Working Hard...

Burgundian scribe (portrait of Jean Miélot, secretary, copyist and translator to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, from a copy of his compilation of the Miracles de Notre Dame), 15th century.

After a tumultuous journey down the coast of Connecticut, through the perils of the New York Metropolitan area, and the Mad Max landscape of northern New Jersey, then the relatively bucolic settings of southern New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, we had a day of rest. During said day of rest we celebrated the birthday of the youngest member of the tribe.

A good time was had by all, save the reason for the event who has been battling an upper respiratory thing for a couple of days. He was off his game as he's in the "getting better" stages of the viral attack. You know, when technically your body has successfully fought off the virus but you feel rather like crap as you hack up all that crap in your lungs.

He's a trooper though and while his doc has given him a clean bill of health, he's still a bit cranky with the whole thing. Even his first taste of cake, cupcake to be precise, didn't improve his morale. He seemed put off by the whole experience. "Sugar? What is this vile taste?"

Ah, he'll learn.

As for Grandpa, I'm slowly recovering from the Sandy Eggo adventure and the long drive down to these environs. I ain't as young as I used to be. Though a long nap on Saturday helped immensely. (I think that's the first nap I've had since I was a child, woke up bedraggled, yet refreshed.)

I have started the final editing of my WWII book, the working title of which is Almost a Lifetime, A Novel of World War II. That is going slowly, to say the least.

Some months back I began copying the blog episodes from Blogger's editor 0ver to Microsoft Word. This was done while I was still posting those episodes to the blog. Imagine, if you will, my chagrin when I noticed all of the varying formats contained in that Word document. Those of us who use Blogger can testify to their changing things almost at random. Not sure why they do it, but it's something I need to deal with.

I'm also editing parts of the story for continuity and to make things flow better. Posting it in serial fashion was easy but let me do things in a haphazard sort of way. No matter how hard you readers tried to keep me in line, I still find areas where I, shall we say, "colored outside the lines."

But I will say this, I am enjoying reading the story again. I had almost forgotten how I had grown to love the characters I created. There is almost real pain when one of them falls to the vagaries and violence of war. Something which I note that I haven't really been able to recreate in the book I'm currently working on. For some reason the old saying "catch lightning in a bottle" springs to mind. I do know that many authors produce one really good novel, then the rest all pale in comparison. I almost feel that way at the moment.

But I shall persevere and get this thing edited and ready for publication, whichever way I choose to go on that front. (I've heard that self-publishing doesn't really gain an author any "street cred." I'd appreciate hearing from those of you who have gone that route. I know a couple of folks who have gone that way and wonder what hurdles/perils/difficulties are in that.)

Eventually I'll get back to the new novel, which is the other book I always wanted to write. (The WWII one being the one I've been tossing around since the mid-seventies.) But be warned, the blog posts over the next few days might be kinda boring. For you see, I'm kinda busy...

Now, back to work.