Category Archives: The Forest Throne

family, holidays, The Forest Throne, Writing

Writing Progress

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I have great hopes that this will be one of my better sellers. Two of my grandchildren, Ezra and Elise, think it will be a best seller. We’ll see.

I interrupt the review of The Control of Nature to just talk. Last weekend we were in Big Spring, Texas, doing the grandparent thing. We drove up on Thursday, had a grandson’s birthday party on Friday with many 6-year-olds and their parents, a grandson’s cross country meet on Saturday, taking or picking up grandkids from school or activities. It was quite enjoyable.

Then, on Saturday, the family drove to western Oklahoma for our son-in-law’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. They boarded the dog, which left Lynda and I alone in the house with the three cats. That lasted only about 30 hours, but it was a good time.

During the days, when the kids were at school, Richard was at work, and Sara was either working at home of going to the office, we had lots of solitude. This was quite enjoyable.

For me, it was like being on a writers’ retreat. I had no special projects to work on, no household chores, no yardwork, just peaceful time. So what did I spend my time on? I got back to work on the sequel to There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Titled The Key To Time Travel, I had written a prolog, chapter 1, and most of chapter 2, consisting of around 3,650 words. But I hadn’t done any work on it for close to a month—other than re-read it and edit. I had just been too busy with those special projects and things around the house.

But from the first day, I found time to write in it. About a thousand words a day. The plot flowed easily, the words found their way to pixels on screen. By the end of four days, I had 5,500 words added to the novel, pushing it to 9,200 words, or just under 25 percent of where I think the word count will end up.

I asked our granddaughter, Elise, to read it, which she did (all but the last 500 words or so), and she loved it. She mentioned certain things that made it good, things she liked to see in a book. So I think I’m on the right track.

We drove home on Wednesday. I’m writing this on Sunday. How many words do you think I’ve added since I got home? None, that’s how many. I made progress with my special projects. I finished one book I was working on both before and during our trip. I did a major amount of yardwork on Saturday. Then I had to prepare to teach our adult Sunday school class, a new series that I developed. That took a fair amount of time on Saturday.

Here it is Sunday evening. I’m brain dead. The microwave quit this morning, only a little over three years old. Lynda has a medical appointment tomorrow. Let me rephrase that. She may have a medical appointment tomorrow. She thinks she cancelled it and we’ll have to check first thing Monday.

So I don’t expect to get lots written either tonight or tomorrow. Maybe Tuesday.

Bible study, goals, The Forest Throne

September Progress, October Goals

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Yes, the last day of the month is here. Time to give a report of my stewardship of my time and reveal what I got done for the month and what I didn’t. Also time to set some goals for October. First, the progress.

  • Attend 3 writers group meetings, all in person, including making a presentation at the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society on 9/13. Did this, and my presentation at the NWALWS went well, with reasonably good attendance.
  • Blog twice a week on Monday and Friday, as always. Got this done, with no filler posts
  • Concentrate my limited writing time on The Key To Time Travel. I won’t put a word or chapter goal. I’m in the middle of Chapter 2 currently. I worked very little on this. I looked at it, read it all over, made some edits. But I don’t think I added more than 200 words. Next month should be better.
  • Figure out how to make a trailer for my Bible study, Death Kindly Stopped For Me. It will be a simple trailer, but lots to study to make it happen. I worked on this, but wasn’t able to get it done. I have a power point done, but can’t figure out how to make it run automatically.
  • Hopefully, get back to work on the two Bible studies I set aside a couple of months ago. One needs only an introduction and maybe 1,000 more words in the narrative to be finished. The other I estimate at 70 percent finished. Sure would be nice to find an hour here and there to work on them. Did not work on this at all, other than to touch base with the retired pastor who is reviewing one of them, to see when I might have his input.

So, it wasn’t a very productive month in terms of writing. But, in terms of special project, it was productive. I finished the Stars and Stripes inventory on Monday. On Wednesday I had a very good day digitizing letters, and am close to the end of the notebook I’ve been working on. The overall project is a long way from being done, but progress is being made. I’m at the point where soon I’ll feel good about backing off somewhat and getting back to writing.

And so, here are my goals for October.

