Daily Archives: November 6, 2005

The Importance of Reading Notams

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Mike and I get a surprise on a day trip to Boulder City, NV.

Mike, my significant other, flies airplanes. I don’t hold it against him. Someone has to do it.

He owns a 1974 Grumman Tiger with a partner, Jeff, who also lives in Wickenburg. The plane is in excellent condition, well cared-for and hangared. Mike’s previous partner, Ray, flew it even less than Mike does, so it didn’t get out much. Jeff flies it more often. Mike knows he needs to fly it more often.

That’s what yesterday’s trip was all about. He knows he needs to fly more often and I know I need to go with him once in a while. One of the reasons he bought the plane was so that we could take longer trips than we could by helicopter. Back then, I owned a Robinson R22, which cruised at 80 knots with 2 on board (if we were lucky) and couldn’t fully tank up with fuel so any flight longer than 90 minutes required a fuel stop. It seemed to make sense to have an aircraft that could get us places farther away in less time. The Tiger, I was told, cruises at 130 knots. (I have yet to see it cruise any faster than 120, but I think it’s because Mike doesn’t like to push it.) Of course, in January I took delivery of a Robinson R44, which cruises at 115 knots and can fly more than 3 hours without refueling, so the speed/long trip point isn’t very valid any more.

Anyway, Mike knew he had to fly more and I knew I had to fly more with him.

For the record, I do not know how to fly airplanes. I have a total of 1.5 hours in single engine airplanes and .9 hours in gliders. All of my other flight time is in helicopters, with a tiny .4 in gyros. I have no interest in piloting an airplane. I admit that I’m a helicopter snob.

So yesterday morning, we poured over books, looking for a destination for a day trip. I should probably say that he poured over books; I was busy trying to see whether my Web server had come back to the world after an IP address change. He used the old iBook to log into various Web sites for more information, including weather. I had suggested the runway at Monument Valley, which I visited by car on my long road trip in August. I was pretty sure it was paved. (His insurance prohibits him from landing on unpaved runways.) But his sources of information — primarily AirNav, I think — said it was dirt and showed a picture with reddish dirt to prove it. Of course, AOPA’s Airport Directory, which appears to include more errors than reliable information, didn’t mention the runway there at all, despite the fact that is widely used by tour aircraft and is walking distance from the Gouldings Lodge complex.

After a while, he declared his conclusion. Boulder City, NV.

For those of you who are not familiar with the southwest, Boulder City was built to house the workers who built the Hoover Dam, the first big dam on the Colorado River, back in the 1930s. It’s the only city in Nevada that does not have gambling. It’s a small but growing city, uncomfortably close to Las Vegas and comfortably close to Lake Mead, the Colorado River, and of course, Hoover Dam. It has a nice airport with three runways (although I think the short parallel runway is closed), fuel, and other amenities I’ll get to shortly.

The plan was to land in Boulder City, tie down — that’s what you do to an airplane so a gust of wind doesn’t take it away while you’re not around — and go into town for lunch.

Our plan set, we went to the airport. While Mike pulled out the plane and did his preflight, I made a quick trip to my helicopter, which I’d left parked out on the ramp overnight. I’d been experimenting with video from the helicopter and wanted to see if a cable adapter I had would fit the headset jack so I could run audio right from the intercom system into my camcorder. It did. Along the way I ran into one of Quantum’s flight instructors, who was fueling up on a cross-country flight with a student from Scottsdale. We chatted a long time. Heck, it’s hard not to chat for a long time with a fellow pilot. His student asked me about Glendale. He said he’d seen me taking off and landing all day long last weekend. I told him about the 131 passengers and both of them were suitably impressed.

Back at the airplane, Mike was just about ready to go. I climbed on board — literally — and buckled up. He started up and taxied out to the runway. A while later, we were airborne, heading toward Needles, NV. His plan was to fly to the Colorado River around Needles, then follow that up through Bullhead City and over Lake Mohave before heading in to Boulder City. The flight should take just over an hour. It was probably the same route I would have taken in the helicopter. A direct flight straight across the desert is incredibly boring. Flying along the river is a lot more interesting.

