Limbo

I may be in a writer's state of limbo for awhile. Waiting for a yes, but expecting a no. From everything you hear as an upcoming writer,it's hard to break into the industry, so you should expect lots of rejection. I'm fine with that. I'm just looking for a new story to write on for now. I'm going to go back over some of my old writings, see if I can edit them up into something for a magazine. I've got one poem, Portrait of a Raven, I think is worthy of publication. I'm going to shoot that one at the Cutbank later on this year, so I'm just waiting on that one -- limbo. Any way, it's a rainy day, so little housework and lots of time to do what I wish. So, keep on keepin' on.

Letter Sent!

I sent the letter! It's the first, and we'll just see. I hear there's lots of rejection in the publishing industry, but I've done my best. I spent more time with the letter last night, my spouse looked it over again, and I read it a couple more times today, and just a few short moments ago, I sent it. The agency accepts queries by email, so I sent it that way. I'm a big fan of saving trees, but then again, there's the whole paradox about a writer wanting to save trees. :) So, now I must wait about three weeks for a response.

Querying still...

I've been working on the query letter still. Read through it twenty times or more making changes. Sent it to my wife again, she gave suggestions. I took all of them, and can't find anything now. I sent it back to her just a second ago, but probably won't look at it again until tomorrow. Seriously, if you're trying to get published, you'll spend more energy on the query letter than any one page of your entire manuscript, yet, it is the first thing that lands on an agent or editor's desk, so you have to make it great!

Query Letter, hard edit

So many months ago I wrote a query letter for an agency, which I thought to be really good. I looked at it today, read it, and to me, it seemed O.K., not great, and I figured from reading it that it was probably a little unclear as to what the book was about. I wrote in a bunch of stuff that kept the reader guessing, which is good in a story, but not so good in a business letter. I think I was being too creative in the letter, in hopes that my writing style would come through, but looking back, it's all about the brevity of the story, and the story should speak for itself. I had my wife look it over, and she's a wonderful critic and editor. She pointed out all the crap and confusing parts of the letter. I cleaned it up, showed it to her again, and again she pointed out the crap in the letter, a little less the second time. I cleaned it up a third time and then . . . put it away and took a break. I'm going to go back to it again here very soon, clean it up again before I show it to her for a third time. I can't thank her enough for her help. So that's what's in the workings.

Petrified Birds Sing Petrified Songs

Jim Bridger told many tall tales, like of the petrified forests, where you can find petrified animals and as the title states, petrified birds singing petrified songs. Any way, here in the photo are two petrified tress. It's quite the short and strenuous hike to get to them, but oh, is it worth it. Not only are there these two standing, but there's a third behind it, and all along the hike there're stumps and such. There's much to be said about Yellowstone's petrified forests, but I'll leave that to science. I just like the stories and the pictorial wonder of it all.

From Drop Box

Not Much

I'll let you in on something, sometimes I'm not that creative. Sometimes I don't like to write, and sometimes I'd like to but there just isn't time. I don't consider myself a full-time writer. I consider it more of a hobby, something I like to do that I'd like to share with people one day. Yesterday, I had chores and a wonderful evening watch Montana Shakespeare Company perform Private Lives at Tizer Gardens, which was seriously an amazing play with a professional cast -- really lucky to have such a fine company so close to home. Today, I had more chores, I'm painting my house, working on writing an essay for a grad school class, and then I'm going out with friends for a burrito and to watch the film Food Inc. at the Myrna Loy. I find that reading and doing other cultural things really helps with writing -- I look for new ideas, new scenes, new characters, new little idioms to put into writing, of which, I write down for later. Any way, I said I'd write about the down times too, which is all a part of it. Hope you all have a lovely day!

Mt. Everts and other pretty things

In this photo is Cathedral Rock in the foreground, midway is Mt. Everts (for the supposed but incorrect location where Truman Everts was found.), and behind that are the Beartooth Mountains.

From Drop Box

Major Day.

I've finished editing. I'll not touch this project again until an editor asks me to do so, or I can't sell it :). It ended up being about a 100 pages single spaced, with a word count of 49,200, which falls perfectly in line with what most publisher's are looking for. I'm pretty excited to say the least. I thought of this idea 6 years ago, started writing the first inklings about 5 1/2 years ago, and now, now it's done. I've been thinking about Truman Everts for all that time and this one story. I know that I'll have to keep telling his story and explaining it, but writing it is over. Wow.

