News about the book and other things

The good news about the book is that we are making progress!  I say we because I have a team helping me. I have hired a young woman who is studying for a PhD in African American History at Rutgers University. Her name is Shannen and she has experience in putting a book together.  We started last Friday searching for photos for the book.  I also have a young woman whom I am calling an intern, who will work for me.  She was recommended by one of the women from the Princeton Research Forum of which I am a member.  This young woman lives in Trenton, she goes to Mercer County Community College, and she wants to learn about publishing a book.  She will start next week.  So hopefully we are on track to get the book finished in December.

There is still a lot of work to do.  Besides getting the photos and the photo permissions, we have to get
permissions to use some of the text in the book and then copy edit the entire book to see that it fits into the size dictated by my contract so we have a long hard road to go.

I have dedicated all my time togetting this done.

However, as I look at the book I realize there is a lot more to say so that I have material for another book!  I have only talked about the women for whom there is a lot of public
information.  I have a list of women whom were listed in who's who in Black America that I would have to research or take their oral history.

Speaking of oral history, I did take a break to attend the Oral History Organization meeting in Atlanta last week.  I presented a paper about one of the women whose oral history had been released to the Chemical Heritage Foundation.  Her name is Reatha Clark King.   Since oral histories are private until they are released to the public, I could only talk about the women who have released their oral history.

This is not true for the book since most of the information in the book is already public.

While in Atlanta I did some research at Emory University archives.  The archives of Sinah Kelley one of the women in the book was there.  I waited through seven boxes of stuff. It was like wading through the attic of a person.  Sinah was born in 1916 so she was one of the pioneers in chemistry.  Her diary was there along with baby photos and a photo of her college graduation.  She went to Radcliff College so ten year and twenty-five year alumni books were there.  The good news is that she wrote about what she had been doing since college graduation so that I have some of her life in her own
words!  It is an interesting story.

At the Oral History conference, I took a short course in Web 2.0.  Blogging is Web 2.0 and I learned I need to blog more often.  Therefore, look for posts that are more frequent from me.

Jeannette Brown

I become an author! ????

Well in order to go through this process, I guess I am going to need help. Also writers have to write, just as singers have to sing every day and other musicians have to practice every day so I decided to start this blog in addition to the two others I should be writing every day.
This blog will be just for the trials and tribulations of writing a book for a novice.
The first trial is looking at the contract. Until I sign the contract I will not reveal my publisher in case there is a last minute hitch, but some of you reading this will know as I told everyone. I just don't want to tell the rest of the world yet.
I have never seen a book contract before. It is 16 pages! It gives every detail of what the publisher wants me to do and what they will do. I am in the process of reading every line and I have two lawyers looking at it for me. I found out that I can revise some of it. I have a very supportive editor! In fact I really think he wants to publish this book which is good for me.
So this is the first post of this blog. I will take you through the gruesome details of book writing.

I am a researcher, a chemical researcher, but researching these women is very much the same. You look for them, find out about their lives and then ask questions and look deeper. I started this research about 40 years ago but I did not go as deeply into their lives as I am doing now. I just wanted to know why I was the only African American woman chemists that I knew. Then I met Dr. Marie Daly the first African American women to get a PhD in chemistry. Then I wanted to know where the other women were and why she was the first in 1947!

It has been fun going through this research and I am still researching, but at some time you have to stop and write it up. That is where I am now the stop and write it up part. This as I said before is the reason for this blog. I have to write.

You will see this is a stream of consciences but hopefully I will make some points and get better at it as I write.

That's all for now.
Jeannette