WORKS-IN-PROGRESS

Barry Arthur Cotton will self publish (DBA ‘doing business as’) Seanchí Leabhair (Storyteller Books in Irish) and plans to make books available in eBook, paperback, and hardcover formats. Progress in writing has been overshadowed by the joy Barry experiences caring for his grandsons. It has, however, been possible for Barry to conduct research and design book covers with a baby on his shoulder. The actual writing, however, has been much more demanding, and to ‘get in the Zone’, Barry often wakes up early to write between 3AM and 7AM. Progress has been slow.

Currently, Barry is working on a book titled, THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COMPANY’S BOSTON MEN. From the sailing of the Mayflower in 1620 to the 1640 advent of the English Civil Wars, twenty-thousand individuals migrated from England to America in what is known as The Great Migration. Though less than one percent of these immigrants were from Boston, Lincolnshire, ten Boston men helped found the Massachusetts Bay Company while four of their number led the company as Governor or Deputy Governor for fifty-one of the fifty-five years it existed. This book tells their story and is planned for release in 2022.

At the same time, he is working on a biography of his 7th great-grandfather, the Rev. John Cotton, titled JOHN COTTON: An Intimate Investigation of His Life and Times, which was awarded First Place in the WRITERS’ LEAGUE OF TEXAS MANUSCRIPT CONTEST for nonfiction. This work is planned for release in 2023.

As my family attests, I often go on and on about my ancestors’ stories. I have earned the right to tell these stories. I own them because I have painstakingly researched them.

The weight of all the material I dug up on my 7th great-grandfather, eventually forced me into writing. I was weighed down like the ghost of Scrooge’s dead partner, Jacob Marley, who in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was “captive, bound and double-ironed” with chains “long, and wound about him like a tail”. But my chains were folders of research on the life of Rev. John Cotton who lived from 1584 to 1652. To free me from the chains I created, I had to begin writing.

Creating THE COTTON CHRONICLES, I have become aware of the extent that I am a visual learner I am. I guess I always have been visually oriented. I recall in 6th grade being turned on to science by Bell Lab movies like Hemo the Magnificent and The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays.

You may have noticed all the videos I have posted in COTTON CHRONICLES. A picture is worth a thousand words, so how many words are ‘moving pictures’ worth?

Perhaps I should be making films?