Category Archives: Writing

Christianity, creativity, miscellaneous, Writing

Snow Day

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Looking north, not on our street but the one our circle ties in to. Plowed, but having had almost no traffic on it. The road veers to the left in the distance while our road goes right, both steeply downhill.

Yesterday was a snow day. This large winter storm, called “Landon” by the Weather Channel, was strung-out across more than half the USA. The forecasters missed the start of the storm, but otherwise got it mostly right.  They even predicted that we would get a last band of snow last night, and it happened. It looks like another inch or two on top of the 6 we already had.

So, when you are retired and have hit your 70th birthday, what do you do on a snow day? For me, I can’t resist going out in it. Never mind that the temperature was 18 and a north wind was blowing the fine snow at a 45-degree angle. I bundled up and hiked up the road. Not far, just up to the stop sign and back.

As I left the house, I measured 5″ in two places on our property, and a 13″ drift near the garage. Our street wasn’t plowed. Tire tracks came to our mailbox and stopped. The mailman had obviously driven that far and, not having any mail down the road (one of two houses there is current vacant), just backed up the hill. He/she did a good job of staying within the downhill tracks as they backed uphill.

At the house up the road, my neighbor was out. Having just shoveled his driveway, he was standing there, in just a light jacket. We talked for a while, me at the top of the driveway and him just inside the open garage door. Then I continued my walk. I was surprised to find the next road plowed. It isn’t a main road, though it does connect to main roads at both ends. About an inch of snow had fallen since it was plowed, and only one set of tire tracks showed on the freshly fallen.

At the next road, it was the same. Plowed, more snow falling, and only a few tire tracks. No one was out, either on foot or in vehicles. My walk had been pleasant thus far. But when I turned to head home, the wind was in my face, driving the fine snow. It was biting, not all that pleasant. But, I had only gone .17 miles, so it was a short walk past five houses and lot and lots of woods on both sides. I reached home having not fallen and invigorated.

I then returned to my work for the day, a fresh mug of coffee in hand. I think that was my fourth. My work was reviewing edits to the church Centennial book suggested by the two proofreaders and uploaded to the document in Google Drive. They did more than just proofread it, however. They had a lot of suggestions for changes. We have a Zoom conference scheduled for this afternoon to discuss it, and I figured I should go through the comments before hand. So, in The Dungeon, Google Drive on one screen and the Word doc on the other, I went to work. By the time 3 p.m. came around, my brain was fried, despite having taken those breaks for the walk and for lunch.

On a snow day such as this, I would have then gone to the sunroom with my coffee and read and taken a nap. But yesterday, instead, I did that in my reading chair in the living room. I tackled my e-mail inbox, going through e-mails over 10 years old and deciding what to do with them. I made good progress and can see light at the end of that tunnel. Then I’ll get to tackle the sent box. Through the evening I went through another twenty pages of comments in the Centennial book.

Now it’s almost 8:30 a.m. on Friday. The sun is shining through The Dungeon windows. I have ten to fifteen pages of comments to go through. I have other writing to do, then the conference at 1:00 p.m. After that, hopefully, I’ll find myself in the sunroom, alternately reading and napping. It should be a pleasurable after-the-snow day.

book reviews, fiction, Writing

Book Review: “Turning Life Into Fiction”

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This isn’t one of the premier books that every writer needs to read and have on their shelf, but it is a worthwhile read.

I have a fair number of books for writers in my library. I should read more of them, but, given the large number of books I’m working through, I tend to pick others over those. Recently, I browsed one of my bookshelves, the one tucked away in the storeroom, and pulled two out. I took them and no others on our recent trip to Texas, forcing me to read them.

On Wednesday I finished the first of them, Turning Life Into Fiction, by Robin Hemley. Since that’s what I do to a fairly great extent in my fiction, I thought this would be good to read. It was. I read the paperback edition, copyrighted 1994. My copy is a new book but I don’t remember buying it. Possibly I won it at a writers conference.  That might sound old, but really it isn’t. The advice that Hemley gives works across the 90s and the 20s.

