What I Wanted To Do

a When Once Destroyed Update

What I Wanted To Do, a When Once Destroyed Update

I hope this season of reflection and renewal finds you safe and warm. I again want to thank you for your support for When Once Destroyed. I am quite confident that it will be ready for release by spring.

The process moves in stages. Work in one area moves with some intensity followed by a quiet period before we move into the next portion of the work that needs to be done to ready a book for publication. April still seems like a safe bet.

I move through these stages with the direction of editors and designers and marketers who are coordinated at Wise Ink Media of Minneapolis by my project manager Lindsay Bohls. It takes a lot of care and deliberation and everyone has been top notch. Thank you Lindsay, Wise Ink VP Hanna Kjeldbjerg and marketing manager Crown Shepherd, editors Imani Josey and Sara Robb, and designer Emily Mahon, Senior Art Director at Doubleday Books who came up with a really impressive cover.

I had some ideas about the cover and Emily developed seven mock-ups that we distilled into five, and then two, and then I made a final choice. Seeing my name on a book cover was startling, but there you have it, this is really happening.

This week I’m working on what’s called “Front Matter,” the elements included before the first page of the manuscript, and, you guessed it, “Back Matter,” elements included after the last page of the manuscript. Together, it’s 16 elements, some of which I had done already. Among them are a dedication, a table of contents, and the works cited. Some things will have to wait, like the index.

I’ve written a study guide that will be included. I really do think it would make for a good high school and maybe college text. I’d put it with Wendell Berry, Sarah Smarsh, and Robert Wuthnow works in a study of post World War II rural America. Perhaps Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass could fit as a comparison with the decimation of Indigenous peoples for “progress” and profit. What was lost.

Along with working on the front and back matter, I’m this week reading through the entire manuscript again one last time before a final proofread. Sometimes, when I’m in the quiet time between pre-publication stages, I get a little nervous about what I’ve done. It’s nice though, that when I read it again, I’m pleased. I’ve had that reminder again this week. It’s what I wanted to do

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