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!

'The Fracking War' making some tactical adjustments

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - After a few fits and starts, I finished rereading the first draft of The Fracking War today, with pages of copious notes to consider as I begin rewriting/editing.

Propane truck explosion

I had put enough time between draft and first reading to read carefully. If you read too close to the original drafting/writing, you miss stuff. A lot of stuff.

I took out the corny material, saw where to add more action/adventure/anger/angst, and now need to set aside a couple of days to add descriptions and a chapter or two in the rewriting process. Maybe more than a couple of days.

Weeks?

Having never fought in a guerrilla war, parts of this book were hard to put together. But as a miscreant teenager responsible for a good share of hell-raising, I am quite familiar with the concept of serious destructiveness.

From the 1984 film 'Red Dawn'

And if that serious destructiveness was in the spirit of saving the world/environment? Well, so much the better.

There will be more news about The Fracking War in the next few weeks.

But, attention Beta readers: Prepare for incoming!!!!!!

'The Fracking War' as it lands in Beta readers' inboxes

A photo assignment taken on the fly, completed the same way

MONTEREY, New York - The email from my editor at the Elmira Star-Gazette came Wednesday night. She needed a simple exterior building shot of a volunteer fire department's digs in a nearby town.

I believe she called it a 'building mug' and needed it Thursday afternoon for a weekend story/feature layout.

Sounded pretty simple, though getting it to her by 5 p.m. or so was going to be a stretch. I was in Rochester, NY at a medical appointment at noon when I committed to getting the photo. Rochester is  several hours north - plus I had several stops to make on the way back home. When you get close to a Trader Joe's in central New York, you stop, no question about it.

Building mug shot

The timing worked out so that I was in front of the firehouse - in a heavy rainstorm - by 5 p.m. And for this assignment, I was carrying the trusty Canon camera that went to Tonga last fall. But I was also carrying my newly acquired iPhone, the camera in which is excellent.

Slick, I thought. I'll shoot and send the photos from right on the spot - no need to roll all the way home.

I took three quick shots on the iPhone, cropped them and sent them. Well, I thought I sent them. If you have an iPhone you are familiar with that clever whooshing sound when a photo heads off through the ether. All three whooshed great.

Except when I went to call the editor to confirm they had arrived, I discovered I didn't have a cell signal down there in the little town of Monterey hollow - whoosh or no whoosh.

Santo Crappo!

Phone takes great photos, in rain or shine

I pulled out the Canon camera and rapped off some backup photos, then roared out of the little town, holding my cell phone in front of me like an actor in a really awful movie being chased by the bad guys. After zooming around a few hairpin-like turns, the cell phone signal popped up near the Watkins Glen race track. By the time I pulled over, the editor had already received the pix and chosen one.

Assignment completed. Editor happy. Photographer to get paid.

Whoosh!

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.