Just 10 days left to pre-order a copy of 'The Fracking War'

WATKINS GLEN, New York - There's only 10 days left to pre-order a copy of The Fracking War, either in electronic format (Kindle, iPad, Nook or?) or as a signed copy from the first press run.

The book is available through Kickstarter.com at this link:

PRE-ORDER 'The Fracking War'

10 days left to pre-order 'The Fracking War'

The Fracking War e-book version and printed edition will be commercially available through bookstores and online outfits in spring of 2014. But if you want one sooner than that, now is the time to log on and take care of business.

This morning The Fracking War's Kickstarter/pre-order shows 62 backers ranging from $10 to $250. Another backer said she will pledge $250 as soon as she gets her Amazon.com account working properly.

New York anti-hydrfracking Artist Will Sweeney has taken our agreed upon book-jacket concept and is working on  the final mockup and drawing even as I write this. We should get the final cover art Tuesday or Wednesday.

I will post more in a few days about book cover progress and two more anticipated endorsements.

Environmentalist, author Bill McKibben endorses 'The Fracking War'

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - Bill McKibben - an environmentalist, activist and author - Sunday passed along his written endorsement of the novel The Fracking War. 

Bill McKibben

It will be included on the book's cover, along with a photo of Bill. (Most likely a different photo from here...)

"If you've thought the debate over energy policy was a tad dry, this novel might change your mind. God hopes it never comes to this!" -- Bill McKibben, author Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

Bill's book-jacket endorsement comes as the Kickstarter.com campaign offering pre-publication sales of the book has just 14 days left.

In the meantime, New York anti-fracking artist Will Sweeney has promised to present a set of sketches Monday for the front and back cover.

'The Fracking War' moves closer to the bookshelf

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - The Beta readers have spoken. 'The Fracking War' manuscript (with a few tuneups and plot revamps) is ready to go to print.

Well, almost.

After about four more days of final copy editing, the manuscript should go to a professional proofreader for an excruciatingly close read. Then with the help of a graphic artist for page and cover designs - and locating a reliable printing company - the 95,000 (or so) words will go from a draft to, well, a book.

In the course of the last month, Adm. Fox and I explored the various publishing options. We attended a writer-publishers' conference panel in Halifax, Canada comparing traditional book publishing with the brave new world that is called self-publishing. (Actually, it's not that new, and you don't have to be brave.)

While I would love for a carload of traditional publishers to sweep into my driveway waving fat checks demanding the right to publish The Fracking War, I am way too impatient. Plus, I'm not sure they have the right address.

So some form of self-publishing and/or printing is in the offing. And very soon.

The Halifax panel at the Word of The Street conference (WOTS LINK) was very interesting - and convincing. A Canadian writer named Leo McKay stole the show (Leo McKay's website). Had it been a prizefight, he would knocked out the two traditional Canadian book publishers within minutes of the opening bell.

His message was simple: Most authors can get their book published without going the traditional route. The real trick is getting the word out about the book's availability so people pick it up and read it.

Watch for The Fracking War Book & Road Tour later this fall.

The Betas take the field in 'The Fracking War'

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - Eight months and 95,000 words later, The Fracking War (at least Ver. 1.0) is done.

Spiral-bound copies of the manuscript were dispatched today via U.S. mail to two beta readers, one in California, the other in Maine.  The third beta reader is my in-house editor (and wife!) who each week checks over my column for the Finger Lakes Times carefully before I send it in.

All three beta readers have been tasked with the same thing: Please read this as you would any novel and see if it works.

The  idea for writing this book came from reading several very well-done, non-fiction tomes critical of hydrofracking for natural gas. They were full of details, numbers, references to studies. There were references to lots of news reports. Lots of references. Lots of news reports.

In some chapters, the books showed flashes of the emotion and trauma that surrounds this technology - a technology so lovingly embraced by our incumbent U.S. President and fossil-fuel companies who are making a bundle of cash.

And pretty much destroying the environment in the process.

Unfortunately, I don't believe those books have been able to capture the imagination of the public. They report and recite. In The Fracking War, I want to report and ignite - as in ignite passion.

My three beta readers will let me know in the next few weeks if I did that.

If I did. Well, Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of War!

First rereading of Part 1 of 'The Fracking War' is finished

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - I just reread the first segment (of five) of my draft of The Fracking War ("Prelude to War"). It was my first peek at the book since I drafted it last winter in Mexico.

