Zero Hour on Geronimo!

October 15, 2019
   The day has arrived and believe it or not, we are in good shape. Thanks to Rebecca Edwards, who redesigned multiple pages of the book where I had something weak, I can now say with some confidence that my vision of what I wanted this book to look like has been achieved.

   Of course much credit goes to Robert Ray and Dan Harshberger (who designed the cover and the page layout) who both spent countless hours assuring everything tracks and looks good, as well.

   Not everything I had planned made it into the book. I wanted to do a sidebar on Apache headgear and we just ran out of time and space.

A Good Example of Apache headgear

   This is why it will say "Book One" on the title page. A little trick, Kathy Radina taught me way back when I did my first book on Billy the Kid (1992). I was fretting and moaning about all the things I couldn't get in the book and she finally said, "Here's how you solve that. Go to the title page and type these two words: Book One." And, I did, and it has served me well ever since. So the Apache headgear sidebar will be in Book Two of "The Illustrated Life & Times of Geronimo."

   John Langellier drove up from Tucson this morning to proof the book and he is in the conference room even as you read this, pouring over the layouts, looking for mistakes and typos and military snafus. Hint: he has found plenty of all the above.

Dr. John Langellier proofs Geronimo

   As previously mentioned, I had about a dozen unfinished boards of scenes I wanted to illustrate for the book and just never had the time to finish. Here they are scattered around my studio looking like the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Daily Whip Outs: "Unfinished Geronimos"

    Some of these had potential but they'll perhaps end up in Book Two of "The Illustrated Life & Times of Geronimo"

"From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art."
—Susan Sontag