So Long Old Freind.

   So it has been a few weeks now since the generator burnt up. I made another trip to the city recently to retrieve the remains from the rewind place. They told me nothing I didn't already know, that it had served its life, which hasn't been an easy one spinning around out there for 14 years and I reckon I had got my moneys worth out of it.
I asked him what I should do with it.

"Boat anchor, that's about all its good for." he advises me.

My new boat anchor came with nearly a $200 bill to take it apart and estimate it's demise.
They plopped it into the back of my truck with a fork-lift, and I headed back wondering indeed,...what the hell was I going to do with it.

 I brought it home one last time, picked off the regulator, the shaft-key, and saved some of the shroud bolts I've noticed vibrate out sometimes. But beyond that, theres nothing worth keeping around for spares, anything I'd ever probably ever need someday has been worn or frazzled out already. And I knew if I unloaded it out here, it would sit around and be in the way for who knows how long.
A fitting burial was in order.

I just about busted my guts skidding the housing and all your innards out off the tail-gate, but after 14 years, so long old generator. For over 120,000 hours you've lit up my life, warmed the structures, heated the hot-tub, dried my jeans and froze my food, not to mention amping up my drum kit.
It was never any trouble either, I had a main connection or two burnt off over the years I had to fix but never had a single problem with the generator its self. Unlike the pelton-wheel and intake screens its hooked up to, that as you know I'm always fiddling with due to some new storm or mechanical calamity. But its time to move on. I'd feel a lot worse for my old friend here, if it wasn't for the fact the brand new replacement is not far away.

Reality TV, Stowe Creek Yukon...Who Would Have Figured?

    Like millions of viewers around the world I have been following the popular gold-mining shows on TV, or in my case, YouTube via satellite. I find it all rather amusing, being as familiar as I am with the Dawson area. Over thirty years ago, working out on the placer creeks, it seemed like the last thing in the world anyone would ever want to do a television series about, but these days enough viewers are tuning in that there are two networks airing competing weekly shows.

I track the hits to Hotspringlodge and search keywords people use to land here, and after the new season starts they flood in related to gold-mining and a few of the creeks I was associated with in a past life, and received mention here in some rambling. 

   The original series on Discovery seems pretty heavy with the drama and scripted situations, and if you've been in the racket, you got to wonder when they get in all the time it takes to mine with all the BS going on.  In the real world, good chance the original cast members would have been out of business halfway through the first mining season, never to be heard of again, except from inquiring creditors, but by sluicing the world of ratings, they managed to keep going despite themselves.
One thing that never fails to astound me, is the fact these guys appear to have all their gold at the end of the season, usually most of it is cashed in for operating expenses throughout the season.
And no-one accounts for the gold fineness, or purity, seeing pure gold doesn't exist naturally.
Most miners I've run across didn't keep their gold in glass jars either for fear of dropping it.
Anyways, that's television, it's all entertainment and editing.

The History Channels program Yukon Gold is probably a little more representative of what you would typically find I think.

   But I've got to hand it to that character Beets that moved the last remaining gold-dredge to the mouth of Eureka Ck. That particular large gold-dredge had been moved up to the Dawson gold-field's from California sometime before 1940 and assembled out on Clear Creek where it worked until 1955 before being shut down. Back in my day that same dredge was being refitted and resurrected where it sat by Queenstake Resources, to the tune of about a million bucks. They managed to get it up and working then for a few seasons, but new environmental restrictions and the falling price of gold put them out of business, along with a lot of other outfits, one of which I will refrain from mentioning.  This past television season the huge machine has been moved I don't know how far, but lots far, south to another mining area located on the Indian River at the mouth of Eureka Creek. It has been resurrected and refitted once more, to the tune of another million bucks, and it will be interesting to see how he makes out with this old technology, and today's economy.

In the early 80's I worked further up Eureka Ck. Ours was a much smaller Cat operation, mining the narrower valley for coarse gold up towards the headwaters of the right fork. 

  

Hal and I, swapping out a cracked D8 head.

Pushing in the last of a cut.

 Stowe Creek- I just about fell out of my chair last week at a new episode of Yukon Gold shown on the History Channel when I discovered a young couple, Nika and Chris, mining on our old Stowe Creek claims. This area was considered well off the beaten trail back then, and along with most of the Montana Ck. tributaries, we had the entire 3 mile length of Stowe staked. and was included in our optimistic drill sampling program in 1981.

