Category: My Writing

The Writing Life, 18 January 2025: Reaching the finish line

brown and white track field

Hi, everyone. Welcome to my writing nook, so to speak.

There’s some big news having to do with a project I’ve been calling The Yank Striker 2. How about we talk about it? Also, I might discuss a few other things.

The Home Front

Fort Madison, Iowa, Dusk, 17 January 2024. Photo by Laura Liegois.

I got started on the second semester of the school year this week. It’s still amazing to me how fast the second half of last year sped along considering how long the first half of the year dragged along because of all the time spent on the road, out of my old home but not yet in my new one, just waiting for the school year to be over and to finish with all contractual obligations to my old district. It inspired some good poetry, but it was a bit of a slog especially at the end.

When we were having dinner together this past Sunday, my wife pointed out to me by the end of the current school year, I will have worked for five different school districts during the past ten years – an average of two years per district. I hadn’t thought it had been so many in such a short period of time, but the math worked out.

My wife has lived in five different residences in this time (one more than myself because she moved early to Chariton when she got the job of city manager there and I was wrapping up another teaching contract). Then there’s the fact my kids have moved a combined ten times during this time, counting moving them out of or into our homes, dorms in the case of our daughter, and apartments.

That’s a lot of moving in an out, a lot of time on the road. To be honest, both Laura and I would be happy not to be going anywhere different for a while. In another decade, she and even I will be within sight of retirement from our respective professions. Our house is nice, and work is going well. Even with all the uncertainty in the world, I try to appreciate what I do have. All things considered, my life is going well.

What I’ve Been Writing

Hey, remember that book I put out a year and a half ago? You might have heard of it if you’ve been hanging around my blog for a while?

Remember how I’ve kept saying it was going to be the first in a series? Well, this theoretical series is now coming closer to becoming a reality.

Ta-Daah.aah

Subscribers, passers-by, and humans alike, I am delighted to announce I have completed the rough draft to the second book in The Yank Striker series, which I have referred to as The Yank Striker 2. I have an idea for the final title of this book, but I am not revealing it until later when the time is right.

I had hoped I would have finished the rough draft before the end of 2024, but I only overshot my target by a mere half month. I now have a 80,345-word first draft on my hands. Oopsy.

It is now in my cloud and various hard drives for future use, safe and sound, and ready for what I consider to be the true work of writing, the revising process.

Since I officially finished it mid-week this week, my plan is to let the manuscript sit and simmer in the computer and in my head for three and a half weeks. This would mean I’m going to start tackling the second draft of the book by 8 February 2025.

My ultimate goal would be to release the book with my publisher by 1 June of this year. This would mean:

  1. Second draft – begun by 8 February and completed by the end of the month at the latest.
  2. Beta reads – begun at the start of March and completed by the end of March.
  3. Two more rounds of revisions in April.
  4. Final editing and proofreading in May and concluding by the end of May.

This might be the most ambitious release date for any book I’ve ever done. However, I managed to self-publish my own chapbook of poetry before 2024 ran out, so you never know.

Since I officially finished it mid-week this week, my plan is to let the manuscript sit and simmer in the computer and in my head for three and a half weeks. This would mean I’m going to start tackling the second draft of the book by 8 February 2025.

My ultimate goal would be to release the book with my publisher by 1 June of this year. This would mean:

  1. Second draft – begun by 8 February and completed by the end of the month at the latest.
  2. Beta reads – begun at the start of March and completed by the end of March.
  3. Two more rounds of revisions in April.
  4. Final editing and proofreading in May and concluding by the end of May.

This might be the most ambitious release date for any book I’ve ever done. However, I managed to self-publish my own chapbook of poetry before 2024 ran out, so you never know.

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

Starting this week, I’m planning on kickstarting my other preparations for getting The Yank Striker 2 to market. This is going to be more of an effort than just the revising and editing process.

Unlike my first two novels, I’m interested in going to an outside source to design the cover art for The Yank Striker 2. I’m also hoping to find some beta readers for my book once I finish the first revision.

And no offense to all of my great readers online, but I’m not soliciting such help here.

After some time online and having to deal with a massive amount of scammers and grifters trying to separate me from my money for different reasons, I am about done with working with any online book business operations, or at least done with people I don’t have recommendations for from my IRL friends, such as my fellow writers in places like Des Moines, Muscatine, Burlington, and points beyond. Online life might be cool, but it’s no replacement for human connection1.

