Romance Novel: The First Status Report

Keeping the Tryst came out a little less than a year ago.  I'm still hoping that it might be picked up by a real publishing house someday, but in the meantime I've been happy with it.  It's sold enough to make a bit of money, but more important than that it seems to be appreciated and enjoyed by the kinds of people I was especially writing it for.

Toward the end of Keeping the Tryst I allude to what else I want to do with my life.  For the past many months I have been bogged down by a number of crises that have kept me from doing anything toward those.  Thankfully - and I truly believe that God has been at work in these matters - I have emerged from that in a better position than I've ever been in my life.  I can now throw myself fully into some of those endeavors.

I have decided to devote much of my "own time" for the foreseeable future on my historical romance novel project.  I am still going to compose op-ed material because that kind of writing has been part of my nature since I was a high school student.  But I'm going to give this novel as much focus as I gave to Keeping the Tryst.  I believe that I have hit upon an original idea that no one has done before and I think it's unique enough to stand a good chance of getting published.  It needs to be as good as it can be and that's what I'm going to set out to accomplish.

First up on this project: brainstorming.  The basic concept is in mind, now it needs some elements that will make it really cool.  All the while I'm going to be outlining and revising that, to get the basic endoskeleton in place.

I know how the story begins.  I also know how it ends.  That is how I like to start writing anything.  Just need to fill in the long space between those extremities.

Consider this the first status update of my new project.  As I did with Keeping the Tryst, I will be sharing reports from time to time, until the book is finished and I start trying to land it an agent.

This may take awhile.  A few years, likely.  But I think it will be fun to follow along 🙂

Depiction of the Sacking of Constantinople.
This is a clue.  Maybe.

EDIT 09/06/2026 9:36 am EST:

Yesterday was the first day I significantly dedicated toward work on my next book.  That mostly entailed nothing more than reclining back and letting my mind orient toward the story I want to share.  I allowed my imagination to run wild with ideas of characters and locations and various props that come into play.  This morning I have Microsoft Word open on my iPad and I'm filling a new document with those ideas.  So that is the first real writing I'm doing on this project.  It will be at least a year before there's a first draft.  I can't imagine it taking anything less than that.  The brainstorming will go on, new ideas will come and be considered and either be let go or implemented.   There is a lot of historical research to do.  There are shades of characters but they don't have proper names yet, just mere shapes of purpose.  But in the end, twelve months or so from now, there will be a finished draft that I can set about refining into the book's final form.

It's going to be a lot of work.  But this book isn't going to write itself.  Neither did the last one.  I came to a point where I had to decide if I really wanted to write it or let it go.  I'm glad that I committed to it.  And I now know how to write a book and also how not to write one.  Keeping the Tryst was a very personally trying endeavor.  This next one is going to be tough, but it is also going to be much more fun.

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Keeping the Tryst: Evolution of a book

Earlier tonight I was checking some things on Facebook and there was a memory that popped up, from a year ago.  Usually I don't look at those, there have been just so many things I've shared over the years.  But for whatever reason I went down the rabbit hole and took a gander.

Here is what it pulled out from this day in 2025.  A few things: this references the time I spent at the nearby Whataburger (the first location in the state of South Carolina).  I was there for awhile, earning some supplemental income to the artificial intelligence training I've been doing a few years now.

And at this point Keeping the Tryst had pretty much gone through editing and revision.  This was heading toward the final stages in getting it published.  This was also the time when I had started designing the cover.

I went further.  It turns out that a LOT has happened on July 26-es.

From ten years ago, when Tammy and I were in Oklahoma City.  Pokemon Go had been out for a few weeks and I was having fun going to gyms and taking on whoever was in control.  On July 26, 2016 I was on fire!  And I was having lots of giggles installing Pokemon with some funny names...

A few more clicks and I came to this post, from 2015.  Again, about the book.  At this point it had been in the works for about nine months.  I started working on it roughly two months before Dad died.  He was the one who most encouraged me to write it (a lot of other people had been telling me that I should write a book too).

