Novel Update

I thought I should post a mid-month update on the progress of my latest novel as well as ask your opinions on the cover. I’m 70% through the first round of edits. My goal is to finish editing the entire book by the end of the month.

Two weeks from today, I leave for another trip to Kenya. This will be my seventh journey there, as hard as that is to believe, and for the first time, it is going to be mostly a pure vacation. We don’t have any volunteer work planned, but we are still open to whatever our hosts ask of us.

When I get back on October 18, I’ll do another edit on the book as well as finalize the cover. Then by the first of November, I hope to start working on publishing it on Amazon.

Uffda, that’s a lot of ground to cover, both literally and figuratively.

As you may recall from my mid-August post, the novel is about three women – one living in the mid-eighteen hundreds and two in the very near future. The future setting – ten years or so from now – is somewhat dystopian, and it’s up to the two heroines living then to initiate the change to bring our country back to normalcy. The one-room schoolhouse in Prior Ridge (formerly Prior Gulch) is the pivotal character in all of this.  Also, the teacher who worked there when the school first opened is an inspiration to the other two women.

Here are some of the cover concepts I’ve come up with based on that premise. Remember, they are just ideas; I’m sure whichever is the closest to the best one still needs some work. I just wonder which concept to move forward with. Or I could scrap them all.

Oh, and last thing. The title went from “Save Our School” to “Rewrite the Now,” but I want to thank one of Hubby’s cousins for sending me the winning title – “Prior to Now.” Thanks, Sherry! 

Thought #1 - mostly about the setting - farm land in the upper Midwest

#2 - focus on the one-room school, but needs a better graphic artist than me so it doesn't looked plopped on the page

#3 - my great-grandmother Anna posing as the school teacher Emma

#4 - great-granma again, but in both 3 and 4, she needs to stop hovering.