The past several months have been intense. My father fell in August last year and was too fragile for surgery, so he had to spend a couple of months healing in the hospital. When he was released, I was in the middle of sending out the Kickstarter copies of Death’s Garden Revisited. I spent most of November and December traveling back and forth to Michigan to care for him and my mom.
At the end of November, I was contacted by my publisher, who was interested in updating 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die for a second edition. I had to tell her that I was excited to work on the project again, but I couldn’t commit to starting work on it until things with my dad settled down. Still, we signed the contract and I made a list of new cemeteries I wanted to write about.
I was on my way back to see my dad again at the end of February when I got the call that he’d passed. I helped my mom through his funeral and ordered my first gravestone before rushing back to San Francisco to get down to work on writing the new cemetery pieces.
As it turned out, I’d only just gotten the research done and was starting to write the new entries in April, when my mother had a stroke.
I flew back to Michigan once more to care for my mom, but I made myself take a break every day to write about another of the new cemeteries. To be honest, the work was a life raft. It felt good to have something I loved so much to look forward to each afternoon.
I returned to California in the middle of May, turned in the new cemeteries, and finally started fact-checking and updating the original 199 Cemeteries. I turned in 25 pages of notes last Thursday.
Now I’m waiting for the editor’s notes, if there are any, and the redesign of the book with the new cemeteries and photos added. I haven’t seen the new cover yet, but I know they’re working on it.
The book is planned for release in Autumn 2024. I cannot wait for you to see it. It’s going to be lovely.
