I took a short break from writing after I worked through the final edits for Hiking Alabama 5th Edition and Space Oddities: Forgotten Stories of Mankind’s Exploration of Space. It’s a waiting game now until the initial proofs arrive for my final blessing. In the meantime, as I relaxed by mowing our pasture over and over and over again (I miss the horses!), I began thinking about what the next book would be.
Hopping off the mower I went inside the house and dug out my bajillion notebooks, each with ideas scribbled in them with possible ideas that date back to my high school days. Most of those will NEVER see the light of day. Out of the stack, five options leapt out at me. One of those is the mystery that I had started working on two years ago, Dead Air, a good old fashioned mystery based at a local radio station in the 1940s. (The rough - and I mean rough - first chapter can be read here.) The concept is good, the rough draft was mediocre at best, so that one would need a lot of work.
As for the others, I had already started fleshing out the material, doing enough basic research, and writing sample chapters to include in possible proposals to publishers. Before going down the long and winding road of creating a lengthy proposal, I put together a query letter for each one and will be submitting them to a few publishers to see what will stir up interest
As I have mentioned previously and in earlier blogs, my writing began in high school. After graduation, I wrote many articles and short stories which led to a new pastime – rejection letter collecting. I have quite the collection, too, all in three ring binders neatly tucked away on bookshelves in my writing room.
The first is my collection of short stories about growing up, all loosely based on faulty memories. Many of you have either read or heard some of these stories on my podcast, Joe’s Shorts. They need a good re-working plus several new stories will be added.
The next three are non-fiction historical books. One came to me as I was writing Space Oddities. It is the story of how pop culture and the space race ran parallel courses between 1958 and 1971, many times intersecting to create unusual results.
In that same vein, I had started another book five years ago that recounts the history of July 1969 as the first humans walked on another world. The manuscript titled Everyone's Gone to the Moon (after the 1965 Jonathan King song) was centered around the entire month from July 1st to 31st. The book would chronicle interesting and unusual new stories and pop culture events that occurred during the month as well as present interesting and lesser known stories of the preparations and eventual first landing on the moon.
Finally, I have always been fascinated with the music of the 1940s, particularly during the war years. I have a proposal for another non-fiction historical book tentatively titled, GI Jive. The title was taken from the great song composed and sung by Johnny Mercer and also sung by Louis Jordan. The goal of the book is to document not only the history of many of these tunes – how they were written and recorded – but to also put them into context as to what was occurring during the war at the time of their release and how the songs related to the people fighting overseas and those fighting the war on the home front through interviews.
So, now I need
to figure out which one to pursue. Can’t do them all at once, you know. Or can I?
Hm. Who needs sleep! I’ll keep you posted and let you know what the final
decision is.
