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

'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.
   

Author interview posted - book launch Monday in SF

   POINT RICHMOND - A New York radio interview with the author of The Devil's Pipeline done in late January is now available to listen to online.

     The half-hour conversation with radio talk show host Michael Warren Thomas of station WYSL (1040 AM) in Rochester, New York covered Fitzgerald's latest novel but also touched on the novelist's two earlier works, The Fracking War and Fracking Justice.

     Michael Warren Thomas hosts four programs each Saturday. Fitzgerald's interview was on Discover The Finger Lakes which focuses on events and people the Finger Lakes region. This was Fitzgerald's fourth appearance on the program.
     In the interview Thomas noted how Fitzgerald's fictional works reflect real-world, real-time events interspersed with the actions of the journalist characters, as well as cast of villains.
     Thomas also asked about the current anti-press climate being pushed by President Donald Trump in which he labels the press "the enemy of the people."
     Fitzgerald noted that Trump's barrage has been damaging. But Fitzgerald said he is equally concerned about how much the decline of newspapers and journalism - particularly in small towns - continues to be devastating to civic life.
     "People need a source of information that they trust," he said.
     The full interview can be heard here: MWT interview with Michael Fitzgerald.

Book Launch Monday at Book Passage in SF

Michael J. Fitzgerald

   San Francisco - The Devil's Pipeline and its two predecessor novels, The Fracking War and Fracking Justice will be featured Monday at 6 p.m. at Book Passage in San Francisco's Ferry Building on the Embarcadero.
     The event is an official book launch party of Left Coast Writers and is open to the public.
     The Book Passage event will include a talk by Fitzgerald, a question-and-answer session with the audience and a book signing.
     Copies of The Devil's Pipeline will be available for purchase at the bookstore.
     The latest novel has drawn praise from three Bay Area writers, Rita Gardner (author of The Coconut Latitudes), Steve Early (Refinery Town and The Remaking of an American City) and Elizabeth Claman (The Prodigal Wife and other novels).
     "Fitzgerald's third novel might be his best," Claman said.
 

'The Devil's Pipeline' published and ready to read

   POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - The Devil's Pipeline made its print-version debut Saturday and is available via Amazon.com.

     The E-Book (in Kindle, Apple Books and all those other electronic book formats) should be available in a few days.

     The final sprint to publication came during several weeks of amazing feats of computer magic performed by Adm. Sylvia Fox. That magic was punctuated occasionally by muttered incantations directed at her computer screen.

     But in the end, the final book product looks (and I hope reads) great. You can read a sample on the Amazon page.

     The official "launch party" will be Saturday, Dec. 15 from 2-4 p.m. at Kaleidoscope Coffee in Point Richmond, Calif.

     Everyone is invited to this celebration/soiree.

     The publication of the novel ends more than two years of on-again, off-again writing, editing, beta reader reviews, proofreading and manuscript back and forth with two different commercial publishers.

     In the end, Adm, Fox and I used an Amazon publishing platform (for the print version) and a separate electronic system for the E-book (the same one we used for the E-book of  Fracking Justice). I'm pleased with both.

    Please come to the Kaleidoscope event if you possibly can. It's going to be a great party. You can ask me there when the audiobook is coming out...

'Fracking War' presentations - and video - in Nov.

   SACRAMENTO - November was a busy month with presentations in Sacramento and San Francisco. December was busy, too - for different reasons, which is why it's already 2018 before this report made it out.
   In Sacramento, I gave a talk at the Friends of the Library at California State University, Sacramento, the university where I spent several decades teaching journalism.
   In San Francisco, it was a lively panel discussion with three other writers at the Howard Zinn Book Faire.
   The Sacramento event was a real homecoming for me.
   The library gallery speaking venue was full. The audience included students, former colleagues and even retired CSUS President Donald R. Gerth and his wife Beverly.
   My introduction was given by longtime amigo, retired Journalism Professor Bill Dorman. Bill helped engineer my appearance and shepherded me through the day - a luncheon, the talk and a cocktail/reception at the home of retired Government Professor Jean Torcom.
   In the talk I took a different tack than previous presentations. I stayed away from reciting the horrors of hydrofracking and focused on the novel-writing process. The feedback at the talk and the reception after let me know it was the right move for the university audience.
   A video of the talk is at the bottom of this column.
   Included were references to The Devil's Pipeline (set to go to an LA publisher this week for a second look) and The Wolverine Rebellion, the characters of which are getting extremely restless for my attention to get that plot moving again.