I'd decided months ago to try for an agent, but recently talking with a friend, I'm going to revisit that idea and revise that agent letter I wrote a few months back. To keep the creativity flowing, I'll figure out something else to work on too. I've another book idea, but I may take a break to work on poetry and short stories, not sure, but I'll keep you posted.

Backside of Mt. Everts

The supposed location where Truman Everts was found was subsequently named after him, Mt. Everts, but sadly, it is the wrong location, it's actually further in the park. I took a hike a few years back around the back side of Mt. Everts, and this photo is from that hike.

From Drop Box

Confusion? Nah.

So, in the beginning, years ago, I thought it would be fun to write a book from a crazy person's point of view. I wanted my character to parallel his grandfather's journey of getting lost, so initially, I thought he'd just loose his mind. As the story developed, he loses his health first, fighting a mighty flu, and afterward, losing his mind by sickness induced psychosis. At the same time, as becoming sick, he losing a his last parental figure, his guardian after his parents died, who was also his employer. So, in one fowl swoop, he loses near everything. He of course doesn't know he's losing his mind and he's learning of his grandfather's story at the same time. As this progresses, he leaves his home for the wilderness, because he's crazy and think a mountain lion is going to eat him in his home. I hope that the story itself doesn't sound as totally far fetched as my description, but it is, and as the reader, I want to keep you guessing as to what is real and to what is not. The part I'm working on right now, he's trying to coming back from the wild because he knows he's in trouble from being boiled, burned, scraped up, bitten by flies, and starved. So, the mind set of this man is totally nutty, which I feel I can do quite well, but hey, people want a story they can read and understand, as do I so, I try to make it not too crazy by making the mind jumps seems logical. Any way, it was a bunch of research on the effects of the flu, psychosis, and starvation, and then I made Truman all of those things. Here's a snippet of him trying to build a fire near the end of the book:

By joyous luck there upon a river stone by the fire lay my fate, the opera glass. Soul sparks and rainbows burned within. I pocketed the prize and limped out of the canyon, through the willowy stream that cuts up at an angle that can be climbed by crawling over boulders. There’s no sun besides, so beginning fire was out of the question. All I could do is try to keep moving homeward. Upon the flats, the wind howled still and flakes turned to frozen pellets blasting away at my tattered skin. Vision so obscured, I crawled, bush to boulder, bolder to bush. Endurance, I told myself, endurance. Like that, I traveled for eternity -- bush to boulder, bolder to bush -- following my feet and hands for I haven’t found home in my heart. I knew not where I was going. Hope, once more was extinguished like any flame I once had. I sat leeward of a big sage. Mind emptying, slumber, body so cold it’s warm, and still a fly tearing bloodied patches of skin from my scratched, burned and boiled cheek.

I must have slept, because I awoke warmed. The snow had stopped, the wind slowed, and the clouds parted above me and beams flowed down like dreams. Quick to the lens I was. I’d already made a small stash of kindle just for this – I kept in my only pocket not ripped. Quickly, I piled it tipi-like and fumbled with the glass. My fingers. My fingers didn’t work. I couldn’t move them. Like a statues hands were mine. I could bend barely at the hand’s joint, but no further out on the digits. The glass fell to the ground and with both hands, gripping like clubs, I was able to grasp the lens and hold it steady in my palms. Steady enough. More firm, steady to light this fire, to light it takes patience, endurance. On my knees, with palms outstretched, I funneled the light, prayed the light through the lens. Not letting this moment pass means life, to not focus and let it slip away is death. Again, I empty my mind, traveled to the far reaches. I can do this. Focusing, passing the realm of slumber, I enter dream. High above a green field I floated belly down, sun to my back, and I see a dot edged with summer Cottonwoods in a sea of dry prairie grass stretching at all sides for hundreds of miles in all directions. Through the golden ocean runs a ribbon of green trees to the South. Descending from the clouds, a home appears, modest, within the shelter-belt. There’s neat rows, a garden I’d say. The decent is leisurely -- to the garden. The sun is so warm on this cool day. It must be late spring or early summer, and to my surprise, there’s a man working the garden. He’s a wide straw hat. “Who are you?” I call from my cloud. He turns his head and his face filled with smoke furls. They rose and burst when they hit the wind. A flame! Red glowing, growing, a flame! A fire. Fire! Life! I shall live, I shall live to see tomorrow.

