As some of you know, I’ve been working on a memoir since 2022. The book focuses on the trials of a rule-breaker with a checkered academic past who follows his passion in a nontraditional career path, making it all work out in the end. .
He’s a kid who just wants to build things. After a difficult time in public education he drops out of a prestigious art school and overcomes obstacles to become a design engineer in the aerospace industry despite not finishing a college degree (full honesty, of course). He goes to work on science projects in fields including bio physics, high energy lasers for missile defense, space telescopes, and others – the jobs we encourage school kids to dream about. I’ve pasted just the first ten pages below, but a little deeper in the book there are years building wooden boats, automation systems, assembling satellites, and helping fix the Hubble Space Telescope.
Scientists start the day not knowing things, and that has made them truly fun to work with. This is aimed at the upmarket reader, but I've taken care to keep the writing from getting too academic or “literary,” or so scientific that it's over the lay reader's head. My three science editors have read through to ensure accuracy and clarity, and my non-scientist beta readers have assured me their eyes did not glaze over at any point. In some places it’s unavoidably humorous.
I was getting some traction with literary agents, with solid compliments on my writing craftsmanship, storytelling etc., but also, “Not a good fit for us . . .market timing . . . “ and so on. Thre are some marketability issues. I’ve set this aside for now, while I contemplate a major revision to change the focus and include some things that were left out.
Meanwhile, since January I’ve been working on a novel that I made a start on, 30 years ago in 1996. I wrote a few scenes for it back then, and every time I pulled them out to look at, I liked them, and was disinclined to change a word. Now I have about a third of it written and most of it outlined.
It’s in a large part a historical novel, taking place in the late 1930s in a small town in Colorado, but with a present-time story line as my modern-day protagonist tries to figure out what happened in the past, and what of it is relevant now. In the 30s, there’s a romance, and lost or stolen fortune, and a murder, while in the present there’s another romance, and a man trying to figure out what’s important in life.
Frankly, I’m having a blast writing this. I’m getting support from my “Shut Up & Write” writing group that meets on Saturdays at the library, as well as a number of friends with areas of expertise like police procedure, mining, and local history. I hope to have the first draft completed by late summer.
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