Genealogy Archives - Page 6 of 8

The Best of The Goose’s Quill 2016

December 29, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

As 2016 winds to a close, I take a look back and see what Goose’s Quill posts resonated with my readers the most. I often get surprised! Here are the top 20 of the year:

Productivity and Expectations

A Clean-Out Vacation

Summer Slump: Is it September Yet?

Gans Family Reunion 2016: Blood is Thicker than Water

Beta Readers: A Vital Part of the Process

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

The Best of the Goose’s Quill 2015

Research and Citations: Save Time, Get it Right from the Start

The Dread Synopsis

Book Launch! But What to Read?

Critique Groups: A Resource Worth Having

Book Fair Magic: Casting a Reading Spell

Evolution of a Speaker: From Wrecked to Relaxed

A Successful, Grateful Book Launch for The Witch of Zal

My First Author Panel: The Student Becomes the Teacher

Learning to Excel: Spreadsheets and Writing

How To Cope With Book Launch Anxiety

My Biggest Takeaway: 2016 Philadelphia Writer’s Conference

Musings on Grief and Comfort

And my #1 read post of 2016:

The Witch of Zal Book Trailer

Thank you everyone for reading The Goose’s Quill! Have a safe and Happy New Year, and I will see you in 2017!

Save

Gans Family Reunion 2016: Blood Is Thicker…

July 28, 2016 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

I attended the 2016 Gans Family Reunion this past weekend. This is the 3rd such reunion, over the span of almost 10 years. Prior to the first one, I knew very few of my Gans relatives—they were names in a family tree, elusive cousins who existed somewhere in the wilds of Haverford.

Once upon a time, my great-grandfather George married Catherine. He had 2 sons and a daughter that survived to adulthood. His wife Catherine died in the 1918 flu epidemic, when her youngest child, my grandfather, was only 3 years old. George married Helen some six months later, and with her he had 2 daughters and a son.

Although we cannot know the family dynamic, we do know that the younger children did not know for some time that the older children were not full siblings. We also cannot know Helen’s feelings for her husband’s first children. All we know is that when my grandfather Bill married my grandmother, my great-grandfather disowned him. The story is that it was because my grandmother was not Catholic, but many feel that was a convenient excuse to cover whatever deeper issues prompted the move.

The rift was not a complete sunder—my eldest uncle remembered his first cousins, and they remembered him. My father remembers being at my great-grandfather’s house on one occasion, and my great-grandfather letting them into the movie theater where he worked for free. Once my grandfather moved his family from Haverford to Ocean City, though, the gap widened as distance took its toll.

Still, tenuous ties remained. My eldest uncle would stop in and see his cousins when in the area. He attended an earlier Gans reunion, which sparked the ember. Finally, my father’s first cousins decided on a full Gans Family Reunion. They were all getting older, and what did some falling out 70 years ago matter anymore? All the participants were long dead.

Gans cousins 1950

And thus the first Gans Family Reunion happened. Everyone had such a great time, they have repeated it twice since. Several of us from different branches of the family are interested in genealogy, so we shared information and continue to do so today. It was gratifying to find that the 3 of us had found the same family line—independent confirmation of our findings.

Nowadays, we have DNA to help in our genealogical research. My dad did a DNA kit already, and two of his first cousins are also going to do it. Hopefully they will all match!! Our Gans DNA is strong. Looking at the first cousins, the resemblance is striking. And people this time noticed how much even some of the 3rd cousins looked alike.

Gans Cousins 2011

I am so grateful for my Gans cousins for hosting these events, where distant cousins become not-so-distant. Blood truly is thicker than water, calling us together as time diminished whatever squabble had torn the family apart. I look forward to having more get-togethers in the future, where past, present, and future collide.

Save

Research and Citations: Save Time, Get It Right From the Start

April 28, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

I’ve written a family history book for my father’s side of the family, and I am now at work on one for my mother’s side. The book for my father’s side took forever, but not because of the writing—because of the research.

Obviously, genealogy takes a lot of research. Over 20 years I have documented evidence from everything from tombstones to letters to photographs to legal documents for birth, death, and marriage. I have a genealogy program where I enter all the data, and cite my sources for each data point.

The problem? My citation entry proved insufficient.

As I wrote my father’s book, putting the data into readable prose fell smack into my wheelhouse. But I wanted other researchers of those lines to have a fully sourced genealogy at their disposal. When a genealogist finds a source (such as this book) where you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, that provides a paper trail, and has sources so you can judge for yourself the reliability of the data, it’s like striking gold. I wanted to give this information to people gift-wrapped, as a way of paying forward all the help I had gotten from those who researched before me.

