Family trees

Way behind because  of Createspace and my computer. All I can say is that the people who complain about the ease of self-publishing cannot have tried to publish a paperback! Writing the book was the easy part. Editing took time and effort, the cover was fun to do, but getting it all into Createspace is driving me nuts and doing my computer no good at all. (Either that or it still doesn't like Windows 10). Now that I'm almost at the end of the process, I think the book is priced way too high, but either I go with Amazon's  recommendation or I get no royalties. Some choice!

The other problem is that Createspace wants to publish the book as a Kindle e-book for me. There's no way to tell the system that it is already out in e-book Kindle format. Maybe I'll just have to publish and then delete my "original " Kindle - what a waste of effort!

On another front entirely, dh and I have become interested in family trees, both his and mine. I've discovered that a fair few of my maternal grandfather's forebears come from Cotherstone, which I believe is a few yards on the Yorkshire side of the river Tees, but I must check that. I wish the UK Census gave the surname of females who marry, as tracking them back in almost impossible. Birth dates seem flexible, but then  back in 1800 there would be many families who existed without a calendar or a diary to keep track of events and dates. I can well believe that by the time a man had reached 83 he could not recall if he was born in 1799, 1800, 1801 or 1802. (All dates are given!)

It is a fascinating process to track the lines back, though it isn't easy. It seems many didn't bother to report to the authorities when someone died, though most births are recorded. Even after 1837 when registration became law, there seem to have been those who died "unreported."

Edits and family trees

"it was a long walk!"

Coming to the end of edits - the ones I hope will be Final Edits, and am astounded to note that even at this late stage (after several edits) I can still play around with the word and sentence order and make improvements. I am beginning to think that a person to go on and on improving a book for a lifetime, but I really want to get on an write another story.

It is becoming clear to me that my writing is sometimes muddled.I don't get the sentences in the right order so that the flow of words is graceful and the thought processes are clear. Sometimes, I need to change one sentence's position in the paragraph and then it is fine. Sometimes I need to move a paragraph to make the thought process clear. Another notch on the learning curve.

Side by side with this I have been investigating my family tree on my mother's side. My father's side I have, thanks to a diligent gentleman who gifted me a copy of his research and then disappeared from my life. I'm doing it via UK Census Online and find that I don't have to go back very far before my great grandparents were "making their mark" on a marriage certificate. On the other side of the family,  there were teachers - what a pity they didn't get together!

It also seems that people often didn't bother to record births and deaths, which is frustrating. The Society of Genealogists says: "The records of civil registration in England & Wales which commenced on 1 July 1837, relate to the birth, marriage and death of an individual. In Scotland records began in 1855 and in Ireland in 1864 (n.b. Irish non-Catholic marriages were recorded from 1845.)" So pre-1837 it is back to parish records, not always easy to access.