 Arriving by helicopter, the test drill set up on some stripped ground, mid point Stowe Ck.

Old door from a remaining cabin.

Getting our contraption set up to put down the first test hole, Stowe Ck. March 1981.
The old timers would have to sink a shaft in the permafrost using fire for a month to accomplish getting samples from bedrock. Once in place and set up, we could bang down a 6" hole, often 30', in a couple hours. Of course it took us all day to get in place and set up.

 

If I figured we were onto some encouraging ground, I'd take a section of the lower drill core, thaw it over a fire on the spot, melt some snow and pan it out.

Eventually, we hit the Stowe pay I believe, or what there was of it, from a few hand fulls of gravel, and some snow melted over the fire, this was the first gold panned out of Stowe in 80 years. Not long after, the bottom fell out of the gold market and we never did get around to mining this ground, letting the claims lapse in '87.  

   I'll write a more in depth story sometime about this project and the creek's early history, but it cracks me up to no end to see the old creek featured on TV every week. They get in there using our old road, and set up their camp in the very spot that we had intended to. That location is a natural spot for a camp there is a small tributary located there called Hidden Treasure Ck. that allows for a gravity feed water line to the camp. I still have all the drill-logs around here someplace that recorded depth, material, and gold recovered, calculated out by the yard. 

   Would I like to go back gold-mining again? Well yes and no. Its a pile of risky hard work, but if I was 30 years younger, I'm sure it would be difficult not to be drawn back to the allure of gold. 

Second thought, I think I have enough problems, and I'm not so sure I would make good television material either. But as it is, with not much chance of growing younger, I may just have to sit back in front of my lap-top and live vicariously, along with the other millions of viewers, through the efforts of these modern day miners working my old claims.  Good luck to them.

More gold stories....

http://hotspringlodge.blogspot.ca/2014/11/montana-creek-big-dreams-and-last-wishes.html

http://hotspringlodge.blogspot.ca/2014/06/clean-up-on-eureka-creek.html

http://hotspringlodge.blogspot.ca/2016/03/old-timers-on-stowe-creek-1901-1981.html 

http://hotspringlodge.blogspot.ca/2016/10/behind-scenes-at-yukon-gold.html 

Smoke Spill, And A Darkened Trip Home.

   I've got a small crew of characters staying here for awhile with their RV plugged in while they install hi-speed Internet to the remote first nation villages scattered around the valley. They were getting ready to head out for a few days off and while they were waiting for the noon road opening I offered to take them over and show them the pelton-wheel that generates the juice around here. 

"It's been running a little warm the past week." I had told them walking over there.

I opened the door to the shack and it was considerably warmer in there than normal, a sure sign of electrical resistance, and I expressed my concerns. They asked me what the serviceable life span of the generator should be.
I told them I wasn't too sure, but figured I was about to find out.

   Sure as hell, the very next day, off goes the power. I went over to the genset shack and opened the door and was greeted by a strong burnt electrical smell, which is never good. Obviously it has developed some leaky wiring, allowing the smoke inside to escape. I cranked it up manually and yes indeed there is smoke squirting out everywhere. I had been dreading the possibility of a smoke leak.

When the system was installed 14 years ago, the machinery was bolted down to a cement slab and the shack was built around it. I had given the ability to remove it someday a little thought alright, and made the doorway extra wide. I figured that one day down the road, the genset will crap out and some poor bugger is going to have to figure how to get the monstrosity out of there.
At the time, I didn't really think it was going to be me.

There was a hemlock that fell over close by that I had been saving for about a year and a half now, and it turned out to be just what I needed to strap on the front of Old Alfie for a boom so I could reach in there and snatch out the frazzled 600 pound generator end. The hemlock was ideal as it was small enough for me to man-handle around without wrecking my old self, but plenty skookum to hold the weight.

I brought it back over to the lodge and poked it in the back of my truck and tied it in there good.

As much as I hated to, the next morning I pulled out at quarter to five and headed to the big city to try and rectify my dilemma, hitting the end of the lake at sunrise.
I got to Squamish just as the Ford dealer was opening, I've been working on a neighbors pickup and it was a chance to order parts. Turns out the part (electrical) is on back order.
Not only that, but he had some alarming news...

"I don't know if its going to be 2 weeks, or 2 months" the parts man explained.

