Good news!  On March 1 I signed an advance contract with the University of Washington Press for “Before Portland: the Native Americans’ Wappato Valley.”  A completed manuscript is due in the Press’s Seattle office May first 2017.  (No, I receive no payment for this.)  Completing the manuscript will be my major task for the next fourteen months.  (See “Works in Progress” for progress to date)  I’m really looking forward to this next year because it’s when the book finally begins to take shape before my eyes.

The procedure after submission is: 1) The manuscript will be sent to outside readers for peer review.  The readers will evaluate whether the Press should publish, and make editorial suggestions.  Then 2) a Press editor will go over the entire thing, and 3) we’ll get permissions for visuals and figure out the layout of the book.  All this is preliminary to actual publication, probably some time in 2018.  It’s all a very long, deliberate process, but the final result should be well worth the wait!