Interesting start to the major league baseball season: Tampa Bay won their first 13 games to tie a long standing record. I happened to catch an interview with a player from the 1987 Milwaukee team that also won 13 in a row at the start of the year. He mentioned that despite that great start, by the time of the all-star break at mid-year, their winning percentage was already below .500. He didn’t know why things fell apart to that extent, but that the experience was a good reminder that it is indeed a long season. This morning newspaper indicated the Ray’s record is now 23-6, so they are still doing well. But … it’s early days, etc.
Feedback is still pending on the query letters to agents and publishers regarding the fiction manuscript, so there is still not a lot of writing news to talk about. I sent a status report note to the helpers in Lincoln who so graciously read and critiqued the early drafts. Several replied that they would join me in keeping my fingers crossed. The first batch of queries went out in early December, followed by a second series in early February. Most agencies indicate that in the post-COVID world with its reduced staff sizes, six to nine weeks is probably the norm for receiving feedback – and almost all indicate that they do not reply re submissions that they aren’t interested in.
So, as I told the crew who helped with the proofing/editing process, if nothing major evolves from the initial queries, I think the plan will be to focus on a few of the remaining agents that appear most promising and also begin researching smaller publishers that enable authors to work directly with the staffs. We’ll see what happens. As it turns out, the timing for the third round should probably best happen in mid-July. If all goes well, we’ll be doing some traveling in late June-early July and I don’t want to be ping ponging back and forth with agents or companies while we are spending time pretty much off the grid.
Change of subject: as I was double-checking some World War II stats in a military history manuscript, I ran across an excerpt from Rick Atkinson’s book An Army at Dawn that in a unique way captures the enormity of the losses in that conflict. The quote is from Atkinson’s prologue to the book.
“September 1, 1939, was the first day of a war that would last for 2,174 days, and it brought the first dead in a war that would claim in average of 27,600 lives every day, or 1,150 an hour, or 19 a minute, or one death every three seconds.”
Soon thereafter, Atkinson narrows the focus by describing losses in the war’s initial campaign. Although fairly brief and rather small in comparison with many operations that were soon to follow, the casualty numbers were horrific. “Within four weeks of the blitzkrieg attacks on Poland by sixty Germany divisions, the lightning war had killed more than 100,000 Polish soldiers, and 25,000 civilians had perished in bombing attacks. Another 10,000 civilians – mostly middle-class professionals – had been rounded up and murdered and twenty-two million Poles now belonged to the Third Reich. ‘Take a good look around Warsaw,’ Adolph Hitler told journalists during a visit to the shattered Polish capital. ‘That is how I can deal with any European city.’” Eighty-four years later, those words could have been spoken by Vladimir Putin.
A second change of subject: as do some other localities around the country, Lincoln conducts its elections for local offices this month. There are some good, qualified candidates, but I am weary of the attack ads. Tons of money has been spent on them. That approach apparently appeals to many and often has special impact. Too bad. Hopefully, the good guys (and gals) will win.
Well, that’s more than enough about manuscripts, military history, and politics. It’s time for that thought provoking, far more important feature: TRULY AWFUL PUNS.
I gave a handyman a list of ten things to do, but he skipped numbers two, four, six, eight, and ten. He only does odd jobs.
My wife left me because I was obsessed with becoming a tailor. I told her “Fine, suit yourself.”
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Best to all,
Tom