Not a great start to the day and I jumped back into my truck and continued on to the big city hoping to be on my way back home with a smokeless generator as quickly as possible. Well, a guy can always hope anyways, these things are not as common as you think, and pretty specific to the particular pelton-wheel installation and controls. I thought worse case scenario, I might have to come back down in a few days or so to pick up the repaired, or replacement genset end.
I imagine even sooner when I tell them how big of a hurry I'm in!

I made good progress to the city until I actually got close to it, when the Monday morning traffic came to a snails pace. I couldn't do this every day, or even every Monday for that matter. After crawling along like this for what seemed like about half an hour, all of a sudden the brake lights went off and everyone took off going like hell and it was all I could do to keep up it seemed.

I'm not the best guy to be driving around civilised country, and I could carry on here for half a page about my adventures and mis-adventures trying to get to where I was going.

Fate finally delivered me to my intended destination for once, made notable by the proliferation of broken down gen sets and electrical motors lined up out front. I honked the horn to alert the mechanic and backed up to the big shop doors to save precious time then ran inside and explained my predicament to the guy at the counter, whom seemed a might unimpressed at my leaky winding/smoke escaping theory. 

First thing to come out of his mouth is..."I hope your not in a hurry".
I said that's easy for him to say, he's got electricity!
There is indeed jobs lined up and the phone rings steady.

I finally talk him into getting his guy in back to come out and have a look. He rolls up the big noisy shop doors and I perceived a certain hesitation in his voice before he called out...

"Hey Latkus, can you spare a minute, I got another job for you to look at!"
Someone from in back shouted some European four letter word, and a string of something or other in between before ending on the four letter word again. There was a few clangs and bangs from tools hitting the workbench and pretty soon counterman and I are joined by the short, over worked, and harried looking shop foreman.
"Smoke leak!" I joked, trying to lighten the moment.
"I better leave you two to chat." says counterman, and excuses himself to a safer locale.

"Oh cheezes" the man says peering into the generator with a flashlight, "You really booger 'dis one goot".

"Thanks" I said, "Should I wait for it or would you like me to pop back in later?"
"Oh shits," he says wiping his brow with a grimy rag, "...a guy of funny too!"
He tells me it would involve 3-4 days winding alone, without knowing what else is burnt in there.

I told him 3 days would be an eternity, he countered that was once they got to it. That got my interest up, and I queried him on how long it might take for them to get to it. He blew out a big breath, looked around at the pallets of generators and electric motors, makes a long whistling sound and looks over his shoulder into the shop.

"It be, oh..., 3 weeks we can maybe squeeze in you".
"Oh cheezes!" I said.
"Dats da best we can do," he says, then adds, "...we short a man."
"Oh, he sick?" I asked.
"No...he dead!"
I went back up front to continue my discussion with the boss.
"I could send you over to Beaver, but its the same story there" he apologises.
I showed him my short list of possibilities.
"How about these guys?" I asked, pointing out the only one not crossed off.

"Oh them." he chuckles, then informs me they had gone out of business some months ago. 

How could it be, with a gold-mine like this? 

A likely story I thought to myself, and off I went in search of the outfit with the big important sounding name. After numerous wrong turns and adventures with the local inhabitants by accident I finally found the boarded up competition, whom had indeed gone out of business some time ago.

So, a good part of the day had been used up already with my wanderings, and I pondered my next move. There was only one thing I could do...I decided to go home and think about it for a bit more.

Recalling the grid-lock traffic of this morning, and timing it just right to hit the grid-lock traffic in the afternoon, I decided to take a route home more my style. 

I'd take the rugged West Harrison, or Sts'ailes road/mountain goat trail home. 

I headed the opposite direction of the Big City, out through Abbotsford, where I lived until I was 13. 

 Stopping for a late lunch there I happened to notice differential oil smeared all over my right rear wheel. "Cheeses!" I said, then went looking for the local Ford dealer.

The place wasn't where I expected it to be, they have gone and moved things around since I was a kid it appears. But soon enough I get all fixed up with a new axle seal, brake shoes and differential oil at the new place. I already have a line-up of broken down stuff piled in front of my shop door that I was going to have to drag out of the way first, but I figured I could handle the axle seal job in an afternoon when I got home.