Also, I’m going to spend this weekend trying to email organizers of Iowa book fairs. I want to get some updates about upcoming dates and whether I can get on the road to be part of those events. When I confirm some of those dates, you’ll be the first to hear from me.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week:

Not sure if I’ve featured T.S. Eliot in this space, so I decided to go with this one. Seems he had a sense of humor for sure.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

  • T.S. Eliot

Here’s another statement I would cosign, although I often get distracted during my writing. 😅

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

  • Gloria Steinem

Finally, here’s the great Margaret Atwood with the wolves theory of storytelling.

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

All of them?

Sure, he says. Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist2.

How to support me😊.

Go to the links on the side if you are reading this on a desktop/laptop or the links on my profile to check out some of my other links. For example, in those places, you can find out about my first book, the journalism thriller The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, as well as the first book in my The Yank Striker series, The Yank Striker: a Footballer’s Beginning.

If you go follow the links above, you will be able to buy both the paperback and ebook versions of my books on Amazon. Again, if you just put “Jason Liegois” in Google you’ll probably find them on the first page of search results.

If you happen to visit these fine independent book stores in Iowa, you can find my books there:

  • [NEWEST LOCATION] Green Point Mercantile, 214 Chestnut St., Muscatine.
  • Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Bent Oak Books, 619 7th St., in my new hometown of Fort Madison.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines.
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

My poetry book The Flow and the Journey is available at the first two bookstores above (and hopefully more down the road), but it is also available online but not on Amazon. I’ve set up a new online store for copies of my chapbook on my WordPress site, Liegois Media. If you want to get a physical copy, go ahead and click on the button below.

The Flow and the Journey

The Flow and the Journey

The first collection of poetry from author Jason Liegois.

$6.00
Shop now

On the subject of Substack, it’s fantastic if you are signed up for my free subscription, but I would love it if you signed up for a paid one. The monthly rate is the lowest I can put it ($5 per month) but my yearly rate of $35 is a steal at less than three/fifths the monthly rate.

Now, if you want to support me but can’t quite afford a full subscription, I am now on Venmo. You can just send whatever you can afford. Just click the button below; anything you can provide helps me keep things going.

Go ahead and buy me a cup of coffee, why don’t you? 😊

Final Thoughts

Wow, a lot happening this week. Hope your week went well, and for you writers, I hope you got something down on paper or on screen.

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

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  1. I am very much tempted to spend the next Prose Night post detailing one of the most elaborate grifts someone tried to pull on me. It’s a cool story, trust me. Might be more interesting than some of my fiction excerpts. 😅 ↩︎
  2. The Yank Striker 2, I believe, would best fit being thrown to the wolves and also running with the wolf pack. ↩︎

The Flow and the Journey

As I’ve mentioned previously in this space, I came into writing poetry more or less under protest.

My mother reminded me recently that she had encouraged me to try and write poetry as a young kid, but I had never taken to it. I always pictured myself as a fiction writer rather than a poet. My evolution into considering myself a poet took place over an extended a period of time and I was well into adulthood when it started in earnest.

At the risk of repeating previous stories, the process towards writing poetry began during the late aughts. It was then I moved back to my hometown of Muscatine, Iowa, and rejoined a local group of writers calling themselves Writers on the Avenue (WOTA). It was a solid group of writers who were like me – writers who wanted to improve themselves and to grow in their craft. Everyone needs a similar group or two or three or more if they want to see growth.

I did get this from WOTA. Without them, I’m not sure I would have moved forward on the projects which became my first two books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker.

However, there was a lot of reading and a lot of critiques between people interested in my work. In all honesty, a good portion of my contributions to our group was listening to and critiquing poetry.

Many of the WOTA members wrote tons of poetry – poetry about the natural world, their feelings, their history, their faith – things attracting strong emotions and imagery, which are natural fodder for poems. I would sit in these workshopping/critique sessions, attempting to provide feedback, while not having something for them to read. What parental pressure failed to accomplish, adult peer pressure did.

I started off slower than a soccer-playing turtle goalkeeper trying to waste time at the end of a match. Fiction was (and is) my priority, so it was something I just played around with.

I kept finding myself return to the theme of the Mississippi River, the body of water I’d lived next to for about 40 years of my life. The imagry of living next to this watery highway, the source of life for everyone around it, attracted me like nearly nothing else.

This theme continued to attract me as I spent four years away from the Mississippi while living in Chariton, Iowa, in the middle of south central Iowa and well far away from any significant nearby body of water. It was a nice little town, but mentally and emotionally I was missing something.

I was further inspired by living on an actual highway (Iowa 14) for the first time in my life and only a block and a half away from railroad tracks. The theme of travel, the road and rails, also started to creep in to my verse.

