Notes on this work in progress.

Copyright © 2012 Bob R Bogle



Any reader making it close to what is presently called Chapter 16 will recognize that this is the sort of novel that's going to make more sense with repeated readings.  I'm not writing this as a deliberate puzzle for the reader to try to decipher, but intend that the pieces will fall together of their own accord.

Part of the problem for the reader (and the author) is keeping track of a vast cast of minor characters.  It's unnecessary for the reader to try to construct family trees to keep all the relationships straight; however, it's vitally important for the author to do so in order that the many relations will not be stepping on each other across generations and family units and through time and space.  Unfortunately about a month or so ago one of my flash drives containing fictional genealogical material became inoperable, and so one of the things I've been working on today is reconstructing those trees from a lot of notes.

Before I spent a month writing Chapter 11, I already had numerous other subsequent chapters more or less ready to be uploaded, with a little cosmetic work here and there.  Now, having spent much of this morning streamlining Chapter 17, I've concluded that some rather extensive, but not too serious, rewriting is required for Chapters 13, 15, and 17, which all recount the visit by the Isaiah Cutter family to the home of Jerusalem John Cutter near St Joseph, Buchanan County, Missouri, in the second week of August, 1855.  This rewriting will probably take a few days.  The rewrites of Chapters 13 and 15 will simply replace what is posted on this website now.  After Chapters 17 and 18 are uploaded I'll probably have to spend a longer amount of time working on Chapter 19, of which nothing more than a trifling few notes have been written yet.

I might add that it's probable that many of these very short chapters will be spliced together and merged into longer "real" chapters in a later draft.  Keeping them short and modular like this means that I may be able to shift them around and put them in a different order later if I deem it desirable to do so.