I was going through town, which looks nothing like it did, when my low fuel warning light goes on and I make a wise decision to hit the next gas station that comes up. Turns out to be Hub Service, a family run gas station-repair shop that has been on that corner forever. Wheeling up to the pumps I recalled pulling into the same place years ago to pump up the tires on my mustang bike. A very personable chap ran out to the pumps and I asked him to squeeze all he could into the tank.

"So wheres this Hotspring Lodge?" he finally had to ask, seeing the lettering across the rear window. 

I said it was up at a hot spring off the north end of Harrison Lake towards Pemberton, and that I was taking the rough way home up the lake. 

I recalled my leaky diff seal, and the possibility of camping out on the little traveled Harrison trail.

I had also noticed an empty service bay, "Say, you guys got time to do a axle seal, I got all the parts."

Sure, no problem he tells me, and I drove up to the doors.

 We go in and he writes me up, I give him my first name and my last, which is a well recognized pioneer family name around these parts. There is a street and a museum and a park and a few things around town carrying the family name as well.

"Trethewey," he says, "Are you one of 'the' Tretheweys?"

I told him I most certainly was...but probably not one of the ones he was thinking about.

He introduced himself as Ross Siemens. The Siemens name has been around town for awhile too, Ross is the 3rd generation to operate this business, and somehow finds time to serve on city council. We had a good chat about local history, the Trethewey House museum and about how much the town has changed. 

He showed me a whole series of photos taken over the years, this is what I remember as a pup.
They have expanded by a few bays over the years, but in 1954 the original building had been constructed of materials bought down the street at Abbotsford Lumber, an outfit my dad operated.
Anyways, if you are ever out that way, stop for gas and leaky axles at Hub Service, really great owners, the mechanics are cool, and even the customers were nice. They got me on my way and I headed off in the direction of Harrison Lake country.

An hour or so later I headed up the Harrison/Sts'ailes forestry road , I'm not sure what the time was getting to be, along with being one of the last people on earth without a phone, I also don't own a watch. 

The road starts off civilized enough, and I stopped and took a few pictures here and there.
There is some discussion about improving and paving this road in the future. I hope so.
Darkness was approaching, and I wished it had of been earlier in the day so I could have done a post about the trip. I decided to do one anyways...

There was the odd boulder on the road...

There was the odd little creek crossing...

Cheeses, their getting bigger...

Three hours later I saw the sign for the IPP project, so I knew I was at the head of the lake and the Lodge was only another hour up the road.

 It was nice to be back at the fort after my adventure to the Big City.

The next day, on the back-up generator, from the comfort of my computer I ordered a new 22kw generator end. Its sitting at the factory in Texas, they will spend the next week configuring it to my application and ship it out. It will take another week to reach the border and clear customs, if all goes well.  Its going to cost a few hundred bucks short of what I paid for the pickup I'm going to haul it home with. Bastard.

I can almost hear all the giggling going on out there after all my bragging I do about all the creek produced 'free' electricity I have around here. But I guess sooner or later wear and tear and smoke leaks catch up with you, and its time to write a cheque.
In the meantime, I'm burning up the wood-pile by the arm load and running the backup generator 8-10 hours a day and going through propane at an alarming rate of a couple hundred bucks a week to keep myself and my guests in the style we've become accustomed to. Almost.
Two or three weeks shipping from Texas sounds like a long time to wait...
...anyone up for a road trip?!

Deja Vu All Over Again.

   Well just like happened back in December, we've had a banana monsoon going on again for the past couple days, washing out the roads and causing slides and making a nuisance of it self again.

Its jumped the culvert once more out behind here. After they just spent 5 grand fixing it from the last blowout. Numerous spots between here and town are causing problems, although the road is still open, theres rocks on the road and creeks flowing across and fun stuff like that.

The creek down at the hot spring is up. It does this now and again under conditions like this.

Runoff from the old road above jumps the culvert and pours over the bank into the hot spring pool, which in turn cools off and overflows onto the lower area.

I had taken a shovel down with me in anticipation of this, and managed to collect the run off in a small ditch and divert it off and away from the hot spring source. It will take a day or two for the water to get up to temperature again.

And oh ya, I'm running on back up  power around here again. All my pipes and stuff got blown out of the intake pond up the hill again, and I just fixed it a month and a half ago the last banana monsoon. And its still raining. This is going to be some long-weekend, campers beginning to arrive down at the hot spring, and my first batch of guests just pulled in for the trailer and cabin facilities here.

Doubters...ha.

