It's been several months since you heard from me. As some of you may know, I had a rough winter health-wise, but I'm happy to report that the worst seems to be behind me, and I’ve returned to my regular work schedule.

I had big plans for this fall, but unfortunately, I've been dealing with some minor health issues. It's nothing serious, but I have decided to take a few months off from the newsletter and content updates to focus on my health.

I forgot to mention in my last update that I was going on vacation in August. As a result, I didn’t have time to write a proper update this month. The newsletter will return in three weeks with another Beyond the Book post.

Over the past month, I queried three literary agents and took the most significant break from the book since I started the project in January 2016. Even though taking a break feels a little weird, it is nice to slow down and give the story (and myself) space to breathe.

Even after taking most of June to recover from an absolutely crazy spring, I still managed to make significant progress on my book. I met award-winning author Reyna Grande and spoke with an editor who works at a major New York publishing house.

Over the past month, I began writing a query letter, which I will use to pitch literary agents. I also worked on developing a website for the book. Fortunately, there was a lot of crossover between these two items, which allowed me to make a lot of progress on both fronts.

Over the past month, I’ve been laying the groundwork for that effort. Getting a book traditionally published turns out to be quite a complicated endeavor, so today, I wanted to give you a brief overview of what that process looks like.

In January of 2016, I sat down to write a story about reuniting with my birth family from El Salvador and my experiences as I got to know them. Now, almost exactly five years later, I have a completed manuscript of my autobiographical novel. It is roughly 117,000 words in length or approximately

After two long years I finally finished my "Batman” rewrite! Even though this process took a lot longer than I had anticipated, I’m thrilled with the end result. I now have story that “works” and nearly completed manuscript.

Over the past month I’ve struggled to make a meaningful dent in the final act of my book. While the writing has been going great, finding time to work on it has proved to be difficult.

I made some good progress this month despite falling behind my intended schedule. I had planned to finish Act III before September, but I’m not quite there yet. Between spraining my wrist in late July and taking few days off to enjoy nature, I wasn’t able to write as consistently as I would have

Today I have some exciting news to share. As of a few days ago, I am roughly halfway done with Act III! Despite this milestone, I still have several weeks of work ahead of me before I’ll have a finished manuscript. In this update, I want to share what I have left to do, and how you can read my

After a couple of months off from writing, I'm happy to report that in early June, I resumed work on the book and that I’ve already made a substantial amount of progress

As some of you may, or may not know, every spring I coach Ultimate Frisbee. While this activity is one of the highlights of the year, my duties as a coach often make it quite challenging to make progress on the book, so I’m taking a break.

This month I’m going to be sharing several smaller updates on a variety of topics related to the book.