A printing error or?

I started reading "Gunman's Chance" and wouldn't you know on page 10 was an editorial mistake that had me confused for a couple of minutes. It seems the hero left camp and left his pack horse behind, but on the next page, the pack horse was with him. I know being an editor can be a boring job, but he should have caught this one. The way it is written makes sense, since the word used was spelled correctly, but it was just the wrong word and should have been caught. The word is "leaving" and it should have read "leading." To me, it appears they were in a hurry to get the book published, but I don't know why since this was printing #6. So far, that is the only error found, not that I study everything for mistakes. I don't, I make plenty of them myself and that's why editors are important. I type fast, maybe 80 wpm, and not always correctly. I use there for their or vice versa, cause I'm in a hurry, for example. But, hopefully, we'll catch these spelling errors and any formatting mistakes up0n re-reading and editing.

As far as Bantam goes, I've read a number of them and don't recall any mistakes. It was just a bad day for the editor, I guess.

I remember reading a book by one of the "Wrights", a popular writer of the 1910's or later or earlier, but there were so many mistakes in the book, I never could get beyond the first few pages, and this was in a book at the library. I guess editors were scarce in those days or they didn't much care. And there were a lot of books published where the mis-spelling was deliberate and I could understand why they did it, and I understand the need for editing, too.

Today marks the fifth month I've been waiting for the rejection of "The Upamona Gold Claim Wrangle." Maybe they think I'll forget about it or they just have a slow process, but I think I could decide if a book was worthy of publishing in a month or two. Maybe I should have sent it to someone else, and then again, as long as I don't hear, there is still the chance of getting it in print.

Another thoughtless thought

I've been going through the unread novels that I purchased a while back to decide which one I wanted to start reading. I finally settled on "Gunman's Chance," by Luke Short. This edition is a well-used book published by Bantam in June 1976. Thumbing through it showed that no one had written anything in the margins or on the empty pages and spaces, except for one note on the final page. It was printed in blue ink with two underlines and read "END" without the quotation marks. I figure that whoever did that was really glad it was finally finished, or just wanted everyone to know that there was no more, since the manuscript didn't say it ended, like THE END or something. He may have had a hang up about books ending and not telling you it was the end, and he wanted to make sure everyone would know it. Not having read the ending first, as I hear some people do, I can't tell you if there was supposed to be more to it, but this person certainly understood it was over, kaput, done with by writing End at the End. Finito, and there just weren't anymore pages to it. I wonder if the person was a writer, and just wanted to finish it off, or maybe he was dissatisfied with the ending and wanted more. I hope I don't wake up in the middle of the night, half-way through the book, thinking I should be finished because I keep seeing End on every page.

Cowboy joke/Finished again

Well, it's time for an Old Cowboy joke. Thanks to Linda, although I don't know her, but this e-mail was forwarded through the straits of of the air to my in-box and is repeated here:

You have lived to be 71 and know who you are, then along comes someone and blows it all to Hell.

An old cowboy sat down at the local lunch counter and ordered a cup of coffee. As he was sippng his coffee, a young woman sat down next to him. She turned to the cowboy and asked, "Are you a real cowboy?"

He replied, "Well, I've spent my whole life breaking colts, working cows, going to rodeos, fixing fences, pulling calves, bailing hay, doctoring calves, cleaning my barn, fixing flats, working on tractors, and feeding my dogs, so I guess I am a cowboy."

She said, "I'm a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I thing about women. When I shower, I think about women. When I watch TV, I think about women when I eat. It seems that everything makes me think of women."

The two sat sipping in silence.

A little while later, a man came in and sat down on the other side of the old cowboy. He, too, asked, "Are you a real cowboy?"

To which the cowboy replied, "Well, I always thought I was, but I just found out that I'm a lesbian."

You are probably sick of hearing me gab on about the book I'm working on. Can't blame you a bit, but there won't be too much more of it. I've finished "Blood Runs in the Gulch" again and will now finish editing, proofing, correcting it for the great publisher in the sky.

But, what else do I have to write about? Not much, if I stay away from politics, religion, philosophy er whatever, the movies, the news, the books I've read or am reading, and just what the heck is left? Oh, yes, there's Fathers' Day, Mother's Day, Groundhog Day, Fourth of July Day, and Labor Day.

