Althea's Math Mysteries

 

This blog may not be as active as it used to be, but it's a good way for me to remember some things. My first post about my Althea stories was in September of 2019, so I've been working on the first two books in this series for four years now. I'm hoping we'll be able to publish them in about a year. 

I have a very hopeful timeline that puts publication in October. But we all know that things never go as well as we hope. (And I'm wishing we could do it just a bit faster than that, so they'd come out in time for Math Storytelling Day, September 25, Maria's and my birthday.)

I have pretty complete drafts done of Althea and the Mystery of the Imaginary Numbers and Althea and the Mysteries of Triangles, Circles, and Pi. Soon I'll be asking for folks to read the manuscripts and comment on them. (Email me at mathanthologyeditor@gmail.com if you'd like to be one of our readers.) After that's done, we'll do our usual (Natural Math publishing's usual) crowdfunding campaign. And then there will be illustration, copy editing, proofreading, page layout, and books!

Here's my mock-ups of the covers, and lots of information that goes with the books.

At a few points, I've really wanted to see what these would look like as actual paperback books. lulu.com made that easy. Two books cost me under $25. I've done that 3 times, while I've polished up the books. What you see in the photo above is me holding the 3rd printed draft copy of Althea and the Mysteries of Triangles, Circles, and Pi.

In other news, I retired on May 20 from my full-time job teaching math at a community college. Teaching online was way too much work, and less satisfaction than teaching in person. I'm still covid-cautious, so I also didn't want to go back to teaching in person. Retirement has been wonderful. I'm working hard on the books, visiting Michigan where I help my dad (who's 90), cleaning up my house a bit, and working on my yard. 

All that was plenty for about the first five months. When I noticed that I sometimes felt like I had nothing to do, I posted in a Beast Academy group on facebook that I was thinking of offering a class. Someone suggested that I apply for a position with AOPS. (Art of Problem Solving is an amazing online resource, providing great math textbooks and classes, and they wrote the fabulous Beast Academy curriculum.) I did that, and I'll start teaching for them soon!

I will definitely be blogging more over the next year, to let anyone still reading my blog know what's up with these books. (If you're out there reading this, I'd love to hear from you.)