Since citation-supported research was a main goal of the book, I needed to have clear citations for every piece of data. I found in going back into the data that I had often been lax in my citations. While more prevalent in the early days when I often didn’t know better, I also found other places where I had taken shortcuts.

I had vague citations: “Tombstone.” Well great, except I didn’t say what cemetery. “Marriage License.” Whose? Issued where?

I found incorrect citations: “Scotland Birth Registry.” No such entity exists. I either meant the Scotland Old Parish Records, or the Scotland Statutory Records Index (depending on the date).

I had no citation at all. This baffled me the most because I clearly did not make up the information. I got it from somewhere. Often it required me to dig through the information I had to finally find the source.

So the biggest time-suck writing my genealogy books is the source citations. I often have to stop and track down the original source so I can properly source it. Then I have to fix it in the genealogy program before I add it to the book. The upside, of course, is that when I am finished the books my genealogy database will also be in tip-top shape.

What does this mean for your writing research?

I know most of you are not writing genealogy books. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from my mistakes.

If you write historical novels, have a database where you list every historical detail you use and where you found it. That way you can defend that detail if needed, and it gives you a go-to list for more in-depth research if needed.

If you write contemporary novels and people helped you out with details of setting, character, or culture, write it down. In the many years it can take from first draft to publishing, you may forget who told you what, and when it comes time for the acknowledgements, you don’t want to forget someone.

If you write fantasy or science fiction, track every bit of real science or history you used to inform your world. Not only will you be able to discuss and defend your points, you can then go back to those sources later to see if there are updates to the science or cultural history that you can use in future books set in the same world.

If you write thrillers, mysteries, or police procedurals, you’ll need insider knowledge of the justice system and perhaps technical knowledge for things such as planes, submarines, and weapons.

Another advantage to all these research notes is that you can use that information to support blog posts and presentations, non-fiction works about the same subjects, and as resources to refer readers to if they want more information.

We writers pull information from everywhere, and we collect data on a wide variety of subjects. We need to know where all that research comes from. Don’t waste time later having to go back and retrace your steps to double-check a detail. Get it right from the start.

Do you keep track of your research? How do you organize the data and sources?

Because it All Reflects on Me

June 26, 2014 By Kerry Gans 4 Comments

Publishing is a business and everything I put out reflects on my brand. Everything. Even if it’s something outside my usual commercial writing sphere that few people will ever see.

Most of you know I successfully self-published a genealogy book for my dad’s family. It came out wonderfully, and I was very pleased. I decided to edit the book down to end with my grandparents’ generation (to keep personal information on living individuals private) and release it to the public.

I chose to get the book professionally copy edited, because no author can catch all his or her own mistakes. I did not hire a professional book designer only because I could not afford one. However, I did research the basic design mistakes of self-published authors that make their books look amateur and did my best to avoid them.

My genealogy book is clearly a niche book. I will be shocked if it sells even 100 copies. Because of the small expected sales, and because genealogy books even by the genealogy publishers are not exactly known for their book design, I felt that the business decision of not paying for professional design was a valid one. Had this been a book I anticipated having high sales numbers, I would have thought otherwise. However, knowing the expectations of my audience, I made a calculated decision.

Because, as a business, I have to decide how to spend (or not spend) my limited money.

Time is also money, as the saying goes, and as a business owner, I need to make another decision: How much time am I willing to invest in any given project to make it “good enough.”

After I got my copy-edited genealogy Word manuscript back, I made the changes, went through it one more time, then converted it into a PDF file. I added in all the photo JPGs, checked everything one more time, and then went through the final step of converting that regular PDF into a PDF/X-1a file, which is the required file format for Ingram Spark (and CreateSpace). I had done this exact process for my family’s edition, and it had worked flawlessly.

Then I uploaded the PDF/X file and waited for the e-proofs from Ingram Spark. I got them, and flipped through the proofs quickly to make sure all the margins and layout looked nice. It did, so I Approved the paperback version and ordered a hardback version for myself so I could see the cover prior to Approving it. I got the hardcover (beautiful!!) and happily pressed Approve. My genealogy book was now available to the public.

But.

A few days later, I was at my cousin’s house, and I pulled out the hardback to answer a genealogy question. And I saw something strange in the text. A weird space in a word. Instead of Census, it said C ensus. I flipped a page—d aughters. And another. And another. Odd spaces in random words littered the book.