HAPPY FATHERS' DAY TO ALL THE FATHERS, AND THOSE WHO MIGHT BECOME ONE!!!

Illegals/"True West" Articles

I was going through my e-mail yesterday, all of five or six, and ran across one on money. Specifically, how much money is spent to support illegal aliens in a year's time. If the Feds and State want to save money, they should start cutting here. The total for one year was a whopping $338 billion, which is totally outrageous! Everything from schooling, supplies, books, etc., to food, and they don't even make them learn English! And in this morning's Salt Lake Tribune is a nice long article on census taking. They want to get them all counted so they can raise everyone's taxes to pay for more support for the illegal aliens. I say, deport them. It wouldn't cost $338 billion a year to close the borders and send them back. If they want to come to the U.S., MAKE THEM DO IT LEGALLY!!

I received my second issue of "True West Magazine" this week. I'm not too interested in the articles this month, but, if you have kids, or grandkids, or even worse, great-grandkids, there is a fine article on places to take them this summer or whenever. And there is one telling of the best burger eating places of the west. A couple of the places sound like they're a heart attack waiting to happen, the burgers are so big and tasty, but I'm sure they would satisfy about anybody's taste. There is a detailed gunfight by Bob Boze Bell that IS interesting, one of a series of Classic Gunfights that he writes about for the mag. I like the advertising in the magazine, also. It's a great place to look to find something to do, read, stay, or whatever.

I started recomposing, no, that's too elaborate a word, to use for what I've been doing to "Blood Runs in the Gulch". I've been rewriting some of the plot to make it more realistic, at least I think it's a little better. It won't take long to re-do it, all I have to do is get at it, and that's just a matter of finding the time and desire to get it done, but some other things keep squeezing me out of actually sitting down and finishing it. But, I will finish it, other stuff be-damned!

Boone's Lick Finished/Still having trouble with pills

I finished reading "Boone's Lick," by McMurtry. Like I said, I'm a slow reader, but eventually get it done. The novel was hilarious for the most part, even though it covered the Fetterman disaster, wherein the whole Army outfit got wiped out by the Sioux. It wasn't as quite as bad as the Custer fiasco, since there weren't as many soldiers killed, but it was a disaster, nevertheless. It was a good and easy read.

I haven't quite got my drugs straightened out yet. I'm still having difficulty with dizziness and lack of enthusiasm, though my stomach seems to be getting a little over it's rejection of food. Food just doesn't appeal to me. I get hungry enough to eat the south end of a north bound bear, but when it comes to actual eating, I have to force it down. So far nothing has decided to come back up, and I feel a little better, but it's getting to be a tough job, this eating every so often. And this from someone who used to eat the 20 oz. porterhouse and about anything else that was put in front of me. A big steak, baked potato and salad was a fine meal. Very seldom had fish of any kind and don't eat much of it now, albeit it makes up more of my diet than ever before, which isn't saying much. I still don't care for it. Of course, I used to wash all this down with alcohol of some type. I only drank water when there wasn't anything else to drink. It'll rust your pipes, used to be the saying. All this drinking and eating used to take place when the ship hit the shore.

Between times, it was a pretty dry life. But don't let me mislead you, I've served on seven or eight different ships, but I had about two or three times over the land duty, maybe even four times, so there was plenty of time to pollute the pipes otherwise. And if I had the chance to do things over, I wouldn't change one whit of it, well maybe just one little whit. I would've kept my weight down!

These medicines I have been taking have been at the direction of a medical doctor, and I'm sure they were prescribed or recommended in my best interests. But sometimes they just don't work like they're supposed to, exhibiting not only one of the side effects, but when all are taken, they may produce more than one effect, especially if they happen to have the same side effects as all the others. Egad! Complain! Complain! Complain! or Laugh! Laugh! Laugh! Whichever strikes your fancy! Personally, I choose to laugh, but all that comes out are complaints!

Red on Fridays/A Thought about Writing

I am posting this one on Friday, since my ranting and raving is about Red Shirt Fridays.

