May 22nd, 2008

Finished chapter 10 of the posse book today! I was given a word count of 40,000 and am currently at 36,000 and I have yet to write the introduction and bibliography. The mayor of Dodge City is writing the forward and hopefully I’ll have some great quotes to use from other western authors. In the book I used one of Wyatt Earps’ quotes about the way he dealt with the true criminals in this world. It reminded me all over again that many of the real offenders are not behind bars, but walking among us masquerading as wives, students, and health care workers. “I’m not ashamed of anything I ever did,” Wyatt said in 1927. “Were it to be done over again, I would do exactly as I did at the time. If the outlaws and their friends and allies imagined that they could intimidate or exterminate the Earps by a process of assassination, and then hide behind alibis and the technicalities of the law, they simply missed their guess.” I’d liked the way Wyatt handled the people who came after his family.