Everything went as planned with the exception of timing. We had a headwind of about 20 knots around Bullhead City. Bullhead City is notoriously windy and I think that’s one of the reasons so few people fly in there. The airport is right across the river from Laughlin, NV, with its semi-cheesy casinos, cheap hotels, and even cheaper buffets, but because 20 knot winds are relatively common, the casual pilots avoid the place like the plague. It’s silly, really. The wind just about always comes right down the runway, from up the river or down, so it’s not like there’s a challenging crosswind. That day it was coming down the river, steady enough to drop our ground speed down to 105 knots.

Past Bullhead City, I switched the radio frequency to Boulder City’s. It was still 40 or so miles away. But as we climbed to cross the mountains west of Lake Mohave, I got my first inkling that Boulder City wouldn’t be as easy as it should be.

“Young Eagle 12, left downwind runway 27,” came the voice.

Young Eagles is an EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) program that gives free rides to kids aged 8 to 18. The idea is to introduce them to aviation in a fun, safe, and affordable way. Sometimes an EAA member just takes a few kid for rides. Other times, the local EAA chapter will hold a rally where they fly a bunch of kids. Hearing someone say Young Eagle 12 made me wonder if there were Young Eagle flights 1 through 11 out there, too. That would make 12 (or more) pilots out there, flying around the skies of Boulder City, without an air traffic controller to keep them organized.

My fears were confirmed when I heard a call from Young Eagle 3.

I say “fears” and I do mean this literally. I am intimately familiar with the local Wickenburg chapter of the EAA. These folks will meet religiously every month for an EAA meeting, refreshments, and a “program” — which could be something as stimulating as watching a VHS tape of the Reno Air Races on a television — but most members rarely actually fly. It frustrated the hell out of me. I love to fly and I like to fly with others. You know — a bunch of folks start one place and fly out to another for lunch or something. But these people seldom went anywhere. I used to go to meetings just to see if anything was planned, stay through the refreshments, leave a few bucks for the kitty, and head out before they started up the VCR and dimmed the lights. They did arrange a Young Eagles Rally once back in 2000, right after I got my R22 and I took 5 kids for rides. I think they tried again a few years ago, but only one or two pilots showed up. Not a very active group. I dropped my EAA membership and stopped going to meetings. I’m not the only one who wasn’t impressed. Every once in a while, a young, fresh person — usually a guy — would show up for a meeting. I’d never see him again.

So in my mind, an EAA chapter has a membership consisting primarily of people aged 65 or older who rarely — if ever — fly. Understand my fear when I thought 12 or more of them might be circling the skies of our destination airport?

We came over the hills and the airport came into view, still 15 miles away. That’s when the radio got really active. One call after another — pilots taking off, pilots landing, pilots climbing out, pilots flying downwind. And just to really confuse things, there were helicopters flying in and out, too. Papillon and Silver State were both doing tours. But I wasn’t worried about them. I was worried about those darn airplanes.

Mike flew out to the dry lake bed south of the airport, then turned for a 45° approach to a left downwind for Runway 27L, which was the one all the other pilots seemed to be using. Three airplanes took off in quick succession and made left downwind departures right before he got into downwind. I kept pointing them out for him. I also watched the helicopters make their approaches under the downwind traffic pattern. When we were on downwind, I caught sight of an airplane flying below us. I realized with a start that he was landing on Runway 33, which would have him crossing runway 27 while others were taking off and landing. I pointed him out to Mike just when the pilot said he was going around. Going around (to him) meant making a sharp right turn that put him under Mike’s wing somewhere. Mike saw him go there but never saw him come out. I didn’t see anything and I started getting panicky. In a helicopter, I could just stop where I was, turn around, and look for the bugger. Then Mike saw the guy, confirmed he was no factor, and turned base. I closed my eyes for landing — I always do — and felt relief when the wheels touched pavement.

We taxied back to fuel and found the ramp crammed with airplanes and helicopters on display and tons of people. It was a Young Eagle Rally coupled with the Boulder City Airport Open House. And those people at Boulder City really know how to put on a show.

After fueling up — at only $3.39/gallon — we tied down the Tiger on one of the last open spaces on the ramp. Lots of people had already parked their planes in a gravel parking lot. Then we walked over to the FBO to see whether we could arrange for ground transportation into town. Mike still wanted to go with Plan A.