At home, I pulled up the final PDF/X file. Yup, there were the weird spaces. I pulled up the regular PDF file, the one I had converted from. No weird spaces. I tried the conversion again. The spaces appeared again. To this day I have no idea why they appeared in this conversion, when they did NOT appear in the family edition version. It is a technical mystery that is baffling me. But I had to find some way to fix it, because I could not let the book stay out in public the way it was.

So I went into the PDF/X file and painstakingly found every instance I could of the spacing. I went through the document twice, and used the Text Touch-Up tool to fix it. It took hours over the space of several days. But I finally had a version with no weird spaces. I uploaded the new files—even though I knew it would cost $25 per version to change the interior after I had Approved it.

The second set of e-proofs came in and I vowed to go through the text this time, not just flip through. And I found more space issues. They were more apparent in the e-proof because the font was slightly thinner, enlarging the space between letters. I checked the file I had uploaded. Yup, there they were—not as glaring as the ones I had fixed, but noticeable now that I was attuned to them.

So I fixed the PDF/X again. More (but fewer) hours. Another upload (but this time no fee because I was still in the Approval process).

Third set of e-proofs. I combed through the proof and all was looking good—until page 167. I found a space I missed. And another space on page 304. And another on page 338. But that’s all. Just three spaces.

Did I go in and fix them again?

Yes, I did. (You knew I would, right?) And I also found another space I had missed, and a misspelled name that had escaped both the copyeditor and me. And then I uploaded PDF/X #4.

I am waiting for this set of e-proofs, but I think I have finally gotten to where this result is “good enough.” Nothing can ever be perfect, so there comes a time when you need to let it go. I am at that point (barring some glaring error) with this project. I have spent all the time I want in getting this as close to perfect as I can. No doubt some of you are thinking I have spent far too much time on it, given the small rate of return I expect. But I think my time was worth it. Why?

Because publishing is a business and everything I put out reflects on my brand.

Everything.

So I have to make it good.

What do you think? Am I conscientious or completely obsessive? When do you get to feeling that it’s “good enough”?

Genealogy Book Phase One Complete

April 17, 2014 By Kerry Gans 11 Comments

Anyone following my blog knows that I’ve been putting together a Print On Demand (POD) book of my genealogical research. The first book I put together was for my family—it contains info up to the present day generations.

I used Ingram Spark for my POD book. The quality is great and everyone has been pleased with the book. And I got a little giddy holding a book with MY name on it in my hands!

The cover is special to me for a number of reasons. First, it is the house that came to be called Warawee, where my great-grandparents lived and was the hub of the Warren family for 4 generations. Second, my father, Harold Warren Gans, drew the picture!

Phase one, writing and distributing this version to my family, is complete. The next phase is making a public version to put out in the world for sale. I’m hoping that libraries, historical societies, and genealogical societies will be interested, as well as other amateur genealogists like myself who are researching those lines.

I am finishing my copy edits for this public version, and hope to have ebook, paperback, and hardback editions available no later than May.

This has been a long and involved process, but I have learned a great deal, and am very happy with the results so far!

CreateSpace vs. Ingram Spark

January 30, 2014 By Kerry Gans 7 Comments

Any of you following along will know I am trying to self-publish a Print-On-Demand (POD) genealogy reference book on my family in particular. I had decided to use Amazon’s CreateSpace because so many people suggested it and it has been around a while. What I found was that because of the length of my book, I could NOT use CreateSpace (more on that below), and so I went over to Lightning Source, another POD company people had suggested. Lightning Source’s POD arm for small or self-publishers is called IngramSpark.

The following comparison of the two resources is necessarily incomplete, as I could not complete the process with CreateSpace and have not yet completed the process with IngramSpark. But it’s what I have found so far.

CreateSpace is very easy to use. However, I found their Submission Guidelines to be missing or misleading in key areas. When reading how to format your book’s interior, it tells you the gutter margin for 3 different pages count ranges, all the way up to 1,000 pages. What they don’t tell you anywhere in the Submission Guidelines (it can be found elsewhere on the website) is that there are maximum page limitations based on trim size and color vs. black and white options. Based on their Page Count table, the maximum number of pages anywhere is 828 (not 1,000) and if you choose to do full color, 480 is your limit. My full-color book, unfortunately, is 508 pages. Due to the nature of the content, there is no way I can cut 30 pages out. Which is why I went to IngramSpark. (I did confirm with CreateSpace customer service that I was correct and I COULD NOT print this book with them.)

