A Promotional Experiment

In a rare excursion from my shell of introversion, I built a web site to promote my latest novella BROKE DOWN ON THE ROAD TO GLORY, which is still in search of an agent and/or publisher. It's odd, for me at least, to be hyping something that isn't for sale yet. Heck, the car companies do it all the time. I guess it's not so weird.

So anyway, the site is http://brokedownbook.com. It contains all kinds of info including; a sample chapter, character bios, story synopsis and much much more. Take a look. If you like it, tell your friends. If you don't, tell your enemies.

Coping With the Day Job

"Your files have been published." A simple sentence. A passive sentence. The kind of sentence I email to my fellow employees dozens of times a day. An exclamation of boredom. A cry for help. Save me from the abyss! Do they hear my plea? They do not. Unless there is some hidden meaning to "Thanx Tom" that eludes me.

Then there is our director. Every email I send him is written in an A-A-B rime scheme. He's never noticed. Messages to the legal department have only one and two syllable words, yet they always respond in their over-blown fluffy language.

So why do I play these games? Well, there's the sheer evil pleasure of subversion. There's the ego-boosting arrogance of getting away with this stuff. Mostly though it really is a cry for help, building a wall in defense of my sanity. I'm not sure it's working.

Killing an Innocent Character

Tonight I killed one of my characters. It was weird because up until tonight I didn't know that there would be a murder in this book. I knew it was a psychological thriller, but didn't know the stakes would be raised that high.

On the bright side, she wasn't that great a character in the first place. She was merely the bridge between two of the main characters, girlfriend to one and roommate to the other. Now though, in death, she becomes a major source of conflict and launches the story easily and definitely into act two.

The weird thing is that I feel guilty. Not that I killed her off, but how great I feel about killing her off. Her death has helped the story so much that I'm giddy with delight. How sick is that?

Rediscovering Your Own Work

Today I was cleaning up the writing folder on my had drive, moving bunches of old stuff to subfolders like, "needs work", "bits and pieces" and of course, "pretentious garbage." In the midst of all this I came upon a rather large file I had completely forgotten about. It's a 25,000 word story titled HEAVENVILLE about a professional wrestling promoter who own an RV park that was once a drive-in theater. Surprisingly it's pretty good. It needs a major rewrite, but it's all there.

How could I have forgotten about this? I searched my memory and seem to recall that i wasn't able to resolve problems with the plot, particularly the climax. i must be maturing as a writer because I now see simple solutions for what was, at the time, insurmountable difficulties.

Encouraged by this gem I spent several hours reviewing all my old work for some other salvageable beauty. Unfortunately all this yielded was the movement of a great many files to the "pretentious garbage" folder. Ah well.