Take your life, or any part of real life, and figure out how to turn it into fiction. You aren’t writing history, and there’s no need to make your fiction exactly faithful to history. Begin with the truth. Add characters, delete characters, change the gender of characters. Start with the real setting; make some changes, but probably not as many as with the characters. But, if you change anything about a real place be prepared for someone very familiar with that place to call you out on it. That’s okay. For every 1 reader who knows the place you will have 1000 readers who don’t. So make a few changes. Maybe more than a few.

Hemley starts with journaling, and the importance of it, then moving on to memoir. He talks about the news and how to take virtually any news story and be able to develop a fictional story about it. He cautions the writer, however, that not every historical detail needs to be part of your memoir or story. The writer needs to take great care to see that the story has the right details, the details needed to pull in the reader and keep them reading.

The last chapter has to do with legal and ethical concerns. You don’t want to use real people in your books without permission. If you do, change enough so that the character bears only a little to the original. While successful lawsuits against fiction writers based on characters that resemble real people are rare, they do happen.

I’m glad I read this book. It helped me to see how I’m doing a lot of things right as I turn real life experiences into fiction. I’m not going to keep this book, as I never see myself re-reading it. But it’s a good book, a worthwhile read for any writer.

The Forest Throne, Writing

More on “The Forest Throne”

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When building a fort in the woods, it’s good to have a helper.

Well, I’ve been sitting at my computer for an hour editing The Forest Throne. I totally forgot that the first writing I was supposed to do this morning was my Monday blog post. Hence, here it is 7:50 a.m. I’m 20 minutes late and just getting started.

Every fort has to have a beginning, and many hands to make the work light.

I had planned my post today to be about The Forest Throne, which I’ll abbreviate TFT hereinafter. I told something of the genesis of this book in a prior post, promising then to tell something of the story in a future post. The future has arrived.

Soon, it begins to look like a fort.

The story revolves around Ethan. He’s 11 years old to start the book, visiting his grandparents for Thanksgiving with his parents and three siblings. Ethan has some issues (what 11-year-old doesn’t?), and he’s constantly being corrected as he torments his little brother and sister. He and Grandpa go for a hike in the woods behind the house, into the hollow, something they do on every visit.

You never know what you will find when you hike down an Ozark hollow.

This is the Ozarks, not the highest mountains part, but the foothills. Lots of valleys covered with oak trees eking out a life on rocky hillsides. Way down the hill, just before you get to the bottom of the hollow, they find an odd formation in the hillside. It looks a little like a chair. It seems to be manmade, and has a hole drilled into one of the “arms”. Ethan sits in it, calls it his forest throne, and immediately wishes it was a time machine. His grandfather reminds him “There’s no such thing as time travel.”

Later they go across the street from the house and work on a fort. You’re in the middle of the woods. It’s someone else’s land, but they aren’t around, so what do you do? You build a fort. It takes a few years of repeated visits to get it done. While playing at the fort, Ethan’s little sister finds a blue peg, which he immediately takes from her. He realized it is the same size as the hole drilled in the forest throne and determines to go back there to see if the peg fits. Maybe it’s the key to activating the time portal.

Well, he does go back there; the peg does fit; and nothing happens except the peg gets stuck. Nothing he tries gets it out. Soon the visit is over and he and his family goes home to Texas.

They come back the next year during the summer—just the three oldest kids, not the parents or the baby brother. Ethan is 12 now, and he gets to stay longer after the other siblings go home. He goes down to the throne, which is a little hard to find, but he finds it. The peg is still in place. After much trying, he learns that with a little bit of twisting the peg will come out. He pulls out the peg. In just a few seconds he encounters….

Well, this is about as far as I can go without giving away the whole plot. Let’s just say that Ethan’s hopes that the throne is a time portal turn out to be all too true. He activates it, not once but twice, and a terrible thing has happened as a result.

TFT is done. I finished it last Wednesday. I finished reading it to the wife last night. I’m most of the way through with my first round of edits and will likely complete them today. My critique group has through Chapter 4. Later this week I’ll get it to my beta readers, all five of them. They are ages 13 through 8. We’ll see if it passes muster. Hopefully it will be ready to publish not later than April.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, self-publishing, Writing

2021 Book Sales

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My highest selling book in 2021.

