-2. Ghost Snatcher
In the Company of Heroes in the Shadow of America
2019, 14,597 words,
Reading done by Banjo
Editor: James
Publisher: Lynn Lockhart
At the close of 2019, at Punky and Rick’s place in Bellavue, Pittsburgh, I completed Ghost Snatcher between Christmas and New Year’s Eve 2020. As this book was being written from an Eastern Perspective as a crusade against Western men, I used friends from the east as character models:
-Nero the Pict as Crank Shaft Witherspoon
-Erique as Mainline Watson
-Israel as Old School Johnson
-Earl as Acetylene Jackson
-Myself as Berstan Dessalaines or “Captain Sunshine,” the Colonel’s Nickname for my eastern ass.
Page 13: axil to axle
Page 18: embers to members
Using Bold as video evidence of the expedition and italics for the officer’s log of Captain Sunshine works better in this reading than I thought it would when writing it. I am most pleased with the Justice Service awards earned by this company of heroes, including:
Crankshaft Witherspoon
Awards: Auto-Engineering Service Star, Martin Luther King Justice Award, No Borders Resettlement Award with Gull Wing Cloudburst, Purple Heart [2 awards]
Conviction Reassignment Awards: Armed Robbery, Murder 2, Manslaughter, Menacing—six counts, all overturned and reassigned at Demographic Service Awards after the Whitefish, Montana Riots
Outstanding Community Service Debt: 162.5 hours
…
The awards covers a lot of character back story and serves as oblique world-sketching at the same time. I should use this method again in a future work. Just writing this as a lark over two weeks left little imprint on my mind.
Page 19: capitalized Crankshaft
Page 20: comma changed to sentence break
Page 21: italicized monologue paragraph at page bottom, shard to charred
Page 22: into to into it
Page 23: Guerilla to Guerrilla
It is beginning to irritate me that compassioned is not yet in the computer dictionary. It should be—I made it up almost four years ago.
Page 26: Italicized:
“Are you fucking kidding me, Acetylene!”
“Oh, my Earth!”
“No! Desist!! Hold your fire!!!”
Decided it was confusing to italicize Sunshine’s Captain’s Log outtakes and reversed it.
Page 27: Had to repair this sentence:
As the Ghost Snatcher speeds by, the head of the downed rider can be seen to be wracked with deep-felt sobs of pain and disapproved invalidation…
Page 28: quality to equally Page 29: insert such before “that he has taken”
Page 31: Capitalize Mainline
Page 32: Catcher to Snatcher
My favorite footnote from page 32:
Note
-1. Dessalines is not the Principal but the Principle Warrant Officer, as the Justice Service is a minimally hierarchical organization focused on Principle.
Page 33: The Red Rock Warrant was written at the request of Riley Smith who wanted to serve as a patterned character killed by Negro law officers for the crime of Caucasian gun ownership. It pained me quite a bit three months later, when Riley’s wife called me one morning and told me he had passed in his sleep.
Page 35: Catcher to Snatcher , tightened up a comma,
Page 37: inserted comma
Page 39: changed comma to M-dash, tightened up comma
[It looks like punctuation mistakes increase when I worte the action scenes.]
Page 41: comma changed to sentence break,
Page 42: confederate to Confederate States of America.
Page 43: comma and an and to a period and Then,
Page 44: titled to tilted mugs, and to a sentence break, corelate to correlate
Page 45: after to afta, for to fo [preserving ebonic dialogue consistency], goo your to Joo York,
Page 46: added m-dash and last phrase of: “...left behind forever the obedient world of bitch-ass zeroes, and became a man—joined the company of true-ass heroes..
Page 47: extasy to ecstasy
Page 48: and changed to sentence break, that to than at page bottom,
Page 50 is the best monologue in the book thus far
Page 53: comma changed to sentence break
Page 55: added the first ‘a’ to this passage:
“Well, this motherfucker was kind of a greasy Greek or Italian, not even a…”
Page 56: replace sic with set
This scene was based on having dinner at the Silver Moon Diner on U.S. Route 40 in Baltimore County on Monday nights in 2008 with my son and seeing the fat owner count his money with a handgun on his lap.
Page 59: The Jersey Warrant placed my good friend mister Saffrono as the affirmative enemy of Crankshaft Witherspoon
Page 70: grifted to grifting, add comma after scalps,
Page 71: Finish first day of proofing, about 2 hours.
…
Page 73: “to have a hangover” was missing ‘a’, put the ‘h’ at the end of Pittsburgh, this warrant seen was based on a speech writer that drove me to the Amtrak station in Pittsburgh in spring 2019
Page 80: I threaded in my experience in Portland for the backstory to Captain Sunshine.
Page 84: t-therapy to T-Therapy
Page 87 and 88: goo to Joo
Page 93: protested to protesters
Page 95: capitalized Boy Blunder, change ro to to
Page 97: capitalized The Service
Page 98: ore to more
Page 99: ‘mal-con-tance,’ in dialect for malcontents, capitalize Crispy,
Page 100: grenades to grenade
Page 101: You to yo in dialect, en to en, bel to belt,
Page 102: ta to da, in dialect
Page 104: al to all
I must say, that I totally forgot that I had these negro soldiers use live feminist Earth Daughters as meat shields.
Page 107: rifle to rifles, capitalize Ghost Snatcher
Page 108: capitalize Snatcher, into to into,
Page 109: to9wards to towards,
Page 110: day to dat in dialect, comma inserted
Page 113: The drive to They drove,
Page 114: insert quotation mark before “Soap
Page 115: capitalize Mainline, tightened up fourth blank page
Page 116: remove extra comma,
Page 118: ire to tire, capitalize Crankshaft,
Page 119: inset a before madman, broke dialogue from action and started the action paragraph with Oldschool then…
Page 120: shat to that
Page 121: boll to bolt am to jam, capitalized Crankshaft,
Page 122: game to came
Page 125-6: remove quotation marks from assigned crew dialogue, battel to battle
Page 127: capitalize Colt, removed crew dialogue quotes, huooked to hooked
Page 128; Rocy to rocky, fore to fire [a common typo of mine]
Page 129: No to Now, catcher to Snatcher
Page 130: own to down, low case to capital J…, insert quotation marks of Oldschool’s dialogue [no longer prefaced as crew dialogue], ahnds to hands,
Page 131: prograsse to progress [what a retarded typo], treet to tree, capitalize Sunshine, capitalize “Come…
Page 132: lace to place, won to down, tow to toward,
Page 133: I to I’ll, yap to tap,
…
I am pleased with the way Ghost snatcher ended, being a hero tale. The final character introduced, is the youngest grandson of Bob, my friend who showed me the places that I used for the scene of this novel. This record is being appended to the novel, which I hope has entertained.
Other novels written from 2019 to 2022 that take place in the same near future setting as Ghost Snatcher, are:
-American Dream Boat
-Wake Christopher
Unwritten novels: Tagline-Newslaw, Machete Virus and the Man Too High to Hassle may be set as one, two or three tales in this same socially just future.
This appended editorial log, is not being proofed or edited. There is not much point in that when I have just finished it and my mind will transpose corrections unmade.