As you can see the book (which was far from having a title) was in much different condition from what it would eventually transmogrify into.  It was going to originally be more in-depth about my life with bipolar disorder.  And this was also more than ten years before the book was finally published (say, what is keeping George R.R. Martin from finishing The Winds of Winter anyway?).  A lot happened in my life during the intervening decade.  Good, bad, wacky, tragic, horrific, hilarious.  And during that time more people said that they wanted to read my entire life story.  So that's what it became.

At the time Chapter 2 did cover the first twenty-five years of my life.  In its radically changed final form the second chapter of Keeping the Tryst spans up to the time I'm in second grade.  Blame my incredibly precise memory: I came to realize that there was much in my childhood that resonated across the next several decades.  Like how Chapter 2 now starts, with my first brush with insanity at the age of six.

It's really quite something, as the author of the book, to look back upon its evolution.  It's kind of a chronicle of how I was also evolving as a person.

Maybe someday I'll get to do it again.  I like to think that as far as I've come as a human being, there is still quite a bit of developing left.  Perhaps there will be enough material for a sequel.

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New project: writing another book

After a few years of percolation, and occasionally writing notes about cool neat stuff to include in it, today I began at last earnest work on a writing project that truly excites me.

It's a romantic novel, the idea for which came about before the COVID plague descended upon humanity.  It's a notion that I haven't seen anyone use before, so maybe I'm breaking some new ground.  I'm getting to employ my history training, formal and otherwise, into it.

(No, it's not like Casablanca!)

Lord willing that this gets completed, I think it will get much better reception from literary agents than has Keeping the Tryst.  My autobiography has confounded all the representatives that I've presented it to.  The primary problem is that it's way Christian for secular audiences and it's much too secular for the Christian market.  But based on what I've heard from a lot of people who've read it, that seems to be part of the appeal.  As one commenter on Amazon remarked it presents a lot of my personal theology, but it doesn't preach down to readers.  That was something I wanted to avoid and in that regard the book has succeeded.

This new project isn't like that all.  It's going to be a challenge, in many ways.  But I'm committing to completing it.  And then I'll be content with whatever others might take away from it.

As happened with Keeping the Tryst, every so often I'll post a "progress report" on how the new book is coming along.  A little peek into the the workings deep within the inner fog of a romance novelist.  Who knows, maybe it will inspire others to write their own such books.  If it does, then I will be greatly pleased and quite honored to know that mine had such effect.

As always, more soon.

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American Thinker has published my first essay in quite awhile this morning

I haven't written anything in the way of an op-ed piece in quite some time now.  I'd honestly wondered if I have lost my touch.  Like, was getting my book published the peak experience I will ever have?  I don't want it to be that way.  As I wrote in the final pages of my book, I have spent half a lifetime fighting something that has taken so much from me.  Getting that back matters an awful lot.

This morning American Thinker, a site I've long admired, published my first essay for a wider audience since January of last year.  "Holding the Media Responsible for the SPLC Scandal" is something that I must confess I had some pleasure in writing.  For decades I've watched too many journalists cite Southern Poverty Law Center as a legitimate source of information.  I can only imagine the looks on the faces of those journalists after the recent indictments against SPLC were handed down. 

From the article:

The mainstream liberal media exists within a bubble, beyond which is a reality that it cannot comprehend. That Southern Poverty Law Center apparently engaged in criminal activity is something that does not compute with most journalists and editors. In fact, it’s downright impossible for them to conceive of the notion. It comes down to emotions and vague intentions. SPLC didn’t really mean to break the law, those of the leftist media will try to persuade us with. “They were only doing good,” we will be told. 

It’s very simple with such minds: SPLC was an absolute good and thus anything they stood against was an absolute evil. And even now, they will refuse to admit that an organization they had considered so righteous has actually been exceedingly nefarious in funding those very racists they have portrayed themselves as opposing.

As always, thoughts and comments are more than welcome. 