It’s been a long time since I posted my book sales. 2021 was my best year for sales. I guess you would call it a record year, though, with the numbers still as low as they are, record somehow seems inappropriate.

I sold 223 books, almost all sales coming from on-line sources. That beat my previous best year which was 156 way back in 2012. Also, in 2021, I passed the 1,000 lifetime sales mark, ending up with 1034.

Why the increase? Amazon ads. I began running some ads on Amazon in July 2020, added to them in 2021, and sales finally happened. Unfortunately, to this point I’ve spent more in ads than I’ve received in royalties from all sources. It’s not a big number, and the deficit is shrinking. At the end of the year, I was down only $4.52, though at worst I was behind $73.80. If the trend continues into 2022, I’ll be money ahead in a month or two. Just on ad spend, not overall. The cost to maintain this website puts me way in the red each year.

Had 19 sales of this, pulled along by the ads for the first book in the series.

I had sales of 22 different books, out of 35 books listed for sale at year end. Highest of those was the first Documenting America book, which I advertised. Second was Doctor Luke’s Assistant, which I also advertised. The other two books in the Documenting America series also had double-digit sales, as did Acts Of Faith, which I advertised.

Several of these “sales” were actually through Kindle Unlimited, the first that I had from that Amazon sales channel. I think royalties work out to less, but I’ve had a hard time rigorously tracking them.

So, here comes 2022. My ads are still running. They don’t seem to be working quite as well as early in the year. I will probably add another book to those I advertise, though I’m not in any hurry to do that.

Here’s hoping 2022 will be another best year for book sales.

 

 

family, fiction, Writing

The Time Crunch Has Started

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Every year, in November, tens of thousands of writers, at the start of November, sign pledges, set goals, and sit their rear ends in seats in front of computers and begin a novel. Yes, it’s National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. Internet groups have formed for it. Some in-person meet-ups are probably happening. The goal is 50,000 words for the month. That’s not quite a novel for most genres, but it’s more than just a good start. It’s well on it’s way to writing a novel.

But I am not participating. I never participate in NaNoWriMo. The main reason is the busyness of November. Our main annual family celebration is at Thanksgiving. Preparations for this normally consume much time and energy, leaving little for writing and certainly not enough to complete a novel or even 50,000 words of one. I am working on a novel, and today hope to carve out enough time to add 1,000 words to it. But I can’t commit to NaNoWriMo goals.

This year the time crunch is made worse because of decluttering. Two bedrooms have been in use as decluttering staging areas. They are cluttered. The dining room and our large dining table has also been a site of staging. Boxes and piles, boxes and piles, seemingly everywhere. They grow a little and shrink a little, depending on whether we are finishing with something or starting something new.

Saturday we made some good progress, so naturally the dining room looks much worse than it did on Friday. I said progress because we finally, after nine months, dug into boxes of linens left behind in our house when my mother-in-law died three years ago. We sorted. Somethings we discarded (which means put them aside to go to Goodwill, which takes odd cloths and makes things out of them). Today, Monday, with a little extra effort, might have all this sorted out and put either in the garage for storage/donation or in smaller boxes for storage. I hope.

Writing will continue, even as I work on both physical and digital decluttering. But I have no real goals for output until after Thanksgiving. Then, maybe by the end of December, the first draft of that novel will be done. Meanwhile, I will say with Emerson, there is time enough…for all that I must do.

goals, Writing

October Progress, November Goals

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Start of a new month. Time to report on what progress I made in October, and to establish some goals for November. First, the progress.