The FBO at Boulder City is run by Silver State Helicopters, which does tours out of that location. The woman at the desk was just handing us the keys for the Courtesy Car when Brent A, who I knew from Papillon, walked up to the counter. He’d left Papillon to work for Silver State. We chatted for a while before he went back to work. I asked the woman at the counter if there was a Notam for the airport event and she told me there was. Mike and I left the airport feeling very silly.

Notam, for those who aren’t pilots, is short for NOTice to AirMen. (Sexist, I know, but I don’t really care.) It’s issued by an airport or the FAA and published by the FAA to inform pilots of things they should be notified about. Like the fact that the airport will be hosting an Open House that day or the fact that the airport will be closed to traffic from noon until 1:30 PM for aerobatics.

Pilots are supposed to read the notams for an airport as part of their flight planning. I usually read them with the weather info I get from Duats.com when I prepare for a cross-country flight. The problem is, there can be dozens of notams in a typical Duats report and it’s all too easy for your eyes to glaze over while you’re trying to figure out which ones actually apply to you. (Most don’t.) I would use that as an excuse for Mike on this particular trip, but it doesn’t apply. He admitted that he didn’t even look at the notams. Bad Mike!

I don’t want to give you the idea that I always look at notams when I fly to another airport. Although I usually do, I don’t always. For example, if I’m just going to fly up to Prescott and hop in my Toyota to go to the pet store or Home Depot, I’m a little light on flight planning. I usually peek at the weather, especially if it looks questionable, but I all-to-often completely skip the notams. Prescott has a tower and if there’s something going on, it’ll be on the ATIS (a recording of airport conditions) that I listen to on the way in.

I guess the reason we’re so lax about notams is because there’s seldom anything in them that affects us. Okay, so the PAPI lights for runway 21R are out of service. I don’t use PAPI lights. There’s going to be a laser light show at 0400 zulu 5 NM west of the such-and-such radial of the so-and-so VOR. I’m not flying that night. Taxiway Echo is closed from 1500 zulu through 2000 zulu. That’s on the other side of the airport from where I land. Get the idea?

We’re definitely not the only pilots who don’t read notams when we should. Last week, when I flew down to Glendale for my first Thunderbird meeting, I couldn’t get the ATIS. I just included the words “negative ATIS” when I called into the controller and he gave me the airport condition information. But when another pilot specifically asked the tower for the ATIS frequency, assuming that what he had was wrong, the tower told him the ATIS had been notamed out since Sunday. Four days. Oops. And I can’t tell you the number of airplanes that tried to land at Glendale when the airport was closed that weekend for the Thunderbird event. Airport closures are always in notams.

But Boulder City taught Mike and me a good lesson: Always read the notams.

While we walked around Boulder City, taking in the sights, I asked Mike whether he would still have come to Boulder City if he knew about the event. He admitted that he might not have. He’s a relatively new pilot and sharing the sky around an airport with dozens of other pilots in an uncontrolled environment was not something he enjoyed. (It isn’t something I enjoy, either.)

We had lunch at the local golf club, then went back to the airport. By that time, it was just after noon and the aerobatics were starting up. A lot of formation flying and loops and rolls. We wandered around the ramp, looking at the helicopters and airplanes on display. There was a lot to see. We passed the EAA hangar and realized that not all EAA chapters are like Wickenburg’s. The Boulder City Chapter is young and active, full of pilots who fly more often than just enough to keep current with the FAA. I ran into a few more helicopter pilots I knew and made some inquiries about getting stick time in a Brantly.

When the airplane aerobatics were over, the RC aircraft aerobatics started. One excellent RC aircraft pilot did tricks I’d never seen before. Excellent demonstration.

(You know, Wickenburg could learn a lot about putting on an airport event if it got advice from folks who know how to do it. Or maybe if they talked to a few real pilots about it and get them involved. But that’s just a thought. I’m sure Wickenburg will continue to do the same old airport car show and advertise with its tired old flyer every year.)

