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...

Getting back on the horse, after riding on sailboats

NUEVO VALLARTA, Nayarit, Mexico - After a busy writing and journalistic summer in upstate New York, followed by a whirlwind reporting assignment in Vava'u, the Kingdom of Tonga (covering the Regatta Vava'u sailing extravaganza), it has taken me until today to finally establish a writing schedule.

Sign for Regatta at Tropical Tease shirt shop in Vava'u

After returning from Vava'u, I spun my wheels for weeks with traditional queries to magazines and major newspapers, meeting limited success at landing articles. Limited might be too generous a description.

But as the great travel writer Rolf Potts told me, what's most important is having the material in hand. In this case that means my notebooks full of impressions and quotes, roughly 5,000 excellent photos and enough video to keep a Steven Spielberg editing for a whole winter.

The Tonga/Vava'u stories are going to be a welcome contrast to write when compared to the book I have promised myself to complete before summer. The working title is The Fracking War and while it will be a work of fiction, it will be based on the well-documented horrors surrounding hydrofracking for natural gas. Several excellent non-fiction tomes have been written by journalists, even using some clever literary journalism techniques.

Taking notes the first day in Vava'u

But none of these has hit the level of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which is what is needed to grab the public's attention to a cataclysmic environmental disaster in place and growing daily.

I'm shooting for the hyrofracking version of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

This piece is appearing today because outside forces were conspiring to keep me from doing any writing. And I was a co-conspirator. Why write when you can boogie board, swim in the pool, walk on the beach or simply turn on the blender and mix up a concoction that requires salt on the rim of the serving glass.

Doing serious writing here in Nuevo Vallarta in my seaside (and poolside) condo might prove as difficult as studying for the Catholic priesthood in a strip bar.

Still, I have earplugs, a soon-to-be completed office area and if I stick to my schedule, it should work.

Vamos a ver (we will see). I will post progress reports here weekly.

Home from the big trip, let the writing and editing begin

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - I am on the last leg of my month-long voyage from the Finger Lakes to California to the Kingdom of Tonga (and back), landing tomorrow morning in beautiful Elmira, New York.

To steal a phrase, "What a long strange trip I have been on."

All of that now has to be translated into stories, publishable photos and videos. In other words, the real work begins now.

The cornerstone assignments were for Cruising World magazine and also a Zumba publication. But we have quite literally more than a dozen secondary markets already in the pipeline, as well as many others yet-to-be contacted.

We ran across so many different possible stories while in Vava'u, Tongatapu and Fiji, I filled two notebooks with story ideas and notes. Adm. Fox shot thousands of photos to illustrate the stories. And video? I think I have about five hours of raw footage - maybe six.



One story might be about the fellow in this photo, a chap named Billy who has a tiny - and I mean tiny - theater right on the main drag. He packs in - and I mean packs in - an audience several nights a week, working with an actor named Augustine.

I have video interviews with both Billy and Augustine that might make for an interesting mini-movie all by itself.

After reading several short travelogue style books, I'll bet a 50-100 page memoir book might be within my reach (and grasp, I hope), time permitting, of course.

The organizers of Regatta Vava'u want exposure for their corner of paradise so more tourists will visit next season - May through September.

I'll do my best.

But I should probably go visit next year to see how it all turned out.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The fun stories, the good news stories are needed, too

DUNDEE, New York - For most of the summer, I have been chasing stories for the Elmira Star-Gazette, the Ithaca Journal and Mountain Home magazine (out of Pennsylvania). All have been fun stories and/or stories where I knew what I was writing/photographing/publishing would be well appreciated.

Over the past weekend, I went to the Finger Lakes Wine Festival where I managed to find some friends pouring wine for their amigos (who own a winery) and voila! I was able to publish a photo of them, which promos their friends' winery quite nicely.

Plus, of course, they liked seeing themselves in the newspaper.

LINK: Monday's Wine Festival article in Star-Gazette
Then Tuesday morning there was a feature I had written about a local guy who is raising alpacas.

His hobby turned into a business that now has his entire family hard at it with a entire production of making yarn and products for sale.

He's living the dream which I chronicled and also gave a helluva boost to his business.

Right after it was published, I received several emails from people asking me for good directions to the ranch and little store. Multiply that times the circulations of the two newspapers and the family is in for a windfall.

It deserves it.

LINK: A passion for alpacas...

The experience this summer has taken me in a time machine back to when I started in the news business, writing hard-hitting, expose-type stories mixed in with features just like these. Looking back, the softer pieces may have made a bigger dent in the cosmos than any 'gotcha' story I ever wrote.

It's fun to make people happy.

I once took a photo and wrote a story about a local boy scout leader whose son had attained Eagle Scout - no small feat when your dad is the big kahuna of the troop. I can still see them standing there, posing for the photo. And the next day, when the photo and story were published, the dad came in and bought 50 copies of the newspaper.

One proud papa.

Professional journalists will often scoff at such stories, but know in their hearts that they count for a lot.

Nice to be reminded of it after all these years.

Always get the names, always get the names, always get the names...

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - Forty pix into the Seneca Lake Wine and Food event this afternoon and I was sure I had at least a half-dozen good shots to accompany my story for the Elmira Star-Gazette newspaper.

And I was careful to get names and sufficient information to write captions.

I thought, I thought.

Wine in four packs

After writing the story (382 words), I dispatched eight photos to the editors. And in one photo, there was a young woman pouring wine who was clearly identifiable. But I hadn't gotten her name because I was at a booth where I thought I knew everybody.

I thought, I thought.

The rule of thumb in the journalism business is simple: If someone is identifiable, well, identify them damn it!

And so I after I sent over the photos - sans her name - I waited to see which of the eight shots the editors might pick. No sense going crazy to find the name unless I needed to.

Music at the event was great

You already know how it worked out..

That photo was THE photo they wanted to use - time to go crazy.

And so the Admiral and I went catapulting back to the event at the local park a mile away, only to find that the wine tasting was all closed up for the day.

Santo Crappo.

Using a very old-fashioned method - the telephone - I tracked her name down and so tomorrow's Elmira Star-Gazette will have Alexandra Doniger of the Hector Wine Company proudly displayed, along with one of her bosses, Justin Boyette.

Story over, lesson learned.

Again.