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New text for Keeping the Tryst's cover

It's been almost six months since the release of Keeping the Tryst.  It's reached a nice sized audience already yet I'm still tinkering with it behind the scenes.  Finding small places that can be improved, etcetera.  Nothing drastically major: it's still the same story that was published in early October, just cleaned up in spots.

There is one detail that has irked me though: the text of the back cover.  It's easily the one thing I wrestled most over.  The back cover text should be something that readily sells the book, without saying too little or worse, too much.  Keeping the Tryst is such a wild book though, it was always going to be tough to synopsize it into a digestible packet.  So it is that the back cover description hasn't really been something I've been satisfied with.

So with some hours to spare last night and into this early morning, I dedicated myself toward improving it.  And I'm much happier with what has come of it (click to enlarge):

I've already uploaded the new cover and it should appear live for new purchases within the next 72 hours.

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Jerry Bledsoe, one of my favorite authors, has passed away

The sad news is coming out of Asheboro, North Carolina this evening that Jerry Bledsoe, the prolific author who among other things hit the bestseller list with his true-crime book Bitter Blood, has passed away at the age of 84.

In my formative years, Bledsoe's columns for the News & Record out of Greensboro were must-reading.  It seemed that there wasn't a subject that he couldn't write about and make it a rollickin' good respite from one's typical daily life.  He was a gifted humorist who brought with him fresh insight into practically everything he wrote about.

But Bledsoe's biggest claim to fame had nothing to do with humor.

In the summer of 1988 came the publication of Bitter Blood.  It remains one of the most disturbing true-crime books ever written.  Bledsoe's book attempted the impossible (something he admitted in its final pages): trying to make sense of the Fritz Klenner/Susie Sharp murders that transpired in Kentucky and then North Carolina between 1984 and 1985.  It was an event that defied all sense and it absolutely rocked the communities they transpired in.  Especially Reidsville, North Carolina, where I'm originally from.  Bitter Blood was what it seemed everyone in my hometown was reading: it was pretty much locally known simply as "the book".  Bledsoe wrote that.  And it was a magnificent performance.

I was able to meet Jerry Bledsoe a number of times.  He was someone who always appreciated his readers and he seemed pretty humble about the success he had enjoyed.  He loved his craft and he was thoroughly dedicated to practicing it and he was always seeking to refine that, as any true artist aspires to do.  Bledsoe was in every way a remarkable man, and I thought he more than deserved noting his life.

Thought and prayers to his family and friends.

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A new question about Keeping the Tryst: What happened in the cafeteria at Elon

My book Keeping the Tryst has been out for a little over a month and a half now.  It's been doing pretty well sales-wise.  Okay it's NOT a bestseller by any stretch.  But enough people have been buying and reading it to make me pretty happy so far.  Maybe there will come to be some word of mouth and knowledge about it will spread around.

People are reading it.  And their comments have been rather kind.  One of my friends said that it's a real page-turner that he's barely been able to put down.  A number of people have praised its readability, saying that it doesn't come across as a 500-some page volume.  I've also gotten good word about the design: it's page color, the font size... so it's something comfortable on the eyes.  Considering that I had to design everything about this book, hearing those things makes me smile.

There have been a number of questions from those who have been reading Keeping the Tryst.  I've been doing my best to answer them as well as is possible.  Here's the latest question that's been asked.  I suppose it's a good one, because I didn't expound on it very much in the book...

"What happened in the cafeteria in chapter 19?"

Harden Cafeteria, Elon College, circa 2000

The answer is: I don't know.

I have vivid and troubling memories about what happened a few hours earlier, then a week and a half following my salvation experience in November of 1996.  I remember being in my bedroom at our apartment, sometime after midnight.  There is the memory of calling someone.  What took place between going to the cafeteria and winding up back home, that's gone.  Just... gone.

When dawn came, I didn't get ready to go to class.  I was too torn to pieces, too wiped out.  My mind was a wreck.  I skipped school that day.  And the next.  Friends called me, wanting to come over.  But I turned them down.  I wasn't ready to see anyone.

