Chicken Ranch report no. 12

So we've come to suspect that H1N1 has infiltrated the homefront. In a lemons-into-lemonade kind of way, this has been good for my writing. With everyone else lying around lethargic, there's nowhere we're going or the like. So, other than the lack of sleep from staying up late with vomiting children, I've been able to put my waking hours to good, writerly use.

As I write my way deeper into the book, I'm coming across a surprising number of serendipitous realizations. Nothing earthshaking, mind you, nothing that makes me shout, "AH-HA! This proves Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone!" Even so, they're significant to me. For instance, several disparate facts lying around--most of which are well-known to people who've written or read up on the Chicken Ranch before--but as I'm writing they click together with a few other bits and pieces I've unearthed all the way, and suddenly, blam!, it's like staring cross-eyed at a colorful, pixellated poster for hours on end before it suddenly resolves itself into a 3-D image of a possum eating a watermelon or somesuch. Only in my case, a timeline magically appears where none existed before, complete with dates, records and motivations, effectively bridging a gap where before only innuendo and hearsay held sway. That's cool.

These random discoveries have also helped me deal with an over-abundance of information. Believe it or not, the history of the Chicken Ranch is a feast-or-famine affair, with certain eras utterly devoid of meaningful information, whereas other eras the cup runneth over. This is particularly true in the case of tangential stories and events, those that aren't necessarily about the Chicken Ranch per se, but the people and events around it that provide a much-needed context, allowing the reader to understand why and how things unfolded as they did. Too many tangents overwhelms the main narrative, but what to do when one particular tangent is pretty darn significant? Enough so that folks may well ask why I skipped over it? Well, in the course of double-checking some dates, I came across a previously-unknown newspaper archive online that included articles on that particular event. More importantly for my immediate needs, it was kind enough to inform me that Jim Flournoy--the man who'd later become Fayette County Sheriff and a major figure later on in my book--was deeply involved in the event, something I'd not come across before. Armed with this new knowledge, I'm moving this particular tangent later in the book, so as to flesh out Sheriff Flournoy's early career more effectively. Pretty cool how this works out, eh? Here's a sample of the latest:

Cooperation, mostly, seemed to be the key in forming a lasting alliance between the brothel and the sheriff’s office. Law enforcement everywhere maintained useful networks of informants who’d pass along information overheard from the underworld. In La Grange, this boiled down to the fact that petty criminals tended to brag about their exploits to whatever pretty whore they happened to be bedding. Miss Jessie made sure to pass any such confessions along.

And yes, I am still on track to finish this chapter by the 15th, which will give me an even-money shot at wrapping up the next chapter by New Year's Eve. Momentum, as they say, is a wonderful thing.

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