Eventually, I decided if I wanted to call myself a poet, I needed to start publishing those poems, even if it was only on my own platform. That’s when Poetry Night was born.

Forcing myself to publish my poetry every month ended up being a good thing for me. Eventually, I started to run out of my old work, so it forced me to start creating new poems and new verse. I started to get out of the old prose writer habits of adding in more words when fewer, more descriptive words would do.

Early in 2024, I ended up spending a lot of time driving, traveling, and staying in unfamiliar places due to personal circumstances. I spent more than a bit of time in unfamiliar hotels and apartments due to this, and poems about being on the road started to spring from my laptop.

It was around this time I wanted to try and put together a physical collection of my work. I didn’t want it to be something just half-hearted and scattered. The poets I knew in real life (including those from the now-disbanded Iowa Writers’ Corner, of Des Moines, Iowa, and the Society of Great River Poets of Burlington, Iowa) said it made sense to base the collection around a particular theme.

It was then I took a look at the topics which had been dominating my verse for at least the past couple years and perhaps longer: River life and traveling life. Rivers and traveling became The Flow and the Journey.

This is a chapbook I put together with the assistance of Dodd Printing in my current home of Fort Madison, Iowa. It contains 19 poems touching on the Mississippi River and river life in general, as well as what you experience and encounter in life on the road. They run the gamut of the first poem I like to say I wrote with intent all the way back in 2010 to poems from 2024. All of them speak of either what river life has meant to me or what a traveling life is like.

If You’re Interested…

…in poetry, especially river and travel poetry, this might be the book for you.

Other than running into me at book fairs and events around Iowa, I’m trying to put together ways for you to purchase my first self-published work out to people. I’m hoping to make them available at independent bookstores here in Iowa, depending on their interest.

Until then, I’ve set up a new online bookstore for The Flow and the Journey here at Liegois Media. Currently, it’s just $6 for a copy, and I’m limiting it to one purchase at a time due to limited supplies. But go ahead and click on the button below. I’d love you to take a chance on my poetry.

Get a copy of The Flow and the Journey

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

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Poetry Night at the Writing Life, 28 December 2024: End-of-Year poems and my new poetry book

Welcome, everyone.

We’ll get to the actual poetry in a little bit. Before then… I typically don’t do much “business” or “promotion” when it comes to to these Poetry Nights (or Prose Nights, either), but I’m going to make a quick exception to this rule because it is attached to my interest in poetry. I’ll keep it short, however.

I announced in my last newsletter I had finally put together my first chapbook, The Flow and the Journey, a collection of 19 of my poems. One of them dates all the way back from 2010, five of them from 2019, and the remainder from 2023-2024, when I finally decided to take my poetry seriously by writing these Poetry Night entries1.

Since this was all a self-published thing2 (where I decided to just put it together and do it because there wasn’t a massive push for someone to publish my poetry just yet), I had to start thinking of a way for people to buy this chapbook other than trying to hunt me down either in my hometown or at my personal appearances. So, I decided to get something set up.

Since Substack doesn’t quite have the setup for this, I decided to put something together at my WordPress sister site, Liegois Media. I set up my own Internet storefront page where you can order my chapbook for $6 per copy. This is the link, as is the one below.

The Flow and the Journey

In all seriousness, I have to admit this is a beta rollout of this service. Pay the amount and make sure to include your address in the purchase, and I will do my darnedest to get the product to you. If for some reason, you haven’t gotten a delivery to me, email me at jasonliegois@liegois.media. Make sure to put in the subject line “You got my chapbook, boy?” I’m more likely to see it3.

All right, blatant capitalistic pitch over. Let’s talk new poetry.

I think I’m built a bit different from many of my fellow humans, especially my fellow Iowans. Most Iowans I run into can’t wait to get outdoors into the summer heat. The Iowa State Fair is our secular pilgrimage, even though I’ve lived here for longer than 40 years and never attended myself. Most of my fellow friends, neighbors, and co-workers love the sun and warmth of spring and summer.

When it gets around this time of the year, however… many of them get down. They wonder where the sun had gone, hidden behind the clouds bringing along rain, snow, a mix of the two, or maybe an ice storm. They wonder why everything is so gray, why it’s so cold, even though it’s nothing compared to those living at 45° North (say, Ottowa, Canada, or Maine) or even 50° North (The Maritimes in Canada)4. It seems to bring them down emotionally, drain them of their physical and mental energy. “I haven’t seen the sun in so long,” I hear sometimes.

I believe I am of different stock.