(L-R: Liz Carlisle, Steve Masover, Michael Fitzgerald)

   The San Francisco event was a panel discussion titled "Narrating the Anthropocene: Storytelling to Rouse Communities Grappling with Planetary Crisis," organized and chaired by San Francisco novelist Steve Masover, author of Consequence.
   The other panel members were Liz Carlisle, author of The Lentil Underground: Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America and Jean Tepperman, author of Warning from My Future Self.
   It was a lively panel discussion, with all of us talking about using fiction to effect social change.
   The panel was less than an hour - the panel-presentation equivalent of speed dating.
   But it was a lot of fun.

'The Wolverine Rebellion' draft crawls ahead

   POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - The draft of The Wolverine Rebellion is moving ahead slowly, kind of like a camo-clad guerrilla working his (or her!) way forward across a field to sneak up on an enemy.
     In this case, the draft is moving from concept to characterization and notion to narrative.
     As in the case of The Fracking War, Fracking Justice, and The Devil's Pipeline (Pipeline is currently at a publisher's office in Los Angeles awaiting word), The Wolverine Rebellion has many familiar characters from those books, plus new ones.
     And just as in those earlier novels, the characters are asserting themselves as their story - and it really is their story - moves along.
     The one piece of the draft that firmed up today (along with the already completed half-dozen chapters of Assembly) are the five section titles. All are subject to change, of course, depending on how the characters handle things.

Assembly

The Tynn Man

Sins of the father

The Empire Strikes Back

Tsunami Warning

'Fracking War' - energy company required reading

POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - The Fracking War might not have made the NY Times best seller list yet. (Yet! Yet!)

But this week a note from a friend - who was purchasing a signed copy of Fracking Justice - indicates The Fracking War is clearly hitting some of its target audience.

How many copies of The Fracking War are inside?

She mentioned that her son said The Fracking War is considered to be "required reading" at the east coast energy company where he works.

Perhaps that bears repeating: "required reading" at the east coast energy company where he works. 

That's high praise, whether the book is reviled or revered. Oh, and by the way, he doesn't work at the energy company in the photo to the right. But I wonder how many copies of The Fracking War  might be lurking in the hundreds of offices of that energy company office, too?

When The Fracking War was first published, one hope was that it would help educate (and inflame) people about the ills of hydrofracking, using the fictional tale about the work of investigative/columnist Jack Stafford and The Horseheads Clarion newspaper staff.

It worked to a large degree, at least based on reactions from people in the Northeast including many who were protesting (and continue to protest) the proposed loony liquid propane gas storage project at Seneca Lake proposed by Crestwood Midstream of Houston, Texas.

As part of the marketing of the book, copies were sent to energy company executives and some of the more prominent public relations hacks in the employ of the industry.

Apparently not all of them pitched their copies of The Fracking War into their desk-side round files.

The news that this energy company is paying attention came at just the right moment. In the coming weeks I hope to tackle the final section of the next novel, The Devil's Pipeline. Good God but there's so much material going on in real time, in the real world, it's hard to predict what will happen in the final chapters of this third book.

But you can be pretty sure it will end with a bang, like The Fracking War and Fracking Justice. And maybe even on a Native American reservation, somewhere on the Northern Plains of the U.S.

Results of a natural gas pipeline explosion

'The Devil's Pipeline' - four of five sections done!

POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - The draft of The Devil's Pipeline hit a milestone today. Four of the five sections in the novel are done. In draft form at least. Whew...

And that bit of news comes just in time for me to head back to my Watkins Glen, NY office in two weeks where I have plans to lock myself in to finish the novel. I have a box of extra strength Irish breakfast tea on the way to keep my caffeine level up.

The drafting of this book has been as challenging as building a pipeline. It started out as a five-chapter book sample, destined to send to an agent. It morphed into the need for a full manuscript when a New York city publisher agreed to take a peek - but only at the final completed draft product. Then in between, two bouts of illness slowed things way down.

Plus, the characters themselves have taken me on a few detours.

One menacing, unpredictable and all-around despicable character (who for the record is NOT based on any NY politicians) forced himself into the book in the second section. I tried to keep him out, honest. But he's been wreaking havoc for 10,000 words. I hate bullies. He's got trouble ahead.

