Note: This is the second part of a mini-series of posts that look back at 2017 with all its joys and tribulations. It was a year of big changes and adjustments both professional and personal. It rolled in like a monster a truck and flew away like a balloon.
April
Living in the Midwest, April means spring and gardening. We enjoyed a late Easter after a mild winter. All along I was plugging away at my book “Shifting Sands Short Stories” that I had hoped to finish on my birthday. Since I wrote the majority of the stories so long ago, I had to rewrite some of them, based on my new experience as a journalist. It was a true labor of love.
Writing got harder once it got nice outside. Like any writer, I would procrastinate finding every excuse not to write. There were days when I’d rather do dishes than write. But as May approached I intensified my writing.
I also started walking right after Easter. I walked 1.8 miles to the Franciscan Life Process Center every day. The walk was a source of inspiration also for my therapy app.
May
I love May when everything blossoms. I am talking mainly about lilacs and cherries in the Lower Peninsula. I’ve only been once to the Lilac Festival on Mackinac Island in June, and once to the Traverse City Cherry Festival.
I didn’t finish my book by my self-imposed deadline. The formatting was a lot more difficult than I expected. I pushed the deadline back.
June
However, I knew I would have to finish the book in June because our French granddaughter Ella spends summers with us. I had to add a brand new story into the book “Orange Nights.” So, I wrote the oldest story “The Temptation of Martin Duggan” in 1990, and the newest one in 2017 for length so the name could go on the spine of the book. You have to have more than 100 pages for the book’s name to go on the spine.
I uploaded the final version on June 27 to Kindle Direct Publishing by Amazon. The print version was more complex than the kindle e-book format.
July
In July we took the Badger ship across Lake Michigan and did a circle tour around the lake plus visited Munising on Lake Superior. I never wrote about this because of all the social events. Mom Ella turned 80 on Aug. 23. We returned from the mini-vacation on Aug. 22.
That’s one the many advantages of writing your “Year in Review” because you get to write about something you wouldn’t otherwise get to.
In spite of the fact that we’ve been many times to the Upper Peninsula aka UP we’ve never done the glass bottom shipwreck tours to Bermuda and Hettler aboard the Fireball. It was an amazing voyage by the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.
About the featured photo
It is an old map of the Great Lakes placed in the Belrockton historical museum in Belding.
The shortlink to the first post of “Year in Review 2017” is:
Glass Bottom Shipwreck Tour in Munising. Reservations are recommended.
Kindle Direct Publishing
kdp.amazon.com
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