Both of my parents grew up in Wisconsin. I have German and Norwegian heritage from them, and neither of those countries are known to be tropical paradises. The last time I went to Florida was somewhere around a decade ago. It was at the invitation of my parents and it was a chance for my kids to experience Disney World, the Atlantic Ocean, and for me to to reunite with my aunt I hadn’t seen in maybe 20 years. And it was in December. Without this confluence of coincidences, I’m not sure I’m visiting Florida ever again.

Maybe you couldn’t tell from all those posts in October and November whining about how I was tired of seeing summer weather in Iowa around then, but I’m not a fan of tropical or desert climates. I don’t like to have to dodge the sun and humidity when it gets to be 100℉. Those places like Florida, Texas, and Arizona aren’t my idea of vacation getaways or retirement forever homes. When I think of places that feel like a relaxing place to be, my dream places, they look more like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Upper Michigan, Norway, the Scottish Highlands, the Faeroe and Shetland Islands, and Iceland. Like these places:

timber cottage standing at foot of mountain
Photo by Stijn Dijkstra on Pexels.com
red and white boats on water
Photo by Simon Hurry on Pexels.com
island surrounded by city
Photo by Tobias Bjørkli on Pexels.com
aerial photography of river between cliffs
Photo by Wendelin Jacober on Pexels.com

Well, those might be adventures for another day. For now, the next two poems are the result of some seasonal inspiration. Hope you enjoy them.

Fort Madison, Iowa, December 2023

Misty Stroll

28 December 2024, Fort Madison, Iowa

The wet weight draping all over me and here

Would be a draining burden in Iowa July

With sweating corn, sweating animals, and

Sweating people wading through the wet air.

But now in the chill of December

Shielded from the sun by the mist and the low veils above

I can let it surround me, I can absorb it, let it refresh me

And my home is more like home.

Fort Madison, Iowa, 27 December 2024

Cozy Winter’s Eve Nook

Fort Madison, Iowa, 28 December 2024

Winter eve charcoal, parchment, gray, midnight,

Medium cool atmosphere, comfortable enough to lounge in without a coat

Until you lounge for more than a few minutes.

The winds persistent on level plains with not enough wood sentinels

Fortune for mariners but disaster for the unsheltered.

My nook is sealed from the worst of The Hibernal

Good wood, stone, metal, concrete, and sealant

The hearth providing the extra needed few calories of warmth

A crow’s nest view of my lovely winter abode

But as a submariner among the fathom-length depths

So am I among The Hibernal.

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  1. As I write all of this, I realize I need to make a post discussing this project specifically like I made specific posts about both of my books, The Holy Fooland The Yank Striker. Watch this space for the post coming soon. ↩︎
  2. Shoutout to my hometown biz Dodd Printing for their help in putting this together, by the way. ↩︎
  3. I get a lot of emails from the blogs I subscribe to. ↩︎
  4. I currently live just above 40°30’ North. For me, I have sworn to my wife Laura that 40° North is the farthest South I will ever live in my life. Anywhere between 45° or 60° degrees North would suit me just fine – in fact, I’d be good with 45° or 60° degrees South, as well. I’ve heard decent things about southern Argentina and New Zealand. ↩︎

Poetry Night at the Writing Life, 23 November 2024: A Seasonal Shift

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Poetry Night at the Writing Life, 26 October 2024: Two approaches to a subject

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The Writing Life, 5 October 2024: Still hoping for fall

We are officially into the start of autumn since the equinox happened, but despite a cruel tease of such weather, we here in eastern Iowa have not been getting consistent fall weather. I am going to insist on decorating my blogs with autumn imagery until it actually looks and feels like these pictures in the outside. That’s just the way it has to be for a while, folks.

But we’ve got writing and new events to talk about, so let’s get into it.

The Home Front

The transition between old residence and new residence for Laura (my wife) and myself continues.

Painting in our home had been completed, and the removal of our carpet is all but done. We also did some trimming up on the tree in our front yard that was a bit overdue. Now will come the process of treating the hardwood floors, moving all the items now in storage into the storage of our new house, installing new lighting and ceiling fans, and carting away some of the resulting detritus. Soon enough, our modest apartment will have to be packed up and ready for shipping, either by us or the movers.

Thankfully, unlike our last move, this is a move within our current city and will not need to be finished immediately. I am somewhat selfishly looking forward to my new writing space and how I will eventually get it set up.

Of course, not even this move will be the end of moving and changes for us. My son is moving closer to buying his own home, and we will be happy to provide any assistance for his own move in Des Moines. Thankfully, he does not have as much possessions as we do and his is also a move within a city.

What I’m Writing

I’ve been quite busy this week and last with my ongoing projects.