My friend Gary was the one who suggested that something very horrible had happened that evening in the cafeteria.  And over the course of the next few days, a number of friends from what was a close-knit community of Christian students intimated also that a terrible occurrence had transpired and that I had been at the center of it.

There are some mysteries in my life.  Things that I can't explain or have ever fully grasped.  What happened that night in Harden Cafeteria at Elon College is one of those.  It's among the biggest enigmas that have come about in my time on this earth.

What  I wrote about in chapter 19 of Keeping the Tryst is whatever it is.  Something terrible, that I've never had a solid answer about.  But I believe that God has brought me a long way from that.  It doesn't cast a shadow over my life as it had.  In fact, in the grander scheme of things it's really something pretty minor.  I came through it, God is good, and that's all that matters.

But maybe someday, though it's already been almost thirty years, there will come to be a clear understanding of what happened.  And who knows, but maybe I'll write about it.

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Yet another question about Keeping the Tryst: Uncle Frank's superposition

It's been a little over three weeks since my first book Keeping the Tryst was published.  It's been selling fairly well, considering that I'm a first-time author who's been pretty under the radar for awhile.  I'm happy with it and I'm hoping still more people will come to discover it.

Since it's now "out in the wild" some people have had a number of questions about it.  I'm going to be answering those as they are asked.  Who knows, but I may add a "frequently asked questions" to a future edition of the book.

Here's the latest question about my book:

"How is Uncle Frank in 2014 after he died in Florida fourteen years earlier?"

I really should have clarified this in the book.  In my life there have been two Uncle Franks.  One was Mom's half-brother.  He's the one who moved to Florida and had a family there.  He passed away in 2000 from lung cancer, a few months after Granny's passing.  Uncle Frank was a real character.  He's someone who has always been an inspiration for me, to live for God and also to allow time to laugh.  He was a good man.

The other Uncle Frank is Dad's brother-in-law, the husband of Dad's sister.  That Uncle Frank has always lived in Reidsville.  He's the one who came with Mom to our house the night after Dad had his accident (and who I told the joke to).  In 2012 Dad and Uncle Frank rented a car and took off on a cross-country odyssey to Arizona to visit a fellow knifemaker.  They had a really good time exploring the western United States together.  During the visitation for Dad at the funeral home we had a bunch of Dad's knives on display.  Uncle Frank was eagerly telling people who came about Dad's craftsmanship.

Like I said, I really should have cleared this up.  But maybe most people will figure out on their own that they're two separate people.  In any case, there have been two Uncle Franks in my life, and I've respected them both.

Have a question about the book?  E-mail me at theknightshift@gmail.com and ask away!

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My book is getting around!

Here it is during a cruise to St. Martin, St. Thomas, and Nassau in the Bahamas:

Much thanks to good friend Roberta for sending this along :-) 

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A new reader question about Keeping the Tryst

Following the first question a few days ago,  I've received another query from someone who is reading my new book Keeping the Tryst. And it's a good one...

"What was the 'most disturbing visual aid' that anyone in the argumentative writing class had ever seen, that involved a jar of tea, some aluminum foil and three or four balls of Silly Putty?"

Ahhh yes.  That.  It was January of 1993, when I was at Rockingham Community College, when I did that little stunt.  Involving nothing but items found at the average grocery store or Walmart.

Listen: I'm not sharing that with anybody.  It's something you HAD to be there to experience.  Twenty-some innocent souls including Mr. Conte the instructor were there to witness it and I doubt any of them have spoken about it either.  I doubt they've even wanted to think about it.  It was just too much.

All I'll say is that the power of suggestion can be a terrible, terrible thing.

It did help get our group an "A" though.  And Mr. Conte said that it made him think about some things he'd never considered before.  And after that stunt it seems EVERY other group had to have a gimmick to make their presentation stand out. 😀

Funny thing though: Every class that Mr. Conte took roll for after that, he would call out my name and then give me this look, like "Oh Lord please don't do anything crazy today."