The airport reopened for traffic and Mike and I headed out. It was an uneventful flight back, mostly along route 93. For some reason, we still had a little headwind. We landed at Wickenburg at 4:30 PM local time. We’d spent more time out than we’d originally planned, but we’d had a great time.

Yes, I did say we. Even I had a good time on an airplane trip.

A Laundry Run

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Now if only there were a helipad in the Laundromat parking lot…

Our place at Howard Mesa is 40 acres with about 1/4 mile bordering state land. The lot is pie shaped, with the pie “crust” at the top of a gently sloping hill. About 5 acres at the top of the hill is quite level — certainly level enough to land a helicopter.

PhotoLast year, when I worked at Papillon, I had my R22, Three-Niner-Lima, up here with me. Sometime during the summer, we had a load of cinders (volcanic gravel which is widely available here) delivered and we — well, mostly Mike — spread it out to make an oddly shaped landing pad. That’s where I landed Three-Niner-Lima, and this year, that’s where I’m landing Zero-Mike-Lima. The pad is less than 50 feet away from our trailer and its screened-in room. It’s also less than 50 feet away from the horse corral, where our horses go to drink and to eat whatever we throw down to supplement their grazing. As I sit here in the screened-in room, typing this, it’s right in front of me. I put a little fence around it to keep the horses from wandering in. That’s probably a good thing, because they’ve been itchy lately and scratching themselves on anything handy: the corral gate, tree stumps, the BBQ grill shelf. I can just imagine them scratching themselves on the helicopter’s stinger and cracking a tail rotor blade in the process.

Today, I flew down to Williams to do my laundry, check my e-mail, and do some grocery shopping. I loaded up my laundry bag and a few small bags of garbage (no garbage pickup up here), did a preflight, and climbed on board. Cherokee was in the corral, munching on some timothy grass when I started up. He didn’t look concerned until I brought it up to 75% RPM for my mag check. Then he bolted. I don’t know where Jake was. Alex the Bird and Jack the Dog watched from the screened-in room as I spun up and took off.

I did a quick circle over our property to make sure the horses were together. Cherokee really freaks out when he can’t find Jake. They were together, gazing about 100 yards from the pad. I was already forgotten.

I zipped out over the mesa, then dropped down on the north side. I circled Larry Fox’s house; if he’d come out, I would have landed and offered him a ride. But he was nowhere to be seen, so I headed south, to Williams. I flew out over the town once before landing at the airport. I dumped the trash, added 25 gallons of fuel, then started up again and repositioned to a parking spot. Then locked up and lugged my laundry through the terminal to the parking lot out front where my faithful MR-2 is waiting.

As usual, it started right up. I really love that car. I mean, how could you not love a car that is content to wait in an airport parking lot days, weeks, or months before you come to put it to work? A car that always starts when you turn the key? A car with 132,000 miles and its original clutch?

I did my Williams chores, angry with myself for forgetting the cooler. That meant I couldn’t buy ice cream. Not that I need ice cream.

The Laundromat was particularly weird for me. Laundromats are weird places, anyway. In Williams, the people who use the Laundromat fall into two categories: the usual folks who don’t have washers and dryers (normally apartment or trailer dwellers on the lower side of the income scale) and vacationers who have run out of clean clothes. Most of the folks there that day were in the first category. I was kind of a mix of the two, but I fit right in, driving up in my sad little Toyota, wearing ratty clothes because that’s all I had left. I was the only one who knew I hadn’t arrived in Williams in that car. And I’m pretty darn sure that I was the only one in the place who was living in a trailer with a helicopter parked 50 feet away from it. But I enjoyed the experience, especially listening to the tips offered by one woman about using the dryers: “Only put in a quarter at a time. Then pull out the dry clothes and add another quarter for the rest.” A quarter gave you 10 minutes of dryer time. She claimed that her clothes were often dry with only a quarter’s worth of time. She must have a lot of polyester and nylon; my 100% cotton clothes took 3 to 4 quarters to dry.

