Oh Yes! ........... It's 2015

Greetings to all of you cousins.  The new year crept up on  me, and I realize that I haven't had much to say here for quite a while.  It isn't due to failing interest on my part, and my excuse for no new posts is that for the better part of the last six months I have been working very hard to complete two books that I wanted to leave to my son and daughter and especially our three granddaughters.  I expect, however, that it may be of some interest to some of the cousins ... and ... 'cousins'.

I realized that all my 'stuff' on Ancestry wouldn't necessarily make much sense to somebody new to it, and I needed to try to give it a more approachable and edited form.  It has been a big job, but both books have been written and self-published.  I decided that I would do one book on Alice's Norwegian and Swedish families ... and did that first.  The second is on my side of our family, and describes my Danish, Pomeranian and Norwegian lines.  I left the Norwegian to the last, because it is by far the longest and most complete.  It has also been the focus of the Virtual Reunion, though the blog has really only dealt with my gr Grandmother's Naas/Drangedal line ... which is what  those of us on this site derive from, and have focused on.  I ended up with more than 500 pages ... but there are a great many more photos, charts and stories than pages of my own writing.

I used Lulu to publish the books, and have been very pleased with the quality of their work ... especially the fidelity of color and sharpness of the pictures and photos.  Printing in color is not inexpensive.  The production cost, which I have to pay for each book, is about $60 for the Orvedahl Side and over $70 for the Hansen Side.  But I wait for the fairly frequent short duration sales, which are at least 20%, and on occasion as much as 30%, less expensive.  If there is interest in the content, I am planning to put pdf files of the individual families 'in the cloud' so that those of you who are interested will be able to see what I've done.  If anybody wants a hard copy, I will need to give you a URL to use, since it is not being sold to the public

I have done it in my own idiosyncratic style, which may seem 'loose' to real genealogists.  But I had a great amount of story to cover, and the main audience won't necessarily expect the organizational style that real genealogists use and expect.  To me, the most interesting parts were the missing pieces and 'mysteries'.  A few I've found or solved, but a great deal remains for future efforts ... most of which I will not be around to do.  To add a bit of color, here's what the books look like:

I'll tell you later how you could get a look at the portions that would be of interest to you.  My very best to you all