Grrrrr… has become the common refrain concerning my publishing Dear Josephine, Book Two of The Steep Climes Quartet.

The original plan was Spring 2024, although I knew this to be ambitious, but if all had gone well, well, this could have happened. As much as I would like to blame others for this failure, and for subsequent missed publication dates, the fault, dear Brutus lies not with the stars but with us, and by us, I mean me, since I’m both author and publisher. A just-in-time example of such schedule-delaying problems is my having just looked up the above (mis)quote, to learn that the line is as follows, from Shakespeare’s Julius Ceasar (I, II, 140-141):

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Still, getting lost on the Internet isn’t really the issue, at least when I’m mentally strong and don’t wander too long down the You Tube road. The fact is that with only the rarest of exceptions, writers have somewhere between two and six hours of solid writing (i.e., manuscript work) in them each day, and I’m around the three-hour limit and when I have longer days, I’m usually too mentally exhausted and lose ground the following day. Of course, there is plenty of other work to be added to each of my day’s schedule, including keeping up on climate change news and science, plus preparing and giving climate talks and going to meetings, plus posting regularly, plus whatever marketing and promotion work is needed (another 24 hours each day would be helpful here), plus reviewing and rewriting and (don’t forget!) reading, and correspondence both professional and personal, and, of course, the balance required for other life demands like eating, exercising, self-care, and relationships. Plus, Rocky, the dog, insists that I walk him before I go and get the daily mail and, perhaps stupidly, I’ve signed that contract and the non-compliance penalty is fierce.

The first big delay for Book Two was discussed in a post called “The Next Book Cometh as Dear Josephine Reaches the Final Stretch… Plus Some Talk about Publishing on Amazon,” If you’ve read this post you would have learned of some editorial service shortfalls, including poor proofreading, which lead me to go through two more drafts. Still, as I re-read this, I’m surprised by the optimism I’d expressed in my hope that book production would soon start, but alas, book production must happen after the manuscript is up to par and that work, not surprisingly, took time.

As it turned out, the time needed to came close to 2 months, and that work was full out manuscript rewrites and edits that managed to drop over 8,000 words and further improve the text, but even as I was undertaking early book production work, the debate between Biden and Trump took place on June 27 and the result of that was shock and dread. I had been assuming that Biden would be re-elected, but post-debate the prospect for Trump winning a second term seemed too likely.

The problem posed with the possible Trump re-election is that the near-future aspect of both Kill Well (published Fall 2023) and Dear Josephine. Kill Well takes place in 2026 and my operating assumption was that the Executive Office would be held by Democrats and thus continuing the climate change progress work of Biden. With Trump looking more likely and the Democratic candidate prospects dimming, my effort to project the near future accurately enough to serve the book was in question. The manuscript for Dear Josephine was done, but its timeframe of 2029 would require a different outcome if Trump and his odd antagonism toward climate change progress was the reality of 2024-2028 (or, really, his absurd rejection of the concept of climate change itself and his clearly stated quid pro quo with Big Oil). I decided to wait until November 7 or for an earlier positive indication that Harris would prevail. By September, and post-Democratic Convention, I calmed down and concluded that Trump’s reelection was unlikely, and I started back on the work.

Then Trump got reelected.

I’m sure I’m not the only fiction writer who dreads writing a near-future book, but between Trump getting back into office and my crushing understanding of what this meant for both books, well, let’s quote Shakespeare again in describing my desire to work on the books (from As You Like It’s All the world’s a stage soliloquy):

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

Yup, “creeping like snail” fits.

But work I did.

I got rolling.

The first step was to revise the manuscript for Kill Well, which will be shortly re-published as a revised edition. There were some typos I had wanted to fix and some language that got improved but now Kill Well’s 2026 conforms with America’s political reality. For absolutely stupid reasons, I also spent far more time than I should have correcting formatting on the revised manuscript’s Word file due to my having to reconstitute the original manuscript file from PDF. The revised Word file is now ready to export to PDF and replace the original PDF in the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, although there are the same changes needed in my Direct 2 Digital and Ingram Sparks publishing platforms too, and I’m not looking forward to re-learning all the little quirks of each platform, but there you go.

I’m about two-thirds through the revisions for Dear Josephine, and then there are formatting and cover creation (design and image are already understood), and I must fit in another proofreader somewhere along the line.

By the way, I’m assuming that Congress will shift away from the thin Republication majorities in the 2026 mid-terms, so from my lips to god’s ear. Furthermore, the Democrats regain The White House in 2028 (please reference previous lip-related plea).

All I can say is that I can’t wait to get back to work on Book Three, Over Brooklyn Hills, which takes place in 2035 and so this book is far enough into the future to keep me from worrying about having accurate assumptions. By 2035, that book will have been out for a decade (well, nine years, most likely, if one is a realist) and well past any sense for revision. Book Four, Farm to Me, takes place in 2049, so my pallet is that much more open.