  • The Yank Striker 2, the sequel for The Yank Striker: I am now at 52,000 words for the first draft of the book. I am currently shooting for 75,000 words as a new target for the end of the year. If I average about 250 words on it for the remainder of the year, I should be able to get to 75,000 by 31 December 2024.
    At this point, I think it is doable. I will concentrate on this for my short-term goal, and then work toward getting it publication-ready for summer 2025.
  • The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project: Made a big jump in progress on this project. As of this writing, I’m beginning to wrap up the critical scene where my main character makes the fateful decision to look into his family’s history of professional wrestling although he has been at least on a surface level avoiding this world for all his life. I’m going to write just what I consider to be the essential scenes until I get to something approaching a full rough draft. This will be interesting because the story will eventually bounce between the late 2010’s and 1954-1974. It’s the first time I’ve dealt with different time periods in one of my stories, and I’m looking forward to the challenge.
  • The Untitled Liegois Poetry Chapbook: I have actually made more progress on this project this week. I’ve finished revisions on the poems, and finished arranging them in order in the chapbook. Again, I think my revisions have significantly tightened up those poems and given them more impact.I am not sure when I will have this ready for sale when I’m out and about, so to speak. I have to add in some author’s notes and acknowledgements, consider whether some more photos might be called for, and some other design issues. Plus, I have to start figuring out how to print the thing. However, I’m inching closer to being a self-published poet.

What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing

(AKA personal appearances)

I (also sometimes known as The Dude In Purple) still have a few events coming up for this fall and some others I’m tentatively adding to the schedule. All these events will be me appearing live and with my books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker.

Here are my current events1:

  • I’m headed back to the Des Moines area from 12-6 p.m. Sunday, 6 October [THAT’S TOMORROW], for the Windsor Heights Book Fair. This will take place at the Agora Events Center, 7692 Hickman Road, Des Moines. This will be the second year I’ll have participated in this event, and I’m eager to return.
  • I’ll be participating in the Local Writers’ Book Fair, which will be part of the 2024 Iowa City Book Festival. It will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, at MERGE, 136 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City. This is again my second year of participating, and I am looking forward to being back in Iowa City.
  • I’m planning to attend the Fort Madison Area Art Association’s Meet the Author Book Signing event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, November 30, at the FMAAA’s center at 825 Avenue G, Fort Madison. This would be my first author’s event in my new home of Fort Madison, and I am overjoyed to be part of this gathering.
  • I’m hoping to be part of the DSM Book Festival at the at Franklin Junior High Event Center, 4801 Franklin Ave., Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, 22 March 2025. This is being sponsored by one of my favorite independent book stores in Des Moines, Beaverdale Books. I’ll provide more information, hopefully, as the event approaches.

    I’ll be looking to add some more dates on the appearance calendar as time goes on. Hope to see you at one of those places.

Writing Quote of the Week:

I agree with Eudora’s words here, although I’m more certain of the sentiments.

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

  • Eudora Welty, On Writing

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

(Feel free to ignore this bit if you’ve read it before)

Currently, I have the mighty total of TWO novels which make up my official backlist2.

My first book is a journalism thriller set in Chicago during the turbulent days of the 2008 election and the start of the Great Recession. Check out more about it here.

You can get the paperback version of this book on Amazon here and the ebook version of it here.

A fellow Iowa writer and organizer of the Windsor Heights Book Fair, Tyler Granger, recently did a review of my book: you can find it here3.

My second book, the first in the The Yank Striker series, is a soccer drama telling the story of the beginning of a young American’s career as a player. There’s more about it here.

The paperback version of this book can be found on Amazon and the site of my publisher, Biblio Publishing. It is also available in ebook format on Amazon here.

John Buzbee of The Culture Buzz radio show in Des Moines (KFMG FM) interviewed me about the Yank Striker: You can catch it here.

For full links to these and other helpful places having to do with me and my writing, you can go to this page on my WordPress site, Liegois Media.

You can also get my books in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:

  • NEW: Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

Final Thoughts

All the writers keep writing and everyone keep safe, especially those who are continuing to deal with the effects of Hurricane Helene passing through the southeastern US over the past week. Best wishes.

