One Summer (Update)

Okay, a few updates.
As they say in the fire service: Rapid Rate of Spread. No containment. Sorry. I couldn't resist the fire lingo. It is that time of year, after all.
The proposal for One Summer is now complete. It includes an overview, a "Why This Book" section, a chapter outline, and several sample chapters.
I've sent it to a writer friend for comments, and now I'm waiting to hear back.
Other than that... I'm writing. Every day. And lots of it.
One quick note.
A number of people have asked whether I'll be posting excerpts from One Summer as I write.
For now, the answer is no.
One thing that has been brought to my attention is that publishers generally prefer not to have large portions of a manuscript already available online. Since my goal is to give One Summer the best possible chance of finding a publishing home, I'd rather be cautious.
That doesn't mean the updates are going away.
Quite the opposite.
I'll continue sharing the progress of the book, the research, the discoveries, the writing process, and some of the challenges of turning nearly fifty-year-old memories into a memoir.
When the time is right, perhaps I'll be able to share passages from the manuscript.
But for now, One Summer updates will focus on the journey of writing the book rather than the book itself.
 There is one  other subject I wanted to touch on because it has been weighing on my mind, and perhaps on the minds of a few future readers as well.
This is a memoir. Which means other people inevitably appear in its pages.
Recently, I reached out to someone from my past. Way past. I simply wanted to say hello. The conversation was polite but distant.
Before it ended, they said something I'll never forget. "I am not that person anymore."
Neither am I. Hopefully, none of us are.
We've all changed. We've all matured. Life is no longer black and white. It's mostly shades of gray.
That realization has shaped the way I'm approaching this book.
One Summer is my story. And mine alone. Will other people appear in it? Of course. But I have no interest in telling their stories for them.
If I made mistakes, I'll tell you about mine. If I behaved badly, I'll own it.
If I took drugs, drank too much, or made terrible decisions, those belong to me. I won't assign those choices to someone else simply because they happened to be standing beside me.
Those are their stories to tell. This one is mine.
And here’s another story that is distinctly all mine: