June 30, 2009
It's no secret: I can be scattered. Kathy mentioned to me the other day, like most women, she is a "gatherer," to which I responded, "Yes, and I'm a scatterer."

She has been ribbing me about this ever since.

Anyway, the Mickey Free project has been starting, stalling, starting, peedering out and proceeding, then stopping for bug bite medical issues (both mine and the Top Secret Writer, who was almost fatally bitten, last Fourth of July, in Tombstone of all places), and then starting again, mostly in stumbles and lurches for quite a while now. The project went into a lull after we published the Mickey Free excerpt last December in True West. And, although we were honored with a second place finish in the Best Western Short Fiction Story presented at last week's Western Writers of America Awards Competition, for our efforts, we have much bigger plans for the Mickster.

So, when our production manager, Robert Ray, went to a seminar last week, the guy who was running it handed out these mini-graphic novels about his presentation. Robert asked him how he produced it and when Robert came back to work, he started in to create an 8-Page-Mickey. He printed out a gaggle of them and I have been mailing them out. This, in turn has re-energized me and, today, as it pertains to Mickey Free, I am honking for the passing lane, Baby!

Last night I laid in seven washes:

Today, when I went home for lunch, I started developing these frames, looking for clues and mini-highlights to enchance:

This is what came out of those efforts: Mickey rode across a desolate, burning landscape with his Sharps rifle across the pommel, every second anticipating the worst. Mick's big mule, Tu, cocked his long ears in the wind, nervous and jumpy as well. Weird, distorted images materialized in the dust, as grotesque faces rushed by in the howl of the wind. . .

Had a very good fire set piece going but killed the cloud of smoke with too many layers:

Gee, I wonder: is there any quote that might sum up these efforts and, that of Custer's as well?

"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."
—John Kenneth Galbraith