Useful Literary Links
Why is your e-mail moscowgoat? I get this all the time. Here's the story: I worked in the Middle East during the 80s for a petroleum service company. One of my jobs was a six-week work rotation out of Bombay, India. I'd fly over, join a crew of two other guys and we'd work the offshore rigs in the Arabian Sea for the Oil and Natural Gas Association of India (ONGA). One day I got a phone call at my apartment. The guy calling said he wanted to use the company I worked for, so we set up a lunch appointment to talk. I knew something was off when he spent almost two hours asking about where I grew up and what I thought about leaving the States. Finally, he spilled the beans and told me he worked for the CIA. I almost fell over. My first thought was that I was going to be arrested for something. Then he went on and told me more about ONGA than I'd ever even heard about it from the Indians themselves. When I asked what he wanted with me, he said the Indians were in a joint venture with the Russians on a number of wells and there were people in the intelligence community who wanted very much to know the production figures on those wells. He told me specifically where I could find production reports and what to look for. He even knew that the log book I was required to keep was in the same room with the production records. I told him that was stealing. And he explained that information about oil was no different than gauging missile strength or tank numbers. Then he started talking money . . . Not a lot, but enough to make me listen. It was about that time I began to think it would be the patriotic thing to do. He gave me a plain black-plastic Casio watch with a camera built into it, and whenever I turned in my log book I spent an extra two minutes photographing production reports. When he asked what I was going to do with the extra money, I told him I wanted to buy an old muscle car when I got back to the States, a GTO. "A goat," he said (that's the nickname for a GTO). After that, my contact name with the Agency became Moscow Goat. I only write this now, because it's been more than 15 years; that's one of their rules.
Here are some Live Links:
www.twinlakeswriters.org Writers group Mtn. Home, Arkansas.
www.fwca.org Fiction Writers of Central Arkansas meets in Little Rock.
www.ozarkswritersleague.org Writers group that meets in Branson, Missouri.
www.writing-world.com Huge database for writers of all genres.
www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/ "Common Errors in English" a great site for understanding word usage.
www.WaterWellnessWorkouts.com This site is owned by my friend Carla Johnson and discusses water fitness (since so much of Izard County Badlands focuses around the water I thought folks might enjoy this site).