That’s how it happened. That’s how I got fire. I know nothing of the day-vision, nor how I could not shake long enough to create a flame, but I’ve been tending ever since. Again, the wind rose, clouds regrouped, and the snow has recommenced. Like a horse, I keep my ass to the wind, to protect it still, I keep in the shadow of a Big Sage. With its help, I’m able to block enough wind to keep my flame fluttering. With much difficulty and tenderness this life is alive.

Sleep, though, is impossible.

Too, food seems distant,

so distant that I forgot

what the empty hole inside feels like.

I know I’m thinning, thinning quickly.

I can see my ribs draped in thin skin

covered in dried blood

from fall and the scrapes.

I don’t think about food.

I can’t think about food.

My body aches for food,

so I don’t have to think about food.

Lack of food will not kill me

tonight.

To sleep means the end of fire

which would mean a dark morrow.

I will not die --

I know this.

I have endured.

So I will not sleep.

Tomorrow, at break of dawn,

I know not where I will go, but I will survive.

I will simply follow my soul.

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

I often reference the Lower Falls and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and here's a picture I took in early June.

From Drop Box

A Photo and an Article

I've been working on inserting photos/drawings from historical figures from the 1870 Washburn expedition to my story. The basic idea is that Truman draws unconsciously and turns out an exact replica from the expedition, of which he of course knows nothing about. For this one, he is just begining to learn about his grandfather, Truman Everts the first, through the scrap-booked articles and his article published in Scribner's Monthly. This is one such article that he finds and sticks into his journal, which I footnote like this: [1] This article was placed between the pages of this entry. --ed. I do this to again create for the reader, the effect of validity and truthfulness, which my hope is that the reader will see the irony of the situation, in that I create a fictitious character portrayed to be true but receives real information. Any way, this is a cool, short article from Oct. 6th, 1870 in the Helena Herald.

Something Different

My wife, Joice, decided we should enter an art contest, neither of us are artists, nor have we ever entered an art contest. She came up with the design; I helped her "edit" it, or perhaps, you'd call it revising, I'm not too sure. She was definitely the lead artist, I give her all the creative juice on this one, I just helped her out, but as she says, "I would never have done this without you," and I told her that I would never have done it without her, so it worked out well. Any way, we took home 2nd place in the juried adult category and the people's choice award for the adult category as well. Below, in order, is the progression of the piece:

The finished product.

Truman's Mother and Father

Days ago, I wrote about adding a scene to my story that told of how my character's, Truman's, parents had met. True to what is known in the story so far, Truman's father is stoic in the true sense of the word. He feels so little for his father, but at the same time, wishes he could have had a better relationship with him. His mother is quite a subservient to her husband. She never expresses her love in words, but in signs. Truman is confused why she would have continued to stay with such a cold man, plus there's a gaping age difference (which stays true to the historical figure, Truman Everts). I wrote the scene within a chapter where he becomes consumed in a blazing forest fire, surviving, and he wonders why he's alive, and his mind jumps to his mother, which is often the case for this character. Always, there is more going on, but I think you can get my drift from that little on-ramp, and I thought this would be a nice update from the notes I left here before. Enjoy!

From Lost Man:

She was such a quiet one, but she could carry a scold for walking in the house with dusty boots or leaving the living room a mess. Yet, she was the caring one, in her glances, warm loving eyes, and a soft rustle of hair is how she showed her love. I still don’t see how she could have stayed with my cold father. I didn’t know it either, not until Kurtz told me. It was the weirdest thing, because it’s the only time in all those years that he ever told me anything about my family.

The day of the trip, the Yellowstone I can’t remember, but I do remember going to him before we departed, making sure he’s alright, he was right sick. I could never forget his pale face and sunken eyes.

It was before dawn, we’d only greeted each other, and he said, “You wish to know how your parents met?”

I was taken by surprise, “Yes, but they’re dead.”

“Hmm,” and we sat there at his kitchen bar drinking coffee near his murky library.

“So, I’ll never know,” I said to just to break the silence.

“I believe you are old enough. Your wounds are healed and you are but scar tissue now, so not much could hurt you,” he was thinking aloud, but one look in his hollow eyes, and you could see a storm of contemplation.

“What are you talking about, Kurtz? We was talking about how my parents met. Are you thinking of those damn bison again? I haven’t checked the line, but assure you, everything is locked down tight.”

“Truman, no. My cattle are secure, and the bison are on the right side of the fence. I too was speaking of how your parents met. He told me once.”

Like a whistle it was always there, screaming in the background, I thought it was the fridge motor, but no, it was the

bomb falling.

“You know? How?” I was clench-jawed and dumbfounded; surely, I believed that knowledge to be dead with my parents.

“He told me,” was simply all he said.

“And what did he tell you?” I prodded. I know you have to dig deep with Kurtz, and I never tried to pry before because I respect the man -- his privacy, he saved my skin and my family’s property.

“He told me that he saved your mother’s life.”

I knew that. That is what my mother always said too, never him, though. I took it as a lie to cover up the fact that they met at the Bucking Horse Sale or something else equally slimy, but she never told me.

So, brokenly, I said, “I knew that. At least I’d heard it, not believed it.”

“Did he tell you how? Did she tell you how?”

“Never,” was all I could reply.

“Hmm,” was all he replied.

We sat for a moment in the shared, pregnant silence. He poured another cup of coffee, and then began, “I’ll the story as I remember: One winter night, many moons ago, a cow got loose from your father’s herd. It wandered loose, disillusioned in the blinding storm. Your father went after her on foot with a thick coat and a flashlight. He found her near here. The storm was worse by then, blizzarding to beat heck, as they would say around here. He knocked. I answered. We lodged the heifer in my barn for the night. He called home to your mother telling he was alright and that he’d be staying at my place for the respite. I took him to my study, and I cracked the red-wax seal on a bottle of Marker’s Mark. We drank the bottle and talked through the night to sound of the crackling fire and howling wind. He told me how he found your mother. I didn’t ask, he just began, and I tell it to you like he told it to me. He told:

‘I was an old man when I met Elizabeth – seventy-four. I’d already ranched my whole life into what most would call a retirement, but a rancher never retires. It was summer time. I’d like to travel to see rodeos around the counties, so it was that I was in Helena at the Last Chance Stampede. It was the end of July, hotter’n hell. I sweated through my hat and my feet swam in my boots. I was early, so I took a late-afternoon walk around the grounds, they have a lovely fairgrounds -- trees, a stream, and tranquil walking paths around the acres. I took off for the stream and trees to find shade and cool. I was deep back in the thicket, near the back and I was nearly on my way back. Came around a bend an found a braided chinaman with a machete readied to cut this girl’s throat. She was on her knees, hands tied behind her back, blindfolded. He had her hair knotted in one hand and the blade on her neck with the other. The deed and just begun, and a trickle of blood ran down her neck, staining the shoulder of her sun dress.

I yelled, “Hey! What’re you doing?! Get the hell away from her!”

He only glared at me, pissed that I had discovered his deed. Our eyes narrowed on each other, and I decided action was necessary, I ran at him. He dropped her, and with two hands, pointed his blade at me in some karate-jew-jit-su-shit move. I stopped before I got my head taken off. I reached behind me, like I was grabbing for my pistol, which I didn’t have. We stared at each other and breathed deep breathes. I remember how labored and intense those moments were. I offered, “What’re you doing? She’s just a girl.”

“Getaway,” he told me.

“No, not without an explanation, and not without her,” I told him, and he held the machete for a moment and lowered it.

“I sell her. Dis is what I do,” he said.

“You can’t sell a dead body,” I said.

“I sell dead girl. Pay more dan live girl.”

I was startled, “How’s that work, chink?”

"Minghun. Not for you know.”

“I take her, and I go to police, chink. What you think about that?”

“NO!” He yelled at me.

“Then how about you, me, and the girl go on over to the beer garden and talk this thing out.”

He held that blade at me for a long time, relenting, he put it down and nodded me on.

We drank beer, many beers.

She didn’t say a word, and drank nothing, because she was sixteen.

The old chink, told me that he gave up farming because of all the racist asshole in the valley. He took up bride selling instead. There’s a Chinese population in Helena, from the old railroad days. They keep to themselves, I never even knew they’re there. Thought they all went back to Chinaland or California. He told that in Chinese custom, the son must have a wife, even in death, or his soul will wander or some shit like that. The husband’s family finds him a wife, pays the family for her, and they marry him to her. His soul is represented by a doll, and she marries the doll, but the marriage is also his funeral. Dongyang, that was his name, Dongyang, said he got paid $1,600 for a live bride, $1,000 for a whore, or if he found a suitable recently dead bride, he could get $2,000 either way. A family with a dead son didn’t want a widow to take care of, so a dead girl is more desirable, making her more expensive. So, he made more money off dead girls. And because they’re so far from China, they’d take any dead girl, and because a dead girl was harder to find, he’d make his own dead girls.

I asked him, “Where’d you get her?” pointing to the blond haired girl.