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First question from a reader about Keeping the Tryst

Okay, someone just asked the very first question that I've been given about Keeping the Tryst.  This is from a person has finished part one.

Here's the question: "What was the joke that you told your uncle?"

If you've been reading the book, scroll down past the spoiler space and you'll find the answer...

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The question pertains to the joke that Mom asked me to share with my Uncle Frank, who was Dad's brother-in-law, late that night after they got back from the hospital following Dad's accident earlier in the afternoon.

I had heard this joke at school earlier that afternoon.  And I admit that at the time I thought it was pretty funny, though I hadn't grasped yet just how serious it really was.  It's not a joke I would tell now, forty years later.

Here's the joke:

"What do you call Rock Hudson in a wheelchair?"

"Roll-AIDS."

This wasn't very long after actor Rock Hudson had died of AIDS.  Hudson's coming forward about being infected with HIV was a revelation that sent shockwaves through American pop culture.  And of course Rolaids is a popular antacid/heartburn medication.

Definitely an Eighties-era joke and like I said, it's not one I would tell anyone these days.  But I fleetingly mention it in the book, it sort of adds to the scene that I'm describing: Mom and Uncle Frank returning after being at the hospital all evening, bringing cold hamburgers from Hardee's for my sister and mine's dinner.  When I had told Mom the joke on the way back from school that afternoon she said she didn't like it.  And now here was Mom wanting me to share that same joke with my uncle.  It kind of underscores how dire the day had become just like that (Chris snaps fingers).

If any more questions come, I'll be sure to provide an answer (as best I can).

And if you want to read my book here's the page on Amazon where you can find Keeping the Tryst.  Available in hardcover and for Kindle readers and apps.

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It's been a week since Keeping the Tryst was published...

...and I just checked the metrics.  According to the report, the book has sold very well so far, considering that I'm a relative unknown (outside of this blog, various stunts over the years and the occasional op-ed piece).  Right now it's holding at around #90 in the survival biographies genre, and hovering about #1200 among all memoirs in the Kindle store.  Not bad at all for a newly-minted book author eight days in.

I've gotten some feedback from people who have bought the Keeping the Tryst hardcover.  Every one has commented on how readable it is, despite the 537 pages length.  The font size and the cream-colored paper are very easy on the eyes, and that the chapters are divided into so many sections also makes the book readily digestible and fast-moving.  One person read the entire book in two days.

At the moment, I'm quite pleased about what's happened since its release.  I'm hoping that there will get to be some word-of-mouth and that others will consider purchasing and reading it.  I never expected to be a bestselling author right out the gate and that probably won't happen.  But a lot of people over the years have said that my story is one that many would find not just interesting, but captivating.  I believe them, enough so that I worked on this book on-and-off for over a decade.  I've said that if even just one person found reading it to be time well spent, then my task as an author will be successful.  Based on the figures I looked at earlier, the book has smashed through that target... and how!

Keeping the Tryst is available in hardcover edition and in Kindle ebook format.

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Keeping The Tryst has been released!!

Eleven years of on and off work.  A lot of things happened in that time.  Quite a few events and situations that kept changing the shape of the project.  All of that effort and at times sacrifice... and it culminates in tonight.

Keeping the Tryst hardcover edition just popped up on Amazon a short while ago.

Here's the hardcover version's page.  You can order that now.  The Kindle ebook version (Amazon page here) is still showing pre-orders but I imagine that status is going to change soon.

I don't know what else to say right now.  Just so very thrilled to see my book on sale, and maybe it will enlighten and edify and even entertain its readers.  That's one of the goals I had all along in writing it.

Okay, I didn't sleep at all last night, and I've got some work to do in the morning, so I'm going to turn in for the evening.  But I go to bed tonight a published book author... and that's a pretty neat feeling :-) 

Hope y'all enjoy it.

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Keeping the Tryst: The first copy has arrived!

It got here about thirty minutes ago.

