In case you were wondering, The History Press did send a contract a while back, but the editor and I agreed to put off signing it for a while. I was concerned that it has specific due dates and word count windows, and I suggested we wait until I had a draft of the Founder's Era chapter done - the theory being that writing that draft will give me a much better idea of how long the book might be and of how long it will take to write it.
In the meantime, speculation has it that the four May, 1934 forest fires on the estate were caused by careless horseback riders throwing cigarettes into the dry grass by the sides of the trails. Fortunately, there were boys on the tower (Dio tower? the water tower?) doing fire-guard duty; when they sounded the alarm, other boys raced to the scenes of the fires and put them out before they spread too far.
That thing about the fire is pretty awesome. Why don't we still have kids on fire guard duty? I would go hang out on top of the water tower for a while and try to spot fires...
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling that if you send kids to the top of the water tower now, they're going to create more fires than they spot. Am I right?
ReplyDelete(I MEAN THEY'RE GOING TO GO UP THERE AND SMOKE POT.)