A big shift to Substack for most writing

CAMP SWAMPY, OREGON - There isn't really a place called Camp Swampy, at least not here in Scappoose, Oregon, where I call home aboard my floating home across the river from Sauvie Island, northwest of Portland proper.

I nicknamed it that one dreary winter day three years ago when the rain never ceased and the everything was soaked - including me and my dog Biscuit. The name comes from the Beetle Bailey comic strip, where the army camp that Beetle and his fellow soldiers are stationed along with their commanding officer, General Halftrack.

Sometime amid moving around from Oregon and visiting the deserts in Southern California, the SF Bay Area and the California and Oregon coasts, I started posting a lot of my writing on Substack with a site titled Write On and On. That's a play on my newspaper column published weekly in the Finger Lakes Times in Geneva, NY titled Write On.

The FLT Write On continues to, well, write on and is published every Friday. But I have been tinkering with Substack, posting 123 times by last count. I jumped on using this online posting vehicle in part because I want use it to publish my fiction. My one foray into that was a success. I published The Devil's Pipeline, a novel that I published in paperback several years ago. It received plenty of hits from readers. 

My next big Substack project is to publish an in-process novel in serial form, a la what Charles Dickens did in the 19th century. Most of his famous works appeared in newspapers, a few chapter at a time.

In process? It means I will be writing much of it live, even the day before (or day of) when chapters appear. Gulp? Yes, it's risky business. But as long as I don't write myself into corner, it should be fine.

More on all that later in another posting. And if you don't see it here, take a peek over on Substack.

Back writing a renamed 'Sons of Covid' novel

RIVERS BEND MARINA, Oregon - A lot of water has washed past my riverside home since I last posted here.

The two biggest bits of news to report are that Sons of Covid will now be Captain Jack & the Sons of Covid. Plus, this latest novel in the Jack Stafford series will be published via Substack.com at my 'stack': Write On and On. A printed version is in the works to be published once the novel has been released electronically.

THE NOVEL WILL BE PUBLISHED in serial fashion - a series of chapters at a time - similar to what Charles Dickens did in the 1800s, publishing his works via newspapers. Nothing like deadlines to encourage a writer - and the characters of a novel - to get cranking.

Instead of the wild finish ending up occurring in the Southern California desert, the characters have taken the book to Northern California to the Lava Beds National Monument.

Captain Jack & the Sons of Covid features many of the same newspaper/journalist characters readers met in The Fracking War, Fracking Justice and The Devil's Pipeline. There are a number of others, including one fellow named Lawton Eavil. (It's pronounced AVIL.) You can take from that I am using the Dickensian method of naming characters.

IF THE SUBSTACK-SERIAL RELEASE WORKS WELL for Captain Jack & the Sons of Covid, there are several other Jack Stafford tomes in the pipeline. Next up would likely be The Multnomah Mermaid, set in Northwest Portland.

The writing gridlock close to clearing away

SCAPPOOSE, Oregon - Sons of COVID, the planned fourth Jack Stafford novel got stalled on the fiction-writing railroad tracks in early 2021. In January specifically. You might remember what happened January 6.

Events of that day, followed by a move from the San Francisco Bay Area to a riverside home in rural Oregon kept that novel idling. I was in search of a way to angle the plot believably in a real-world gone mad. The way out of the woods has proven as treacherous as the evil that led to the insurrection that could have toppled democracy as we know it in the United States.

Such is the life of fiction writing when you use real-world events as the backdrop for fictional story. Not a novel technique I would advise, though in my first three novels it certainly worked well.

But in the last six months, a combination of column-writing success, helping launch a new magazine (Dynamic Aging 4 Life) and discovering the likely root cause of some crippling fatigue all added up to reviving my fiction writing projects. Plus, while the last section of Sons is in process a new project based on the life and writing of Jack London is shaping up. More on that in coming weeks.

In mid-March I will be heading to the Southern California desert with a group in a tour/workshop led by the Wanderland Writers organization. We will hit the Salton Sea, Borrego Springs, Joshua Tree and other spots in search of, well, that's the fun of it. We don't know exactly what we will find and/or what we might want to write about.

For me, it might be the final chapter of Sons of Covid might shift from Northern California to a barren desert showdown.  

Jack Stafford returns this fall in 'Sons of Covid'

   MODOC COUNTY, Calif. - Jack Stafford and his three crusading newspapers - the Horseheads (NY) Clarion, Rockwell Valley (PA) Tribune, and Vashon (WA) View will return for readers this fall chasing the news - and bad guys - in a new novel, Sons of Covid.
     The novel follows in the wake of three previous Jack Stafford novels: The Fracking War (2014), Fracking Justice (2015) and The Devil's Pipeline (2018).

     Sons of Covid takes place as the nation struggles to contain a raging pandemic, control corporations running amok and attempts to reinstitute social justice and equity across a badly divided country.
   Stafford and the staff of his newspapers, websites and Clarion Newspaper Syndicate find themselves investigating a swirling morass of government corruption, corporate greed, right-wing extremists and environmental degradation.
     As they publish news stories and columns, they run into a wall of malefactors intent on stopping them by any means possible.
     As with earlier novels, Sons of Covid will be divided into five sections.
   The tentative titles are:

• The Armies of the Night

• Captain Jack

• The Tynn man

• You say you want a revolution?

• Butch and Sundance

Millport Landing in NY to sell The Devil's Pipeline

   MILLPORT, NY - Millport Landing, an art gallery, coffee shop and artisan display area will have copies of The Devil's Pipeline available for purchase in the next week.
     The Landing is adjacent to the famous Catherine Creek and joins The Hector Wine Company, Rasta Ranch Vineyards, Fox Run Vineyards and the Finger Lakes Times as outlets for the book.
     "There is some irony - good irony - in having a Millport sales point for the book," author Michael J. Fitzgerald said.
     "In the first book in the Jack Stafford series, The Fracking War, Jack gets a speeding ticket driving through Millport," Fitzgerald said. "Lots of Finger Lakes readers told me they have had the same thing happen."
     Credit for finding Millport Landing as a place to sell the third book in series goes to Yvonne Taylor of the Seneca Lake Guardian & Gas Free Seneca.
     The fourth book in the series, tentatively titled The Wolverine Rebellion is being drafted.
     "The reviews have started coming in to me - via email," Fitzgerald said. "I encourage everyone who has read The Devil's Pipeline to also put their remarks up on Amazon.com."
     The review link can be found here: REVIEW.

Millport Landing - overlooking Catherine Creek

Thumbs-up review published of 'The Devil's Pipeline'

   GENEVA, New York - The Devil's Pipeline got a solid thumbs-up review today in the A section of the Geneva, NY Finger Lakes Times newspaper.
     On page 2 - not buried in the classified section.
     In a review headlined,"Fitzgerald's 3rd book a 'devil' of a good read," staff writer David Shaw said ..."This book is a page turner. Fitzgerald uses humor in the right places to make what could be a very dark story a fun read."
  The review includes a sidebar story in which Fitzgerald talks about what led him to write The Devil's Pipeline and hints at what the next book in the Jack Stafford series of novels will bring.

'The Devil's Pipeline' SF book launch a success

   SAN FRANCISCO - A book launch party at Book Passage in the city - organized by Left Coast Writers - went off without a hitch Monday evening.
     About 20 people came to the Ferry Building bookstore to hear Michael J. Fitzgerald talk about his three eco-thriller novels, with the main focus on the newest, The Devil's Pipeline.
     "It was a pretty lively group all asking good questions," Fitzgerald said.
     As part of his comments, Fitzgerald explained the link among The Devil's Pipeline and its two predecessor novels, The Fracking War (2014) and Fracking Justice (2015). All three focus on threats to the environment posed by misdeeds and ruthless policies of corporate energy conglomerates.
     They also all chronicle the crusading journalism of a newspaper and citizen activists trying to defend their communities.

 "The next book is going to have a corporate energy connection," Fitzgerald said. "But it will also be looking at the increasing threats to civil liberties faced in the U.S. There are plenty."
    The tentative title of the next novel is The Wolverine Rebellion.
    The Book Passage event was the second book launch since The Devil's Pipeline was published at the end of November 2018. The first was a local Point Richmond gathering in December at Kaleidoscope Coffee.
     "I'm hoping to do a couple of book events in upstate NY - or even Pennsylvania - where the first two novels are set," Fitzgerald said. 'We won't call them book launches. They will be plain old book parties."
     The Devil's Pipeline is available through Amazon.com, at Book Passage bookstores, in select locations in the Finger Lakes, NY region - and directly from the author here: MICHAEL J FITZGERALD.