As you can see Tammy approves! :-)

Keeping the Tryst arrives in hardcover and for Kindle ebook this coming Wednesday, October 1st, at 12:00 a.m. UTC.  That's 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on September 30th.  My friends and I are thinking of having a small release party counting down to the moment it publishes.  Hey how many times do you get to say in your life that your first book is being published? :-D 

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A special preview of Keeping The Tryst

In a little less than two weeks my autobiography (it's really more like two or three typical memoirs mashed together... what can I say I've had a complicated life) Keeping The Tryst will be released.  After more than ten years of on and off work it will at last be in the hands of readers, and then I guess we'll see what happens.  I'm hoping and praying for at least ten people to buy a copy, whether the print edition or Kindle ebook, and enjoy reading it.  That would make me extremely happy.  A writer only needs one person to read what he or she has composed and to come away feeling like it was time well spent.  That's who I've been laboring for: just one person, whoever he or she might be.  But it will make me happy if more than that read and like it too!

So since we're in the home stretch leading up to publication, I thought I'd share a bit of it. What you're about to read is the opening to chapter five, which spans the course of a year between my being ten and eleven.  A lot transpired in that period of time: some good but some of it not so pleasant.  These first several paragraphs though convey one of the happier memories of my childhood.  And it delights me to share it now...

 

There is a scene in the movie Citizen Kane where Mr. Bernstein mentions how sometimes a person will remember an occurrence without understanding why that particular memory is so vivid.  He recalls how long years earlier he saw a girl in a white dress, carrying a white parasol.  Bernstein saw the girl for just a fleeting moment, and she didn’t see him.  But he confesses that there hasn't been a month that he hasn’t thought about her.

            My “girl with a white parasol” moment happened on July 26th, 1984.  And I doubt there has been a week since that she has not come to mind.

            It was the summer after fourth grade.  And it had been a grand one in my little world and beyond.  Summer vacation began with a solar eclipse three hours after school let out.  Between that and the start of fifth grade were two trips by my family to White Lake, the premiere of Ghostbusters, a Star Trek marathon, the race between Reagan and Mondale, the music… the summer of ’84 was on fire!

            The family was at peace, that summer.  I wasn’t in fear of anyone, and that felt good.

            In the midst of all this my parents and sister and I took a trip north to visit our cousins.  We left on Friday afternoon and made it to Virginia Beach late that night.  The next day Dad drove us across the harrowing Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel.  A few hours after taking the Cape May ferry to the southern tip of New Jersey we arrived in Point Pleasant, just in time for dinner with Bill and Mary.

We stayed with them until Wednesday.  Then we left for somewhere that Mom and Dad said would be a place we would never forget: Amish Country.

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania was unlike anything I had ever expected to see.  “Plain” folk were going about in their simple clothing and riding their horse-drawn buggies.  We passed by a barn that was being built.  All of this and more, a place that was incredibly out of time with the rest of the world… and I loved it!

“Is this just for the tourist trade?” I asked my parents.  They insisted that the Amish really did live this way and had been for hundreds of years.

It was just before noon, following a morning of going on a guided tour of the area and being taught about the Amish and their culture.  We decided that we needed lunch.  We pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot.  The four of us went inside and got in line.

And that’s when I saw her.

            She was a little Amish girl.  She must have been about ten, like me.  Wearing a long blue dress and a white bonnet and black boots.  She was waiting to be served at the counter also.  And it was just such a strange juxtaposition, seeing a girl dressed like that in line at a modern fast food restaurant.

            She was soooo incredibly cute.  My heart began doing things it had never done before.

            And then our eyes met one another’s.

            She smiled at me and said “Hello.”

            I had never seen anyone so beautiful.

            “Hello,” I said clumsily.

She smiled again. 

            The Amish girl picked up her order.  She said goodbye and with a whirl of her dress she was headed toward the door.

            I watched her leave.  I waited, hoping she would turn back around and smile one more time.  At just the last moment she did and waved at me.

