog on a regular Monday and Friday schedule. I’ve done fairly well at that this year, and I’d like to continue it. Yes, I did this. I don’t think I missed a day.
  • Complete publishing tasks for and publish all versions of  Documenting America: Making The Constitution. I’m close. The covers are the big holdup. Got this one done! I was almost ready with it when I posted goals, so I was pretty sure I’d finish it.
  • Complete publishing tasks for and publish all versions of  Acts Of Faith: Examples from the Great Cloud of Witnesses. I’m almost through with edits, but I can see this happening. Yes, I got this done too! I went through much consternation about the cover, but in the process of doing so learned much. So, book #30 is published. Well, some of them are short stories.
  • Write a short story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca series. I have a sheet or two of notes of what I’m going to do next, if I can only find them. Nope, not done. In fact, I started it on Sept 30. As of today I’m 2016 words into it, thinking it will be 4000 to 6000 words. I’ll roll this goal over.
  • Critique 2-3 poems at the Absolute Write Forums. I’d like to keep my foot in poetry somehow. Maybe this is the way. I regularly went to the poetry forum at Absolute Write and read new poems posted, but didn’t find any I thought I could do any good on. I’ll keep trying.
  • Attend writers groups on the 11th and the 18th. Done. Enjoyed both of them.
  • Complete reading three items and begin two or three more. Finished the three, and started two others, as per my goal.
  • Prepare my first newsletter for release about Oct 15. And figure out how to make it happen. I started this, but didn’t finish. I made up a list of what will be in it and have some of it written. I may make my Oct 15 goal.

Speaking of October goals, here they are.

  1. Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
  2. Finish the short story “Tango Delta Foxtrot” and come close to finishing the editing process. Shared the first scene with my writing group, for critique later.
  3. Attend writing groups on the 9th and 16th.
  4. Finish the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. As of this morning I’m a little more than halfway done with it. This is doable, though might be a stretch. If I get it written, publishing will be in another month.
  5. Issue my first newsletter. It may be shorter than I want, and may not have as many items as I planned, and for sure won’t have a lot of subscribers, but, hopefully, it will go out.
  6. Continue an aggressive reading program, at least an hour a day. I’m in the midst of two books, one in print and one e-book. I should finish both and start one or two more.

That’s it for this month. I’ll check back in the first of November.

Dateline: 3 October 2019

 

Bible study, Documenting America, goals, poetry, reading, Short Stories, Writing

September 2019 Goals

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I used to do goals posts regularly. I’ll do it this month and see what comes of it.

One thing I’ve been doing in the evening is going through old posts on this blog and adding categories to them. My son helped me set up my website in June 2011. Part of that was creating this blog. I already had a blog over at BlogSpot, titled “An Arrow Through the Air”. He did the work of porting all those posts over to this blog.

I intended, at first, to run both blogs. This one would be my writing blog; that one would be for more personal stuff. I did that for a while, but soon saw the pressures of life wouldn’t allow me to do both. So, I abandoned AATTA and concentrated on this blog. Eventually I renamed this one to be An Arrow Through The Air. The old one still exists. Every now and then I make a minor post there just to keep the account open.

A few months back I went to the back pages of this blog, I forget why. I noticed that all those posts from the old blog came over but none of them had categories. The all show up as “Uncategorized”. That’s not a major problem, but…oh, wait, I remember now. I was trying to find a post I did back in 2008 on a certain subject, went to that category, and didn’t find the post. That’s when I learned none of the categories had stayed with the posts as they ported over.

So, slowly, as I have a night in front of the TV where I can’t really do anything else, I’ve been going back through the old posts and adding categories. It’s actually a tedious job but I feel that it needs to be done. As of last night I had completed all the posts for 2008. Looks like I have two and a half years still to go.

One thing I noticed was that in 2008 I made a monthly post about my goals for the month—writing goals mostly—and then an end-of-the-month post showing how well I’d done. That was almost a journal, of sorts. It made me think I ought to do that occasionally. So, here’s my first goals post in a long time. Perhaps on Sept. 30 I’ll come back and make a post of how I did.

  1. Blog on a regular Monday and Friday schedule. I’ve done fairly well at that this year, and I’d like to continue it.
  2. Complete publishing tasks for and publish all versions of  Documenting America: Making The Constitution. I’m close. The covers are the big holdup.
  3. Complete publishing tasks for and publish all versions of  Acts Of Faith: Examples from the Great Cloud of Witnesses. I’m almost through with edits, but I can see this happening.
  4. Write a short story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca series. I have a sheet or two of notes of what I’m going to do next, if I can only find them.
  5. Critique 2-3 poems at the Absolute Write Forums. I’d like to keep my foot in poetry somehow. Maybe this is the way.
  6. Attend writers groups on the 11th and the 18th.
  7. Complete reading three items and begin two or three more. As of this morning I’m halfway through two books (each around 260-280 pages) and a third through a 60 page article. I should easily finish all these with no problem. I don’t know what I want to read next, but I’ll start searching my stacks before lone.
  8. Prepare my first newsletter for release about Oct 15. And figure out how to make it happen.

That’s enough, I think. See you all on the 30th with a report.