It’s very eggciting.

The book is a humorous memoir of raising chickens in a learning-by-doing-it-the-hard-way and turns out to be a good how-not-to book with a section in the back that is more how-to… and so feed stores are recommending it to people going home with chicks in hand.

I’m delighted, and just as soon as my grandfather’s aviation history biography is done… I plan to begin polishing the sequel to Just a Couple of Chickens, titled …

Just a Couple More.

(need I say more…?)  Happy Easter 2012!

Colonel Cloyce Joseph Tippett, USAF Reserve, started out in a Curtiss JN4, a Jenny, with an OX-5 engine that Tip could take apart and reassemble himself, thanks to the hands on experience of an Uncle.  The latest ship I’ve written into the book is a Douglas C-54  Skymaster, the type of plane that was the first Air Force One for President Truman in the ’50s. Big multi-engine passenger plane… really big… and now Tip is eyeing jet aircraft -

Now I’m wondering, what will the final tally be?

Sky’s the Limit…

Tip has now (… now meaning back in 1943) landed safely in Buenos Aires and just finished touring around Argentina creating that country’s civil aviation program, only to find he’s being asked to do the flight again, this time in a twin-engine Cessna T-50, with his wife and child on board (the child is my Dad… so they obviously arrived safely from that flight too!)

The suspense is killing all of us… The Book will be Ready Soon!

See you on the other side!

It is a diary of flights, aircraft, activities. It is amazing.

Col. C. J. Tippett, who was my grandfather, flew everything he could climb into. And the book I’m writing is now beautifully enriched by as much research as I can do on each of those bizillion planes. Twenty-six so far and counting… those are only the ones I could find good data on. The others are all similar to each other – in that they are Fleet or Continental Cubs, but were different ships, so multiply that by at least 2.

When I’m done writing the book I look forward to blogging more about the planes.
And blogging again about my other book, the chicken book, which is also very fun… but I shoulda done my grandfather’s book first and so I have to do it now… besides, I want to…

The Curtiss Jenny JN4, the Heath Parasol, the Tommy Morse Scout, the Kinner Lincoln PT-K, the Keystone B4 bomber, the Great Lakes 2T-1 Menasco, the Taylor Piper Aero F-2, the Warner (and every other kind of engine type) Fleet 1 and 2 and 7, the Detroiter, the Kinner Fairchild, the Ryan STA (oh my favorite – it must have been amazing to fly),  the Bird BK, the Aeronca L and C3, the Waco RNF, the Rearwin 7000, the Curtiss Robin, the Meteor, the Lambert Monocoupe, the Lycoming Stinson, the Pitcairn PA-6, the North American BT-9, the Douglas BT-2B, and …. drumroll… the Szekely Curtiss Wright Jr.  And that’s just up to 1938.

Now back to the book!
He ground-looped a Fleet, hehehehehe!

Tip grew up in a working class family during the Great Depression. He became an instructor within the civil aviation movement, was involved in the early days of the Flying Tigers, and taught the Tuskegee Airmen what they needed to pass their pilot certification tests. He was accused of spying on South American governments during WWII while working to establish civil aviation standards, but didn’t let it interfere with his reports back to his Embassy contacts. Tip flew the first helicopters in commercial applications and in doing so, established many of the first helicopter records.

He collected celebrities of the era as easily as he logged flight hours. His friendships with leading actors, military representatives, and South American elite brought glamour to his already high-flying lifestyle. Traveling from Washington DC to South America for the United Nations, the Civil Aviation Administration, and the US Air Force (Army Air Corp), Tip made extraordinary record-setting flights over the Amazon Jungle in conditions and aircraft that would make headlines even today.

For a non-famous person, Colonel Cloyce Joseph Tippett touched so many famous people and events that reading his story is like taking a walk through history from the point of view of a single man with a single purpose: to fly – as far and as long as he possibly could.

write now, it’s all I can do to keep writing… the book.
Posting is a faint memory.
Emailing family and friends, a delusion.
Texting, 4getit. Cnt doit fst anyway so why try?

I have to just stay focused on the book project and keep writing. I’m on my 17,548th draft of the first chapter – classic.
I do my best work with my fingers on the wrong keys, kidy djog s noh pbrt yp yjr ;rgy if you know what I mean.
And I just can’t find the balance between fact and supposition when it comes to Tip’s family of origin… so I bust right back to his first in flight exploits and then have transitional-sentence-itosis.

But I keep writing. writing.writing.writing….
Because that’s what it’s all about.

is to Read What I Am Writing.

WahOOOOOOOOO!  Don’t haffa tell me twice!  I’m a reader like I’m an air breather. Seriously. If civilization ever fails to provide both libraries and hot running water, I’m outta here.

So that was not a hard one to follow.

I’m writing an aviation biography of my grandfather so I went cruising for aviation biography, or any biography actually. I’m not picky. The Lindburgh biography of course. That thing weighs like ten pounds. I feel smarter already. Amelia Earhart’s books. The absolutely beautiful “West With The Night” by Beryl Markham. The strange little gem “To Fly Like A Bird” by the Vertical Flight Heritage Series – Joe Mashman’s words, he flew with my grandfather. “Adventures In Aviation” by Kim Schribner, another pilot who my grandfather knew.

The first thing I gleaned was that there’s a structure and form and voice to aviation biographies. And it’s GOT to be about the planes. But it’s also got to be about the people. And I learned what a beautiful lyrical thing a biography can be. Which raised the bar for me and put me in writers block.

Wah.

But anyway, I blazed back to the keyboard and kept with it.

The other piece of useful advice – to study my craft, the craft of writing – which I translated into taking classes, joining groups, subscribing to newsletters, studying or applying methods, finding and keep referring to websites, books, learning software…had also been useful. But the funnest of all is to READ.

And then it comes back to the writing. No matter what, I have to write the book. Writing Writing Writing…. no matter what to keep writing. So, I write.

And gave me the opportunity to see how a marketable idea, made into a well written book, presented by a creditable author, pitched to the right agent… can result in an agent/author relationship, which could then lead to a book deal.

It wasn’t me…. no no, not yet… though I did pitch once (and did very well for completely bombing it.) It was a young adult author with a clever idea – well written enough to capture the agent she found at the Willamette Writer’s conference.

So I learned alot… and took an exhausting number of cool workshops. And now it’s back to writing the actual book. Somehow it always comes back to that – or else there is no book.