  • Complete some significant work on The Key To Time Travel. I will have four days (starting today) where I will be somewhat cloistered, and hope to write 4,000 words those days. For the month I’ll double that and set a goal of 8,000 words. With a little discipline, that is quite do-able.
  • Finish the Bible study A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 5. I should get a report on viability soon. Indeed, a preliminary report on that indicates it is good. Note that, if I’m not mistaken, this is a renumbering of the Bible study, splitting part 1 into two and renumbering those after it.
  • Attend three writers meetings, all in person. Actually, I may fit in a fourth meeting. I’m also considering joining in on an on-line group from time to time. Just considering, for right now.
  • Blog twice a week. I have a number of book reviews lined up.
  • Continue with special projects. That’s not necessarily writing related. In October, I expect to finish digitizing the letters notebook I’m working on, and to finish proofreading the Kuwait Letters book. I’d like to say I will also finish adding photos to it and reformatting it, but that might be a bit much.

So there it is. A little more ambitious than the September goals. We’ll see if I can pull it off.

self-publishing, The Forest Throne, Writing

Henry, Izzy, and Me

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Henry and Izzy knew they were going to meet me that day, but not that I was giving them copies of the book.

In my last post, I talked about the author events I had last week. I mentioned that on Wednesday, I went to John Tyson Elementary School in Springdale, Arkansas. The purpose of the trip was for me to meet and give copies of my book There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel (Book 1 in The Forest Throne series) to my two beta readers, Henry and Izzy, and their E.A.S.T. facilitator, Mrs. Jennifer Boogaart. I wanted to write about that more in my last post, but I was waiting on photos. I didn’t take any myself, so I had to wait until they were posted on the school’s site. Those finally were posted, so I’ll say a little more about that event.

I think Henry and Izzy’s EAST facilitator, Jennifer Boogaart, was as happy to receive a copy of the book as they were.

In Nov. 2021, Mrs. Boogaart reached out to a Facebook group I’m a member of, Arkansas Authors. This is a group for the purpose of putting writers and educators together. Mrs. Boogaart said she had two students in her E.A.S.T. class who were writing a book about JTE’s school recycling program. She was hoping to find an author who would discuss the writing and publishing process with them. I volunteered, and last year we had two or three Zoom meetings (the pandemic still keeping us apart). One of these meetings I suggested, since I was about to publish a short story and I thought they could watch the process as I shared my screen with them.

I hope to do some writing on the sequel to this this week.

In one of the Zoom meetings, we discussed if they would want to be beta readers for TNSTATT. I explained what this was, and they both answered yes. I sent it to them in January of this year. I did all this mostly e-mailing their teacher, who I asked to get permission of their parents first. They were the first people other than members of my family who read the book. As a result, I mentioned Henry, Izzy, and Mrs. Boogaart in the acknowledgment section of the book—again, with their parent’s approval.

So Wednesday I arrived at 9:00 a.m. The school district communication department was there, as was Izzy’s mom. Mrs. Boogaart took me down to the E.A.S.T. classroom. Henry and Izzy came in soon thereafter, and we sat and talked. I gave them signed copies and showed them where their names were in it. I talked with them about how the idea for the book came to me, and how my oldest grandson helped with the ideas and the plot. I also asked them more about their book, including where they stand in the writing process.

The communications people got some of this on video. They then asked each of us for a statement about how the work on this book felt to us. Meanwhile, others were also taking photos, including the teacher, the mom, and the assistant principal. The whole thing has been posted on the JTE E.A.S.T. Facebook page. It’s at the top of the page now; later you might have to scroll down.

This is not the typical author event. I didn’t sell any books. I didn’t bring any to sell. But it was a joy to work with the kids, and to be able to meet them and give them the book. My life was enriched, and I hope they and their teacher’s lives were as well.

Oh, wait, I figured out how to get the link to the E.A.S.T. post itself. Here it is.

Documenting America, The Forest Throne, Writing

Writer Events

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We had a good critique group Thursday evening.

I said on Monday this would be a busy week, and it was, even busier than I thought it would be.

Tuesday, I made my presentation to the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society. This was a repeat of my presentation “The Universal Postal Union: The Letter Writer’s Friend”. We were eight in number at the meeting, and attenders seemed interested. At the end of the presentation, we brainstormed other things I might talk about in future meetings.

Wednesday, I went to John Tyson Elementary School in Springdale, AR, and presented copies of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel to my beta readers, Heny and Izzy, and to their E.A.S.T. facilitator, Jennifer Bogart. It was good to meet these two students and chat with them a while. The school had the school district media people there. There was a post about it on the school district’s website, but I can’t find the link now.

Then Thursday was the semi-monthly meeting of our critique group, the Scribblers & Scribes. We had five in attendance, one who was a new member and another I hadn’t met before. All five of us had some writing to share, and we went from 6 p.m. to a little after 8:30 p.m. It was quite a variety of writing to review.

I had a good time making the last-minute presentation to the homeschool group—and I sold a few books as well.