The Devil's Pipeline will consist of five sections - similar to formats of The Fracking War and Fracking Justice. Here are the draft titles for each:

Iowa

Welcome to Mars

Drums Along the Ogallala

Wrongful Deaths

The Big Short

And just like the other two books, this draft novel has been battered in various directions by real-news events that impact the public, the energy industry and proposed pipelines. Like the impact of the Dimock, PA water pollution case - $4.2 million awarded to two families. The Dimock decision has the characters in The Devil's Pipeline chattering like magpies.

For readers who wonder whatever happened to Jack's Boat - the novel I worked on last summer -, well it did not sink out of sight.

It's next in line for a rewrite when The Devil's Pipeline is off to the publisher.

Thanks for your patience!

Finally climbing back on the novel-writing 'horse'

POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - When I left New York in November, my plan was to give a pulpit-pounding speech at the Green Festival and Expo at the San Francisco Cow Palace. After that, the plan was to settle in here in California and continue work on the draft of my next novel, The Devil's Pipeline.

As some of you know I never gave that speech. And it was just today that the characters in The Devil's Pipeline - Jack Stafford, his son Noah, sisters-in-law Cass and Anne and a long cast of others introduced in The Fracking War and/or Fracking Justice - came out of a two-month, author-induced slumber.

In November, a head cold & severe laryngitis turned quickly into pneumonia and eventually transmogrified into just a nasty, nasty bronchitis, hacking cough and aching bones.

And so it was that novel writing went by the boards. I was able to keep up with my Finger Lakes Times column. And I read a lot of fiction and non-fiction - about pipelines among other things. But work on the novel? Not a chance.

My usual mode of fiction writing is to start a story and  run with it - just as fast as I can think and type. There are no long hiatuses or thumb sucking. I just keep the story moving.

It's like real life. You get up, do your day, repeat. So taking two months off created a panic over lost momentum.

Panic? Yup.

Suppose I couldn't pick up the thread and get the plot moving again? Suppose, suppose, suppose?

Excuse the overused phrase but, "No worries, mate."

What helped was actually sending a note to an aspiring writer just a few days ago who wants to get  started on a book. She was worried by the daunting prospect of pounding out 70,000-100,000 words.

My advice was to think of writing as stacking paragraphs. Build a paragraph, then stack it. Build another one, stack. And another.

So after re-reading the roughly 20,000 words I had penned months before being gripped by the grippe, this morning I stacked for a couple of hours. When I was done, Jack and Cass were arguing on a bucking airplane, Calvin Boviné had reappeared from Fracking Justice and Horseheads Clarion Editor Eli Gupta discovered. ... Well, I don't really want to say more about that. Eli and I are still trying to figure out what he found really means.

The incentive to get writing again got a huge boost several weeks ago from Kirkus Reviews when the magazine named Fracking Justice as one of the top 100 indie books of 2015. It's drawing more attention to The Fracking War also.

I'm honored and very thankful for the notice.

No matter though, it's just good to be back at this keyboard.

A 'Kirkus Reviews' thumbs up, a book stop in Pennsylvania - and where is 'Jack's Boat'?

BURLINGTON, Pennsylvania - After a swing through the western U.S., with speaking stops in Flagstaff, AZ and Los Angeles, I flew back to New York to start the draft of the next Jack Stafford book tentatively titled The Devil's Pipeline.

Speaking at the Green Festival Expo in Los Angeles

Sandwiched among hours of research on oil and gas pipelines, the droughts in western states and actually writing (13 chapters in the draft so far), I traveled to Burlington, Pennsylvania, which by last count had fewer than 200 people living in the community.

No exactly the kind of place to draw a big crowd.

Even so, my presentation at the Bradford County Public Library was well received by a group of people who have been fracked by the fracking companies - up, down and sideways.

Their tales were as fascinating as they were depressing. They validated nearly everything I've written already in The Fracking War and Fracking Justice. They also passed along some interesting new slants on the problems hydrofracking is causing in their community.

My God it's ugly.

Grrrr... says Dick Cheney

Next up in the speaking gig category for me is another Green Festival Expo appearance. This time in early November in San Francisco.

The slide show that accompanies my talk has been refined and elicits laughs, tears and gasps.

The gasps come from showing photos of Dick Cheney, the evil prince upon whom you can really heap a lot of blame for the spreading of hydrofracking (and its problems) across the U.S.

