<\/p>\n
So, I guess it’s time to come clean.\u00a0 I need to apologize to
\neveryone for my erratic behavior as of late.\u00a0 The red eyes, the
\nmood swings, the coming home late and banging around downstairs while
\neveryone else is trying to sleep.\u00a0 I guess it’s time to confess,
\nto live up to the consequences of my actions and try to put forth an
\nexplanation, that, while I know it doesn’t justify what I’ve been
\ndoing, will at least give you a little bit of an idea what I’ve gone
\nthrough.<\/p>\n
I, uh.\u00a0 I’m working on this novel.<\/p>\n
The first one was easy.\u00a0 I know that’s not what you’re supposed
\nto say, but, well, tough shit.\u00a0 I was in my last year of college,
\nand I had to have a thesis to graduate, as they say, with Honors.
\nA lot of my colleagues did important things.\u00a0 They researched
\nchemicals, they restored houses, they designed mind-bending graphical
\ninterfaces for software.\u00a0 I was a bartender trying to form a band
\nand finish up my degree while at the same time spending an inordinate
\namount of time trying to stay sane while a girl kept dragging me
\ntowards a nightmarish cliff where we would jump–together, please,
\nbaby!–into black romantic insanity and the sea below.\u00a0 So I
\ndidn’t really have time to study quarks and gluons or do the kinds of
\nresearch necessary to analyze gay Victorian poets.\u00a0 Not that I
\ndon’t like quarks and gluons, or gay Victorian poets, for that
\nmatter…I just felt like doing something more, what’s the
\nword…self-indulgent.\u00a0 On the University’s tab, no less.<\/p>\n
And
\nthis…thing, this double-spaced, 12-point, multi-paged thing just flew
\nout of me.\u00a0 I was weaving gold out of the straw of my life.
\nI would sit down and write 5,000 words, then go to the Zephyr and drink
\nmyself onto the floor, carefree and lighthearted.<\/p>\n
I wrote that
\nfirst one in about three months.\u00a0 Well, that’s the amount of time
\nthe whole thing spanned across.\u00a0 Actual time commitment?\u00a0 I’d
\nsay about 20 hours.<\/p>\n
Not that I won a Pulitzer or
\nanything.\u00a0 Not that someone heard about it and called me up and
\nbegged me for the paperback rights.\u00a0 But now I had this
\nthree-hundred page, soul-encapsulated thing that my friends were
\npassing around.\u00a0 I’d made something, and it felt like a calling.<\/p>\n
Fast
\nforward a year.\u00a0 My diploma is keeping the coffee table
\nlevel.\u00a0 I’m working in a candle store, peddling rose-scented
\npillars of wax to grandmas and confused males looking to make things
\nright with their girls.\u00a0 My girl’s gone.\u00a0 I’m sleeping on a
\ncouch in an unfamiliar city.\u00a0 I haven’t written a damn thing since
\ngraduation except entries in a schizophrenic livejournal and an e-mail
\nto this guy named Nacho Sasha.<\/p>\n
One crazy night, he was drunk on
\nFive Alive and tequila and he invited me to shape up a livejournal
\nentry about the Red Sox for his website, of which I was a fan.\u00a0 I
\ndon’t think I slept for three days.\u00a0 I was that excited.\u00a0 I
\nspent hours pouring over this thousand-word Hunter S. Thompson rip-off
\nessay, trying to make it perfect.\u00a0 And, Goddammit, Nacho posted
\nit.\u00a0 The bug was back.\u00a0 I wanted to write more.\u00a0 Nacho
\ngave me promises…he said I’d be facing misery, rejection, eventual
\nUltimate Pessimism.\u00a0 I ignored him and started writing
\nagain.<\/p>\n
Fast forward another year.\u00a0 My diploma is
\npulling coaster duty.\u00a0 I’m working in a bunker for a data storage
\ncompany.\u00a0 Still no steady love.\u00a0 But I’ve got my own room
\nnow, and my own beautiful computer, and I’ve spent so many sleepless
\nnights wondering where my life is going that I’ve finally decided to do
\nsomething…I’ve decided to try that novel thing again, for serious
\nthis time.<\/p>\n
But this time around, I’m not living that
\nadrenaline-poisoned college life anymore.\u00a0 I live in the fifth
\nsafest city in America and eat healthy.\u00a0 I got no band, no
\naxe-wielding lover, no Gestapo professors breathing down my back.
\nI’m living in comfort, and this is the only reason I can think of that
\nthe words aren’t coming as easy anymore.<\/p>\n
That, or maybe
\nthe story I’ve chosen to tell is too big for me, too ambitious, a rock
\nface I’m trying to scale without any guide.<\/p>\n
Eh, fuck
\nit.\u00a0 I’m doing it anyway.\u00a0 I’m plugging along, I’m getting it
\ndone.\u00a0 When I’m ready to edit and revise it, I’ll be older, wiser,
\nand maybe hip-deep in lunacy again.\u00a0 I am, after all, moving to
\nNew Orleans.<\/p>\n
Anyway, Nacho, once my benefactor and So, So what is Critics are calling it “Breathtaking” and “A pulse-pounding thrill ride!”<\/p>\n My mom says its too dirty for her.<\/p>\n Nacho says its a temporary distraction and that I’ll be back to writing lowest-common-denominator pap by the fall.<\/p>\n I say, hey, at least you don’t have to pay for it.<\/p>\n Please enjoy.<\/p>\n —————-<\/p>\n Note:<\/em> Ghost and Brooklyn will be hitting GS in June.\u00a0 Stay tuned!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,352],"tags":[68,353],"class_list":["post-2505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cass","category-gsarchive","tag-cassander","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2505"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2751,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505\/revisions\/2751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\npatron, is now demanding restitution.\u00a0 He says I can’t have time
\noff to work on a book unless I give him something to fill the empty
\nspaces on GS.\u00a0 I gave him a few options; he shunned them all,
\nyelling at me through his cell phone.\u00a0 We called each other names,
\ninsulted each other’s ancestors, mailed each other anthrax.\u00a0 He
\nwouldn’t accept my epic poem about the Hebrews wandering in the desert
\nthat I pulled out of the archives.\u00a0 I refused to write ten how-to
\narticles about sexual positions.\u00a0 Finally, after ten weeks of
\nMcCartney-Lennon-esque bickering, we worked something out.\u00a0 I’d
\nlet him have some preliminary writing I’d done for the book, and he’d
\ndo the dishes and <\/em>mow the lawn for two weeks.<\/p>\n
\nI said all that to say this, I guess: consider yourselves lucky.
\nYeah, you get a lot of Cassander magic here, but this is still
\nrare.\u00a0 Parting with something like this, letting peering eyes get
\na glimpse of something I’m working heart-and-soul on is not an easy
\nthing for me.\u00a0 I’m a paranoid mess when it comes to people reading
\nmy stuff, especially if it’s not finished.\u00a0 Of course, I’m also a
\nmegalomaniac, so some nights I lie in bed giggling because I know that
\nwhat you are getting is only slightly indicative of the actual
\nnovel.\u00a0 Ideally, it’ll leave you hungry for more or, at the least,
\nwilling to introduce me to your hot cousin.<\/p>\n
\nit?\u00a0 It’s a sliver, a backstory, a zero issue, if you will.
\nA long short story?\u00a0 A mini-novella?\u00a0 I don’t know what to
\ncall it except a New Beginning.\u00a0 This is your introduction to
\nGhost and Brooklyn, and the strange undercurrents of depravity that
\nexist in Ohio, a state that prides itself on its wealth of wholesome
\nAmericana.<\/p>\n