Chicken Ranch report no. 13

I did it. I got on a roll last night and knocked out the rest of the current chapter, a full two days ahead of my self-imposed Dec. 15 deadline. Which gives me 17 days to complete the new current chapter before the end of 2011, which means I'll have a quarter of the Chicken Ranch book in the can. Not shabby, considering the huge amount of time I've invested in research. The downside is that I went to bed close to 1 a.m., and the Bug, who'd been sick over the weekend, developed a fever and pretty much ended any chance of my getting any sleep at all (turns out he'd developed a secondary ear infection. A quick trip to the doctor and he's all fixed up with an antibiotic prescription and feeling much better). So I'm groggy, achy and punchy today, and not a whole lot of fun to be around.

Still, that can't take the joy out of getting another chapter finished. And last night's writing session covered two fairly high-profile Chicken Ranch stories, adding a considerable amount of detail to one and thoroughly debunking the other. It also contained one of the best quotes thus far, one that I'm very happy exists:

"There’s more hockypoo about that place than anything else."

Seriously, how many other writers get to use "hockeypoo" in their book with a straight face? Okay, I'll admit I cracked a grin while writing it, but still. That quote aside, here's a sample of last night's output, quite possibly the single most well-known aspect of the Chicken Ranch:

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Miss Jessie hit upon a solution almost as old as the oldest profession, itself: Barter. Area farmers didn’t have money, but they did have livestock, and the brothel began accepting stock in trade. Before long, the going exchange rate became jokingly known as the “poultry standard,” that is, one chicken, one screw. Needless to say, Miss Jessie’s girls were up to their eyeballs in chickens in no time.

Printing out the draft of the chapter for my files, it suddenly strikes me that I've already written quite a bit. Curiosity got the better of me, and I compared my page count to that of Jan Hutson's Chicken Ranch book from 1980. Now, there's not a 1:1 correlation between manuscript pages and a published book, but I'll wager my wordcount at this early stage isn't that far off her's in its entirety. And I know for certain I have more facts in mine--at least, facts that can be attributed and verified.

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