            Encountering that Amish girl was the greatest thing that happened to me all that summer.  And more than forty years later, I still think of her.

            It was the noontide of my childhood.  But I could not know that yet.

Keeping The Tryst drops on Amazon at 12:00 AM UTC on October 1st.  That's about 8 PM on September 30th in Eastern Standard Time, if I'm figuring it right.

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Keeping The Tryst: The proof copy has arrived!

It arrived yesterday, actually...

As you can see it has a "Not for Resale" watermark wrapped around it.  I think there might be a few other things that will also differ from the final product.  I've also changed some of the text on the back cover since submitting this version for printing.

This being the proof copy, intended for review before the finished product rolls off the assembly line, I've spent much of the time since yesterday looking it over, finding places that need correcting and improving.  There have been some of those, things that I didn't catch already.  A few chapters for whatever reason had an extra bit of space padding the distance between separate paragraphs.  Don't know how that happened in Microsoft Word, but those are all fixed now.

And late last night I got the notice from Amazon: Keeping the Tryst, both the print edition and the ebook, are set to go on sale on October 1st at 12:00 A.M. UTC (that's 7:00 P.M Eastern Standard Time on September 30th for those of us here on the east side of the United States... I think).

This copy has a nice feel and heft to it.  It's also printed on cream paper.  A lot of friends suggested that it would be better for the eyes instead of pure white.  And I might be biased but reading it has a nice "flow" to it.  I like to think that for all its size, it's going to be a nice book to read.  It's going to go by fairly quickly (sort of like a Game of Thrones novel, back when George R.R. Martin actually did write Game of Thrones books!).

Now, if I can only figure out the best way to market my book.  I'll admit that I'm not the best when it comes to presenting a product.  The best I ever did was when I ran for school board in 2006 (although if we're to be honest, it IS a bit hard to not get people's attention when you're using the Death Star to blow up schoolhouses!).

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And the book's title is.........

 Coming October 1st, 2025, the memoir of Yours Truly.

I present to you: Keeping The Tryst.

Look!  Front cover!

You can thank my friends on Facebook for wanting the title reveal.  I was going to unveil it next Sunday but then I figured "They've waited a year and a half.  Why not show it now?"

It will be available on Amazon, in hardcover and also for Kindle readers and apps.

EDIT: I uploaded the Kindle version this afternoon and was expecting it to be within the next 72 hours when I would be notified that it had passed review.  But I just checked e-mail and they already approved it!

Here is the Keeping The Tryst for Kindle product page on Amazon.  You can find the description but not much else at the moment.  You can pre-order it though and have it ready to deliver to your device on October 1st.

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Book status this week: We have a product!

It could have been easy to upload the manuscript as an ebook and have Amazon derive a printed edition from that.  But that's not what I wanted.  I desire and need something that has shown real effort made toward something beautiful.  Or at least as beautiful as a guy without a strong background in visual design can pull off.

So it is, that after a lot of work in the past several days, a finished book - from front title to description and author picture on the back cover - now exists.  And it looks BEAUTIFUL, if I do say so myself.

The hardest part has been coming up with a description.  My life has been such a complex thing, that it's been very hard to boil it down to the space of a few brief paragraphs.  But I came up with something and perhaps it will catch the attention of potential readers.

Well, it's done.  There is now a hardcover volume that after it goes through Amazon's approval process (something I'll admit some concern about, there's no telling what could result in it getting rejected and sent back for revision) will be soon available for purchase.  I don't know when that will be.  But I'm thinking on a Tuesday would be good.  That seems to be the day that most books get released on.  The plan is still to have the hardcover, the softcover, and the paperback released at the same time.

I hope this sells some.  When I ran for school board I told everyone that I was going to be very happy if just ten people voted for me.  I wound up getting almost forty-seven hundred votes.  If only two or three people buy my book, I will be thankful.

More soon.

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Dear Microsoft: In the name of all that's good and holy, overhaul Word!