  1. Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. I have a couple of conflicts coming up, so maybe those pre-written and to-be-scheduled posts will come in handy. I almost achieved this. I looked back over the month and realized I missed one day. I’m not sure how that happened. I thought I had one scheduled for that day. I suppose I hit a wrong key and the post disappeared.
  2. Work on my work-in-progress, The Forest Throne. I did get back to this. I worked on it a couple of times at a writer on-line event (more on that another time), then worked on it three or four days in a row. I’m liking where it is and how far I’m into it.
  3. Link the four novels in my Church History novels series. Why do I keep putting this off? This month I didn’t put this off. Got it done.
  4. Begin formatting the church Centennial book. I received one of three outside contributions and pasted it in. I have a promise of receiving the other two very soon. I’m happy to report I accomplished this. I now of two of the three outside contributions; I have the book formatted for book size; I’ve been adding photographs. I suspect I have another five hours of work for the book to be ready for someone to make a cover and begin the printing process. Well, first finding a printer.
  5. Attend writers groups this month. I’m not sure how many it will be. I may have conflicts with the meeting dates of two of my regular groups. Maybe I’ll be able to get in on the new group a couple of times. I did this. I missed two meetings while traveling, but attended three meetings of a new group, an on-line group. A productive month in this category.
  6. Publish “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”, once I get critiques back from the Scribblers & Scribes. I have one back already. Publishing will mean cover creation, but I’m already pulling ideas together. Did not get this done. Just too busy on other things.
  7. Take a look at, but don’t necessarily write more on, the Bible study I was working on during the spring and early summer. No, didn’t get this done.

Ok, what do I want to accomplish in November? This is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). But November, with our family Thanksgiving celebration, is always too busy for me to participate. Plus, we still have decluttering/disaccumulation activities. Still, I want to establish some goals. Here they are.

  1. Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday.
  2. Attend my writers groups this month. That will be about six meetings if I make all of them.
  3. Continue formatting work on the church Centennial book. With luck, and a few good hours, it will be finished when Dec 1 rolls around.
  4. More work on The Forest Throne. I’ll even set a word goal on this: 10,000 words more than I have now.
  5. Begin the process of revamping my website. I don’t really have that much to do on it, mainly have a new landing page and move my bio to it’s own page. I ought to be able to achieve that.

I think that’s all I’ll establish as official goals. An unofficial goal is to continue to go through my writing papers and see what I need to keep, what I can get rid of.

I’ll check back in either late November or early December with a progress report and new goals.

C.S. Lewis, miscellaneous, reading, Writing

Another Blustery, Rainy, Busy Day

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Rain came in Wednesday late. At least I think it did. I was asleep and didn’t hear it. When I woke up Thursday morning, I heard the plink-plink on the skylights. While waiting for the coffee to brew, I went into the darkness of the sunroom and listened. The wind was easy, the rain light, and the sounds wonderful.

As for my “work” day, after the coffee was done, I went to The Dungeon. Light was just barely visible between the blinds slats, darker than normal due to the rain. I had my devotions and read morning newsletters, then planned my trading day. Thursday is a busy day for my trading system. I did some analysis and laid out some trades. I then made them slowly as the day unfolded.

For writing, I pulled off The Forest Throne to get back on the church Centennial book. As I’ve said before, the writing work is done. I had also begun formatting it for print a week ago. My main task was to add photos. Some of those were on a shared Google drive. Some were in church archives I had at the house, and some were loose or in envelopes. I worked with them all morning. By the time lunch came around I had approximately ten pages of photos added. It’s not done, but it’s now close. Another morning of work and I’ll have added all that are available to me. Today I plan on doing that work.

After lunch, I fell asleep reading C.S. Lewis’s essay “De Futilitate”. So I got up and went out to the sunroom and went back to reading it. I was able to finish the essay, but didn’t really understand it. I think it’s a three or four reading just to get a basic understanding but that wouldn’t be enough to be able to discuss it intelligently.

Pizza and salad for supper, then an evening of…what? I could write, edit, read, chill out watching TV, wash the dishes, declutter. Hmmm. I’m actually writing this Thursday evening, around 7 p.m. Well, I worked on decluttering and disaccumulation last night; I’m not sure I’m up for it tonight. The dishes really need washing, so I’m sure I’ll do that. I may then mess around with e-mail archiving. That’s easy to do in distracted conditions.

The rain is about over, but the winds have risen. I hear the roaring through the closed window. This is blowing-down-trees strength wind. I enjoy listening to it, but won’t appreciate the clean-up afterwards.

This is the last post for October. I’ll be back on Monday with a writing progress report.

