Over the next eighteen months, I repeated Shelba's class twice, and had a dozen chapters reviewed by my classmates. I would like to go on record now that Shelba Robison and my fellow authors from Saddleback College taught me what little I know about the craft of writing. I owe this book to them and wish I could name each of them individually.
Although many gave good input to my story and my writing, I would like to name six who made significant contributions: 1) Bruce Spencer, a pilot friend who flew me to Lake Powell, edited the entire manuscript, and gave invaluable insight into airplanes, helicopters, and houseboat life on Lake Powell, 2) Tom Glazier, a district attorney who edited the entire manuscript and helped with fishing scenes, law enforcement, and houseboats, 3) Uncle Earl Jolley, a lifelong heavy equipment operator who provided key information about bulldozers, building earth dams, and sandbags, 4) an anonymous engineer at the Bureau of Reclamation who helped me with water velocities in floods which established the timelines for flooding on the river, 5) my mother, who read the whole first draft and because she's my mom, saw virtually no problems, 6) and finally my wife Becca, who helped in all phases of the project, who read the manuscript out loud to me during editing, who corrected my grammar, who never gave up on me, and who put up with my fanatical focus through this entire ordeal over the past fifteen years.
Although it seems a little weird to thank God for helping in the creation of a novel about a terrorist, I can't deny that I was inspired to pursue this project, and motivated along the way. Maybe someday I will know why.
Since I began my research in the early nineties, things have changed dramatically on the Colorado River. Almost a decade of drought has lowered the reserves in both Lake Powell and Lake Mead to critical levels. As of midyear 2005, Lake Powell was down over a 130 feet and classified at under 45 % of capacity. Lake Mead was also very low. If the Glen Canyon Dam were to fail under those conditions, Lake Mead would be able to capture the entire flood and make my story non-plausible.
As far as the explosives are concerned, I have done enough research to know what steps to leave out of the formula so as to prohibit someone using the book as a recipe. If the book seems real in spite of the fiction, then it means that at least in that regard, I accomplished what I wanted.
Lastly, I'd like to thank you for reading my book. I hope you liked it. Since the story is now published, and I have survived my midlife crisis, if you wonder about me, I will be perusing old issues of National Geographic to see if other stories need to be told, and to see if I learned enough writing craft from Shelba Robison to write a second book.
Gary Hansen