IngramSpark is also not difficult to use. However, it will require more money for you to get started. At this point in the process, I have run across several fees:

$49 one-time set-up fee per book (waived if you have a 50 book drop order within a certain amount of time after setting up your book)

$11 annual distribution fee (if you are simply printing for your family and do not want distribution, this fee is waived)

ISBN fee. IngramSpark requires you provide your own ISBN number. You can purchase one for $125, or you can purchase batches of them for less per unit through Bowker. CreateSpace allows you to either use an Amazon ID number (not the same as an ISBN) or to purchase an ISBN through them (I think it was $10) or to provide your own.

So it is more expensive to use IngramSpark. The question you need to ask yourself is: Can I make my book fit CreateSpace’s limitations in a way that will not compromise the book’s quality? In my case, because I have a lot of photos and documents and charts, the answer was “no.”

The actual interior design process is the same–upload a PDF to their website. I will say that IngramSpark’s gutter margins are MUCH smaller than CreateSpace’s, probably due to manufacturing differences, which allows me to have larger photos and charts.

I have not used the cover designer for either system yet, so cannot know how they compare. I also don’t know about the quality of the final product or the tracking and royalty payment facets, since I haven’t finished the book yet.

Having to switch to IngramSpark has set me back, because with the much smaller gutter margins I need to re-size all my photos, graphs, etc. The text, of course, was easy to readjust. Still, I am pleased that I have an outlet to get this book out there in the way I envisioned it, instead of having to present it in a non-optimal way to force it into CreateSpace’s limitations.

I am slowly exploring this self-publishing world, both in ebook and now POD. It’s a fascinating journey! I will bring more info on IngramSpark after I have completed the process and have more to share.

Have you done POD? What has your experience been?

Amazon Kindle and CreatSpace

January 9, 2014 By Kerry Gans 5 Comments

A while ago, I put my first short story, To Light and Guard, up on Smashwords. I did it mostly as a learning experience, and haven’t done much to promote it. I wanted to learn how to format a story to upload, and how all the technology worked. That’s much more easily done with a 3,000 word short than an 80,000 word novel!

To round out my education in the technology realm, I just last week got To Light and Guard for sale on Amazon. The process was much the same as Smashwords, just slightly different formatting rules. So now my story is available on both major self-publishing platforms, and available for all ebook formats, including PDF. (A Kindle-friendly file is also available through Smashwords, but the only way to get it listed on Amazon is to either sell more than $2,000 worth of the book or post it directly, as I did.)

The process on both was relatively painless, as long as you are able to read directions and pay attention to details.

I am now embarking on my first print-on-demand project—a genealogy book through Amazon’s CreateSpace. I am still in the process of learning how to format the book properly, and I am sure much tinkering will be required until I get it looking the way I want.

I probably chose a difficult book to start with, because mine includes photos and other non-text illustrations. This interrupts page numbering and makes things a little more complex. But it’s coming together.

I was slightly disappointed in the limits of size and lack of choice in paper type on CreateSpace—I was hoping for a slightly larger than 8.5 x 11 book, but in the end that size might be a blessing in disguise since all my pages are already 8.5 x 11. As long as I get the margins right, that might actually make it easier. I had also hoped that I could specify that the photo pages be on heavier, glossy paper, and the rest on regular stock, but I so far do not see that as an option.

The book is nearly done the preparation stage, and then I will upload it to CreateSpace and finish the process. I am eager to see it all put together and get an author copy to hold in my hands. This book represents years of research, and I hope to get it into the hands of other researchers who can use my work as a stepping stone for theirs. I know how excited I always was to find that someone else had done meticulous research on my line, and that I did not have to re-invent the wheel. I want to give that same thrill to other researchers!

I’ll let you know how the CreateSpace experiment works out. One thing is for certain—I am learning a lot!

Have you ventured into self-publishing? What has your experience been?

Top 10 Goose’s Quill Posts of 2013

January 2, 2014 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

Top 10 Goose’s Quill Posts of 2013

It’s always interesting to see which posts struck chords with people over the year. Surprisingly, the most popular posts were evenly split between writing and life. Enjoy!

10. The Monkees Came To My Town

9. A Mile in My Daughter’s Ears

8. Connecting the Dots: Meeting My Grandfather

7. The Internal Saboteur

6. The End of an Era: When Writing Mentors Move On

5. A Writer’s Thick Skin: Do We Need One?

4. Old Fashioned: Writing With Pen and Paper

3. My Biggest Takeaway: 2013 Philadelphia Writers’ Conference

The top 2 posts are no surprise. The tragedy of my friend Kate Leong’s unexpectedly losing her 5 1/2 son, and the miracle response that followed his death still breaks my heart–while moving me to tears of joy at the strength and kindness of the human spirit.