Christianity, Engineering, stock market, Writing

Thoughts on Occupations and Leisure

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In my last post, I made some comments on C.S. Lewis’s essay “Christianity and Culture”. I decided to re-read it, finishing it on Saturday. I’m now in the process of reading the train of criticism it provoked and Lewis’s response to the criticism. Last night I went looking for the criticism, and found it on-line. Alas, it was all behind a paywall. In the next few days I may spend a little more time to see if it exists somewhere else on the internet that doesn’t require a financial outlay.

But Lewis got me to thinking, and I journaled about it Saturday night and may journal about it again. Lewis wondered, several years after his conversion, if the cultured, educated life he was living and earning his living from was compatible with Christianity. He said that he had come to the conclusion that the end/goal of the Christian’s life must be to glorify God and see His kingdom increased. Did the cultured life, a.ka. the literary life wherein literature is pursued as an end in itself, contribute to these two aims of the Christian life?

Lewis concluded the cultured life was not incompatible with Christianity. To do so he searched the scriptures, the early Christian writers, and many later Christian writers from Catholic and Protestant sources.

All of which led me to wonder whether my vocation and leisure was compatible with the aims of Christianity. Of course, I left my vocation behind for retirement. For 44 years I spent my time engineering public infrastructure and private developments. I did this in five states and three countries. I earned a good living at it. I think I helped the world, and in some cases changed the world, by practicing that profession. While doing so, I believe I did it as a faithful and devout Christian. When asked to pay a bribe while in Saudi Arabia—a request made by a fellow American expat—I refused. When some Bible extract booklets were shipped to be by mistake, I distributed them in-country, including to a Lebanese Muslim expat.

I could go on blowing my own horn, but that’s not a good thing to do. I only do so to show why I come to the conclusion that the decades I spent in my chosen profession were compatible with Christian discipleship, a conclusion arrived at with considerably less searching than Lewis did.

What about now? I actually have two new professions. One, of course, is writing. My books and stories are a mix of overtly Christian and secular underpinned by a Christian worldview. I don’t have a lot of sales and no notoriety, but it’s difficult to see how that would be incompatible with Christian discipleship.

My other “occupation” in “retirement” is stock trading, or securities trading as defined by the IRS: buying and selling stocks and options for the ake of generating income and building wealth. On the surface that looks a little more iffy. Again, taking a somewhat superficial look at it, securities trading is not inherently evil. It could be looked at the same as buying and selling paintings, or buying and selling baseball cards, hoping to have a gain. With securities, it’s all done in an account, you don’t have an inventory of goods to deal with.

It would seem to be acceptable so long as you do it right. No insider trading (as if I had access to such). No risky speculation. Tithe the gain and give offerings on top of that. Pay taxes on the gain according to the law. It would seem to me that with those stipulations this second retirement vocation is not incompatible to Christian discipleship.

One other thing to consider is if following these retirement occupations is causing me to shirk other responsibilities. My answer to that is no. As I look at the things I do around the house, in the family, in church and community, I think I’m doing okay with what I do.

This little bit of thought has taxed my brain. I’ve given all this a cursory, perhaps shallow, analysis and concluded I’m not wrong in my retirement pursuits. I hope I’m right.

Bible study, Church History Novels, goals, self-publishing, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

September Progress, October Goals

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October 1, falling on a Friday—a regular blogging day for me—is the perfect day for recording what I accomplished in September, and for establishing some goals for October. Here’s the progress.

  1. Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Done, though one Saturday I realized I had totally forgotten to post anything on Friday, so I got a post up a day late. And one Monday post, that I wrote the previous Friday, accidentally got posted on that Friday, #usererror. But every regular blogging day was covered. To help me be a little more regular with my posting, I actually have four blog posts started as drafts.
  2. Wrap up my research project on our church’s charter members. Done! Wednesday I made a final tweak in the list of probable charter members. I started putting my notes into usable form, which I should finish doing in October.
  3. Finish “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”, the short story I’ve been working on for two or three months. Done! I finished this around Sept 20 and sent it by e-mail to my critique group.
  4. Link the books in my Church History Novels series on Amazon. This is an easy process. I’ve been holding off until the new covers were done, but it’s time to just do it. No, I didn’t do this. Shame on me. It’s an easy task. I guess I was hoping to have the covers re-done first, so I kept putting it off. Back on the to-do list for this month.
  5. I still have a few more tweaks to do on the church centennial book. I’m going to work on it after I finish this post and may finish them today (Friday afternoon). Done! Though see what I put in my October goals.
  6. Attend my writers’ groups. At the moment all three are scheduled. Done! One was cancelled, the other two met in person and I attended. I also attended two meetings of a weekly on-line writing group. I don’t know whether I’ll be a regular there, but it was good.
  7. Document one Bible study idea I had and put it in the queue. Done! I recorded it in my journal. At some point I’ll have to transfer it to an ideas folder, either on paper or on the computer, but at least it’s documented and I’ve been able to let my mind sort of forget it. 

