Cover, Causes, Conundrums and Credits

I promised you that I would soon have my book cover available, and that is now the case. If you want to see what the book will look like, go to www.neverlandpublishing.com and click on the "Titles" spot, scroll down a little and look for me on the right. I also now have my editing "suggestions" to address, but the publisher had very few suggestions, so I should have it all back to them this week. I also promised to offer to you the first chapter soon, and that will be coming before much longer. This post is a potpourri of ideas that jump into my warped brain. For example, surely you have watched news programs that cover fires and plane crashes and car wrecks. Often, they wonder out loud about the "cause" of any of these, and then dribble on and on about what might have been behind the problem. This makes me wonder why they can't be candid and concise. Cause for plane crashes? Gravity. Cause for fires? Heat. Cause for automobile accidents? Physics.

When we lived in Macon, Georgia, the telephone book had this listing under government offices: "Gun permits/Marriage Licenses." I am not making this up. Those departments were in the same office in the Bibb County Courthouse. This was brought to mind as I was looking for a bidness in the Greenville, South Carolina phone book where I noticed that "Demolition" and "Dentist" were on the same page. In more ways than one.

Finally, at the end of movies there is an unending trail of credits to people who were involved in making the movie. Sometimes I watch to get an idea of what it really takes to make a movie and why it's so expensive. Lots of people have to be paid. Anyway, the role I would like to have someday would be the "gaffer." I don't know what a real gaffer does, and I don't want to know. But I see the gaffer as an old fart with a stubby cigar in his teeth, a weathered derby propped back on his bald head, three-day whiskers, and a brown paper bag in a pudgy hand. I could do that.