NCYM Biographies — Published!

Billy Britt debuted his latest book, Giants in the Land, at North Carolina Yearly Meeting.

The 17 biographies tell of NCYM leaders — the first one born in 1846 and the last one who passed in 2006. One of them, Isaac Harris, was pastor at my meeting for 30 years, a great influence when I was a little girl.

It's good to preserve these stories of dedicated Quaker servants. But it's the story of this book that excites me.

Billy Britt signs a book for fellow author and Pub Board member Jack Ciancio.

We'd been working on it for several years ("we" being the author and the NCYM Publications Board). I don't know when Billy started his research. I helped edit the manuscript in 2009. About 2010, everything got put on hold when Billy had a heart attack.

Thankfully, he recovered, and we gradually got back to work. All the editors, proofreaders, and even the author are volunteers. (When you see the price of the book, you won't think so. But we're a small independent press and it has photos in it, hence the amount.)

Billy happily signed books and joked around before Saturday night's worship session at yearly meeting.

We all hope somebody writes a sequel with Billy in it. He knew many of the people in his book. And he was superintendent of NCYM for 20 years. Because he's served as interim pastor at several meetings since "retirement," it's a running joke that he's pastored everywhere and knows everybody. He has a mischievous sense of humor and a heart for connecting people with Christ.

2010 Goals - How are we doing?

Last year started off so hectic I didn't even write down goals until June. This year, I started thinking about them in January, but tweaked them for a month. And the tweaking continues.

Things I want to do in 2010 (priorities are in blue)
1. Finish novel: write missing scenes, fix timeline and facts, add descriptions and background, and revise and edit.
Thanks to my nanowrimo friends, I work on this at least once a week. I've added lots of the missing scenes, but I feel overwhelmed at all the other things I still need to do before I even let anybody read it.

2. Declutter. Hah! Ahem, well...
3. Get published in a magazine.
I sent out my first query in years, but forgot to follow-up when I didn't get a reply.

4. Make a Storybook for a relative who has a big birthday this fall. That includes scanning Daddy's negatives from the 50s and getting names and information.
I haven't even started on this! But I still have months to go.

5. Make a Storybook of my trip to Ireland.
I labeled the photos and made some notes. The good thing is, I have a June deadline to get one of these books done because I have a prepaid certificate. Deadlines are good for me.

6. Index the 18th-century church records from the meeting in Ireland.
I made good progress on this until the past month, about 160 pages done. This also helps with my novel, which is based on the people in the records.

7. Run in a 5K.
This got dropped for schedule conflicts, but now it's back on - in two weeks!

8. Go on a mission trip.
I got to do this in March. We went to Jean Lafitte, Louisiana to build a house for a family still in a FEMA trailer from Hurricane Katrina.

9. Other items: Blog and network (I've done this, but it's very time consuming). Market and sell my first book (Got a review, but haven't done much). Scrapbook back to 2004 (haven't).

I love alliterative goals (inspired by FlyLady). I tried Monday minutes (indexing church records - this went well until last month)
Tuesday tweets (fell by wayside)
Tuesday taxes (very useful. The rest of year, this means business paperwork)
Wednesday walking (in full force)
Wednesday weed-out (decluttering - forgotten)
Friday finances, Freelance Friday and Saturday sales (business) mostly fell by the wayside.
An early "Nine-o'clock Novel" turned into the Morning Write, 1 to 3 days a week.
Sunday scrapbooking/scanning/see people (made progress on visiting older relatives)

Some of these went well, like Monday Minutes, until my work schedule changed, I went away on a trip and then I had meetings every night for three weeks. Hopefully I can get back to my own goals and routines now.

It's Sunday. I'd better start scanning. How are your goals coming along?

Books of 2009

I feel pretty good about myself when I look at the list of "books I'm reading" on this blog. But let's see how I really did. Here are the books I read in their entirety in 2009:

1. Deep River Friends: A Valiant People, by Cecil Haworth - I actually proofread this as an almost-final manuscript. It was exciting to hold a final copy in my hands last summer!
2. I edited another manuscript, a book of Quaker biographies. I don't want to give out the title until it's closer to publication.
3. The Last Camel Died at Noon, by Elizabeth Peters - I read her Amelia Peabody books for sheer enjoyment.
4. Books, by Larry McMurtry - I enjoyed reading about the life of another bibliophile, especially while camping. In answer to a friend: yes, I sometimes do finish reading nonfiction books!
5. Philippians - in the Bible, but it's called a "book."
6. The Scotswoman, by Inglis Fletcher - my first Inglis Fletcher book, inspiration for my own fact-based historical novel.
7. Stone Cold, by David Baldacci, audiobook - A lot of action, good characters and plot, but I started in the middle of the trilogy, which was probably a mistake. I read The Collectors last year and this was the sequel that wrapped up the storylines.

Now, here are the books that I partly read in 2009:
-- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - Excellent. I read the whole thing, but started it in 2008.
-- Financial Survival, by Kristen Eckstein - Practical advice for a tight budget. I read most of it, but I'm one of those people who will stop and work on the "how to" of one chapter before I read further.
-- Moate: A History, by Liam Cox - I would have read this whole book if it were still in print! A lot of history about the small town where my ancestors lived in Ireland. I devoured the pages that I had copied at the library during my trip.
-- A New History of Ireland - read a few chapters during my research trip to Ireland. Good, but overwhelming.
-- A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes - great anecdotes, so you can eat up history in bite-sized, tasty pieces. I've been skipping around.
-- The Last Days of Black Beard the Pirate, by Kevin P. Duffus - impressive research, going back to primary sources the way genealogists do. His style is a little annoying, like a Discovery channel special. I started this after Thanksgiving and I'm still working on it.
-- Swahili - I finally found a decent phrasebook with pronunciation tips. I actually am reading the non-dictionary parts.
-- The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog, by Elizabeth Peters - I just finished this, so it's officially in 2010. Loved it! I felt an extra connection with the plot because of events going on in my own life.

So there you have it, not quite a book a month. I did not have particular goals for 2009 and I'm proud of the editing work this year (in addition to proofreading the news at my office job).
My only reading goals right now are research for my novel. Next up: Roots and The Peaceable Kingdom.

A book in hand ...

Just got a copy of Deep River Friends: A Valiant People, by Cecil E. Haworth. It's the revised edition, 2009 date inside, so shiny and new! Amazing to have a book that I helped proofread and see some of the changes that were made since I saw the manuscript.

The book I edited this summer, a collection of Quaker biographies, is still in the early stages. May meet with the author next weekend.

I finally got back to my own manuscript this weekend, using Holly Lisle's One-Pass Manuscript Revision techniques, http://ow.ly/b4pa
I love how she says that you can fidget around with your revisions for years, but real authors FINISH BOOKS. So this week I did the first few steps, deciding what my theme was and drafting a high-level blurb (that was hard! still not satisfied with the blurb). Next step, start slashing up the chapters/scenes ...

Local history

I'm proofreading a revised and updated history of Deep River Friends Meeting. Lots of nice details from the last two and a half centuries, plus pictures.