The Sequel is Coming Along

So in my last post here, I mentioned that my firstborn son's four oldest daughters have been clamoring for a sequel to Erin's Ring.  I am thrilled to say that I'm already eight chapters in, and probably getting close to half-way finished.

These "finished" chapters may need future work if the story goes in a direction I'm not aware of at this point (that definitely happens, in my experience); but I feel like they are close to the final edit phase. I rewrite and polish up constantly as I go along; I'm just not wired to write up a whole first rough draft of a book and then go back and edit it later.

I wrote the first chapter years ago, and then abandoned the project.  But I've tweaked that chapter a bit (and made it two chapters, actually), and I've added six more.  I think I'm going to be able to have the rest done, with perhaps 10 or 11 more chapters, by this spring or summer.  In my dreams, this book was going to be a Christmas present for the girls a few weeks from now; but I don't seem to have the free hours to devote to writing that you would think I would have as a 64-year-old empty-nester. #imabusybusygrammy  #verybusy

I am planning to self-publish this sequel through Bookemon, the site where I published My Little ABC Book.  I have no ambitious plans for marketing it far and wide, no delusions of bestselling author grandeur.  That, I am quite sure, is not part of the path I was meant to take on this earth.  But I will be able to order print-on-demand copies for family members.

As long as I was writing a sequel, I decided to make a slightly edited second edition of Erin's Ring to go with it.  It's always bothered me that in Chapter 16, I called a character "Erin" when I meant to call her "Cara."  (A bright 4th-grader--whose teacher was a beloved niece of mine--pointed this out to me when I visited her school in 2015; this was a mistake that the publisher and several beta-readers, myself included, missed!) Also, I found a few other problems: I'd had a character named Seamus Finnegan dying in 1855, which was way off; 1833 was more like it.  I'd had characters calling out, "Here, here!" after a toast, when the correct spelling would have been, "Hear, hear!" And I'd called the Catholic feast day that falls on New Year's the "Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God," when at that time in history it would have been called the "Octave of the Nativity."  So making this new edition has enabled me to fix some errors that were in the original book.  

Also, I got the opportunity to design a new cover!

That cover artwork inside the frame is Winslow Homer's "Bobbin Girl," which I think is absolutely perfect for a story about some 19th-century Irish immigrant girls who came to Dover, NH to work at the cotton mill called the Cocheco Manufacturing Co. When I look at this vintage ink drawing, I think of the main character, Ann O'Brien!

I actually had one paperback copy of this new edition printed by Bookemon already; but unfortunately, I made poor choices as far as the font and the font size and it was practically unreadable.  So I'm in the process of fixing those issues now.  I plan to order copies of both books as a sort of matching set for my granddaughters--that is, if (when!) I can ever get the sequel completed!

I'm not ready to share the cover (or the subject matter) of the sequel, Marguerite's Diary, yet; in fact, I probably won't until it's finished.  But please pray for me that I can do the story I'm working on justice, because it tells about a miraculous event involving Our Blessed Mother.  And I don't want to disappoint Her.