Shelving the Book Format for Now

When I started this blog, my intent was to write a book, blog post by blog post. But more than six months have passed. In the meantime, I haven't cleaned up Chapter 4 and other thoughts and materials are going unposted. I've been driving around lots of neat places in the watershed that I want to post about!

Therefore, I've decided to go about writing on this topic in a manner befitting a blog. Instead of posting this one finished chapter by one finished chapter at a time, I'm going to use this blog as a means to randomly capture and record thoughts and information about Driving Around in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. A blog is about journaling. So let the journaling begin.

Perhaps someday I will look at this blog as my notes and come back to it to piece the posts together as a traditional book. Maybe. Someday. I'm not sure that that medium fits today's reader. Also, as an author of 5 books, I know what a struggle it is to publish and sell books. I could make as much money if everyone who visits my blog would just click on a Google ad or two, or buy one of my suggested books -- hint, hint.

And so, I'll blog this again, as I did in Chapter 1:

"I’ve wanted to do something to Save the Bay, something more than sending my annual check to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Beyond supporting them financially, I Clean the Bay. I took their VoiCeS (Volunteer Chesapeake Steward) course. I raise oysters for the Chesapeake habitat restoration program. I have changed my over-consumptive ways. I am a vegetarian. I buy Energy Star appliances. I lead kayaking tours on a Chesapeake Bay tributary.

And I am writing this blog. It’s not much, but I’ve heard those scientists say that if we could just get people to understand that the condition of the Chesapeake Bay comes from upstream, that it might help. So I decided that I’d write about the streams and the land in the tributary portions of the Chesapeake Bay. It’s the part of the Chesapeake Bay, the Chesapeake Bay watershed, that we drive around in every day. It is lots of little streams and the stream and the land beside it that we love and call home. Let’s Save the Bay one stream-scape at a time. You save yours and I’ll save mine because ... don’t we really all want the same thing? Health, happy kids, and peace on earth.

This blog is intended to get readers who live and travel all across the great big Chesapeake Bay watershed to see, really see the bit of the Bay that they can see. Perhaps then, they ... you ... will have a watershed moment when seeing, thinking, and caring. Ah, ha! The Chesapeake Bay’s health is inextricably tied to our health. Our health, and the well-being of us all."

In case you're interested in this blog as potential book, here's more information about the chapters that I have roughed out with the intent to develop.

Chapter 4: Around Cape Henry and into Hampton Roads - About the Lynnhaven River, Hampton Roads, and the Norfolk area.

Chapter 5: Let the Punishment Fit the Ducking Place - Early use of the river environment to keep order.

Chapter 6: The James River below the Fall Line - First settlements then and now.

Chapter 7: Unfamiliar to English Eyes - The Chesapeake Bay developed as a scattering of plantations. It was hard to make towns and cities stick. Highways then and now.

Chapter 8: From Williamsburg to Harrisonburg - The history of the rivers I pass when taking my son to college at James Madison University.

Chapter 9: Virginia Peninsula Rivers on the Chesapeake Bay - Hampton, Poquoson, and such.

Chapter 10: The Mobjack Bay and the York River Watershed Below the Fall Line - The watershed of my youth. Gloucester and Mathews.

Chapter 11: Driving Up the Fall Line - Our route to Washington D.C. Taking my daughter to college at George Mason University.

So, if you're a literary agent, I'd be happy to formalize this in a book proposal for you. In the meantime, this blog is just my journal about driving around in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.