Earle Gray's Blog - Posts Tagged "fossil-fuels"
Fossil Fire: the fuels that rule and risk our lives
In my last blog, I mentioned in passing, the book I’ve recently started working on. So let me tell you a little bit about it.
My working title is “Fossil Fire: A social history of the fuels that rule and risk our lives in out time of climate change.� Publishers, not authors, determine what the actual title of a book will be. Sometimes they even have different titles for the American and English editions of the same book. In fact, authors are given to grumbling that publishers are more interested in what’s on the cover of a book that what’s between the covers. That’s hyperbolic, of course. Be that as it may, I’m hopeful that something of the working title windups in the final title.
We won’t know about that for about another four years. This will be my 11th book, and my most ambitious. It will be a big doorstopper that might take me four years to research and write, two third of that for researching and the rest for writing—and re-writing, re-writing, re-writing. The fate of the project may depend on my ability, at age 82, to keep my brain intact. I’m still in the early stages of research. I’ve been working on this part-time because of other irons in the fire, but full time starting in December.
From time to time, I’ll try to blog about interesting stuff that comes up as my work comes along.
In my next blog, I’ll talk about a cousin of mine—a few generations removed—whom I met in the course of my research. He was a 10-year-old boy who, in 1841, had already been working 12 hours a day, underground in a coal mine near Edinburgh. He was part of the vast and terribly exploited child labourers who made the Industrial Revolution possible. It’s a poignant story.
My working title is “Fossil Fire: A social history of the fuels that rule and risk our lives in out time of climate change.� Publishers, not authors, determine what the actual title of a book will be. Sometimes they even have different titles for the American and English editions of the same book. In fact, authors are given to grumbling that publishers are more interested in what’s on the cover of a book that what’s between the covers. That’s hyperbolic, of course. Be that as it may, I’m hopeful that something of the working title windups in the final title.
We won’t know about that for about another four years. This will be my 11th book, and my most ambitious. It will be a big doorstopper that might take me four years to research and write, two third of that for researching and the rest for writing—and re-writing, re-writing, re-writing. The fate of the project may depend on my ability, at age 82, to keep my brain intact. I’m still in the early stages of research. I’ve been working on this part-time because of other irons in the fire, but full time starting in December.
From time to time, I’ll try to blog about interesting stuff that comes up as my work comes along.
In my next blog, I’ll talk about a cousin of mine—a few generations removed—whom I met in the course of my research. He was a 10-year-old boy who, in 1841, had already been working 12 hours a day, underground in a coal mine near Edinburgh. He was part of the vast and terribly exploited child labourers who made the Industrial Revolution possible. It’s a poignant story.
