October 9, 2003
Worked long and hard on the Classic Gunfights book yesterday. Fought with Meghan over many words. I want to tell a good story and for some reason she wants it to be in readable English. Imagine.

Woke up at four mulling a new page that opened up when we redesigned the introduction yesterday. Here’s the words I’m thinking of adding: “Fast or slow, drunk or sober, ugly or vain, they’re all gone now. Only their stories remain.” I may do a scratchboard today of a looming silhouetted gunfighter over a boothill graveyard. Or not.

Yesterday Robert Ray captured several more frames of video off my camera from the Turkey Creek Canyon shoot. Got good shots of Dave Daiss in the actual spot that Will Carver was shooting from. Put in a five frame sequence to illustrate how hard it must have been to spot him. I think it works quite well. We will run this as a one-pager in the magazine down the road.

Need to do about six or seven illustrations today. My wishlist:
• “I can die as game as you can Captain. Let’s get it done.” Charlie Pitts at Hanska Slough
• “Get in!” Jesse James
• abandoned saddle from Northfield (plus the feedbag, spur and Colt, if I have time)
• Wyatt with his gunbelt down around his thighs shooting a shotgun (sounds almost soft porn)
• the above mentioned floating gunfighter.

Rounding up the artboard (5:30 A.M.). Need to work smart.

“He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.”
—Benjamin Franklin