I bought a bunch of groceries at Safeway and a few odds and ends at the hardware store, then zipped back to the airport and loaded the helicopter back up. The broom and 5 4-foot lengths of half-inch rebar were particularly difficult to load up. (No, they didn’t fit under the seat.) By that time, the wind was howling at Williams — probably 15-20 knots from the south (where my tail end was pointed). I started up, warmed up, and hover-taxied over to the taxiway with a nice crosswind. Then I pointed into the wind, made my departure call, and took off into the wind, making a 180° turn as I climbed out. With the 30-knot tailwind I had, it took less than 10 minutes to get back. (Sure beats the 50 minutes it would have taken in the truck.)

Back at Howard Mesa, the horses were in the corral, hanging out by the water trough. I came in from the north, watching them the whole time. I think they were sleeping, because they didn’t seem to notice me until I was about 100 feet from landing. Then they walked out of the corral and stood beside the fence at the far side, watching me, ready to run if they had to. They didn’t have to. I set down gently and shut down.

It took a lot of trips to unload the helicopter. And a lot of time to put all the stuff away.

But at least I got my flying fix for the day.

The Governor Needs a Helicopter

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It could save her time and save the taxpayers money.

I got in to Wickenburg Airport yesterday afternoon sometime after 4:00 PM and set down near the pumps. When the blades stopped spinning and I finally got out with my passengers, I noticed a couple of men in suit jackets waiting in the parking area.

Gus came out of the terminal. “See those guys with the suits?” he asked me. “They’re with the FAA and they want to talk to you.”

As usual, Gus’s delivery was deadpan so I couldn’t help but believe him. I looked at the men. They seemed to be looking back at me. “About what?” I asked. I was near the end of my Part 135 certification process and the last thing I wanted was trouble with the FAA. On a Saturday, no less.

“It must be about you running out of fuel in the desert,” he said.

Technically, I hadn’t run out of fuel. I still had 1/8 tank. But I’d gotten a Low Fuel light four miles short of Wickenburg and had made a precautionary landing on a dirt road in the desert about two miles from pavement. I’d been stranded with Mike and two friends for about 30 minutes when my friend Ray delivered 10.7 gallons of 100LL and took off in his Hughes 500D to continue roaming the desert or chasing cows or doing whatever it is that he does when he’s burning JetA.

“There’s nothing wrong with making a precautionary landing,” I said defensively.

Gus laughed. “They’re not for you,” he said. “They’re for the governor. She’s flying in to Wickenburg.”

As he spoke, a few more suits showed up. The parking lot was nearly full. I remembered a trip to local radio station KBSZ-AM the day before. Rebecca from Robson’s had been there and she was all excited that the governor was going to pay them a visit. I never got a chance to ask why the governor was going to travel out to a mining museum/tourist attraction tucked into the mountains north of Aguila.

“This late?” I asked.

“Yeah. She’s due to arrive any minute now. She’s going out to Robson’s and then to something at the museum. She’s leaving here at 7:10.”

I looked at my watch. It was nearly 4:30 PM. Robson’s was at least 35 minutes away by car. “She’s going all the way out to Robson’s and back and then to the museum in less than three hours? What’s she coming in?”

“A King Air.”

A King Air is a big twin. “From Phoenix?” I asked with some disbelief.

“I think so.”

“That’s a bit of overkill, don’t you think?”

He pretty much agreed with me.

“So she’s going to fly in a King Air from Phoenix to Wickenburg, then hop in a car and drive all the way out to Robson’s?”

“I believe that’s the plan.”

“I should take her to Robson’s in my helicopter,” I said. “It’s a ten minute flight from here and I can land right by Robson’s gate. It’ll save her two long car rides. Suggest it to them, will you?”

He said he would. I parked the helicopter, wasted another half hour around the airport, and went to Safeway to do some grocery shopping. As we went into the store, the governor’s King Air flew overhead on its way to the airport. It was nearly 5:00 PM. That meant the governor would tackle the two half-hour car rides, Robson’s visit, and museum visit in just over two hours. Not likely. I had a sneaking suspicion that Rebecca would not see the governor that evening.

Of course, if the governor had a helicopter, it could save her plenty of time and save the taxpayers lots of money. The helicopter would have to be one like mine — not a fancy turbine job — because it’s relatively inexpensive to operate (compared to King Airs and Turbine helicopters), comfortable, and reliable.

