Next Book Projects

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the books I was finally able to complete this year and get into print. Still don’t know how I was able to do it but I got it done. However, those books are only the beginning of what I plan on being a very busy year of publishing. Unfortunately, those four books were the first to be completed because they were the easiest to get done. I only have one more ‘easy’ book to get done and that has been delayed in editing for the past month because of a variety of events that have conspired against me sitting down at the computer and proof reading.

The next book, the one that is in process right now, is another fun one that really is a snapshot of a time in my life when I was finally able to connect with my community. “Once A Rotarian, Always A Rotarian” is a collection of posts about some of the speakers I met, events I attended, and other thoughts about being a Rotarian. The lessons from which I still carry with me to this day even though my participation has been lacking over the last couple of years.

Follow the completion of that book, I will begin working on my collection about my first three years as a Mason. Again, this is a book dedicated to one aspect of my life that has profoundly changed me for the better. The working title for this book is “Three Years After Three Degrees: How Freemasonry Made Me A Better Man”. I guess we will just have to see if that title sticks and how exactly I want to arrange the essays (that could be the most time consuming part).

Another book I guess you could say is in progress would be the children’s book that I am working on. The text is done… it is a very short picture book so that didn’t take much time at all especially considering the fact that I wrote it nearly a decade ago. However, I still have to conduct the input and supervise the creation of the illustrations for the book. That will definitely be a first for me. This one might be the book that I am most excited and nervous about finally seeing in print.

From there my attention will be focused on creating an adult picture book as there are numerous essays from my travels (especially across Pennsylvania and Virginia) and hundreds of pictures that I have selected to accompany those words. There is a bit of editing that needs to be done to the text but the photos are pretty much ready to go. However, in the end, if there is a book pushed back it might be this one simply based on the cost of production and eventual cover price.

Lastly, the year wouldn’t be complete unless I took some time to annoy some people which is why I am going to pull together all of the ‘polarizing’ posts into a single collection. I also expect this to be the longest book of the year coming in between 400-500 pages. That is a lot of politics and firearms. While I am fairly certain how to organize the book, I am still at a complete loss for a title so, at this point, I invite you to submit your idea. The prize pack includes recognition for your contribution in the acknowledgements of the book as well as a free signed copy once I have it in hand. So, ready through the posts on this blog that fit the subject matter and let me know what you come up with.

So, four books done, two in process, and three more planned for the year. Well, that is at least the plan at the moment. If life continues in the same manner that it has over the past month, I might be lucky to get one or two more out. If things calm down, I should be able to have nine books in print by the end of the year. And, if it turns out to be particularly cold down south this year and I am able to find some time, I might just get some more done. No pressure!

Book Update: Finally, Some Progress!

One of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year was to pull together many of the collections of poems and essays that I have compiled over the years and publish them. I have considered this endeavor in the past but was never able to see it to the end. Well, over the past couple of months, I was finally able to see many of those projects come to fruition. It took some time, a considerable amount of energy, and a few dollars but I was finally able to get four books published through Author House.

The first book that I worked on was a collection of poems that I wrote as an undergraduate student at Endicott College. All of the poems in the collection were written at that time, many of them published both in literary journals and in a limited run I pulled together with a local print shop at the time titled Teaching A Stone To Talk: Nature Poems. I am still grateful for the help that I received from Carol Raiche for the formatting the modest book and putting me in touch with the printer.

Now, accompanied with photos taken over the past decade, these poems are once again available in the collection Paintings In Under A Thousand Words: Nature Poems.

Many of the poems found in these pages are all but memories of experiences that have colored my early life. Some see these moments as glimpses of a time past but I see them as paintings formed in slow deliberate strokes that highlight the details of life that instill the feeling of accomplishment when looking at your past. These images don't need the long drawn out descriptions laden with unnecessary letters, they are flashes quick to flood the mind and equally fast in fading back deep into the gray matter. This is why I see these poems, these memories of my encounters with nature, as paintings in under a thousand words.

The next book to be edited was a project that I started while at Endicott and which later served as my Master’s thesis at Rosemont College. The first sequence of poems was published previously both as individual poems in various literary journals and in my first official chapbook, Kaddish Diary, which was published in 2005 by Pudding House Publications. This small collection has long since been out of print and even one of the anthologies that included a couple of the poems has since gone out of print as well. In the years following the publication of the chapbook, I created two additional sequences based on two other works of holocaust literature. However, this collection also remained nearly forgotten on a flash drive for nearly a decade. Now, I have finally brought this project of passion to light in What Was Not Said: Echoes From The Holocaust.

The Holocaust is a subject all of us are aware of but there are countless accounts that are seldom heard. Based on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of Hertha Feiner, Janusz Korczak, and Filip Müller, these poems describe the life surrounding these writings. Every memoir has something missing. This is not a conscious decision by the author; it is the perspective of the writer filtered through the impermanence of memory. Sometimes it is a forgotten foreshadowing phrase said in passing or what is happening outside when their focus is on the room in which they are sitting. These are the aspects painted in this collection.

The next two collections will be quite familiar to many of you as they are collections of posts from this blog. The first of these books consolidated all of the genealogy posts and is really only the first of many that I expect on this topic. It highlights both the process and the discoveries that I have made over the years and includes many family photos and documents that many in the family may have not seen before. I am glad to finally be able to share many of these colorful leaves with the rest of the family in Out On The Limbs: Searching For Answers In The Family Tree.

This is collection which illustrates how one family tree can give shade to the entirety of American history. Each leaf has a little more to add to my family history just as each piece of fall foliage adds to an autumnal landscape. All different trees offering a different variety of colors but working in unison to tell the same story. These essays offer a cross section of topics which includes recent additions to my family tree, interesting resources or programs, and discoveries that have given greater depth to the lives of my ancestors.

The final project in this initial push is the one that means the most to me. Again, these are posts from the blog which spans the past year and a half. This time around, I collected all the posts about the pregnancy and my first year of fatherhood into a single volume. You could even say that this is a baby book taken to the next level. For me this book is a gift to my son and hopefully something that first time parents, especially fathers, will enjoy. After all, it does tell the reader about The Good, The Bad, And The Adorable: My First Year As A Father.

After my son was born I found myself having conversations with other parents about some of the interesting things that I should anticipate happening during the first year. I had not heard about any of these antidotes before and so I wanted to start writing more regularly about these usually humorous occurrences. Arranged chronologically, this book is a collection of both those early posts of doctor appointments and preparations for arrival as well as the more interesting moments that I experienced during my first year as a father.

Well, that is what has been keeping me busy over the last couple of months and partly why there have been times when I have fallen behind on these daily posts. There are other books that I am currently working on but that is a completely different post for another day. In the meantime, if you happen to read any of these books I would appreciate hearing your thoughts and, hopefully, they proved to be worth the purchase price. Four down and countless volumes to go!