Pete,

I read with interest Chapter One of “Apaches, Buffalo Soldiers, That Female Reporter, and Me”. You are certainly a good writer with alot of imagination. I hope you won’t mind if I leave one little critical comment. My feeling, when reading the chapter, was much like my feeling as I headed out of Kirtland AFB on my bicycle early on many a Saturday morning with a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness desirous of the beauty and enchantment of the New Mexico countryside. I had no place to go and no intention of returning until I was absolutely spent and without energy to continue any farther. It would all end with my return to the barracks at the end of the day, falling on my bed to tired to move a muscle with little else accomplished. It seems as if you are entering the time portal with just about as much aimlessness as I began my many bicycle rides away from the complexities and discipline of the Air Force base into the simplicity and aimlessness of the enchanted countryside. At least, that was my impression on my first reading.

I just feel like you need more purpose and more reason for entering the portal than a simple return to your youth or simply because you had done it before. I don’t know about you, but I can lie on my bed at night and look up at the ceiling and accomplish that much without putting myself in danger at all. You need a story. You need a plot. Perhaps you have one, and I just have not yet detected it. You need an earthshaking reason for going through the portal, like the people of the village who followed the Pied Piper of Hamlin through the portal in search of the lost children of the village or like you were following an UFO through the portal into the underground complex that some say exist somewhere in northern New Mexico with underground throughfares linking all parts of the country. Make the plot personal by searching for a kidnapped friend or family member. Everyone needs an overriding, demanding reason for entering the unknown and placing one’s life in danger, rather real or perceived. The perceived time uncertainty only adds to the confusion. You should go through the portal with determination and with an overwhelming goal in mind as the main impetus for going. As that goal is achieved through interaction with the Apaches, buffalo hunters, and space aliens of some earlier period, the time period can be brought out in the end, but only circumspectly as part of the story, not by mentioning actual dates and times which only serve to confuse. After all, our system of measuring time, along with our calender and dates, are fairly young inventions, which were conceived by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages; and it is different in different cultures.