Chapter 36.7: Holiday Weekend

I’ve always loved Memorial Day. When I was a kid, it meant an extra day of baseball games to play. As I got older, of course, it became the unofficial beginning of summer. Now that I’m an adult, it tends to be the time of year I take time off from work. This year I was able to swing a six-day weekend, mostly to finish implementing the edits of my book.

I’m looking at page 219 of my original document. I’ve already culled nearly 10 percent from the book, and I have more than 100 pages to go. What began as 390 pages is now no more than 358 and certain to be less. Two or three chapters have been deleted – one that hurt, as an argument could be made to keep it. The scenes reflected one of the book’s themes, but they were too much backstory, with the development of characters who went nowhere in the rest of the story. Bye bye.

Maureen’s been steeped in her new toy – a flatbed scanner to replace the one she exhausted over the past few years of running her own company. It did yeoman’s work and was worth every penny of the $100 or so I paid. This one, a similar price, but apparently better quality, has already captivated me. Perhaps there’ll be an image of my smiling mug on this blog soon. Or perhaps it’ll be the one of me hitting a softball during a July 4th game two years ago. I was allowed to play with the scanner, too.