Natural gas explosions, scary in real-life, too

I let it sit a long time so I would forget a lot of it. The time, I thought, would help me determine if it moved along fast enough, the dialog made sense and the plot was plausible.

Well, with some modifications, it looks like yes, yes, and yes.  Woo-hoo!

But it will be up to the Beta readers to determine if my somewhat-biased judgment is anywhere near right.

Where's my hammock?

It took a couple of hours to go through, reading fairly fast. I believe I will go back in the next day or so and edit this first section, making it final (as a draft). I had thought I would read through all five sections and then go back and edit.

But what I saw/read is pretty clear to me right now and doing it this way will make the editing task a little less Herculean.

Maybe.

Regardless, this writer needs a nap right now.

Right now. I'm writing myself a nap in this chapter of my life.

A Boy Scout salute derails my editing start on 'The Fracking War'

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - I had my printed out copy of the draft of The Fracking War sitting on my desk, ready for the red-pencil treatment just a few days ago.

The next phase in this process is for me to read it a closely as a I can, making changes, perhaps adding chapters if needed. Because it's the last time I will edit before it goes out to my beta readers, it's a little nerve-wracking. I want to be sure to iron out any inconsistencies, fix factual missteps and smooth out the roughest edges factually and stylistically.

It's been at least six weeks since I peeked at it. So in some ways, it will be brand new and I should spot things that I would normally have read right past had I done this when I first completed the draft in Sacramento.

My confidence was very high until I dove into a novel I picked up at the Watkins Glen public library, a book that seems to have  been through the traditional publishing mill: editors, fact checkers, fact checkers who check other fact checkers and the editors.

Did I mention the fact checkers?

Then I read these three sentences on page 7 of this novel:

"No long stories. Scout's honor." 

The detective lifted two fingers in a Boy Scout salute.

Santa Crappo! The author wrote that he lifted two fingers.

Boy Scout salute

My time with the scouting organization was limited. A couple of years as a Cub Scout. Maybe three as a Boy Scout.

I still say the longest summer I ever spent was a week at Camp Merz, a Boy Scout camp in Chautauqua County, New York.

But I did learn all that paramilitary protocol forwards and backwards.

Cub Scout salute

For the record, the Boy Scout salute uses three fingers. Cub Scouts use two. Believe me. I saluted my butt off. We had some retired military guys as leaders who loved the saluting.


So you might say, big deal, a minor error.

Yes, a minor error, but just the kind of minor error that should never appear in a well-edited novel. If the writer (and fact checkers and editors and the fact checkers who check the other fact checkers) can't get a detail like a salute correct, how will a reader believe the plot?

They won't. Which I why I will be reading The Fracking War even closer than I had planned.

Oh, by the way, there is some saluting in The Fracking War. But if I remember, it's mostly of the single-digit variety.

The happiest - and saddest - day for the novel writer

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - Until today, I have always had trouble understanding why some novels go on and on and on, long after most readers are ready for, well, The End.

When I started drafting The Fracking War in November, I thought I would never see The End.

But as I am tinkering with the final chapters (and likely an epilog), I can see why a novelist might want to simply keep writing.

All of these characters, scenarios, adventures, love triangles, disasters and triumphs that have been such a huge part of the writer's life for months come to a crashing end.

It reminds me of reading a really good novel. You know the kind, you want to book to just go on and on. The same thing happens to me with movies. Now that I am about to bid adieu to the 20 or so main folks in The Fracking War, it's like sailing away, leaving old friends at the dock.

I took a first run at the final two chapters today, and both need significant tinkering to make them as close to perfect as possible. In other chapters, well, it was clear that any questions or oddities could be simply handled down the line. Need to resolve an issue? Add that to the chapter notes for Thursday.

Now it all has to be tied up - as neatly as anything in real life is tied up. Perhaps it needs to be tied up even more neatly. The fate of  characters can't be left dangling.

The next time one of these blogs is written, I hope to say that the draft of The Fracking War is completed and will be facing an author edit.

If I don't, it's because I just couldn't say goodbye.

The Fracking War's final battles - banda music and finishing Section V

NUEVO VALLARTA, Nayarit, Mexico - The Mexican work crew outside my window is blaring banda music (mixed with occasional techno crap) loud enough that I am considering breaking with all Mexican protocols and telling them to, well, SHUT UP!

