Fame is Only 120,000 Words Away

So, I guess it’s time to come clean.  I need to apologize to
everyone for my erratic behavior as of late.  The red eyes, the
mood swings, the coming home late and banging around downstairs while
everyone else is trying to sleep.  I guess it’s time to confess,
to live up to the consequences of my actions and try to put forth an
explanation, that, while I know it doesn’t justify what I’ve been
doing, will at least give you a little bit of an idea what I’ve gone
through.

I, uh.  I’m working on this novel.

The first one was easy.  I know that’s not what you’re supposed
to say, but, well, tough shit.  I was in my last year of college,
and I had to have a thesis to graduate, as they say, with Honors.
A lot of my colleagues did important things.  They researched
chemicals, they restored houses, they designed mind-bending graphical
interfaces for software.  I was a bartender trying to form a band
and finish up my degree while at the same time spending an inordinate
amount of time trying to stay sane while a girl kept dragging me
towards a nightmarish cliff where we would jump–together, please,
baby!–into black romantic insanity and the sea below.  So I
didn’t really have time to study quarks and gluons or do the kinds of
research necessary to analyze gay Victorian poets.  Not that I
don’t like quarks and gluons, or gay Victorian poets, for that
matter…I just felt like doing something more, what’s the
word…self-indulgent.  On the University’s tab, no less.

And
this…thing, this double-spaced, 12-point, multi-paged thing just flew
out of me.  I was weaving gold out of the straw of my life.
I would sit down and write 5,000 words, then go to the Zephyr and drink
myself onto the floor, carefree and lighthearted.

I wrote that
first one in about three months.  Well, that’s the amount of time
the whole thing spanned across.  Actual time commitment?  I’d
say about 20 hours.

Not that I won a Pulitzer or
anything.  Not that someone heard about it and called me up and
begged me for the paperback rights.  But now I had this
three-hundred page, soul-encapsulated thing that my friends were
passing around.  I’d made something, and it felt like a calling.

Fast
forward a year.  My diploma is keeping the coffee table
level.  I’m working in a candle store, peddling rose-scented
pillars of wax to grandmas and confused males looking to make things
right with their girls.  My girl’s gone.  I’m sleeping on a
couch in an unfamiliar city.  I haven’t written a damn thing since
graduation except entries in a schizophrenic livejournal and an e-mail
to this guy named Nacho Sasha.

One crazy night, he was drunk on
Five Alive and tequila and he invited me to shape up a livejournal
entry about the Red Sox for his website, of which I was a fan.  I
don’t think I slept for three days.  I was that excited.  I
spent hours pouring over this thousand-word Hunter S. Thompson rip-off
essay, trying to make it perfect.  And, Goddammit, Nacho posted
it.  The bug was back.  I wanted to write more.  Nacho
gave me promises…he said I’d be facing misery, rejection, eventual
Ultimate Pessimism.  I ignored him and started writing
again.

Fast forward another year.  My diploma is
pulling coaster duty.  I’m working in a bunker for a data storage
company.  Still no steady love.  But I’ve got my own room
now, and my own beautiful computer, and I’ve spent so many sleepless
nights wondering where my life is going that I’ve finally decided to do
something…I’ve decided to try that novel thing again, for serious
this time.

But this time around, I’m not living that
adrenaline-poisoned college life anymore.  I live in the fifth
safest city in America and eat healthy.  I got no band, no
axe-wielding lover, no Gestapo professors breathing down my back.
I’m living in comfort, and this is the only reason I can think of that
the words aren’t coming as easy anymore.

That, or maybe
the story I’ve chosen to tell is too big for me, too ambitious, a rock
face I’m trying to scale without any guide.

Eh, fuck
it.  I’m doing it anyway.  I’m plugging along, I’m getting it
done.  When I’m ready to edit and revise it, I’ll be older, wiser,
and maybe hip-deep in lunacy again.  I am, after all, moving to
New Orleans.

Anyway, Nacho, once my benefactor and
patron, is now demanding restitution.  He says I can’t have time
off to work on a book unless I give him something to fill the empty
spaces on GS.  I gave him a few options; he shunned them all,
yelling at me through his cell phone.  We called each other names,
insulted each other’s ancestors, mailed each other anthrax.  He
wouldn’t accept my epic poem about the Hebrews wandering in the desert
that I pulled out of the archives.  I refused to write ten how-to
articles about sexual positions.  Finally, after ten weeks of
McCartney-Lennon-esque bickering, we worked something out.  I’d
let him have some preliminary writing I’d done for the book, and he’d
do the dishes and mow the lawn for two weeks.

So,
I said all that to say this, I guess: consider yourselves lucky.
Yeah, you get a lot of Cassander magic here, but this is still
rare.  Parting with something like this, letting peering eyes get
a glimpse of something I’m working heart-and-soul on is not an easy
thing for me.  I’m a paranoid mess when it comes to people reading
my stuff, especially if it’s not finished.  Of course, I’m also a
megalomaniac, so some nights I lie in bed giggling because I know that
what you are getting is only slightly indicative of the actual
novel.  Ideally, it’ll leave you hungry for more or, at the least,
willing to introduce me to your hot cousin.

So what is
it?  It’s a sliver, a backstory, a zero issue, if you will.
A long short story?  A mini-novella?  I don’t know what to
call it except a New Beginning.  This is your introduction to
Ghost and Brooklyn, and the strange undercurrents of depravity that
exist in Ohio, a state that prides itself on its wealth of wholesome
Americana.

Critics are calling it “Breathtaking” and “A pulse-pounding thrill ride!”

My mom says its too dirty for her.

Nacho says its a temporary distraction and that I’ll be back to writing lowest-common-denominator pap by the fall.

I say, hey, at least you don’t have to pay for it.

Please enjoy.

—————-

Note: Ghost and Brooklyn will be hitting GS in June.  Stay tuned!