The Sixth Draft – Firewatchers Sequel

Pardon me as I sip a celebratory drink. The Sixth Draft is done. The sixth draft of Firewatcher’s sequel is done. Another draft? Yes, another draft. This one is a major one. With this draft, the story is done. I could massage this for another year, but I could say that about every book I’ve written. That would eat up another eight years of my life. I’m 65. I have more books to write. This one is done, sort of. Cheers.

Ah, the story is done. But the story isn’t enough. 

It needs another draft to catch typos that some Ais won’t find. My main character’s name is Ari, which means I need to check for places where I typed Air instead. Brody/Brady. Gigi/Gig. Francesca/Fransisco. And then there are those 3, 4, 5 letter combinations that are the aliens’ names but are also part of regular English, especially if a bit of dyslexia comes in. Erle’/early. Umde’/made. Abe’ and Ine’, in particular, can easily have been autocorrected to some new name. And then, there are the capitalization conventions, doubly so because the humans and the aliens have different conventions. And then, there are the changes made in the previous drafts which now must be reconciled. And more. It can get tedious. 

Another draft will be a relatively new thing for me: Grammarly (the non-AI version). I recently revised Firewatcher by double-checking my grammar choices. It was a popular request. I know several editors, so rather than picking one then defend them against the rest, I found it was easier to pick one that they could all criticize. Grammarly. The other benefit is that Grammarly won’t care. Unfortunately, Grammarly seems to have word count limits (or did) which meant having to feed it a few thousand words at a time. With over 100,000 words, that’s a lot of spoon feeding. Open wide!

Assuming those two do well, the last major draft should be the formatting. Get the template from Amazon/Kindle. Reformat my Google Docs file into a .docx. I do so at the library using Microsoft software on Windows hardware because Amazon/Kindle has to accommodate that arrangement, and may not care about Google. OK, megacorps. Play nice. Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe be nice. I think you should be nice to Google too, but there may be egos involved. As it was the last time I did this, the Google version of a docx file ported over to a pdf ended up with some comical page numbering.

Reality usually means something else pops up. Formatting usually takes three iterations. Stay tuned.

And that isn’t enough. Before that final draft, I need to insert those pedantic pages like the Title, Acknowledgements, Author bio, etc. About that title. I haven’t picked one. I have some guesses, but something final must be selected so the Title page can be written. But the title also has to be decided upon because now is the time to write the marketing text. Sell this thing! 

Even before I pick a title, I’ll also start on drafts of the cover. The cover is more than a pretty picture. The cover is the icon, the computer icon that folks click on to buy the book. The complete cover includes the front and back, marketing text, short acknowledgments, maybe the price, definitely the bar code, and then there’s the spine.

There’s lots to do.

And I want to get it done because there is more to do. There are other books and projects to work on.

The next book is  From Middle Class to Millionaire to Mostly Muddling By the semi-sequel to Dream Invest Live.

Hopefully, the title tells that story. I was asked to write Dream. Invest. Live. by several people, including a New York Times best-selling author, because I retired at 38 in 1998. I wrote the book in 2008. The market crashed. The Great Recession kicked in – and my strategy from the book worked. Whew. And then, totally disconnected from the economy, my two main investments were the victims of criminal actions. Eventually, they were found guilty, but I never saw my money returned. Within three months, I lost ~80% of my net worth. Because of the Recession, I couldn’t engage my backup plans to get a job or sell my house. Shortly after that, my net worth dropped 98% from its peak. I’m feeling and doing better now. In the meantime, I saw other parts of America’s wealth classes. Healthcare, housing, philanthropy, taxes, consumption – I saw multiple sides of lots of topics. I want to write about that. One book, many topics, many perspectives. 

After that is the second sequel to Firewatcher. The plot popped into my mind about a week ago. Evidently, I am not done with sci-fi. On the long list is the prequel, and another sequel or two, but there is something else to do, too.

The tall ship screenplay gets a major vote if funding for it arrives. It’s a true story about a 14-year-old spoiled brat who thinks he’s getting kicked out of the house when he is really getting kicked out of the country. Yeah, that level of brat. On Monday, he finds himself a cabin boy departing Liverpool on a tall ship to Imperial India in 1876. Sea life, colonial life, cultural collisions seen from the eyes of a more than precocious teenager – who took notes. He sees magic in the bazaar, and almost believes. He meets another world, but also has to deal with swabbing the deck. There’s a murder. And a whale sneezes on him. The second draft of the screenplay. I intend to talk it up, but don’t plan on getting too excited. Many hurdles to hurdle.

There’s a fundamental reality to my situation. I’m >65.5. Finish this book by 66. The next one by 67-68. The one after that by 70. And I’m considering a multi-book photo series of Olympic National Park, pending their approval, which I haven’t asked for yet. They might say no, or yes. Maybe I’ll live to a hundred or more. Maybe I’ll do what I can. My book choices would be different if I was 25.5, but then I wouldn’t have the experiences I’ve had which help me write these books. 

Step one: Finish this one.
Step two: Finish step one before committing to whatever comes next.

How to finish this post? Take another sip. Cheers, and cheers to you with your projects, too.