New Book Nears Completion!

The holiday season was productive for me as I recently completed the first draft of a new book I have been working on since summer 2019.

With the principal writing and layout in the books (ha!) the focus now is the arduous but essential task of creating the 220 (and counting) page book's index listing all the names and organizations mentioned. Then comes designing the front and back covers. I'd like to have a jacket with this book, my fifth. That will depend on the cost. 

Here is my manuscript's first page showing the title, "The Churchyards of Charleston: Stories From the Underground." 

What I'm doing is documenting in words and photographs Charleston's rich history as seen through the prism of its many old and beautiful churches and their graveyards. 

On the peninsula there are 13 churches with churchyards (or graveyards) next to them and one Jewish synagogue with its cemetery several blocks away, per the Hebrew custom that spiritual leaders should not walk among the dead. 

In my book each house of worship and its burial ground receive 10-12 pages of examination and photography. But I precede that with about 30 pages of background and context, addressing matters such as, as you see, how the Holy City became so holy. The abundance of gravesites on the peninsula is reviewed, as are the creative and wide variety of grave markers and the decorative symbols many have and what they mean. 

The book is laid out in Adobe InDesign (self-taught with great assistance from YouTube videos and Google help searches). The borders you see, from inDesign, show how the writing and photographs are placed and arranged on each page.  

The features on each church include facts and details about their origins in Charleston and a list of distinctions.

I have also photographed the inside of each church and I came away so impressed with how beautiful and well-maintained each is, despite many of them being more than 150 years old. 

First Scots Presbyterian Church is shown here. 

Then, each graveyard, such as the one at Cathedral Church of St. Luke and St. Paul (right), is depicted with facts, figures, common last names of the buried and notable Charlestonians laid to rest there.

This is followed by spreads I call "Five to Admire" and "Stories from the Grave." 

In "Five to Admire" I show and write about several grave markers that I find particularly unique, beautiful and/or interesting. 

In "Stories from the Grave" I uncover interesting people, telling short stories about their lives and sometimes their deaths. This section is four or five pages. Two pages from Circular Congregational Church are show here.

For research, I have relied on a number of primary and secondary sources, plus my own observations and insights as a "taphophile"- someone who really likes graveyards and cemeteries, and who likes doing this kind of research.  I have, after all, written two books about Charleston's grand necropolis Magnolia Cemetery. 

After profiling the 13 churches and their churchyards and the historic KKBE synagogue and its Coming Street Cemetery I have a long chapter on the Charleston Cemetery Historic District. 

This is the "cemetery city" in the Neck Area of Charleston where Magnolia Cemetery is located. Some two dozen cemeteries are in this district, including a number of Black cemeteries. SC State University's first president, Thomas E. Miller is buried in one of these small cemeteries (shown at the top of the page above right side).

Once I finish the index and source pages at the end of the book, which includes carefully proofreading and making necessary revisions, I will share the manuscript with several people to also proofread. I will ask some people who know about this subject matter to look at the manuscript and hopefully write some positive "blurbs" that I can put on the book's back cover and use for promotions. 

I am hopeful to publish the book this summer!  

This photo is from August 2020 at St. Patrick Catholic Church on St. Philip Street.  The pandemic has actually been a good time to work on a book like this! 

This was in October 2021 at First Baptist Church on Church Street. I was surprised how tall, when you see them out of the ground, some of the tombstones are in that they must go into the ground four feet or so, at least this one did before being displaced by the construction of a church building. 

More to come!