Almost Done With One More

When July began, I had three book proposals due, based on meetings I had with editors and agents (well, one editor and one agent) at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. The one I concentrated on first was the study guide of The Screwtape Letters. I finished and mailed that on July 2. I still haven’t heard back on that, but the Christian booksellers convention took a week out of that editor’s schedule.

The second one I decided to work on was for my baseball novel, In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I began working on that parallel to the Screwtape one in June, but had not progressed much. For this proposal, I had some sample chapters writing to do. As I blogged before, I had trouble shifting gears from non-fiction back to fiction. Once I did, I was able to add to the chapters I already had completed, then finish the proposal itself. This all came together last night, when I typed the last edits on the sample chapters. I had typed the final edits on the proposal last Thursday. Now, when I say final edits, that is subject to one more read tonight, with any changes I might see as necessary. So, tomorrow, this will go in an e-mail to the agent who requested it.

Now it’s on to the third one, a Bible study titled The Dynamic Duo: Lessons From The Lives Of Elijah And Elisha. This one will take more work, at least in terms of sample chapters. As I stated before in this blog, I developed these lessons and taught them from March to early June this year. Each week I prepared a two-page student handout, which included comments on the text, sometimes and exercise, lots of maps for understanding, and lots of pictures taken from the web. For my sample chapters, I will have to do away with all the illustrations, and just go with words. So I really have to expand the writing from what I have now. My original goal was to have this one in by the end of July, but that clearly ain't gonna happen. Maybe the end of August, but that might be optimistic.

Still, I have all the handouts with me today, to look at on the noon hour and decide how much of them I can use, how much I will have to add. It's a start, and something I'm looking forward to. Though, I will have to change gears back to non-fiction.

Meanwhile, on the first proposal, waiting, waiting....