One column, one chapter, one writing assignment - oh my

NUEVO VALLARTA, Nayarit, Mexico - The draft of The Fracking War continues to be, well, kind of war-like in the writing, though day to day, chapters are piling up but few bodies for a book with the word War in the title.

Slow and steady wins the race and gets the draft of a novel done.

Writing slow, but steady

Today's lifeless body - only the second person killed in 20+ chapters - is that of a high school chemistry teacher shot in an incident with a Bushmaster rifle brought into her high school classroom.

Isn't it amazing how real life and fiction mirror one another?

That chapter and section was written after I had already written a column for the Finger Lakes Times about the Newton, Conn. shootings. I realized (after a trip to the beach to think) that the characters in my book are dealing with all the same issues inside the book as I am outside of the book. Sometimes I think they are outside and I am inside. Or something like that.

Make any sense?

In the meantime, another piece of good writing news arrived this week -  an assignment from an international magazine to write a piece about life in Mexico. It's supposed to chronicle my experience here. This could be interesting.

Back to the school shooting in The Fracking War. A police helicopter just arrived and I don't want to miss the action.