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  1. All promotional images courtesy of their respective organizations. ↩︎
  2. Don’t worry, I won’t include this bit in the next regular newsletter in two weeks to give you a break, lol 👍🏻. ↩︎
  3. If anyone does any reviews of my work, I’d love to post some links to them. Send it to me in the DM’s or comments. ↩︎

Poetry Night at the Writing Life, 28 September 2024: Autumn comes to Iowa

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The Writing Life, 21 September 2024: Hoping for fall

We are getting deeper into fall in Iowa, but sadly not yet not deep into proper autumn weather. It is more like the weather at the beginning of a school year where you walk to school wearing a proper fall coat in the morning and yet it gets so hot by mid-afternoon you’re forced to walk home with the coat tied around your waist. Such is life in Iowa, but at least it’s not Kansas, which is flatter, doesn’t have as many good rivers as Iowa, and is at least ten degrees hotter1.

The Home Front

Not much here in recent weeks.

It’s part of a slow process, but we are starting to get things sorted out with our new home in Fort Madison. Most of it involves removing carpet, which both my wife and I always thought seemed strange to put over perfectly good hardwood floors, and cleaning things up.

Once the move gets done, we’ll be hopeful not to move again anytime soon. Seems like the past few years has been a constant move for both my wife and I and now our kids, who are in their own apartments or in the process of hunting for their own homes. Besides, Fort Madison is a nice little river town to get settled in.

I am hoping beyond hope this Friday will be the very last 80-degree-plus day in the state of Iowa for 2024. The stinking heat we have to deal with every afternoon after I get out of work can’t go away soon enough. Bring on actual fall weather and even winter at this point.

What I’m Writing

Time for an update on what I’m writing.

  • The Yank Striker 22, the sequel for The Yank Striker: I am now at the 50,000-word mark for the first draft of the book, which is a bit amazing thinking back to how blocked I was on the project in late spring and early summer of this year. I’ve got around nine chapters I’m thinking about adding onto the story, but not all of those are going to be of any considerable length. There’s at least 5,000 of the words in my first draft I know are going onto the discard pile whenever I start revisions. 80,000 words is going to be my absolute limit on the word count for the first draft, and I would prefer to have a final draft of somewhere around 70,000 words, especially since this will be a series and I’ve got a lot more story to tell down the road.
    With the regular progress I’ve been making on the first draft over the course of last month, I’m now feeling quietly confident I might have the first draft wrapped up by the end of the year. That’s going to require considerable focus on my part. From some back of the envelope calculations I just made this week, if I manage to get maybe 300 words on the project written every day, I should have my first draft done and ready to revise by the end of 2024.
    I would love to try and produce a book every year if possible. Getting a book done in two years (as The Yank Striker 2 looks to be at this point) is still the fastest I’ve ever written anything up to this point. If I’m writing this much, I want to be producing books and releasing them. The larger backlist I have, the better in my opinion, and I want to have whatever time I have left to write and produce as much as I can. Also since I am actively working on one series (and have a second in mind), I don’t have the feeling I am going to run out of things to write anytime soon.
  • The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project: I’ve had some time to work on this project last week, not so much this week. I’m getting close to the point in a typical story, if you are using a Hero’s Journey or a Steal the Cat-type outline, where the main character gets a challenge to go on a quest or a challenge.

[MINOR SPOILER ALERT:3]

I decided the impetus for such a call to action was a mini-family reunion in the scenic location of northeastern Minnesota, and it involves a glance into a family past my main character has avoided for years. But when he gets a glimpse of his past from an entirely unexpected source, that past comes rushing back, prompting him to find out the truth about it.
Pro wrestling is also involved.

[END OF SPOILERS]

The Untitled Liegois Poetry Chapbook: Not much work on this one this week. I think I’ve sorted out which poems I want in the book and have taken a shot at revising them. I’m quite satisfied with the results of the revisions, making what I’ve created more compact, more impactful.
Whether I get them done or not in time for some of my more recent outings is a totally different story, but it still seems closer to being done than it was when I was just talking about the idea a year or so ago.

What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing

(AKA where I might be appearing soon, among other things)

I (also sometimes known as The Dude In Purple) still have a few events coming up for this fall and some others I’m tentatively adding to the schedule. All these events will be me appearing live and with my books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker.

Here are my current events4:

  • I’m headed back to the Des Moines area from 12-6 p.m. Sunday, 6 October, for the Windsor Heights Book Fair. This will take place at the Agora Events Center, 7692 Hickman Road, Des Moines. This will be the second year I’ll have participated in this event, and I’m eager to return.
  • I’ll be participating in the Local Writers’ Book Fair, which will be part of the 2024 Iowa City Book Festival. It will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, at MERGE, 136 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City. This is again my second year of participating, and I am looking forward to being back in Iowa City.
  • I’m tentatively planning to attend the Fort Madison Area Art Association’s Meet the Author Book Signing event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, November 30, at the FMAAA’s center at 825 Avenue G, Fort Madison. This would be my first author’s event in my new home of Fort Madison, and I am overjoyed to be part of this gathering.
  • I’m hoping to be part of the DSM Book Festival at the at Franklin Junior High Event Center, 4801 Franklin Ave., Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, 22 March 2025. This is being sponsored by one of my favorite independent book stores in Des Moines, Beaverdale Books. I’ll provide more information, hopefully, as the event approaches.