KIRKUS REVIEWS GIVES FRACKING JUSTICE A THUMBS UP

Both The Fracking War and Fracking Justice had received nothing but excellent reviews when Kirkus Reviews was set to publish its take on Fracking Justice.

I was holding my breathe - really! - when I first started to read what the publication said. Kirkus Reviews is a major player in the publishing industry and noted for taking no prisoners in reviews of books.

So if you heard a loud, whooping sound last month, that was likely me, when Kirkus published its lengthy glowing review. It was sooooooooo favorable, I doubt I could have written one more favorable myself.

Here's a line from the Review that kind of sums it up:

"Reads like an emergency manual for activists battling environmental despoliation."

JACK'S BOAT - AN UPDATE

Jack London

The beta readers for the draft of my novel Jack's Boat did yeoman service, getting their criticisms and suggestions back to me muy rapido. I have been pondering changes in the draft, even as I labor daily on the draft of The Devil's Pipeline.

The best news is all three said, yes! - publish this book.

Jack's Boat is on my writing docket, scheduled for a revamp and final tuneup before it gets another readthru.

Even at that, I think Jack's Boat  and The Devil's Pipeline will both make their debuts in spring/summer 2016.

Which means I better get back to tapping those keys if I want to meet that timeframe...

A change-of-pace novel in the works this month

WATKINS GLEN, New York - As Fracking Justice continues to get placed in bookstores, wineries, restaurants - and lots of other Finger Lakes locations - I picked up the draft of a novella I penned back in the 1990s, but never published. It was in a drawer with several other works-in-progress.

I was three chapters into rereading my draft of Jack's Boat when realized it would make a good contrast/project for me to tinker with for the next month or two while I continue my research for Fracking Evil, the third book in the trilogy of fracking novels that started with The Fracking War.

Jack London

I posted a detailed explanation about that novella-soon-to-be novel titled "The challenge of reviving a novel drafted years ago" on this website, LINK: Writing For Money.

For readers of The Fracking War and Fracking Justice, Jack's Boat has nothing to do with Jack Stafford, the columnist/publisher in those novels. The Jack in the title of the novella is late American author Jack London. The boat is one of many that London had in his lifetime living in Oakland, San Francisco and the Sonoma County hills overlooking San Pablo Bay.

Jack London's writing and life had a profound influence on me when I was a teenager. His love of sailing, ocean adventuring, journalism - and writing novels - provided a hazy blueprint for me growing up.

Maybe it still does.

Look for Jack's Boat sometime this fall. And Fracking Evil in the spring of 2016.

Fracking Evil cover concept art. Scary enough?

Lesson learned: Always have a speech ready to go

GROLIER CLUB, 60th St., Manhattan - I should have known better. Really.

After more than 40 years in the news business and attending countless awards ceremonies, dinners, graduations and fetes of every imaginable kind, I know that anyone even remotely connected to the event should have a finely crafted speech in their pocket.

And be ready to give it on the spot.

But for some inexplicable reason (even to myself), I didn't prepare a real speech of any kind for the Green Book Festival awards reception. Nada, zip, zilch.

And for Godsakes, I was an honoree - first place in the General Fiction category.

I can't explain it, exactly. But there was a lesson learned. Oh yes there was...

Mercifully enough, I didn't speak first. I went second. But had I gone, oh, eight people later, I think my short talk would have been a little more, um, coherent? It worked out all right. Several of the audience members even commented that they enjoyed my off-beat sense of humor. Off-beat, that's what they said. And I'm taking it as a complete compliment and running with it as fast as I can.

The award was for The Fracking War (2014), not the just-published Fracking Justice.

General Fiction - the award (and me...)

While I'll take credit for spinning a good yarn in The Fracking War, the credit for landing this first place Green Book Festival honor really goes to Sylvia Fox for tracking down the contest, getting the book entered on time, and then convincing me - after I learned that I had won - to get my author butt down to New York City to collect it.

It was worth every bit of nail-biting NYC traffic.

As I sat and listened to the award winners give their speeches/talks (some very well-organized, others seemed to subscribe to my just-wing-it style), I realized how much I want to get back to drafting the third novel in the fracking trilogy, Fracking Evil.

I am anxious to fire up the novel-writing machine partly to round out the series, but also so I can jump on the next book after that, a book I've had percolating for several years.

More on that book another time. Right now, I need to put together a quick set of talking points for a speech - just in case I'm asked to give one on short notice.