Fracking Justice inches closer to being published with Version 3.0

WATKINS GLEN, New York - The ever-friendly women at Staples in Big Flats saw me walking up to the counter today offering me a nice greeting and also asking - as they have for several months -"How is the book coming?'

They found out quickly after they asked because they printed out three proof copies.

Today they printed Fracking Justice Version 3.0, the most up-to-date version already reviewed by five beta readers, rewritten, edited and tuned up by me. Then last week Admiral Fox gave it an editor's read-through with more rewriting, editing and a tuneup.

What was printed and bound this afternoon is precipitously close to what go to the publisher sometime in the next few weeks (or a month).

Adm. Fox found several areas where I needed to do more explaining, some where I blabbed on too much, and others where there were timeline concerns. Collectively, I was able to take care of her issues in about a half-hour.

It would be nice if the rest of this process goes as smoothly!

One of these latest copies of Fracking Justice is going to be shipped off to an artist in Canandaigua who has expressed interest in designing the book jacket. If we come to an agreement, you'll read all about her here and what we have planned.

In the meantime, I have one more read through for me of what was printed, followed by some spacing corrections where the tracking of changes made it difficult not to add space or have wordssmushedagainsteachother.

And once all that is done, Fracking Justice heads to the final copy editor/proofreader who was also a beta reader.

I'll be glad to see it finally in print and on bookshelves. I shouldn't be so impatient. It was only last January that I started Chapter 1. Now it's five sections, maybe 100 chapters and about 85,000 words.

Fracking Justice draft is done! Long live Fracking Justice

WATKINS GLEN, New York - The final touches to the final draft of Fracking Justice were put on 10 minutes ago.

The suggestions of the five Beta readers are incorporated, literary stumbling blocks removed (or moved) and the new epilog written.

Thank God!

The draft now goes to Adm. Fox for her editing, followed by a close proofreading. And then it's off to the publisher.

As some point - maybe in the preface or the acknowledgements section of the book - I will have some specific things to say about how much the Beta readers helped make the book stronger. But it was a good process that helped me immeasurably. And, perhaps surprisingly, they mostly agreed on a couple of key points and changes.

While Fracking Justice winds its way through the editing, proofing and publishing process I hope  to start the draft of a novel that has been burning a hole in my writing pocket since I first thought about it in the spring.

The details of it will have to wait, because now it's time to celebrate.

'Fracking Justice' - and those other novels I want to write

WATKINS GLEN, New York - Next week the last rewrites, edits and plot shifts will be made on the final draft of Fracking Justice before it goes to my editor for a serious look-see.

But even as that process finishes up, I can't take my eyes off the list of novels I want to write, all of which are swirling around in my brain simultaneously.

I once read a magazine article about a prolific science fiction writer who used three typewriters, writing three novels simultaneously, moving from machine to machine every so often.

He said it was somewhat like what we would call channel surfing today. Except that he had three distinct stories in play, all of which seemed to me to hold together quite nicely.

Unfortunately I believe I am way too linear to do that. Though I understand how tempting shifting like that might be. Each novel might help inspire a story line in one of the sibling novels on the other machines.

And I do have three working computers. Hmm...

So what are these under-consideration novels? Here are four working titles: 18 Hours to Madrid, Fracking Evil, The Talking Mime and Some Enchanted Evening.

Some Enchanted Evening was started nearly 15 years ago with the first of three segments completed before university life intervened and I couldn't focus on it anymore. The first 12 chapters of The Talking Mime were published - online - five summers ago but halted when a fatal flaw showed up in the plot that I just didn't have time to fix. The readers who read the early chapters of that serialized book are still waiting for the family on a sailboat to solve a perplexing mystery off the Central California coast. The novel 18 Hours to Madrid is a fresh work, in outline form. And no, it is not a Tom Clancy-like adventure novel.

Fracking Evil will be the third (and most likely final) book in the series that started with this year's The Fracking War. Its premise is so dark, I get shivers every time I start doing research. Looking straight into the face of evil is dangerous business, even for a novelist.

Fracking Evil - one cover art concept

Learning To Walk In The Dark - an enlightening book to read

Taylor

WATKINS GLEN, New York - Barbara Brown Taylor's Learning To Walk In The Dark is much more an exploration of the human soul - and faith - than the clever title might imply.

But, really, there's plenty of walking in the dark, too - even a short bit on moon gardens.

One of Taylor's main point is about how we are taught to fear the dark - and anything that is dark - from childhood.

As I was reading the book over the past few days, I kept remembering that scene from the movie Poltergeist and the eerie voice of the medium saying, "Go into the light!"

That iconic phrase has become so much a part of our cultural lexicon, that you can almost guarantee that some wag will offer it anytime someone is having a tough time walking at night, stumbling because there isn't enough light to see.

Taylor is an accomplished writer and one-time Episcopal priest. She asks enough questions of the reader that the book sometimes causes you to pull up short.

You have to think about what she's has just said and test it against your own beliefs before moving on. In the newspaper business, we used to call that kind of writing a thumbsucker.

I read a review of the book the New York Times Review of Books, a testimony of the power of that publication to push people to read particular volumes. That said, I picked up the copy I just read at the Watkins Glen Public Library where it will return to the new-book shelves next week.

Don't choose Learning To Walk In The Dark as a summer-reading, lightweight book. But if you want to peek into the darkness - which is not frightening at all, she convinced me - take your time working through it.