That’s what I had on the writer/author schedule at the beginning of the week. But Thursday I received a message from a woman I’d sold some books to (both used books and some of mine), saying I should look for a text. It was already there, asking me if I would make a presentation to a homeschool group at their Constitution Day, which was the next day, Friday morning—this morning. I said yes, of course, knowing I had only 24 hours to prepare. The meeting was at a park in Bentonville. The students were from ages 5-17, including a good group of teenagers, and all had a parent or grandparent with them. I made what I think was a good presentation, though mostly at the level of the older kids there rather than the younger. The parents all seemed to like it, based on comments I received afterwards. I sold a good number of books in my Documenting America series. And I got a few orders for books that people will want around November.

So now I have an easing in my schedule. Time to take care of car maintenance and yardwork and grocery shopping. And, perhaps, squeezing in a little writing.

C.S. Lewis, critique group, family, Health, letters, miscellaneous, reading, research, Stars and Stripes, The Forest Throne, Writing

A Busy Week Ahead

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I hope to do some writing on the sequel to this this week.

It’s Sunday evening as I write this, multi-tasking as we watch the specials about 9/11. I’m looking ahead to tomorrow, and realize I don’t have time to write the type of post I’d hoped to have for Monday. Even Friday is a little iffy for a post that takes a lot of time.

This is a killer week. Not so Monday and Friday, but the other days have a lot of activities and appointments.

First, I have two “gigs” this week. On Tuesday, I will repeat my presentation on the Universal Postal Union to the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society. I made this presentation in May, but almost everyone who normally attends was gone that day. So I’ll do it again. Fortunately, all I have to do is dust off my PowerPoint and run through it once or twice.

Then, Wednesday morning, I am to be at John Tyson Elementary School in Springdale (40 mile drive), where I will make a presentation of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel to Henry and Izzy, the two students I had Zoom meetings with about a writing project they were doing, then had them be beta readers for my book. They don’t know I’ll be there and giving them the finished book. This will be at 9:00 a.m.

I have several hundred more of these WW2 newspapers to inventory.

Then, at 12:00 noon, I have an appointment with my cardiologist’s P.A. Hopefully I’ll learn how well the cardio rehab program went. Between those two appointments, I’m hoping to meet someone for coffee. We’ll see if that happens.

Then, Wednesday afternoon, Lynda and I have dental appointments. I’ll barely have time to get home after seeing the cardiologist to leave for the dentist. But, unless we head to church that night, that will end appointments on Wednesday.

At noon on Thursday, Lynda will have her MRI to find out what, exactly, caused her sciatica attach in July. That has been twice delayed, not because of us, but because of insurance and provider problems. Then, that evening, is a semi-monthly meeting of the Scribblers & Scribes critique group. I’ll have some preparation time required for that.

In addition to this, I have my normal activities, which at the moment include:

  • morning 2-mile walks
  • digitizing a minimum of 10 printed letters a day
  • inventorying a minimum of 30 issues of the Stars and Stripes
  • whatever writing I can squeeze in, most likely on The Key To Time Travel, though I have other projects to work on as well, if I want to do so.
  • A little bit of yard work, although the work I got done on Saturday puts me a little ahead of where I normally am.
  • reading for research as well as for pleasure, including a couple of C.S. Lewis writings.

At some point, I need to begin the strength exercise program recommended in the cardio rehab program. I hope to begin that on Monday.

So yes, it will be a busy week. Hopefully I’ll be able to see progress on all my tasks.

Bible study, Christianity, goals, The Forest Throne

August Progress, September Goals

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New month, time for a progress report and new goals. First, the progress report. Here are the goals I posted at the beginning of August.

  • Attend three writing group meetings in person. This includes making the presentation at one on Aug 9. Done. My presentation went very well, I think.
  • Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday. I think I missed one day, my first complete miss in a long time. With all that was going on, that wasn’t too bad.
  • Write at least two more chapters in The Key To Time Travel. I did not complete this. I worked on one chapter, and got it mostly done in first draft.
  • Write at least two more episodes of Tales Of A Vagabond. I still don’t know what I will do with this. I need to get a little more into it before I can assess if this is a viable item for Kindle Vella. I worked on TOAV, perhaps a little more than I should have. I have completed five episodes. Now to see how I can program this, how many episodes out. At the moment, I’m thinking of setting it aside and get on other projects.
  • Continue to program the next Bible study. The tentative title is Death Kindly Stopped For Me. I have now prepared lesson notes for three of the seven lessons in this series. I feel good enough about it that I can definitely schedule it to start in October. Now I need to make a trailer for it. Oops, that goals, not progress.
  • Do some marketing of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Also need to close a couple of sales of this. I did a little marketing on this, but not much. Closed two sales.