Here’s how it could work. Any time the governor had to travel to a destination within 100 miles of her office, she could arrange for transportation by helicopter. The helicopter could pick her and two companions up at any designated landing zone — even a parking lot near her office in Phoenix — thus saving her the amount of time it takes to travel from her office to Sky Harbor, Deer Valley, Scottsdale, or wherever she normally departs from. No delays waiting for air traffic control, either. Then the helicopter could take her right to her destination and land in an appropriate landing zone there. No need to land at a suitable airport that might be 10 or 20 or 30 miles away from the final destination. More time saved. The helicopter cruises at 130 MPH, which isn’t as fast as a King Air, but much faster than a car. It could get to destinations within 100 miles in less than an hour. And while she was in flight, she’d be within 1000 feet of the ground, so she could actually see what she was flying over. Maybe it would give her a good look at the urban sprawl the Phoenix area suffers from or a glimpse of off-the-grid life out in the desert.

Now some people might say that the governor’s arrival and departure by helicopter might be too showy and a good example of how government spends taxpayer money. But I will argue that this mode of transportation, especially for distances under 100 miles, is far more cost effective than a King Air. And I think everyone would agree that the governor’s time would be much better spent en route to her destination than sitting in traffic and dealing with airport delays.

As for me? I’m no fool. I’ll take the helicopter where I’m going whenever I can. And it isn’t because I don’t have a King Air.

Freebies

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On why a professional writer should consider writing for free.

It was a hotly debated topic back when I started writing professionally and frequented BBS message bases (the precursors to Internet mailing lists). Some people argued that a professional writer should never write for free. In fact, one person even bragged about how much free work he turned down regularly. (Of course, he never bragged about the paid work he got, either.) Other people — including me — argued that to break into a writing career, you have to write for free, at least in the beginning. How else would you get the clips you need to establish yourself as a writer?

Clips are the beginning writer’s Holy Grail. A clip is an article or a story you have written for a magazine or other published document that has been “clipped” out to show other publishers or editors you want to write for. It’s proof that you have been published. The more clips you have, the more experience you can prove. You can then use those clips to impress the people who can get you better assignments.

Of course, the quality of a clip is just as important as the overall quantity of clips. A clip from, for example, Vogue, is worth about 50 clips from small press beauty newsletters that no one has ever heard of. So the argument that you should be paid for all of your writing does have some merit, since Vogue is far more likely to pay for your work than the sporadically published Betty’s Beauty News (if such a thing exists).

Back when I started, I was breaking into a new career that I had absolutely no formal training for. Heck, I was a financial analyst and former auditor with a degree in accounting! What did I know about journalism? I knew enough, it seems.

I knew back then that I needed clips to get started. I knew that no one would pay an unknown to write for them. So I knew I had to write a few freebies. And I did.

My first published article was for The Audit Advisor, a 12-page monthly newsletter for auditors, back in 1987. It was an article about auditing construction project budgets. I received two copies for my efforts. No money. But I had my first clip.

I wrote a few other articles for publications I can’t remember. Junky little publications. One was a writers’ newsletter. When I received my sample copy, I was appalled that my work had appeared in such a rag. It had obviously been “printed” on a photocopier. One that needed maintenance.

I got my next big break in 1989, when the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) offered me $10K to write a 4-1/2 day course about using computers for auditing. I had taught a few times for them — also for free, with permission and salary from the company I worked for at the time — and knew what they were looking for. I was also quite informed about personal computers, which were very new at the time, and how they could be used to simplify work while performing a financial audit. I asked for leave of absence from work, but they wouldn’t give it to me. So I resigned my $45K/year job (a huge amount of money in those days) and took the biggest gamble in my life: to start a new career as a writer.

I finished the course in the alloted amount of time and even taught it a few times for the IIA. They paid me to write spinoff products for it. I can’t remember what they were, but I have copies in my office somewhere. But I was not really a writer yet. I hadn’t paid enough dues, I didn’t have enough clips for what I wanted to write about: computers.

So I got to work and found some more small publications to start writing for. For free. One of them was one I cooked up: Macintosh Tips & Tricks. It was a monthly newsletter that lasted a few years in a number of formats. People paid to get it mailed to them, so I guess you can say I was being paid for my writing. But not enough.