“I buy her. Good used, cheap.”

“Where? How?” I asked him.

“I go to trailer-park. I knock on door. I ask for young girl. They think sex. I say, ‘no, buy.’ And I buy her for $1,200. Sell her for $2,000. Make $800,” he said so businesslike.

I couldn’t believe it. The absurdity, the cruelty of it, so I bought her for $2,000, alive. He insisted that I had to marry her, because of his values. “I sell wife, not whore. I no pimp,” he told me. So, I missed the Saturday rodeo talking with the chink and buying my bride. I stayed in town until Monday morning. Fresh at nine, we got married. I didn’t even know her name until that morning. She hadn’t even spoken to me until then. She only said, “Thank you. I do.” Dongyang and some clerk signed the witness sheet, I paid my $80 for the license, $2,000 to Dongyang, and I brought her back here. A year later I had my son, and that’s when you moved in, Kurtz.’

That’s how he told it to me, Truman. I kept it from you because it seemed so disruptive. I had no intention of taking this information with me to the grave. This seemed like as good of a time as any.”

I sat in silence, stunned at revelation.

“Truman, I hope I haven’t hurt you. I thought you’d want to hear the truth, at least what your father told me,” Kurtz was consoling. I’d never seen him act so, but I wasn’t ready for consoling.

I cried. I cried for my mother.

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Pictures

I started writing this story about Truman Everts five years ago. It's been a plauge upon my soul, as has been the whol 1870 Washburn party. I spent a good amount of time a few years back at the Montana Historic Society library researching. I found many articles, letters, and pieces from individuals' journals. In Samuel Hauser, the late governor of Montana and part of the 1870 party, he drew a few things from the trip. I'm very drawn to them because I don't know what they are. They seem impressionistic to me. From reserach, I know that Trumbull has ascribed to his name the first drawings of the Yellowstone wonders, but Hauser's from the same trip are never mentioned, probably because you can't tell what they are, but they are beautiful.

The first one here, I don't know what to think. I get the idea that in the middle there might be an overhead view of a river. I think I believe this to be an over head simply because of his Yellowstone Lake drawing below.The second one here I believe to be of the grand canyon of the Yellowstone, but again, I have my doubts because of the river looking thing at the bottom of the drawing, but I love this one!
The third one is of Yellowstone Lake, he even labels it so. This exploration party created the first real drawings of the lake, before this it was known there was a lake, but the shape and size was totally unknown. Hauser again isn't mentioned as being one of the first to create this drawing, that is attributed to Langford, who drew it all from the top of a mountain on the east side of the lake, which was subsequently named after him and this feat. After reading Langford's journal again recently, there was a lot of copying of journals going on, which was to save time and have a separate reference of the trip. So, Hauser could have copied Langford's drawing is all I'm trying to get at, or he could have drawn his own. I don't know. Either way, it's a great drawing.
I plan on using a cropped version of the drawings randomly dropped into the my story, which is in journal form to add a little spice and wonder to my story. Oh, as a random aside, part of the goal with this book was to mix reality and fiction. I take true historic events, people, and quotations and place them into my story. Some are quite obvious in their reference, others are built right into the characters dialog. I have found this to be one of the hardest aspects of this project, it guides the work in a certain direction, which I flow with, and in the end, I have a dillema still, I'd like those quotations to simply be in my manuscript without quotation marks, footnotes, or anything else. That they sit there like they are part of the flow of the story, but also little gems for the reader to discover if they so choose to discover for themselves. Yet, not quoting others' words is unethical and perhaps a little illegal. So far I've been highlighting the parts that I'd like to see removed before publication, which includes citations. So that's the writing life for now. Peace.

Mother of Truman

So, mostly this book is about Truman Everts III, the first is a real person who was lost in the wilds of Yellowstone for 37 days during the first exploratory mission to the area. The second is made up by me, but he did exist, and Truman I did father a son at the age of 75 with his teenage wife. In my story, I try to make parallels to the historical figure -- that whole idea of the past repeating itself if forgotten. My character, the grandson of Truman Everts, doesn't know that story until he read the manuscripts on the dusty old shelf. At that point in his life, early twenties, he has already lost his father, mother, and guardian tragically in separate accidents. I try to use a little dramatic irony, in that the audience knows what's happening to Truman, while he himself is figuring it out, although, I have to admit, I think that part is thinly veiled. To the point -- I need a part that explains how his Father, Truman II, and his mother met and marry. I need it to parallel Truman I's own life, so he's 75, and she's a teenager.

