Vicodin, Mountain Dew and fracking wastewater - what a combination

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - What evil lurks in hydrofracking fluids?

A vicodin with that drink?

In the fifth (and hopefully final) section of The Fracking War, it all comes together in a melange of toxic waste water, some Mountain Dew and a handful of vicodin, that overprescribed painkiller that half of America has in medicine chests.

Getting back into the writing saddle was hard today, after five days of not tapping out a single word on the book. Still, because the fourth segment had concluded, picking it up seems to have worked. It did require adding a new character, one headed for infamy, though he doesn't know it yet.

He's sucked down too many vicodin tablets, washing them down with endless cans of cold Mountain Dew.

And he drives a hydrofracking waste-water truck. A big one. A filled one.

Hydrofracking waste-water truck loading up

Uh-oh.

The self-imposed deadline remains, 12 days from right now. At one chapter a day, we'll see how things progress.

Maybe I need some of that Mountain Dew to get production going. Forget the vicodin, it gives me a stomach ache.

Crap... I might need to speed up slightly. I am pretty sure I will need at least 15 chapters to wrap things up, plus an epilog to say what happened to that dog I introduced 60,000 words ago.

In the meantime, in the real world of hydrofracking, more and more people are taking to the streets to fight. My fictional predictions about a war might be closer to reality than I previously thought.

Back to the next chapter in The Fracking War.

Hydrofracking waste water in a 'pond' - ready for shipping to a river near you