Coming Attractions

I've had a number of people ask about future novels in the The Richard Series. The Red Scarf is the first of five novels I have written, all set in the mid to late 1940s with the same set of characters. I know having four unpublished manuscripts sitting around would drive a lot of authors crazy. However, when I started writing, getting published wasn't my goal. At first, I started with short stories that were comical, simple, and entertaining. My readers---actually they were listeners---were my very young grandchildren. One thing led to another and I started grouping them into novels. I guess, if nothing else, I'm productive, because when I started putting these exaggerated remembrances into novel form, I was finishing one of them about every four months. Each novel is some 200 pages of first person stories told by Richard, the town paper boy.

Well, as most authors will tell you, sooner or later all writers want to get published. When that thought started creeping into my mind, I went the route of most writers and started submitting. It seemed so easy. The first and only submittal of The Red Scarf went to August House, and weeks later they called. The Red Scarf was published in 2007, and I was off to a fast start with a novel that is selling very well to all ages. However, things have slowed down since that first success, and my subsequent novels are still in the submittal progress.

Now the coming attractions: Currently, The Yankee Doctor, the second of the series, is being read by two publishing houses. Of course, I think it's the better than The Red Scarf, but I'll have to wait and see how a publisher views it. I will say this: In both The Red Scarf and The Yankee Doctor there are some hilarious scenes, but one scene in The Yankee Doctor tops them all. In a future post I'll include at least part of this scene. It has to do with the boys trying to run the evil doctor out of town----with---roaches? Pretty funny, if I do say so myself. I actually laughed out loud sitting there at the word processor.

I'll include an excerpt in my next post.