I realized that his mother's role is low in the story, which wasn't surprising, but her depth of character and story is severely lacking, so I'm creating a section to tell her backstory.
Here are my notes:
Friday, Jan. 26, 2007 12:15 PST
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/01/26/ghost_brides/

Killing and selling women as "ghost brides"

Farmer Yang Dongyan bought a woman for $1,600 with the intention of selling her as a live bride. But then he discovered that the woman could command $2,077 as a "ghost bride" to be buried alongside a deceased man and provide companionship in the afterlife. So he "killed the woman in a ditch, bagged her body, and sold her" to an undertaker. Wiser to the superior moneymaking possibilities of selling dead woman rather than live women, Dongyan then killed a prostitute he had "used before" and sold her for a lesser $1,000 (because she was less attractive than the first victim, he told a local paper). It's no surprise that Dongyan had every intention of continuing his disturbing scheme: "If I had not been caught this early, I would've done it again."

For story:

• Tru hears from his mother -- father saved her life and she fell in love
• Kurtz tells Tru
• TruII told Kurtz over a bottle of whiskey one cold winter night during a blizzard, cow got out and TruII went to receive it from Kurtz's.
• Set it in Helena at the Last Chance Stampede and Fair.
• TruII buys her in the ditch behind the fairgrounds before her neck is cut by Dongyan, but it's agree that he must marry her, because of Dongyan's values.
• Use Dongyan's story, as back-story, and Tru's mother is sold to his father, instead of for another family's ghost bride.
• Dongyan tell TruII this over a beer at the gardens at the final night of the rodeo
• Dongyan insists on being at the wedding
• Wedding is Monday morning, early, at the court house in Helena.

So that's what I'm working on right now. I've got to whittle that into a story and tie it into the main story. So, here I go!

writer

So, I write. I write for fun. I'm a part-time writer, and a full time liver. I thought I'd start this off, build up my following and such. Not that I care much about a following, but in order to be read, you have to have readers, so there's the dilemma.

I've been working a manuscript, Lost Man, for about five years now, part-time. So, what's it about? Here's the blurb I've written so far for my query letter:

Lost Man is a story of survival in the wilds of Yellowstone, and upon finding that you are actively seeking writers from the Pacific Northwest and represented similar works as Disappearance: A Map and Into the Forest, your representation for my manuscript would be a very apt match. The lost man is Truman Everts, and he never knew his grandfather or his history, and he had never traveled the fifty miles to Yellowstone National Park. His father was too routine, too stoic for a family vacation, and his is quite, complicit mother died young. Now, Truman is living in his family home, working for Kurtz the ex-buffalo rancher who raised him, and beer drinking with his best friend Todd.

On a whim he treks to the fabled Yellowstone with Todd, traveling the same route of his grandfather, 130 years yore. On the day of return, he finds Kurtz’s open hearse bumping up the gravel road. A snow unleashes in the September air stranding Truman in his home without power and a mighty case of the flu. All collapses, he loses all – his job, savings, health, Kurtz, and rationality. Grasping with all extremities he finds, in the recess of the family bookcase, his grandfather’s writings – a personal tale, lost alone in Yellowstone for 37 days -- a history to soon parallel his own. Screams of a mountain lion, cat tracks in the snow, and his fevered mind strikes him on a fool’s flight into the wild wintery forest. Lost Man jumbles historical events, characters, and quotes with modern fiction in a seemingly illusory realm. It’s a fervent survival tale, taking the reader down the rabbit-hole of a family’s history to find what it really means to live.

The draft is complete, and I've now revised it three times. I'm working on the 4th revision, which is the first time all the way through. Given, some chapters have been revised more than that, and some have been deleted, and some have been moved around in manuscript. Of the 100 or so pages, single spaced, in Word, I've written, I'm at about page 80, so I'm nearly there. Woot!

I had the goal of putting out letters to agents, which I've read is the best way to go for fiction, by April, but after I did the 3rd edit and plugged all the pieces togeteher, I was at about 42,000 words, and the "normal" novel is about 50,000. I knew places to add in some backstory, sidestory and rewordings to make more sense where I knew it was lacking. Any way, as of today, the manuscript is up to 46,000 words, and there's a big section about Truman's mother and how she met his father, which I'm currently working on and will add a least another 1,000 words or more. I'll describe that later.

Now that I've jumped into this. I'll just write about what I'm writing about as I go along.

So here it is, a writer's journal for the those who wish to read.