I still have hopes of beginning to post Book 1 of Coming Home this summer. The editor I have been using for this story has gotten super busy. He managed to go through two chapters in the last two months. At that rate, I won't be posting until 2023. That will not do!
If any readers, hopefully with experience at writing or editing, are willing to assist, I am willing to give you a try. Send me an email detailing what experience you may have, if any. I will send you a chapter or two, or another of my completed short stories to try and see if this will work out.
My second step back was a stupid thing I did a few weeks ago. I was cleaning up my story directory and wanted to delete an old file I no longer needed. I did not notice that the focus in Windows Explorer was set on the directory pane rather than the files pane when I hit Delete. Of course miserable MS Windows did exactly what I asked and began deleting everything in my stories directory. I hit cancel as fast as I could once I realized what happened. By the time I stopped it, Windows was merrily deleting files in the Coming Home subdirectory. The main Coming Home Word doc disappeared.
I wasn't too worried. I could retrieve the deleted files from the #Recycle directory on my Raid 5 network storage device… except it turns out the network storage device only creates the #Recycle directory if you explicitly go into the operating system and turn that feature on. Sigh.
I got lazy during the pandemic. Normally I keep my working files on a portable SSD drive that I can use with any computer wherever I am. I would back the files on the SSD drive to my network storage device every few days. I have been working from home for the last fifteen months, so I did not worry about backing up the way I should. I have been working with computers for over forty years. I should know better.
The bottom line is I lost three scenes in Coming Home Book 1. Thankfully one of the scenes was in what I sent out to my editor and I managed to save his files before they were deleted. That scene was restored in a few minutes. The second scene was relatively short and I recreated it in an evening. I wrote the final scene in Book 1 about six weeks ago, so it wasn't too hard to recreate it.
Book 2 took a bigger hit. I have managed to recreate the missing scenes from Book 2 over the past three weeks, so I am back where I was when disaster struck. I think a couple of the recreated scenes are actually better than the missing first draft. Now, all I need is some editing help to get the story ready for posting.
The sad thing about all of this is not what happened to Coming Home. I lost two-thirds of a story called "Forbidden Rose" and all of another short story. Forbidden Rose tells the story of Rose Henry, Will's oldest, and her first time with a boy. Sadly, I had just finished both stories and had done a first read through beginning to end for each. I threw together 2-3 pages of notes immediately of as much as I could remember of the stories. Some day I will get them rewritten.
I have probably rambled on enough. The bottom line is Coming Home is ready and waiting for editing help. If you have experience and some free time, I could use a hand. Drop me an email and I will see if we can work together.
Doug Fox