So I supplemented my income with a job as a per diem computer trainer. I worked for two different companies. One paid pretty well; the other paid very well. It kept the mortgage paid and food on the table.

Oddly enough, my next big break was as a ghostwriter for a John Dvorak book. Dvorak was very big in the computer world back in the early nineties and his name sold books. So the publisher, Osborne/McGraw-Hill, had hired him and Bernard J. David to write a book called Dvorak’s Inside Track to the Mac. Of course, they didn’t actually write the books. They hired ghostwriters to do it. They split the chapters and farmed them out to a handful of people who were probably a lot like me: struggling to get started as writers. I got the Fonts chapter and finished it quickly. Bernard liked it so much, he gave me three more chapters. I made a whopping $500 per chapter. My name doesn’t appear on the cover, but it is in the second paragraph of the acknowledgments. A very big deal in those days.

I neglected to mention how I managed to make this connection. This is an odd story, too. I’d written a book proposal about using Macs for Telecommunications. I was rejected by the four or five publishers I sent it to. (Ted Nace at Peachpit Press wrote a kind letter saying that there wasn’t a big enough market for the book. The truth is, I was ahead of the time back in those days. A year later, telecommunications really took off.) But one of those publishers sent my proposal to an agent. The agent wanted to represent me, but I was unproven. (Not enough clips.) So he referred me to Bernard who wasn’t terribly pleased (at first) about having to give me a chapter of the book. The really odd part about it is that the agent never contacted me again. To this day, I’ve never been represented by an agent.

After that book, Bernard wanted to work with me again. We wrote The Mac Shareware Emporium for Brady Books. It didn’t do very well, primarily because another book on the same topic was published two months sooner (for reasons I won’t get into here) and it was heavily promoted on AOL. (AOL was just starting to gain momentum at the time and shareware was hot.) But I did have the ultimate clip: my name on the cover of a book.

Fast forward to today. Since leaving my full-time job, I’ve written or co-authored about 60 books. (Many of those are revisions to existing, long-lived titles.) I’ve also written hundreds of articles for magazines, newsletters, and Web sites. My published books collection (including translations) fills three shelves on a bookshelf and my clips, which I don’t even bother collecting anymore, fill a file storage box. You can see a list of everything I’ve bothered to list on my Web site’s Books and Articles pages.

So you might assume that I no longer write for free. Not so. I’m obviously writing this for free. (No one is going to pay to read the things that go on in my head and in my life.) And until recently, I wrote how-to pieces for publication on the Web.

Why? Well, the way I see it, there are two goals to writing. One goal is to make money. That’s why I expect to be paid for writing books and most articles. I have to earn a living. But the other goal is to establish yourself as an authority and spread your name around so people will look for the other things you’ve written.

For example, suppose I write an article about Faxing with Mac OS X Panther. The article gets read by a bunch of people. Some of them may have read other articles I’ve written. They like my writing style, they feel I know what I’m talking about, they think they could benefit from reading some of my other work. Like my books. So they go to the bookstore or log into Amazon.com and buy a book. And I just earned a little bit more money on book royalties. While it doesn’t really pay to have one person do this, it would be nice to have a thousand people do this. And with Web publishing, this is possible.

If you were reading carefully, you may have noticed that I used the phrase “until recently” when mentioning that I wrote how-to pieces for publication on the Web. I still do write these how-to pieces, but I’ve found Web sites that are willing to pay for them. So instead of writing them for free, hoping that readers will buy books to compensate me for this work, I can now be paid for the article. And one of these Web publishers is kind enough to put links for buying my books where the article appears. So a reader can succumb to impulse buying and order the book right then and there.

Will I still write how-to pieces for free? Yes. But only when I can’t write the same pieces for paying markets. After all, I do have to make a living. And the clips box is full.

The Truth about Me

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A report on the fallout from a previous journal entry.

A long time has gone by since I wrote the journal entry titled “Living on the Edge of Nowhere.” Much has happened in that time.