An hour ago I finished the last chapter of the fourth of five sections of The Fracking War, which was infinitely satisfying on one level, and a dreaded moment on another.

Satisfying to finish because so far the book holds together just fine. Unsatisfying because now all the various characters, situations, dramas and themes are all crowding together like characters from a Charles Dickens' novel, racing towards the final chapter.

Dickens used to keep careful track of every character and by the end of each of his novels, the fate of that character would be accounted for. Some critics say he once added a chapter just to account for a dog who appeared briefly at the beginning of a book.

I only have one dog in The Fracking War, a female Labrador who I will not forget.

The last section of The Fracking War will get sketched out in the next couple of days here, in the relative quiet of my condo. The actual writing will (Dios lo permite) in Sacramento.

And the next segment takes me to the Bronx. I am not kidding, I just write what the characters tell me.

Oops, back to the drafting/redrafting. The music just stopped and the only sound is the ocean.

Ahhhhhhhhh...

Cross Bronx Expressway

The Fracking War - a Never-Ending Story for researchers

NUEVO VALLARTA, Nayarit, Mexico - Just about the time I get my research ducks all quacking in the same chorus, I run across more research about hydrofracking, more stories about political corruption, and more cases of illness and disease linked to this rather nasty, out-of-control technology.

For many thousands of words, I have consistently said - or more correctly my characters have said - that hydrofracking uses about a million gallons of water per well drilled. Out of that, about half to two-thirds comes back up as wastewater. The wastewater is a nasty cocktail with the toxic chemicals in it that the gas companies put down plus a healthy dose of radiation and other toxic crap from thousands of feet below the earth's surface.

Even more the Morlocks oppose hydrofracking

At least that's what I thought.

It turns out that in fact many of these wells are using a lot more than a million gallons.

In Michigan, a new fracking record was just set with a well using 21 million gallons. That's not a typo - 21 million gallons of water. Doing the math that says from that well alone about 10-15 million gallons of water came back up and needs to be disposed of in a toxic waste area. Or as gas companies have been doing in Ohio and other places, simply dumped back into the ground in deep disposal wells.

Better hope the Morlocks living underground don't mind.

In the meantime, I have to finish this book before it's discovered this technology causes earthquakes.

Oh crap, researchers already concluded that.

The dilemma starts: A happy fracking ending, tragic - or both

ROCKWELL VALLEY, Pennsylvania, USA - Today marks a significant milestone in The Fracking War. The third segment of the book (tentatively called Heroes and Villains) is done (in draft) and so the planning/drafting starts for what I think will be the final piece of this novel/puzzle.

I began feverishly writing the first chapter of the last section an hour ago, then decided I needed to let the just-finished chapters digest some before I move on.

But I can still plan. Oh, can I plan!

Part IV will have mostly the same characters - except for those already killed, taken in custody, disappeared, or kidnapped. And after 60,000-plus words of drama, intrigue, corruption episodes and toxic spills, the last segment will carry a denouement with a decidedly science fiction bent.

Like the rest of the book, the last part is snatched from daily headlines. It won't be a stretch at all to present my theory of what's ahead. Reading the conclusions of most scientists (those not in the pocket of natural gas companies) is probably as frightening as the scenario my characters are assembling in my head as I write this.

The Fracking War novel is winding down. The real war on fracking is ramping up.

A week into the 'The Fracking War', and the war rages

NUEVO VALLARTA, Nayarit, Mexico - A writing project like The Fracking War at first is a lot like starting an exercise program after a long layoff.

The first day feels sooooooo good. But the second day, oh the muscles are sore!

And the third day, you begin to question your sanity as to why the ^&;*$(%^&; you ever decided to do it.

Hydrofracking and clean water

A week into this, with a side trip to our Arroyo Seco property, I am happy to report that I didn't find any sharp knives to do surgery on my wrists on the third day - though it was tempting.

Instead, again on the third day, I realized that I had started writing the story in the middle. And flashbacks are ok, but they are not my style.

As of this writing, there are drafts of six chapters sitting in another file. Seven characters have been created (they created themselves actually) and now I have to keep at the writing five or six days per week and see what they want to do.

Fictional characters rarely want to do what you want them to do.

In the meantime, the whole business of the dangers of hydrofracking for natural gas is in the news so much every day that it is providing me plenty of material to think about.

I mean for the characters to think about...