The book My Life in Rhyme has undergone a bit of redesign and is now separated into two books. The animal rhymes will be removed from the draft and placed in a new manuscript entitled Amber's Ambles featuring rhymes on this four-legged member of the household and some other acquaintances.
It will be called Amber's Ambles.
So Amber's Ambles is now taking priority for publication this year.
Then comes the finishing of My Life in Rhyme.
I hope you understand all this because I'm not sure I do.
Okay, it's a deal, this is the last attempt to get at the heart of the quality problem in American industry. I have salvoed several times and the shot went astray, not even close to the bow, but this time, we may be over the target.
It will not be a big book as I have concluded that the organization of today is not tuned into measuring that which is important for improving quality. My friend Ken unknowingly mentioned the cause of problems with quality and now even today, he does not recall the clue he gave me back last year.
But it stuck and I am exploring that avenue and promise that this will be the last shot. The target date for publication will be is later in 2023.
And now an update: The book is 99% finished with 88 pages. Now pondering a review but hard to find someone with content knowledge to be the reviewer. I may launch it anyway.
A real departure from what has been written before.
This book is a collection of stories---all true---some made even more true than the way they actually occurred.
The reason for the departure from the books written so far, this book is a collection of stories, somewhat akin to the stories in Unstructured Time, but each story is more detailed, of greater length, and more in keeping with the idea that stories should have a storyline---makes sense, doesn't it?
Anyway, it's my first attempt at "storytelling" and it was a struggle to remain true to the idea of a story having action, and a storyline. An A for effort, not sure of the grade on quality.
Speaking about quality, one of the stories, and the one with the most pages, is a story of my experience in attempting to establish quality improvement as a business strategy in my lifelong job as an engineer and then as a manager.
The book was published in May 2022.
The book is available on Amazon and is priced at $22.00
This will be a documentation of the history of the Stites Family, from its beginning in Europe and into the Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Michigan areas.
The book is the sole effort of Dee and was started in 2020. It will be a printed collection of old photographs and her oral history of the family, both sides, the Stites family and her mother's side, the DeJong family.
The pages completed so far are packed with information. It is about half completed with an expected publication this year (2022). But we know how slowly this research and book assembly goes and it would not surprise us if the date for printing would lop over into 2023.
This book took much longer to write because we ran our of ideas for exploration. We thought about that reason many times and were not sure this was the cause for the delay in publishing it. But we forged on ahead and finally put the finishing touches on it and had it printed in February 2023 so now we have it and it looks good.
It's priced higher than I would have liked, but it had to be in color and color printing adds a whole lot to the publication
costs.
We are happy with the cover as it shows the fox that was reared in our backyard rockpile. What a charmer this little kit was and now we hope it's wandering the woods as a wild beast. No, it is not a beast but a fantastic wild animal.