     I remember a dismal attempt or two at composing words when I was young.
I had decided to write a fiction novel when I was like 8 or 9, but I'm sure not going to embarrass myself  here with the subject storyline, plot, and predictable ending. Parts of which I still painfully recall all these years later. My reasoning was that I would be excused from school to stay home and create my potential Pulitzer. It was worth a try, nothing else was working. Thankfully the publishing world was saved an unknown fate by a bad case of writers block, when my active little mind just kind of dried up. It happened somewhere on about the third paragraph, right after I had covered the unbelivable story line, flimsy plot, and predictable result. It was probably the particular genre I chose, I've never liked fiction, and still don't. But I wisely made the decision to leave the book writing to others, and became an avid book reader instead.
And I do still read, every damn day.
   I gravitated towards biographies and such, to see who people where in life, that always interested me. As did history, and books by old timers that had taken on the frontier, and had a story to tell in their own particular style. I always liked the idea of writing a book about your life though, it seemed to me something that you would naturally do when your an old bugger, and have your own story or two to tell. 
   For a period back in the '70's, I was living and working on a small cattle ranch on the not too distant outskirts of civilization, and found myself front and center with a certain incident involving a broken water reservoir. Rains and a high creek had filled the dam to its brim, and seeing it was going to eventually overflow and breach the dam that held back a considerable sized reservoir, I tried what I could, including rounding up an old buddy Fred, who had some diving experience. I somehow convinced him to strap on his tanks and mask, tie a long rope to his leg so I could haul him back out of there if I had to, then slither into the muddy water to try and blindly find the outlet pipe somewhere down there and ensure it was clear of debris.
   The time of reckoning had arrived, and to my horror, standing there in the pouring rain, the dam spilled over, washing out a chunk of earth and a wall of water went..., well never mind. But you have to admit it was a dumb idea to put in a subdivision downstream from a cattle ranch in the first place, especially this outfit. I'm bringing this unfortunate series of events up only because it was this particular mishap that inspired my writing career. With all the resulting legal action directed at my employer, and as the sole defense witness, I was asked by his office and formidable legal team to write out a brief statement of events that day.

   A day or so after the event, I sat in my trailer up on the mountainside, overlooking what was left of the subdivision lights incidentally, and began to write, by hand, in great detail, about my minuscule contribution to the flooded streets and basements below. Due to the serious nature of the report, I started off straight enough, as I thought a statement should, and continued for a boring, stilted paragraph or so. Suddenly, my brain appeared to take on a mind of its own, or maybe it was just the spiced up coffee. In spite of my aching left hand, one page led to another. It came out on its own, and I let it go, stopping here and there to laugh at something that had spilled from my pen. From my heated efforts to drain the pond, to interactions with the irate inhabitants of said soggy subdivision. A considerable number of whom were already mad at us over that time before when the road was blasted into the mountainside with dynamite, and a whole row of picture windows over there fell out from the concussion.
Oh well, they're the ones who wanted to live in the country.
   The witty adventure story/legal statement ended up being a volume of about 10 pages. I believe I even enclosed a detailed hand drawn map of the disaster area for reference, with a little cowboy hatted stick person, representing myself, standing innocently in the general area of the broken reservoir dam, and a whole bunch of little stick people over in the adjoining subdivision, all jumping up and down and splashing about with exclamation marks over their heads. I proudly turned my manuscript over to the engineer at head office, whom was still convinced I had something to do with the dam breaching in some way, and as a budding writer, was about to receive my first literary rejection.

"We didn't mean for you to write a goddamn book, just a few facts for court!" he says, then slumps back in his high-back office chair, swivels to one side, and begins to thumb through the pages.

"What the hell...?" he soon says, stopping here and there, reading brief passages. 

Pretty soon he begins to smirk, in spite of his cranky self, and broke out laughing.

"I don't think we better call you up in court as a witness, if we can at all help it." he assured me.

   My report was copied and sent out to the various departments and lawyers for use in the case, and I found out later more copies had been made and distributed out to friends and associates, sent on not as a report, but as an entertaining read. I felt I had finally found my niche, maybe I could be a writer after all. I didn't carry on with it at the time, my energy went into other ventures, but the bug was always there, to be brought out on occasional long letters from some remote job site or adventure some place to friends and family back home.