So it was a so-so month. I’m not unhappy with it. I gave a lot of time to my paper files digitalization project, and likely will be doing that for a few months. That cuts into my writing time.

On to September.

  • Attend 3 writers group meetings, all in person, including making a presentation at the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society on 9/13.
  • Blog twice a week on Monday and Friday, as always.
  • Concentrate my limited writing time on The Key To Time Travel. I won’t put a word or chapter goal. I’m in the middle of Chapter 2 currently.
  • Figure out how to make a trailer for my Bible study, Death Kindly Stopped For Me. It will be a simple trailer, but lots to study to make it happen.
  • Hopefully, get back to work on the two Bible studies I set aside a couple of months ago. One needs only an introduction and maybe 1,000 more words in the narrative to be finished. The other I estimate at 70 percent finished. Sure would be nice to find an hour here and there to work on them.

I think that’s it. Possibly more than I can accomplish, but it’s something to shoot for.

Bible study, Christianity, goals, self-publishing, The Forest Throne, Writing

July Progress, August Goals

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First of the month. Time to review progress last month and set some goals for August. That means return to my environmental series will be delayed one more post.

First, the goals I set at the beginning of the month. They were not ambitious goals.

  • Get back on the two Bible studies I’ve set aside to complete other things. I’d love to set a goal of finishing them by the end of the month, but I think that’s too ambitious. Let me instead say to work on them in at least 10 writing sessions. I believe I worked on the Bible studies only one day. Life circumstances and changed writing interests resulted in my not being able to focus on this.
  • Attend three writers meetings, all in-person. Did this. They were three good meetings.
  • Blog twice a week on Monday and Friday. Might be a challenge with the grandkids here. Did this. Maybe a couple of posts weren’t the best.
  • Work on the programming of the next Bible study. I’ll post about it at some point. I did manage to have a couple of good sessions on this. I’m not as far along as I wanted to be, but at least I made progress.
  • Not originally a goal, but something I worked on was the next book in The Forest Throne series, tentatively titled The Key To Time Travel. I did this because the grandkids were here, and they were interested in getting started on it.

What about this month? I’m still dealing with some health issue for me and my wife. We were going to take a long road trip this month, but that’s up in the air right now due to health. I will decide on that sometime this week. I’m going to establish goals as if we won’t be making the trip.

  • Attend three writing group meetings in person. This includes making the presentation at one on Aug 9.
  • Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday.
  • Write at least two more chapters in The Key To Time Travel. I hope to work on that some today.
  • Write at least two more episodes of Tales Of A Vagabond. I still don’t know what I will do with this. I need to get a little more into it before I can assess if this is a viable item for Kindle Vella.
  • Continue to program the next Bible study. The tentative title is Death Kindly Stopped For Me.
  • Do some marketing of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Also need to close a couple of sales of this.

I’ll leave it at that. This is really a tough month to plan anything, given uncertain health issues.

The Forest Throne

There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel

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I have great hopes that this will be one of my better sellers. Two of my grandchildren, Ezra and Elise, think it will be a best seller. We’ll see.

My latest book is now available on Amazon. There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel is book 1 in what I hope will become a four or five book series titled The Forest Throne.  It is the story of 12-year-old Ethan Wagner, who finds a strange rock formation in the hollow behind his grandparents’ home in the Ozarks. He is sure it is manmade and is a time portal. His grandfather disagrees, though a hold drilled in the “arm” of the throne is certainly manmade. When they find, in another place in the woods, a peg that will exactly fit into the drilled hole, Ethan knows he must try out the throne.

I uploaded the book on Saturday. The e-book went live that day, and the print book was available on Sunday. I haven’t yet bought copies for distribution and local sales, but will do so after the proof copy arrives tomorrow.

Here’s the long description.

Ethan Wagner doesn’t mean to cause trouble.

But his imagination and desire for fun and adventure sometimes overwhelm him. When he found the strange rock formation down in the holler behind his grandparents’ Ozarks home, he was sure it was manmade. He called it “The Forest Throne”. When his sister found a peg that fit perfectly in a hole in the throne, he just knew it was a time portal that would take him to the future.

Grandpa said he’d better not mess with the throne. But, of course, Ethan can’t resist. He goes down into the woods when he’s told not to, sits in the throne, uses the peg to activate it and…nothing happens. At first. He doesn’t get transported to the future. But, when he steps out of the throne and removes the peg, the real adventures start.

