First Draft

Tada! There it is - the first draft of what I'm calling "V2." It's far from finished - I still need to rework the events sections, do on-the-ground research in three towns and write up the new "48 hours" section of each chapter where I'll recommend itineraries if you're spending the weekend in one particular shore town. I'm waiting until I have a roughly finished list of places I'm including to create those. Then there's adding in sidebars gleaned from research done on shore articles for the last three years and new photo lists.

In short: there's still a lot to do. But I feel better about my progress now that I have a structure in place, and I can start expanding from there. I'm light years away from what I call a "hard edit" where I go over every single word and period and line break while reading the chapters out loud. Yes, I said out loud. I catch a lot of errors that way.

I promised myself that I wouldn't work during vacation, but I might just have to. Oh, well. At least I won't have to drive far this time.

Unfortunately, I had to miss Steve's wedding in Atlantic City this weekend. The good news is that my brother could be discharged from the hospital today. What a scary ride. Thanks to everyone who emailed me privately to wish him well.