    I’ll be looking to add some more dates on the appearance calendar as time goes on. Hope to see you at one of those places.

Writing Quote of the Week:

Good words from the King about one important requirement for a writer.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

  • Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

(Feel free to ignore this bit if you’ve read it before)

Currently, I have the mighty total of TWO novels which make up my official backlist.

My first book is a journalism thriller set in Chicago during the turbulent days of the 2008 election and the start of the Great Recession. Check out more about it here.

You can get the paperback version of this book on Amazon here and the ebook version of it here.

A fellow Iowa writer and organizer of the Windsor Heights Book Fair, Tyler Granger, recently did a review of my book: you can find it here5.

My second book, the first in the The Yank Striker series, is a soccer drama telling the story of the beginning of a young American’s career as a player. There’s more about it here.

The paperback version of this book can be found on Amazon and the site of my publisher, Biblio Publishing. It is also available in ebook format on Amazon here.

John Buzbee of The Culture Buzz radio show in Des Moines (KFMG FM) interviewed me about the Yank Striker: You can catch it here.

For full links to these and other helpful places having to do with me and my writing, you can go to this page on my WordPress site, Liegois Media.

You can also get my books in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:

  • NEW: Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

Final Thoughts

That’s about it for now. All the writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

-30-

  1. I do not mean to insult any Kansas residents or those who like living there. It’s just my taste to live somewhere near a big river and have it be relatively cool for most of the year if I can help it. ↩︎
  2. All of the following titles are working titles. I’m going to wait to release what I think should be the real titles when these projects are closer to publication. ↩︎
  3. Then again, isn’t this the point of this whole newsletter in part, to let you know what I’m working on? ↩︎
  4. All promotional images courtesy of their respective organizations. ↩︎
  5. If anyone does any reviews of my work, I’d love to post some links to them. Send it to me in the DM’s or comments. ↩︎

On the Rails for the First Time

Hi, there. So, this isn’t going to be my typical writing about writing. This is going to be something of a bonus travelogue about my and my wife’s first experience with rail travel. So if railroads and travelogues aren’t your thing, feel free to tap out for this bit.

Images on the rails between Fort Madison, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois, May 31 – June 2, 2024.

What I Knew About Trains

I’ve always had some interest in train travel. My grandfather Fred was a railroad employee back in Wisconsin years ago. When I was a kid, long after he’d retired from the railroad, I was fascinated by all of the train artwork and models he had whenever I visited. I also was interested in model trains, although I never got into building them myself. I’m not sure whether it was due to the expense of that hobby or not wanting to devote the time to setting them up, but it never really happened for me.

I was also interested in what it might be like to ride on a train. It looked like fun on all the old Hollywood films, with spacious sleeping and dining cars, just cruising along the rails without a care in the world.

As I got older, the idea of rail travel became more attractive to me, especially for long-distance trips. Driving was all right, but it was a hassle to have to drive and be aware of my surroundings for hours at a time. As for air travel, I always loved flying, but commercial air travel as it now exists just became one long hassle for me. The seats always are too small, there’s few good food options, and boarding and deboarding is a trial.

Unfortunately, for a long time I didn’t live anywhere near a passenger rail station. While Amtrak is still very active on the coasts and in the old Rust Belt, there were very few opportunities for mass transit in the middle of Iowa. I used to think we were lucky to have a passable bus service in Muscatine and Iowa City during the years I went to school there. I remember a few years back attending an exhibit at the Muscatine Art Center on the history of train travel in the city and being disappointed it had died out long before I first moved there.

Regular train travel was something for Chicagoland residents, not me. Even though some train stops were within a small drive for me, things never lined up to take a shot at it.

However, recently I settled into Fort Madison, which just happens to be a stop for Amtrak. In a quirk of geography, the southern half of Iowa happens to be better served by passenger rail than the center portion of Iowa, which could use the service given its greater population. Regardless, it provided me with an opportunity.

An Opportunity

I have to say my wife Laura is quite thoughtful when it comes to gifts, a talent I don’t necessarily have – I often have to ask my family and friends what to get them. So, when she suggested we take the train to Chicago and hang out there for the weekend, watch a Chicago Fire soccer match, and do a river tour, I was all for it.

