Yes, I know some translations say it should be “love” instead of “charity,”  but I need more of the latter than the former right now—and I like to think that I try to pay all three of those forward to the best of my ability  (in my bookish pursuits, at least).

You see, I honored the commitment I made in my last post and stayed up crazy hours to finish my book.  In an effort to make it better and save me from myself, I have handed it off to three people: a beta reader to tell me if it’s boring, an editor to tell me if I’m a grammatical disaster, and a local history expert to tell me if I’ve got my narrative’s events completely ass over teakettle.

I have faith it’s a good story. I hope I did well in telling it. I need charity from these parties in their reviews and the time they spend on them, to make it the best it can be.

When I get those back, middle of next month, I believe I will finally have a book fit to print.

In the meantime, there are several tasks I need to accomplish. I have to check a few more citations at the library.  I have to do a little more research about the time period that is not going into the book but that I feel I’ll need if I’m ever called upon to talk about the book. And then there are the human contacts: There are still a couple of descendants I must try to get in touch with, not because I think they will have anything to tell me that I can use (though I will certainly ask, see that business about “hope” above), but more as a sort of courtesy  alert that I am trying to move this into a real, bona fide pipeline to publication.

Still, this is the best I’ve felt about things since I started this project.  I daresay I’m ready to start thinking about another one!

In other news, I also handed in a completely unrelated essay to another outlet and I’m hoping to hear something about that some time soon, though I’m not sure if what I provided was really what they were looking for. Time will tell!