I’m baaaaaack…

Thanks for all your comments, folks. I still haven’t convinced The Publisher that the blog is a good thing, but at least he’s not totally opposed to the idea, either. I just got a few copies from the second printing of The Book, and it looks like we’ve managed to fix the few little continuity errors from the first edition that have nagged at me for the past 16 months.

The Publisher is a great guy but he’s also a bit nearsighted, and he became somewhat enamored of the paragraph formatting in the original manuscript of The Book, where I spaced the lines out a bit to make it easier to edit. You can imagine my surprise when I saw the galleys…

“Uh Boss? You didn’t change this paragraph formatting before it went to print?”

“Nope, looked fine to me. Why?”

“Well, I spaced it out that way so you and The Editor could you know, edit things and make comments between the lines and in the margins.”

“Wasn’t that much editing to do. Plus, I think it’s fine.”

“But it looks like the Reader’s Digest large print edition!”

“Exactly! Ain’t it great?”

So The Publisher and I have been chuckling over that little lapse in judgment at his home in Maryland while I attended the EMS Today convention in Baltimore, and thankfully, now the book looks a little better than it did before. Plus, I no longer refer to a partner by one pseudonym in one chapter and another pseudonym 100 pages later, and all the fictitious highway numbers now match. Most of my readers probably never even noticed, but for me it’s like having your kid inherit the same ugly little birthmark you had as a child, and you obsess that the neighbors will never notice how cute she really is.

On another note, soon you will see a different look to the blog here. As soon as I can find someone who can do HTML scripting fairly well, you’ll see some links and such that are near and dear to the heart of The Publisher and me, like this one. Fear not though, people – I’m still a reluctant advertising whore, at best.

The Publisher is one of the pioneers of EMS. He was there to see the beginnings of the Shock Trauma Center as one of R. Adams Cowley’s original EMTs. His insider stories of the early age of trauma resuscitation are fascinating.

Among The Publisher’s many other exploits, he taught paramedicine to many of the Maryland State Police, and was the EMS officer for the FBI’s inaugural Hostage Rescue Team. He trained with all of HRT’s original shooters, making The Publisher the original Tactical Medic. And this man is my publisher and friend.

Yes, you may touch me.

So that’s what I’ve been doing the past few days…making a few new friends, reconnecting with a few old ones, absorbing a few history lessons, and helping The Publisher set a few more claymores to ward off the skateboarders that continually bedevil him at work. (side note – that whole “this side facing enemy” thing makes it fairly simple. Easy Peasy.)

So here before the day is through, I shall regale you with the tale of The Retaliation as promised, and only one day late. You may stop hyperventilating now, HollyB. Perhaps in so doing, I can shame the LawDog into finishing the mustache story or perhaps the teenage moonshiner story. What say you, Dawg?