   Back in the 80's, I became involved in my spare time with a small upstart motorcycle magazine. I started writing about events, stories of interest, and had my own regular feature called, Technically Speaking-With Mr. T., a nom de plume I used back then. This was all pretty bush-league, and we learned as we went along. One of my more memorable Technically Speaking articles, explained in plain language, the workings of a motorcycle front fork suspension. The article was called, and I cringe now, Fork Your Brains Out, by Mr.T. It started as a working title, and I had hoped something better would have come to me by the printing deadline. It didn't, and I soon found out the power of a well intentioned, but ill conceived heading title.

You probably think I'm making this up.

   The buxom, overbearing mother of one of our shop sponsored riders, a devout member of a local church and a few of her hen friends were the first to complain, arriving at the busy motorcycle shop one afternoon so I could hear all about it in front of a group of snickering and giggling customers. Several of the hard to come by advertisers started raising questions about the magazines somewhat shady editorial staff. I don't know if any of them actually read the article, but eventually the matter was forgiven, but since then, I've always put a lot of forethought into a suitable title.
But in the end, it turned out to be advertising for the fledgling magazine that money couldn't buy.
   Not entirely related to the incident, I eventually resigned from the magazine, and moved from the area in general. I kept up trying to get things down on paper, and began to think if I was going to consider myself a writer, I had at least try and look like one. I began to take long walks with my dog around my country home in the waning evening light, wearing a cardigan sweater and cap, like I pictured a writer would, contemplating life and imagining future book signings and intellectual television interviews. It didn't appear to help my writing career a whole lot, but I did manage to get quite a few pages spit out of my electric typewriter with no little amount of effort. These literary efforts, such as they were,  unfortunately flew from my desk and out the back of my truck during a move and lost. I have to wonder if someone walking down the side of the road later came across some loose pages, put them back in order, and started reading..."What the hell...?"

   I had a dry spell until I came out here to the hot spring, where I had the time in the Winter and was full of fresh adventures after my return from Central America. These jungleventure stories were always well received, and I was much encouraged to follow through in print then, but somehow I always got swamped down by the business end of producing a book, and got busy working around here instead.
The question had come up many times over the years from family, hot spring users and the like, I'd always say, "Uhm, its in the works!"

   A few years back, without a whole lot of forethought, one day out of the blue I decided to start my Hotspring Lodge site here, as an outlet for my active little mind, and busy little camera.
Looking into the world of self-publishing, I began to think something in book form might be possible after all, and you can't put these things off forever. At any rate, I'm sure I fall well into the category of 'old bugger' now, and have a story or two of my own to tell. So, to all you doubters out there, past and present, you know who you are, that thought I was only hot air and would never get around to it, ha! I'm here now to tell you this... Well, uhm, its still in the works. But it has progressed considerably in the recent months and slowly becoming a reality.
*There is about a third of the content stored away, cleaned up, formatted and ready to go for final structural editing. Some stories no one has seen before, while some chapters were originally written 20 years ago. I'll draw from the pages of Hotspring Lodge here and there too of course, no use shooting myself in the foot and wasting some good stories on all you free loaders out there. Some of the more memorable will, including this one maybe or parts thereof, be re-edited to be included in their new and improved, and in some cases, possibly un-censored form. And it looks like I need to make up some new ones too, for filler. So if I'm not here, that is often what I'm doing.
*I've decided on a font, font size, interior artwork and page design.
A book needs to be readable for folks of all ages. Especially when I'm in the not too distant old folks home, attempting to pawn off unsold copies to everyone there.
*The cover art is secured, and the cover design is pretty much sorted out for now.
A successful book cover needs to stand out from the rest. Especially when its piled in with all the other hot-sellers in the huge discounted Walmart bargain bin.
*Mail order copies will initially be available from the Hotspring Lodge Bookstore.
Copies signed on request, and postage stamps licked by the actual author at no charge.
*There will be a reader version available from an on-line retailer.
*The book has been issued an ISBN. (so I have to follow through now)
*I have a publisher. Sparrow Creek Publishing, you probably haven't heard of them, I'm not going to have much luck getting a large advance out of this character. In fact, this outfit and its rather shady editorial staff have never published a book before. Oh well, may as well start big I say!
I'm not giving away anymore information about it for now, I've told you too much already.
But I'll give you a quick look...

I came up with a better title for it than that of course, I learned that lesson years ago.
Stay tuned for further developments, and to the doubters..., once again, I say ha!