I already have one book up on Lulu.com that has been published, namely my Master’s thesis, and I’ve finished writing one novel–the first in a series of nine. It makes me pretty happy to have written two books so far in my life. I’d been forced to put my novels up for about a year now, but I may get a chance to start work on them again soon. However, a project that I’d really like to get underway and get published this summer or this fall is a non-fiction book. Well, perhaps “workbook” is a better term for it or even “textbook.” Regardless of what you call it, it will be a major undertaking.

Several years ago, I worked with Dr. Tony Macheak on a research paper for one of his classes which eventually evolved into a project and then a presentation at an academic conference. The paper-turned-presentation was the use of comic strips to help teach pronunciation in a foreign language classroom. It’s something I’ve always meant to finish with complete lesson plans, a large bank of comics and templates, and other related resources so that it could actually be put to use in a classroom. Since I’ll have some free time coming up, I plan on working on gathering my resources and creating new materials in order to put them together into two books: a basic workbook with information on pronunciation and pronunciation worksheets including comics and study guids and also a teacher’s edition which will have the addition of lesson plans, quizzes, answer keys, and scripts. I’m going to have Ian help with the graphics and cover as well as some basic layouts. I’m going to try and contact Tony (it’s been a while since I’ve e-mailed anyone at all, to be honest) to help with lesson plans and organization. I might even use the little brother as a test subject to see that the lessons and worksheets make sense to a student. I’m really looking forward to creating something like this. I love writing, I love linguistics, and I love drawing. I think this project will be pretty awesome, though I know it’ll take months before it even starts to come together and look like anything close to a book. As I’m working on this book, I might post about it and ask for opinions or input, so this isn’t the last time you’ll hear about this, I’m sure. So exciting!