Chicago went great – the Fire actually won a game, which was a rare instance this season, and the river tour was a great look at the architectural history of the city, despite the fact it was raining more or less the entire day. But it was the train ride I was interested in, because I wanted to see if the experience would measure up to what I had built up in my head.

Boarding

The historic Fort Madison railway station is a modest little building overlooking our riverfront. It’s not a massive hub of a rail network, but a station receiving two trains a day, one traveling east and one traveling west. It’s part of the Southwest Chief route running between Chicago and Los Angeles, and happens to be the only Iowa stop on the route. (Other Iowa stops a bit more north of us are on the California Zephyr running between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area.)

Tickets and baggage are relatively straightforward and somewhat simplified compared to airplanes. Electronic tickets are usually the way to go, although they also allow you to print them out. Once you get in the system, you can get updates on the status of your train, which wound up being pretty helpful when our train to Chicago got delayed by four hours due to mechanical issues. For me, it was something just as likely as if we had went by air, so it didn’t phase me.

The surprising thing when you see an Amtrak train is how short it is compared to the dozens and dozens of cars you see on commercial freight trains. For both our trains leaving and returning to Fort Madison, you have two engines at the front, followed by a baggage car, a sleeping car specifically for the crew, two sleeping cars for longer-term passengers, a dining car, an observation/cafe car, and finally two coach cars that just have seats for passengers and not their own cabins. It’s a pretty efficient setup, and once we got started it was a relatively simple business to walk between cars even during the trip.

Getting on the train is a relatively straighforward process, although I would absolutely advise travelers to use one of those wheeled, vertically oriented pieces of luggage as compared to a longer gym bag or something you need to always carry by hand. The latter are a bit difficult to carry as you are negotiating the relatively narrow stairways between the upper and lower levels of cars. However, I didn’t find any issue with storing my luggage in the overhead compartments, which don’t have doors you have to mess with like on planes.

With Chicago just a four-hour train ride (at least 20 minutes shorter than by automobile), we decided on coach seats rather than blowing unnecessary cash on a sleeper room. Even in coach, our seating arrangements were superior to an airline situation. While the width was slightly better than the airlines, we had all the leg room we needed and there were no issues with leaning our seats back. We had good-sized windows if we wanted to sightsee and curtains if we didn’t. There were even a couple plug-ins for when we needed to recharge our phones.

Unlike with the airlines, we also had the option of some different seating during the trip, which made for a more comfortable experience. We were able to enter the observation car or the dining car if we were interested in a meal. Although I had previously heard some good things about Amtrak cuisine, and we didn’t have any issue with the snacks available there, we decided against a meal and stuck to the observation car. These can get pretty crowded, especially if you’re in a particularly scenic area of the country, but we managed to find a spot to sit down. It’s a really great place to spread out and enjoy looking at the scenery. I’d love to see what the Rockies would look like from the observation deck.

Disembarking and Reboarding

We got off the train at Chicago’s Union Station, located near the Chicago Loop. I’ve been to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in years past, and that had some nice facilities, but I was impressed with the nearly 100-year-old station, which according to Wikipedia handles 140,000 passengers every weekday on 30 different platforms, as well as bus and other local commuter rail and Chicago Transit Authority connections.

We waited for a while in the Great Hall, which was all marble and a beautiful skylight. There were plenty of options for eating there if needed, and we had enough places to recharge electronics or rest on comfortable seating, which comes in useful if your train faces any delays. (Other than our train to Chicago, we were lucky on that front.) There were a lot more bells and whistles there, including the electronic billboards which listed where and when the various trains were arriving or departing.

With no car in Chicago, we had to improvise when we needed to get around. The CTA was convenient, although we had to get very knowledgeable about train routes and how they synced up with the street layouts. Eventually, we used Uber a bit, especially since we ended up getting a hotel well on the South Side because it was one of the more affordable options for us. (We learned later there was at least one large convention and a few other events going on in Chicago that same weekend, which drove up prices and lowered availability for hotel rooms. If we had the option, we would have chose to have a hotel at or near a CTA stop, because there were connections between Union Station and the CTA lines.

Conclusion

All things considered, I would definitely consider traveling by Amtrak in the future. It was a great experience even with our short trip, and all of the staff we encountered were friendly and professional. I’d be interested in taking a longer sleeper car trip in the future, even if it meant having to trek up to Burlington to catch the train up there. If you can manage it, I would recommend the experience to others.

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Poetry Night at the Writing Life, 27 April 2024: Tried a long poem and got four short ones

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