2. The Gavin Effect: A Tsunami of Kindness

1. The World Lost a Superhero: Farewell, Gavin

Happy 2014, everyone!

Genealogy Book Update

November 7, 2013 By Kerry Gans 3 Comments

Some of you will remember that I have been chipping away at a genealogy book for my dad’s side of the family. I hope to have it finished and ready for my family around Christmas, but it may slide a little if other things that are in the works happen—you know, life getting in the way of your plans!

I did reach a milestone today, though. I finished going through all the endnotes and putting them in proper format. I had been cutting and pasting the source material from my genealogy program (Legacy), but it doesn’t put it in proper endnote format. What was there might have been all right, except that when I do something, I want to do it right. If I want this book to be taken seriously by other genealogists, I need to have the sourcing done properly.

So I laboriously went through every endnote (some chapters have 80-90!) and put them in the right format. And that helped me, too, because I found some source material that needed to be more clearly marked—or that I couldn’t remember where I got it. And I added to each endnote where the original material is housed: in my possession, in other archives, in church or cemetery offices, etc. That way people can duplicate my research easily if they want to find the primary documentation.

How close am I to finishing? I need to tweak the illustrations—some are facing the wrong way. I have to put final touches on the chapter title pages. I have to line edit the entire thing, including picture captions and family trees. I have to fix weird glitches in the Index where things are italicized or bolded for no apparent reason. I am hoping to get a few more photos from people before I “go to press.” Oh, and I have to design the cover. So, not too far—but not too close, either. If I have a few concentrated weeks, I should have it done by early December.

Then comes the fun part—figuring out how to properly format it for Print On Demand (POD). I will likely use CreateSpace. It should be an interesting challenge to get everything formatted the way I want! But I geek out over that sort of stuff, so I’m sure I will enjoy it, even with its inevitable frustrations.

So that’s where I am with my genealogy book—hit a milestone, but still a ways to go. And when I finish this one, I have my mom’s side of the family to do. I learned a great deal from this book, so hopefully the other one will go faster as I will do things correctly the first time. So maybe by next Christmas!

How about you? Any pet projects you are working on?

Writing Process Relativity

September 26, 2013 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

Last week I wrote about how time is relative. Specifically, I noted that I can accomplish about 4 times as much work in a child-free hour as a child-full hour. I’ve since noticed that the writing process itself is subject to the time-warping effects of relativity. Some parts fly past, some drag–even if they take exactly the same amount of real time.

I don’t do much in the way of outlining and prewriting (although I am trying to do a little more with my latest WIP), so that doesn’t take me too long. I think if I tried detailed outlining I would find the process tedious and draining, which I why I steer clear. While I admire the authors who can write a scene-by-scene outline, I just cannot get the passion for basically writing the book before I write the book. If I tried, that would be a part of the process that would seem to move at a snail’s pace for me.

Some writers say the first draft drags for them. For me, the first draft is fits and starts. Some days the words flow so fast I lose track of time, I am so immersed in the story. Other days the words don’t come and every time I look at the clock it seems the hands haven’t moved. But even though this is one of the physically longer time frames in the process, it does not move slowly for me. I tend to make steady progress, so I feel good about it.

The revision is where time relativity really can come into play. I find large-scale revisions such as moving scenes, deleting scenes, writing new scenes or new parts of scenes to move quickly. I have more of a big-picture brain, so I enjoy this part of the process a great deal. Probably why it seems to go quickly for me.

It’s the small-scale edits that drag for me. The typos and the grammar and the punctuation and the sentence-level structure. Grammar-type issues such as punctuation have never been my strong suit, and, although I am learning, it is still a struggle. The reading the book out loud edit always takes a long time, but it is completely necessary for me. One time I found that my global search-and-replace had failed to change my protagonist’s name in 4 different places. I never would have caught that without reading out loud. My mind, when reading silently, had inserted the correct name all the previous times I had read it–and I was on the 7th major revision at that point!

I don’t know about you, but when I get to the revision stage, I make a list of all the things I need to do. For a while, this list grows instead of shrinks, since often changing one thing will lead to more changes further downstream. Then the list seems to stall, as if I cannot check off anything no matter how hard I work. But then a miracle of relativity happens, and one day I look at my list and there’s only one or two things on it! I experienced that with the non-fiction genealogy project I am working on for my family. Just this weekend I looked at what had been a very long list, and realized I was on the second-to-last thing! What a thrilling moment to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

How about you? Which parts of the writing process fly for you, and which are like pulling teeth?

Follow Me