There's a thing going around by e-mail that requests everyone wear a red shirt on Friday to honor our troops or show support for the troops. At first, I thought it was a pretty good idea, but I began to wonder.....oh, yes.....I wonder a lot, too much at times. Red, to me, has always been the color of Communists, Red this and Red that, and I wondered, Who started this trend? And why Red? Are they just taking a survey of who reads, and follows blindly, an e-mail, in some obscure counting game? Or, do they really want to show support for the troops? Was it some Democrat, who also use the color Red, e.g., Red States, or just what the Hell is going on? Maybe people with a guilty conscious not having done anything to show support, now put your Red Shirt on every Friday and it will make your conscious clear. A part-time supporter!

Well, now that I've got that off my chest, let's move on to something else. I need to rewrite some of the narrative in "Blood Runs in the Gulch." The more I think about it, the more I can see where the plot is too contrived, so it must be reworked, and I think it can be redone without too much disruption in the basic storyline. I'll just have to work something else in that will take more words, maybe, than the present configuration, but there is plenty of leeway, and since its my story, I can put it in any context that I would like. At least, that's one consolation of rewriting your own material. If it was someone else's, more care would have to be taken.


I have to hand it to the ghost-writers, they write stuff to meet someone else's approval, and if the someone doesn't like it, back to the drawing boards. It takes a lot of "putsbah" or incentive to be a ghost-writer, something that I don't have, and a great imagination. Reporting is a little bit like that, and I have had a little experience, not much, at reporting, but have never had enough confidence to turn it into a career. In fact, I've pretty much written things for other's approval for many years, required to, in fact, but had never thought of applying it to some sort of career practice. Writing Westerns seems to be a natural thing, and if they don't meet someone's approval, it's back to the drawing boards. And I've been making plenty of trips back there the last few years!

The state of the physical body

These last few days, I've been a bit under the weather. It seems the pills I've been taking have side effects of some sort, and it appears that they all hit at once. I stopped taking a prescription pill and one symptom cleared up, but I still was not feeling exactly right. I stopped another pill, something the doc recommended I take, and that side effect has cleared up a bit, but I still wasn't feeling like I'm supposed to, so I stopped another doc recommended over the counter pill, the Red Yeast Rice thing. And most things have cleared up, except the dizziness. I expect it will clear up in a day or two as the drug wears off.


Of course, I've told my doc about the prescription pill, and he went along with it, at least until I have further symptoms show up, but I haven't informed him of the other two yet. I'll do that next week when things get back to normal. I never in the world would have thought there was so many side effects to over the counter, health food type, medicines, but I will be more vigilant in the future. You can't trust any of them, even the vitamins and multivitamins. They sound great before you take them, but as they say, buyer beware! I think they are all designed for a normal human body, and if you have a defect so to speak, they work with side effects. At least that's my theory, having a bodily defect as the medicine man tells me. It used to be normal, but aging, among other things, changes the body, or at least, something sure changed mine, diabetes is the culprit. And it all could have been avoided, if I had seen the writing on the wall and took it seriously back then. But, I don't have any regrets. That's just the way it turned out, so the HELL WITH IT! I got other things to worry about. I'll just try not to make it worse.

Finished for now

Well, well, just finished "Blood Runs in the Gulch." as it's presently called, and although I'm not completely statisfied with it, I have run off a copy for editing, etc., and will commence revising those sections deemed revisable. The darn thing wasn't quite as long as I thought it should have been, but maybe that's good, not having to cut out so much. I could tell you what happens in the end, but I'll hold that for now. This one was mostly done in about four months, a new record for me, while waiting for the rejection from the publisher of the other one. And I'm still waiting. Maybe the longer they take, the better the chances of publication, I keep telling myself.

My editor, my wife, has finished with this draft before this is posted, and she thought, "It's the best one yet." It will take awhile to make all the corrections she found, but it pleased me greatly to hear that. Maybe there is hope after all!

I've been thinking about the e-publishers, maybe I'll have better luck with them, or starting my own site. I saw where the e-books have overtaken traditional publishers during the last year. It's becoming more widespread all the time. More people like to read on the net than hold a book in their grimy hands. Too much trouble to open a book and keep a bookmark inside it to mark your place, when you can get a machine loaded with everything you ever wanted to read for a nominal fee. It soon becomes cheaper and more convenient, and you don't need a bunch of shelves to store the ones you want to keep, they're still there on your reading machine or audio whatamacallit.