The Fracking War draft Ver. 1.0 is officially completed - wine please!

SACRAMENTO, Calif. USA - The first draft of The Fracking War is officially completed as of 5:31 p.m. Pacific Time. I tuned up the last two chapters this afternoon and had a character give a rousing speech that brought tears to eyes of the people in his audience.

I will break the tape with a wine glass

In the other chapter I had to tie up a loose end with a particularly gruesome scene.  I had to do it. The characters insisted.

We'll see what the beta readers think about that.

All I can think at the moment is Jesus H. Christ it was haul to get to this point!

In November when I started writing, the 100,000 or so words looked as formidable as a hike across the entire nation of Canada - in midwinter. Then sometime around Christmas I could see the words and scenes piling up, a story taking shape. Progress!

A few characters fell by the wayside as the months went by. There were plenty of incidents of problems with hydrofracking and the corruption of public officials finding their way onto my pages in the chapters. My characters were - I suppose I should say are - busy every second.

All along I was nourished by daily headlines and near continuous Facebook postings from various amigos about things going on with hydrofracking.

The real world of hydrofracking is a damned scary place.

Whose body is in the swamp?

The draft completed today will have one more piece added - an epilog.

I started to write the epilog two days ago, then realized that it would be better to write it after I do my first edit on the book. There are things from early on that will likely deserve mention.

There was a body found in the swamp I think that needs identification.

And the guy who drank the fracking fluid from the plastic water bottle? Not sure if I need to explain more about his ongoing woes from have a highly flammable ethylene-filled bladder.

And you thought it was a great trick in the film Gasland when the guy lights the water from his tap on fire.

That was nothing.

Josh Fox from Gasland ignites the gas in the tap water