Progress of my Book

Towards the end of my tour of the USA, I decided to write a book about the trip. After I got back to the England and life returned to something approaching reality, I spent the time until Christmas writing one test chapter and investigating alternative publishing routes, book sizes, layouts, fonts, printing costs, book distribution methods and many other things I didn’t know writing and publishing a book.

Each of the 27 states that I visited will have a chapter of its own, plus about another 5 about planning of the tour / other introductory chapters – about 32 in total.

So far, I have written 5 out of that 32 - Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and South Dakota, plus a chapter giving tips about riding in the USA for visitors that Derek Polhill and Chris Luhman kindly helped with. With the help of a guy I used to work with, Brian Bascle, I have the cover and book title all sorted.

My cousins partner, Helen, is editing the book, my brother is doing the laying out of the words and pictures and my son Jeremy is going to draw the maps, so I am sort of keeping it in the family!

However, at this rate, I will take too long to finish writing the book, so I need to speed up somehow.

Having never written a book before, I am finding it quite difficult. To be fair, it is a book of photos supported by words, rather than a book of words that contains just a few pictures, but it is still very hard for me to do. I have always found it hard to concentrate on one thing for a long time, so I keep getting distracted and I find myself doing lots of other things when I should be writing. I am determined however to complete it and I want to finish it all and get it printed and available before the end of the year.

I will post an update in a few weeks time about how I am getting on. For now though, I must get back to writing.....