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A lot has gotten accomplished with my book during the past several days.  I guess the biggest thing to report is that after ten years of on and off labor, with each chapter getting its own Word document, those have all been stitched together into one single massive master manuscript!  That’s what I had done just after noon.

It’s now twelve hours later.

The result is a 540-page long, 140,000 word file weighing in at a little under half a megabyte.  Which would be about a third of the capacity of the 3.5″ floppy disks that we used back in the day.  And that probably says more than is necessary about how your friend and humble narrator still gauges computer technology (laugh out loud).

For most of the past eight hours I ran the complete manuscript through Microsoft Word, and fixed a few things that Grammarly didn’t catch in the ...

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Well, it’s done.

As of twenty-five minutes ago, I have completed putting the entire manuscript through Grammarly, checking for grammar and syntax.  That’s the better part of three weeks that it took to accomplish that.

There will be some going through it with a fine tooth comb, no doubt making a few minor changes here and there.  But otherwise, the text of my book is complete.  It has underwent multiple revisions and checks.  It’s pretty much as good as it’s going to be.

From completing the first draft last November on through its final form today, it’s been eight and a half months of work.  The grammar checking has been done well ahead of schedule.

I’ve been focused, very nearly wholly dedicated on completing my book, since January of 2024.  And here it is, early August 2025.  I like to think that I’m coming out of the process none the ...

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…since the previous post.

I have just finished writing an epilogue for my book.  It wasn’t planned.  It just kinda hit me between the eyes a few hours ago and I needed to commit it to Microsoft Word.

The book has a much more beautiful ending now.

Final word of it: “grail”....

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Where things regarding my manuscript currently stand:

The more that I have looked into it, the more it seems that publishing through Amazon – which would make my memoir available as an ebook on Kindle devices/apps as well as printed as softcover or hardcover – is going to be the way to go.  I’ve been keeping a list of all the agents who I’ve queried with about representation and, well… it’s a lot who I haven’t heard from.  A few have contacted me back to tell me that they’re turning me down.

Regrettable, but also understandable.  A very good book will still have to struggle to find an agent, going about things the old-fashioned way.  And I’ve always known that this book is going to be a very difficult proposition.  But publishing isn’t what it used to be twenty or ten or even five years ago.  There are ways to ...

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The search for a literary agent continues.  But I’m afraid that I really might have written something that cannot be represented as most other books can.  I’ve said it a few times already: the book I ‘ve written may be too liturgical for a secular audience, and too worldly for more religious readers.  There are a lot of elements in it that would fit in something found on the shelves of the average Christian bookstore.  But there are also a lot of things within its pages that would absolutely disqualify it from that kind of retail market.  For an agent to pick it up for representation would be a risk.  I can understand that.

Dad was the one who most believed in this book.  A lot of people have told me that they wanted me to write my story.  But Dad especially.  I wrote this in his memory, more than
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I’m starting to wonder if the most realistic route to getting my book out there might be publishing on Amazon.  It’s not really self-publishing, it’s pretty much like traditional publishing in many ways.  As much as I would love to see my book on the store shelves that may not be possible right out of the gate.  Going through Amazon would let me keep the rights to my work, it gets released, and maybe it will sell well enough that a proper publishing house will want to buy it.

I’ve noted before, that this book is probably too Christian for the secular market and it’s much too secular for Christian audiences.  Maybe this gets to be something that breaks new ground for other books that can’t be readily defined.  Which would be a great honor if that happens.

So yesterday afternoon I had some time on my hands and I ...

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This was supposed to be a weekly feature.  That notion has obviously fallen by the wayside.  But many of y’all have asked how is the book coming along.  So here’s an update…

The manuscript is in as good a shape as it’s likely to be, barring someone with a better mind than mine for this kind of thing going over it and marking places where it can be improved upon.  I’m looking forward to working with such a person.  Writing this book has been a process that is germinating enormous growth of mind and spirit within me.  I’m eager to experience what else might be coming along in that regard.

The search for an agent has been erratic, I must admit.  This also has been a growth experience.  In looking over the query letters I’ve sent out across the past several months, I can tell that there has been drastic ...

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It’s been over a month and a half or so since I’ve posted an update about the manuscript I spent a decade of on and off work on, that I finished writing a few days before Thanksgiving.  As with a lot of other things in my life since I began this blog, some chronicling is in order.  Because this site is all about documenting the human condition and also for sake of anyone who might come across it and find themselves likewise wanting to write a book.

I guess the biggest thing (pun intended, maybe) is that it’s occurred to me that I have not written a memoir, but a full-size autobiography.  Or perhaps it’s two or three memoirs bound up cohesively with one another.  A memoir is supposed to be a personal reflection about just a few or even only one situation in a person’s life.  That is not ...

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Still doing editing and revisions.  But I’m comfortable enough with the first several chapters that I’m including them in some of the queries I’ve started sending out.  This is the next step in the life of a new book: looking for someone to represent it to a publisher.  I could self-publish, and there are a variety of ways to do that.  But ever since Dad especially told me that I should write a book about my life, my dream has been to see it sitting on a real “brick and mortar” bookstore’s shelves.

So, I’m looking for an agent.  And that isn’t going to be easy.  But it’s part and parcel to the process of seeing any book get traditional publishing.  And really, would I want it to be any different?  This entire thing has been something to grow and develop from.  It took a lot to finally commit to ...

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I need to start referring to it more as my “manuscript.”  It’s not a full-blown book until it’s got a few hundred pages nicely bound together with a beautiful cover, and maybe a dust jacket if it’s a hardcover.  Perhaps there will be a photo on the inside back cover.  Maybe a pic of Tammy and me.

That is still awhile ahead of us.

Since completing the manuscript nine days ago I’ve been doing some revisioning.  Right now I’m looking at part three, which is about my years at Elon.  It’s now striking me that the depiction of that is a foreshadowing of the greater drama to come.  The bad things but also the great good.

(I’m coming to realize what the book’s moment of climax is.  It’s three words.  And I’m looking forward to the person it pertains to discovering it.)

I’m going over it all, seeing what things ...

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