75 Days To Go…

… until I have to submit the manuscript for U2 Diary to Omnibus Press. Yikes! January 2, 2008, is just around the corner.

When I think about it as 2-and-a-half-months, it seems like nowhere near enough time. When I think about it as 10+ weeks, it seems a little better. But I prefer 75 days — that sounds a lot more manageable.

I’m now back from almost a week away at a business trip in New York City. I have a trip to Seattle coming up in a few weeks, but after that I really hope I’ll be home for the rest of the year. Researching and writing is a lot easier here at home where I have access to all my books, magazines, emails you’ve sent, and so forth.

Here’s a Status Report…

The two main things on my TO DO list are:

1. Add all the known concert dates from U2tours.com, U2tour.de, U2-Vertigo-Tour.com, and U2 LIVE.

2. Add dates and info. related to all of U2’s official releases. Aaron has given me the okay to use U2Wanderer.org for this, and I plan to take him up on that offer. 🙂

Once those are done, I need to start fixing up the manuscript. Right now I have every entry written out with full month, date, and year, like this:

June 3, 2005

blah–blah–blah….

June 4, 2005

blah–blah–blah….

June 7, 2005

blah–blah–blah….

But the final formatting of the book needs to be like this:

2005
June
3 – blah–blah–blah….
4 – blah–blah–blah….
7 – blah–blah–blah….

So, as you can imagine, that’s going to be a lot of editing on my part.

While all this is happening, I’m still reading old magazines in my collection and highlighting facts/dates/events that need to be added to the book. I’m finished going through my book collection, but if time allows before the deadline, I’ll go through the books I’ve skipped. U2 Show is probably the most noteworthy of that group.

There are also several people I’d like to track down for interviews to get some more details about a few important events.

And, it goes without saying that I need to proofread and edit and make sure the book tells a somewhat cohesive story. I also plan to write an Introduction.

At this moment, I’m at 167,000+ words.

Here’s What’s Next…

Now that I’m done a lot of my own reading/research, I hope to start getting more active here on the blog. Of course, the more I post here, the less I’m actually working on the manuscript. So I have to figure out the right balance there.

I’m going to post an update about the book on @U2 one of these days, and hope that brings in a lot of new visitors to get involved in the mad rush at the end when I’ll be looking for last-minute dates, confirmations, etc., and also putting out calls for photo submissions.

Lots to do! I hope 75 days is enough time. Thanks for all your help to date, and for your future help, as well.