Well, it turns out that there was one tiny little thing that I've forgotten to do with my book's manuscript.  I totally overlooked the page numbers.  To be perfectly honest I haven't needed them all this time.  I'm so intimately familiar with my book, I can zero in on any part of the 140,000-some work.  Page numbers seemed like an afterthought, at best.

Those are what I'm trying to implement.  But I'm having a surprising amount of difficulty.  What I need to happen is for the numbering to begin several pages in, after the dedication, at the start of part one.

But I can't do that straightforward.  I doubt anyone can.  Doing so requires some splitting the manuscript into sections and that is a task all its own.  And then giving each section its own numbering.

I'm sure this lends itself toward boasting about Microsoft Word's prowess.  Buuuuut...

There has to be a much simpler way of doing this.  Come to think of it, there are quite a few things that Word could do better.  Recently a friend was lamenting on how imprecise Word is when comes to placing images.  Among other issues that I've heard of across the years.

It's enough to make me wonder: is Microsoft actively monitoring the issues that have arisen in Word?  Or has the company rested too much on its laurels with arguably its flagship productivity software?

Because seriously, when was the last time that Microsoft really lauded serious innovation in Word?  I can't think of much going all the way back to the arrival of Windows 95, thirty years ago last month.  Oh sure, there have been numerous refinements of the program... but a serious examination under the hood for purpose of - gasp! - improving it?

I'll say it if nobody else will or can: Microsoft Word needs to be rebuilt.  From the bottom-up and the inside-out.  The company needs to make a comprehensive list of all the requests and concerns and take them into account and recreate their product.  And then produce a Word that will set the platinum standard once again for word processing.

They can do this.  We know that they can.  We will absolutely appreciate it if they do.  Well, this writer in particular certainly shall.

Come on Microsoft.  I don't know if one humble blogger might have any sway with you.  But I know that I'm not alone and I think you know it, too.

Reboot Word.  You know you should.  Microsoft's original mission was to put a computer on every desktop: a tool for letting its users achieve the impossible.  Redesigning Word would be in keeping with that, and very much so.

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Book report for last week of August 2025

 The latest lowdown on my book:

As was reported last time, there are three versions of the manuscript to publish: the hardcover, the softcover, and the ebook.  Each one is formatted for their respective media.  The plan as always is to publish all three at the same time.  If the sales are strong I'm going to release a "special edition" of the softcover that includes some photos.  I'm hoping to be able to include this photo in it:

Photo by Ted Richardson

That's Dad with his friend and fellow farmer John Ashe, in a photo taken in February 2012 for a syndicated newspaper story about the state of tobacco farming especially for independent operators.  I got in touch with Richardson a short while later and got his permission to share the photo on my blog (Richardson told me that this was the best photo assignment he had ever done).  I love this photo and want to include it in the enhanced softcover edition.  Going to take some investment in order to pay the licensing fee but it will be worth it.  If there's demand for it, I'm going to make the new edition as good as it can possibly be.

In the meantime, the hardcover edition's text is now 100% stitched together.  The last substantial thing to get added is the acknowledgments, which were a lot of fun to come up with.  There is going to be some figuring out where to add blank pages in order to have it all looking proper once printed, and that's going to be a project for this coming weekend.  But after the hardcover edition is formatted properly, I think the softcover will quickly follow suit.

I've also got to figure out the author bio and brief synopsis of the book.  I've found out that I'm no good at describing myself in a few sentences.  So I'm sort of contracting that task out to friends who know me best.  Maybe they can come up with something.

Finally, will come designing the covers.  Which has to be done after precisely determining the page count.  Coming up with the covers won't be any problem.  I already know what they're going to look like.

What this all means is that at the rate things are going, my book is going to be published by the end of September.  Well ahead of the original intent to have it on sale by the end of the year.  And then it will be out in the wild, for anyone to buy and read.  We'll see what happens then.  But as things stand now, it's going to be in y'all's grubby little paws within the next few weeks.

I hope you guys will enjoy it :-) 

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