April 19, 2007
Woke up this morning with about six changes and corrections to Salt Siege Shoot-out. Got into the office and we went through them. Some were tiny (change town to plaza), others were significant (headline didn't pay off in text!) Going to upload the changes to Tri Star this afternoon. The book went down last night.

Meghan Saar really outdid herself on this book. She caught errors on top of errors, a typo here, a misplaced name there. She saved my bacon on the Credits page when I forgot to thank about a half-dozen Alamo and Custer experts who helped me, including Richard Fox, Kenneth Hammer, Col. W.A. Graham, Richard G. Hardorff, Dan Kilgore, Bill Groneman, Gary Zaboly, Richard Santos, Stephen Hardin and Alan Huffines. Whew! That was a close call.

So I asked Meghan to list the Top Ten Corrections for CGIII and here they are:

1. Changed Lonie from being the culprit when it should have been Thornhill in the Kid Curry fight.

2. Realized the “Adair” gunfight did not match the gunfight that ran in the magazine, and was actually an earlier version. It didn't read quite how I remembered it, and when I looked at what ran in the magazine, my suspicion was confirmed.

2. Made sure Huaca Huanusca (Dead Cow Hill) was spelled the same throughout the Butch & Sundance gunfight (and believe me, it is all over that gunfight!).

5. Caught different dates for the Adair train robbery in different gunfights (Kill Bill and Adair) and making sure they matched.

5. Made sure Dalton gang member Charley Pierce was spelled the same throughout the book in various gunfights.

6. Fixed a date that should have been marked in color, when the one above was instead—thank goodness for color proofs!—as well as fixed Sonoma spelling on background of map (in Tiburcio Vasquez gunfight).

7. Speaking of map changes, here are a few: Fixed Osage from Oasge in map in John Wesley Hardin gunfight; Fixed Magdalena on map in Jeff Milton gunfight; bin(n)oculars, Wo(o)lf Tooth in Custer gunfight maps; Changed ending year on Kid Curry map from 1903 to 1904, as that is when Parachute robbery took place; Salt War maps: had Mortimer being hit from Mauro Lujan’s home instead of Nicholas Kohlaus’ store, among other errors corrected.

8. Counted the heads in a photo for a Wild Bill gunfight and alerted Bob that it could not be similar to the size as the one Hickok confronted because the crowd in the photo numbered more than three times the size of it.

9. In Caldwell gunfight, copy stated four cowboys run to Kalbfleisch’s stable and demands horses at gunpoint, while map stated a half-dozen; matched map to the copy; in same gunfight, a sidebar introduced a group of cowboys as being five suspects, while the list included a sixth person who was actually in jail at the time.

10. Made sure everyone was credited that should have been (at least, as far as who was originally credited in the "Recommended" and in some maps). This included a long list of Alamo and Custer researchers who would've been left out.

MY FAVORITE CATCH:
(And this is why reading final proofs of what is being sent to the printer is SO important!)

Corrections were made to the Butch and Sundance map, but they must have been made on an earlier copy of the map as a November 6 entry about the pair asking for directions to San Vicente had been turned into them asking for directions to Cucho.

When you see this map in the gunfight book, you’ll understand why that slight change could’ve been easily missed. But I read my proofs, even if I’ve read all the articles a million times, because you never know when a file mix-up like this happens!

These are my favorite catches, because sometimes the last thing I want to do is reread the entire magazine (or, in this case, book) that I just finished reading to approve for final proofs. But technology can play tricks on us, and what I approved may not be what was prepared for the printer. So it is definitely worth it!
—Meghan Saar

Onion Headline de Jour
Cell Phone Lost, Found, All In Thrilling Four-Minute Period

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."
—Kurt Vonnegut