I will soon be publishing a book... the history of the first 25 years of St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Highlands Ranch, covering 1979-2004. It's going to be nearly 150 pages and I will be publishing using Kindle Direct Publishing from Amazon. Anyone wanting a copy can order through Amazon and the company handles printing "on demand" as well as shipping and handling the money.
That paragraph above is full of stuff that might need further explanation, it occurs to me.
Before you ask: No one asked me to research and write this book, and I have no idea if anyone will ever buy a copy, much less read it. I won't be making money on it. Right now the estimate is that I might earn as much as 63 cents per sale in royalties. Alert the accountant!
I have been conducting interviews, making phone calls, scouring the internet, browsing print materials from the past, including an invaluable scrapbook compiled by a woman who died about a month after Kathleen and I joined St. Luke's in fall of 2002. I have become friends with two former ministers, both now in the 80s but quite "with it." That is something I would never have predicted.
I have also designed the book and will be able to upload the PDFs of the letter-sized pages as soon as Kathleen and I complete one more reading of the content. There will be a few errors, I assume, but my sense is that the narrative will be readable and logical, even if incomplete in many areas.
The history is at times dramatic and at times a bit mysterious and occasionally surprising. I was not here for most of it and really could not be classified under "religious guy." I have avoided attributing good or bad luck in this history to some celestial plan. What fascinates me in the history are the people and the unlikely connections many of them share.
In many ways, I am the last person who should be writing this history, but perhaps distance from the events allows me to produce something interesting. I guess I will find out soon.
My original plan was to write the history up to today, but the more I dug, the more I wanted to include. And when I saw the pages count going toward 140, it was easy to leave the "second 25 years" to a later date (and a second volume). In fact, I am not all that excited about writing a "next volume," assuming that when some people read the first volume, I will suddenly receive emails and find myself buttonholed by folks after church or in King Soopers who want to disabuse me of some notion I included in the book. I anticipate lots of "how could you leave out...?" questions and my only response will be "sorry, but did you see how long this thing is now?"
I honestly hope I do hear from people. The great thing about online publishing (I don't what else to call the KDP service) is that it's relatively simple to upload a "second edition" of the book, and a third. I can make changes on my own desktop computer and I don't have to worry about "sunk costs" of inventory sitting in the garage.
It was never my intention to make a nickel on this project, so that simplifies things. I would call it a retirement project that is as close to a hobby as I can come.
There is satisfaction in discovering answers to questions, which I suppose I have known for a long time and have certainly taught to so many student journalists over the years. But it's been instructive to be in the role of writer as opposed to writing teacher. One role informs the other, that's for sure.
Interestingly, I often say to friends that I am ready to finally publish the "damn book." It's been in works for some time. I began the research in June of 2024 and have invested hundreds of hours in this enterprise. But as the time to upload it (and learn all the ins and outs of Kindle Direct Publishing) nears, I wonder if I will find excuses to hold off.
Nah! Time to get this book out in the world and move on to new projects. I have been toying with doing some family history writing about the Kennedy and Guffey sides of the clan.
And then there will be those inevitable corrections and expanded explanations and all new characters and anecdotes that the first volume will produce. Could be fun.
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