Alright, September was a productive month. I event added a couple of thousand words to my next work-in-progress, something I hadn’t planned on. Now, what about October? Be bold, or be cautious, in my goals. I’m just going to type and see how it comes out.

  1. Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. I have a couple of conflicts coming up, so maybe those pre-written and to-be-scheduled posts will come in handy.
  2. Work on my work-in-progress, The Forest Throne. I can’t remember what I’ve written about that here. I may have to include a post on it. I won’t give a specific word count goal for now. Possibly I’ll edit this in a week or so.
  3. Link the four novels in my Church History novels series. Why do I keep putting this off?
  4. Begin formatting the church Centennial book. I received one of three outside contributions and pasted it in. I have a promise of receiving the other two very soon. Meanwhile, I’m proofreading the book, which has caused me to realize I have three blanks to be filled in. They are just names and dates, but, still, they will require a little work. I hope to have that done today or tomorrow. Then the formatting and photograph additions will begin. Possibly I will have the formatting done by the end of October and will be ready to go to print.
  5. Attend writers groups this month. I’m not sure how many it will be. I may have conflicts with the meeting dates of two of my regular groups. Maybe I’ll be able to get in on the new group a couple of times.
  6. Publish “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”, once I get critiques back from the Scribblers & Scribes. I have one back already. Publishing will mean cover creation, but I’m already pulling ideas together.
  7. Take a look at, but don’t necessarily write more on, the Bible study I was working on during the spring and early summer. I’ve been so busy with other things I don’t remember where I left off. Since I might start it soon, as in two months or so, it would be good to have it swimming around in my mind even now, occupying a few gray cells.

That’s enough. As with last month, there’s always the chance that something else could pop up.

book reviews, Christianity, fiction, Writing

Book Review: Behind The Stories

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This is like a time capsule of Christian fiction around the turn of the millennium. Well worth the read for anyone writing Christian fiction.

Some time ago (as in a couple of months), having finished reading a book and wanting to find one to read that I wouldn’t keep, thus reducing my inventory, I found on the bookshelf tucked in my close Behind The Stories: Christian Novelists Reveal the Heart in the Art of their Writing. I don’t know where I got this, but suspect I picked it up at a thrift store. Nor do I know how long I’ve had it, but I suspect ten years. The copyright date is 2002. I have a fair number of books for writers on writing and publishing, and I need to work through them, read the ones I haven’t read and decide if any of the ones I have read I shouldn’t keep.

That makes it almost a time capsule type of piece. The author is Diane Eble, though in some ways she is more of an editor than an author. The book covers three to four page stories from 40 Christian novelists. This is as things existed in 2002, or a year before that based on publication schedules. So it misses any that came to prominence before that. Many of the names are familiar: Jerry B. Jenkins, Karen Kingsbury, Janette Oke, Bodie Thoene, Terri Blackstock, Francine Rivers, Beverly Lewis. Others are not as famous, but I actually met some of them at writers conferences: Robin Jones Gunn, Alton Gansky, Angela Elwell Hunt, Deborah Raney. They cover the full spectrum of types of Christian fiction.

It was encouraging to read their stories. Almost every one of them went through some kind of trial. Maybe it was a difficult childhood. Maybe it was a struggle to find their voice. Maybe it was the busyness of life. Each persevered and found authorial success. That is an encouragement for me.

I rate the book 4-stars. It loses a star for something I can’t quite put my finger on. And, it is not a keeper. Next time I leave The Dungeon, I will go out to the garage, and take it to join the other books for sale. Maybe someone else can find meaning in these brief stories.