First of all, I have to say that I’m flattered. At least one person in Wickenburg, the tiny desert town I live in, finds my writing stimulating enough to read everything I’ve ever written on all of my Web sites. That’s the only explanation. How else could someone here find my Weblog, which is buried deep in the bowels of my Web work and not even hosted on my own server?

One of these people liked the”Life on the Edge of Nowhere” piece so much that he (or she) sent it around to other fans via e-mail. He (or she) also printed it, photocopied it, and shared it with a bunch of others. Obviously, this person is above copyright law because he (or she) flagrantly violated it by distributing my work without my permission. (My lawyer is working on the paperwork for that issue.)

The result of the widespread distribution of this one article is quite comical. A few people asked me about it. They weren’t happy, but when told about the context in which it appeared, they didn’t seem to mind. After all, it isn’t as if this piece were printed on the front page of the New York Times. (Although I’m sure a lot of New Yorkers would have enjoyed it very much.) Other people, who I know read it, never said a word to me about it. To them, it was business as usual. A few other people who read it stopped me to tell me how much they agreed with me and how I shouldn’t be so frustrated living in Wickenburg. (The piece was written in a moment of frustration — that should be clear to anyone who read it.) One person even stopped by with his copy to read his favorite parts aloud to me, laughing the whole time. And a few people who didn’t know much about me made a point of looking me up to talk about things. Two of them booked helicopter rides and enjoyed them immensely.

The people who distributed the piece did so for a reason. They want the townspeople to think that I’m a one-woman hit squad, out to get Wickenburg. This isn’t what THEY think — they know better. They’ve seen the work I’ve done in town, especially at the airport, where I’ve invested over $20,000 in furniture, building improvements, a courtesy car, and landscaping. They’ve seen me at fundraising events for the museum and the Rotary. They watched me land Santa Claus at the Community Center in my helicopter for Cops Who Care and have seen me marking numbers on horse butts as a volunteer for the Land of the Sun Endurance Ride. They’ve heard about my presentations to school kids in Congress and Salome, about how I landed my helicopter in the schoolyard, then spent several hours addressing each class of kids. And they’ve seen the dozens of pages I’ve written for wickenburg-az.com , a Web site I maintain at my own expense that provides a wealth of non-commercial information about the town without charging anyone a penny for advertising or access.

But it isn’t the positive things I’ve said on wickenburg-az.com that they spread around. It’s the work where I point out Wickenburg’s shortcomings. As a result, the people who read what they illegally distribute get a lopsided picture of me.

What the people who distributed the piece don’t realize (partially because they’re so close-minded and self-served that they can’t see reality) is that voicing opinions of Wickenburg — both positive and negative — brings to light the way people see the town. We all know what’s good about the town: the laid back atmosphere, the weather (at least 10 months out of the year), the widespread spaces between many of the homes, the relatively low (yes, I said low) cost of living, the ability to live without fear of crime. And frankly, we all know what’s not so good about Wickenburg, too. Why shouldn’t we voice our opinions about it?

Wickenburg isn’t perfect — we all know that. No place is perfect. If there were a perfect place to live, everyone would move there and it wouldn’t be perfect anymore. (I think that’s what happened to San Diego.)

By bringing Wickenburg’s shortcomings to light, we make people aware of them, people who can make a difference. For example, if I complain about the lack of good ethnic food here in Wickenburg it may become a topic of conversation. Someone who has been interested in starting a restaurant might realize that there’s a niche to fill. He might open up an Indian or Greek or Spanish or fill-in-the-blank restaurant in town. That’s adding to what the town offers residents and visitors. It adds tax revenues to the town’s coffers. It offers employment opportunities. It makes the town better.

This has worked in the past. For example, way back before Alco came to town, townspeople often complained that there were no basic clothing stores in town. Indeed, if you needed to buy underwear or socks, you had to go “down the hill” to Surprise, Glendale, etc. The folks at Double-D heard what was being said. They now sell these things. And Alco came along to add more variety to these offerings and more.

I could write all day about the good and not-so-good things in Wickenburg, but I won’t do it here. Why should I? This article won’t get the widespread attention that “Life on the Edge of Nowhere” got. Because it shows me the way I really am: someone who cares enough about the town to speak out.

And the folks who want to keep that picture of me slanted the other way just don’t want people to know the truth.