This is different from actually writing the manuscript, and now that I’ve turned in all of those pages I worked so hard on, the press has assigned me a project manager. She makes sure that the edits and proofs and all that stay on track so the book is actually released on time–in my case, late in the fall. I’m still worried about jinxing the whole thing so I don’t think in terms of an actual publication date, just the general time frame. This is another panicky stage for me, when I wonder if I’ve missed something or haven’t explained something well enough or, or, or….. Until I feel like this:

I spent the last week or so on manuscript revisions. All of them. The whole thing. By April 15, which was yesterday. While millions of other people were scrambling to meet a different deadline, I had my Angels deadline.

So this is pretty much what my week looked like. I did very little besides focus on the 500+ page manuscript. There was some sleeping and I ate the quickest food I could prepare (cereal and sandwiches work for all sorts of meals) and I only did the dishes when the kitchen started to stink.

And I got it done. I didn’t think I could, but I did.

Now the book I planned on finishing some day is done. Well, the major work is done. Now comes all of the production things that have to be done to turn those manuscript pages into an actual book.

Stay tuned.

I have just been on spring break and used the week to work on revisions for my book, Angels of the Underground. There has been a lot to do, especially at the beginning of the manuscript, where the reader has to be drawn into the lives of four very different American women. The one thing the women all had in common was that they left their home country and settled in the far off Philippine Islands. They each had different reasons for doing so, and each thought she had found her particular kind of paradise. That was all upended on December 8, 1941, when the Japanese attacked the Philippines.

I was reminded of the journalist Martha Gellhorn (pictured here in 1941 with Chinese military personnel and her husband, Ernest Hemingway) who once observed that “War happens to people, one by one.” That’s how I’ve been thinking about the four women in my book. One by one, they each grappled with the reality of the Japanese attack and the subsequent occupation. They each decided to resist. Though it seemed like an easy decision, it was, of course, fraught with danger. One by one, they did what they thought was right to help bring about an Allied victory. And each one paid a price.

Who can resist images like this? Look at those llamas, just wanting to be free. And off they went.

Today I needed to divert myself from a whole bunch of real world stuff, and I couldn’t take off running like the llamas. So I did my active fleeing into the revisions of my second chapter. For a few hours I got to write about four American women heading off to exciting new lives in the Philippine Islands. That was pretty fun.

A good day, for not being a llama.