Current mood:

peaceful

Fi-nal-ly...

It's been a long while since I last posted here at LJ, or anywhere else for that matter. Last December, I tripped in the kitchen and mashed my shoulder on the edge of the countertop, resulting in a painful tear in the rotator cuff. Thing is, I'm still hurting and the orthopedic doc is sending me to a shoulder specialist. Along with the ripped rotator cuff, I've developed arthritis in the fingers and thumbs of both hands. Screaming rusty joints, a writer's real nightmare. But hell, I'm not here to whine about my health (or lack thereof).

Nope, I'm here to share a long sigh of relief.

It's done. It's finally finished, the project I've been pouring my heart into this past year and a half. 1,500 pgs. 500K words. Biggest damn beast I'll ever write.

Title: Gray's Necronomicon

As you've guessed from the name, it's a book of the dead. My dead, to be exact, and well, probably some of yours, too. I took every ancestor I could trace and went as far back with them as I possibly could, then I did the same for their spouses, and what emerged from my 20 odd years of research stunned me. It would be a shame not to share it with everyone!

The sheer magnitude of the history is amazing. Where we came from. How we came to be where we are today. What our forebears went through to get us where we are today. Those persecuted for being Quakers or executed for witchcraft in the new world, to those who struggled through bloody wars in the old, it's all there. The good, the bad and the ugly.

The only things I've omitted are the names of the living, for the living have no place in a book of the dead. In Gray's Necronomicon, the dead speak and the stories of their lives unfold and come alive. If some of your ancestors immigrated to America in the 1600s, you may find some of them in this book.

This is more than just a genealogy; it's a history of a big part of the human race from the early 1900s in New England to the faraway lands of Mespotamia and Egypt. The cradles of civilization (of which I believe there were several actually: Africa, China and the Middle East, but then I've been told I have my share of strange beliefs, heh). Of course, the ancient records are dubious and prone to legend, but I think there must have been some seed of truth to them. And yes, they're also included in Gray's Necronomicon.

For anyone who's interested, Gray's Necronomicon is a PDF download, 26 MB in size, for $2.99 at www.esnips.com/web/Necronomicon . And no, esnips is not a publisher, it's a place to share or sell computer files (one of the better, safer ones, IMHO). I could have gone the Lulu route, as this book is self published (due to it's bulky size and the type of book it is), but with esnips, 100% of the earnings go directly to the author. And I keep all my publishing rights.

Well, it's 1:30 a.m. here on the Maine coast, a misty old night and so humid you could almost drink the air. Time to head to bed and dream about the groaning critters that shuffle about in the fog.

Tomorrow, it's back to dark fiction writing for me. Yay!