Book I, Mountain Whispers – Days without Sun, was released in April of 2015. To promote the book, we attended conferences in Washington, DC and Las Vegas. I was also honored to be a guest on several national radio programs, and the book received great reviews on Amazon and in print media. I’ve also had the pleasure to offer presentations to several local citizens groups and to book clubs.
As the election season came around, priorities shifted from promoting Mountain Whispers, to building an online media publishing and commerce company. As with many enterprises, more time and energy was required to do it right. It proved to be a revival, a return to my landscape gardening days. We gathered a following of over 100,000 garden enthusiasts and learned so much along the way. We’re still at it and have added several more sites and pages to our online retinue.
Other projects, classes, and ventures absorbed more time. And, of course, there are always the “vicissitudes of life.” Rather than delve into details, let’s just say the free time to pursue the passion project of writing dwindled along with the point source of cash flow from coal royalties.
Late last summer, the time came to get on with the finish work of Book II. I’d actually written most of the chapters for Book II, but they were scattered and rough. They needed to be cleaned up, filled in, and stitched along a number of timelines.
Flash forward to the end of 2017 and the basic draft had been edited for story line, development, and corrections of my home-boy forays into creative grammar, punctuation, and spelling. The entire manuscript has now gone out to the copy editor and proofreader (one and the same) and will be basically finished pending formatting for Create Space and Kindle (both Amazon).