Ethan’s disobedience results in the time portal being activated—not once but twice. No one seems to have a way to put things back the way they were. Ethan knows it’s up to him to right the wrong he’s done.

There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel tells the story of one boy’s encounter with the past—and the future—and how going between them may not quite be the adventure people think it will be.

You can find it here at Amazon. And here’s the whole cover, back on the left, front on the right.

The front and back cover wrap.
Bible study, goals, The Forest Throne

May Progress, June Goals

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It’s time for progress and new goals. I’ll say right off that I didn’t make as much progress last month as I’d hoped. I got things done, but not all on my list. The busyness may be easing a little, and perhaps June will be more productive.

  • Finish preparing for my presentation to the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society at the May 10 meeting. I finished the preparation in good time and made the presentation. Alas, only two people showed up: our leader, and one a friend of mine from church who came to hear me. Possibly I’ll give this presentation again someday.
  • Complete all tasks and publish There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Very do-able, I think. We are so close on this. I began writing this post and this item long before the day of posting. Possibly I’ll be able to edit this, before the post goes live, and say “Done!”
  • Attend writers meetings. There will be 5 or 6 this month, two in person and three or four on-line. I attended the two in-person meetings, and they were good. I decided to back off a little and am taking a break from the on-line group for a while. I attended the first two and left off the last two.
  • Make good progress on the second Bible study while I wait to hear from my beta reader on the first. No, I didn’t get a lot done on this. The unexpected Centennial work, combined with things I had to do around the house, kept me from concentrating enough to complete these. Also, a glitch of some kind meant my beta reader never received the document to review. That’s been corrected now and I’m awaiting that review.
  • Finish those website updates. I think I have less than 30 minutes of work on this. Not done. Such a small item. Will go on the list for June.
  • Complete work on the Centennial research notes. I think this will be another 2 or possibly 3 hours of work. I was not able to find the little bit of time needed to do this. Partly that was due to the Committee asking me to help with a new task, which took a lot more than the couple of hours I wanted to devote to the research notes. Put it on next month’s to-do list.
  • As always, blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday. Yes, got this done. In something of a rhythm now.

So much for what I accomplished in May. What’s planned—or hoped for—in June? Some of it will sound much like May’s list.

  • Work on my unfinished Bible study, A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 3. Although I still don’t have feedback on Part 4 (I know, this is another out-of-order situation with my writing), I want to at least finish this part.
  • Take a long look at my writing and sales, and decide which of several major projects comes next. I have several directions to go. I don’t anticipate being able to actually start on my next project this month. It would be good, however, to finish the month at least knowing what it is.
  • Finish the Centennial research notes.
  • Finish the updates to my website. That will include adding the new book to my list of publications.
  • Attend two in-person writers groups, or three if you include the letter writers society. I’m not sure when I’ll be getting back to the on-line group.
  • Work on Tales Of A Vagabond. I’ll have to devote a post to this.
Bible study, Christianity, The Forest Throne

Projects Closure Now Very Close

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Not the final cover, but some thoughts I had on a draft. The artist is working on it.

As I mentioned in my last post, several writing projects are at or near an end, and it’s time to start thinking about what’s next.

Last night and this morning, I believe I completed both the Amazon page description and the back cover copy for There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. This is something I’m not particularly good at, these short descriptions aimed at “closing the sale” when someone is looking at my books. I like how it turned out in this case. I have high hopes for this book. Maybe these short descriptions will help.

As I said before, the church Centennial book is done, and print copies are in-hand. The church has been taking pre-orders, and this Sunday, distribution will start. I’ll be at the table where people will pick up pre-ordered copies or buy them that day. A presentation of the book will be made in the church service. I’ll get to man the table between first and second services.

Also as mentioned in the last post, I’m waiting on feedback on my completed Bible study before doing the last 25 percent of the second one. But next week, I think I will hop back on that project and start bringing it to completion, whether I get the feedback or not.

This week, I quickly wrote a couple of thousand words in a memoir-type piece that I’m contemplating writing. At present, it is titled Tales Of A Vagabond, but I’m not sure if that’s how it will end up. I’m not even sure it will be my next project. I wanted to have something for the Scribblers & Scribes writers’ group meeting last night, so I wrote that. It was well received, though of course I received valuable feedback should I want to continue with this. I guess I mentioned Tales Of A Vagabond in my last post as well.

So I’m not quite in between projects, but I continue to inch closer to that point. TNSTATT should be published within two weeks. The two Bible studies should be done in about a month. Centennial committee duties are almost over for me and will be over as of July 10. High school reunion is Aug 13. Somewhere, sometime soon, is my next writing project. Possibly I’ll take a week off.