Zanski: Blog

I have today finished the second book in my next western trilogy, the Seneca Series. Working titles for the first two books are War Party and Bootleg Justice, 121K words and 135K words, respectively. I still consider both in draft form, though mostly in need of fine tuning more than revisions.

In any event, I have already begun the final book which currently enjoys the working title Book Three.

Still hacking away, every darn day. I'm 83k words into the second book of a three-book series. I figure to wrap it up between 100k and 120k words.

I'll provide a sketch of the premise, but with a caveat: I could change it. My Arenoso Trails series, for instance, started as a sailing epic during the Napoleonic Wars, so I'm never quite sure how things will turn out.

Anyway, at the moment I'm calling it the Seneca series. The protagonist, Judah Becker, with one-quarter Onodowa'ga (Seneca) heritage, turns eighteen in January of 1864 and, inspired by reading Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, joins a regiment of Ohio volunteers.

Flash forward to 1883 when he's working as a Deputy U.S. Marshal in the Territory of New Mexico, pursuing a fugitive across the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. And he enjoys fly fishing. Go figure.

I connected to the World Wide Web for the first time in 1997. Up to that time, I had been in situations that only had access to local nets, though some were state-wide, such as the state governemnt network in Oregon in the late '80s. Or the local Realtors net in Florida in the mid '80s. Or a state university net in Colorado in the early '90s.

But in '97, we built a home on five acres northwest of Del Norte, Colorado. We had to pay for a phone line to be brought two miles: over three thousand dollars. And it was as basic as phone lines could be. After hooking up, our modem would work at about 14 kps.

Oh, it was s - l - o - w.

No, it was r - - e - - a - - l - - l - - y - - - s - - l - - o - - w.

And we had to have a well drilled: 220 feet deep at ten bucks a foot. But, surprisingly the well had an artesian flow, about five gallons a minute.

Some weeks later, I noticed that sometimes the well flowed faster and sometimes it flowed slower, by as much as two gallons a minute, and I wondered why that would be. There were no wells upslope of us because our land bordered National Forest. It was just us and Twin Mountain.

So I did my first ever internet search on the World Wide Web: "Why does the flow rate from my artesian well vary from day to day?"

Among other listings was one for the U.S. Geological Survey - the horse's mouth, as far as I was concerned. But I could not find anything specific to my question. What I did find, however, was a link button captioned, "Ask a geologist." I clicked the link and an email format came up!

I was gobsmacked, utterly and completely. Here I was, two miles from the end of the last twisted pair The Phone Company had been able to tap, surrounded by a couple miles of nothing but mountainside nature, and I was going to be able to question a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey about my artesian well. In-effing-credible. I'm still thrilled by the idea of it, how that one link revealed to me the unbelievable potential of the internet.

So I sent my question and, within a couple hours, I received a reply from a PhD-level geologist: he didn't know. Turns out the Geological Survey, as its name implies, has to do with the solid parts of the earth, not the watery parts. Go figure.

Even so, he had some educated guesses, prominent among which was earth tides. Yup, the same lunar and solar influences that cause the tides in the oceans also bring those forces to bear on the solid parts of the earth. It's measurable, but only at the micro-noodle scale or something -- I forget. Still, it was another surprising thing that I learned that day.

Surprise number three came when I asked the geologist where I might search for a more specific answer to my query. Believe it or don't, he suggested NASA. Yep, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. If I hadn't already said "Go figure," I'd be saying it now.

And he was right. NASA suggested a number of possible causes, all of them fairly esoteric and not one of which took up permanent residence in my memory cells. Then some yahoo moved in a quarter mile below us, had a well drilled, and our artesian flow stopped and his began. It's always somehin'.

But today I use those near-limitless resources to research topics for my stories:

- Google query: When was sunset at Alamosa, Colorado on September 14, 1883? (6:13 pm)

- Google Ngram: When was the first use of the term "wanted poster?" (1938)

- WordHippo: What's another word for profoundly? (completely)

Google query: US Army uniform hats in 1866? (forage cap)

- Wikipedia search: D&RG (Denver and Rio Grande Railroad built by General William Jackson Palmer in the 1880s, largest narrow gauge system in the country)

- Google query: in what phase was the moon on September 14, 1883? (waxing gibbous)

And all without my fat behind having to move from my recliner. Go fig-- I mean, who'd a thunk it.

I have asked a couple editors to review my posted stories for typos and other errors, as there seem to be a surprising number of them. It boggles the mind.

There have also been a few correspondents who have been kind enough to write -- again and again -- to point out my errors. As if my self-esteem wasn't in the toilet to begin with.

But I am making corrections to my working files as the notes come in. Truly egregious errors, like switching character names, I try to fix right away with an update submission. Obvious typos and other annoying but non-critical errors I accumulate pending a sufficient quantity to add a re-post to Lazeeze's work queue. I had been reposting individual chapters myself, until I learned that much of the formatting was lost by that method.

And I'm back to writing what I may call the Seneca Series. It begins in the last year of the Civil War with an eighteen-year-old farm boy from Defiance, Ohio. He's one quarter Onödowáʼga -- Seneca, a tribe of the fabled Iroquois Confederacy. But even that quarter portion of native ancestry has a profound effect of his experiences in The War. And after. But those stories are at least a year off -- lord willin' an' the cricks don't razz.

I just finished reading the final chapter of Coldwater Keys as posted on SOL. I put more time and effort into proofing that story than I have any of the others. Yet even the final chapter, which I went over an additional time, remains rife with typos, duplicate words, correctly-spelled odd-word typos, and similar niggling errors. I am aware that proofing is a tough job and especially difficult for the author because he or she has a tendency to read what's supposed to be there rather than what is there. But, come on, that last chapter is lousy with dropped jots and duplicate tittles, and I fancy myself a fuss-budget.

Maybe it's time for the cataract surgery.

Even so, I have to wonder why these errors seem to stand out on the SOL page when I missed them on my work page. Until I figure it out, please accept my apologies for the rough road I've left behind.

UPDATE: I've posted an editor request in the Authors/Editors section.

For those of technical curiosity, my LibreOffice Writer work page settings are: Calibri regular, 12 pt, 1.5 lines, view zoomed to 180%, have tried both b/w and w/b, but I find the red squiggly error underlines are easier to spot against a white background. My SOL reading page is Verdana, black on light gray. I used to work in Verdana, but I like Calibri a bit more. However, I intend to switch to match my SOL settings on my current LO-Writer working document.