Novel ideas: A comprehensive guide to the books I didn't write

"How you, uh, how you coming on that novel you're working on, huh?"

"Me, I'm a cab driver."

"Working on my novel" is one of the great cliches/lies of the Internet, a statement as comforting to those who make it as it is annoying to the ones who have to read it.

There's a whole Twitter account devoted to people's laughable claims that they're working on novels. This account has recently been turned into a book of its own by Penguin, an impressive feat since it consists only of retweets from supposed authors bragging about their creativity and productivity. Obviously, if you're on Twitter (or any social media site), you're not working on anything, especially not your novel.

And even if you do happen to write a novel, who will actually want to read the thing? Virtually no one. But, still, it's a tempting fantasy. We don't want to admit that we're bank tellers, janitors, or substitute teachers, so we tell ourselves that we're really "writers" and that the things we actually do for money are mere "day jobs." This goes for all the aspiring "artists" and "musicians" out there, too. No one is really fooled by this. And yet the charade continues.

It's hardly a new phenomenon created by the Internet either. In the pilot for the sitcom Taxi in 1978, career cabbie Alex Reiger (Judd Hirsch) counsels newcomer and aspiring art dealer Elaine Nardo (Marilu Henner) on her first day as an employee of the Sunshine Cab Company. When she says she's "not really a taxi driver," Alex responds:

"Oh, yeah, I know. We're all part-time here. You see that guy over there? Now, he's an actor. The guy on the phone, he's a prize fighter. This lady over here, she's a beautician. The man behind her, he's a writer. Me? I'm a cab driver. I'm the only cab driver in this place."

And you can see his point. There comes a time when you should drop the pretension and admit what you truly are.

Well, I'm proud to say that I am most definitely not working on any novels. I wrote one once a few years ago as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It is called Perforated, and it is profoundly unreadable, perhaps even stubbornly anti-readable. I've tried to read it myself and found that this is impossible. (I dare you to get through it.)

Even though 2014 is the first year when I was first actually paid for writing something, I would never ever call myself a writer. I'm not one. Jim Thompson was a writer. Dashiell Hammett was a writer. James M. Cain was a writer. I just work for a market research company. That's the real me, as reluctant as I am to admit it.

But there's a part of my brain that won't stop coming up with ideas for novels. I will confess that I've put myself to sleep many nights thinking about these would-be books, imagining both their composition and eventual reception. I'm never going to actually write any of these books, but I want to get some mileage out of them before consigning them forevermore to the cemetery of expired dreams. So here, for your reading pleasure, is a fairly comprehensive list of my "aborted" novels. I'll give you their titles if I have them, plus a general description of their contents. I'm not including The Secret Testimony of Miserable Souls, my never-to-be-completed second NaNo novel, because I actually did finally make a short story out of that.

NOTE: These are not "joke" ideas fabricated solely for this article. The following are all ideas I legitimately considered fleshing out into novels at one time or another.

THE MARITIME TRILOGY

This is the big one, the magnum opus that would have defined my career as a writer. Vaguely inspired by the writings of Herman Melville (Moby Dick, Billy Budd) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter), it's actually three very separate, distinct volumes, published years apart and linked only by the vague thread of "the sea" and those who make their living from it. As such, it only makes sense to discuss these non-books one at a time.

A fitting soundtrack to the book.

The Scarlet Stevedore - This book would run a couple hundred pages and have the same general sense of pacing as a typical romance novel, though the plot is not romantic in nature. I imagined that this would be by far the most popular entry in the series.

As the title indicates, this novel is about the dockworkers who load and unload cargo from ships. Most of these fellows, at least in the book, are brawny in appearance and coarse in manner. But the title character, whose name would have been something like "Adrian," is distinguished by his unsullied good looks, lovingly maintained blond hair, and relatively refined manners. His coworkers don't resent him because he's actually good at his job. Here, the word "scarlet" refers to his rather scandalous lifestyle as well as the bright red scarf he often wears. 

Along the way, Adrian manages to seduce men and women alike, strictly for his own entertainment. Shallow and selfish, he rather enjoys breaking people's hearts. He is not a cruel person, but he does not take life seriously and is amused by those who do. 

The stevedore's fatal mistake is courting a woman who, up to that point, has led a very pious and religious life and has been a faithful wife and mother. Spurned by Adrian, she hangs herself from a rafter in her modest home. As usual, the stevedore shrugs this off. 

But one day, the woman's husband, driven mad with grief and intent on revenge, confronts Adrian on a pier and challenges him to a fight. A lifelong coward, the stevedore backs away until he is standing at the edge of the pier and has nowhere else to go. Assessing his options, he calmly steps off the pier and disappears into the water. No more is seen of the stevedore, but his red scarf does rise to the surface. The end.

You like old-timey ships?

The Sea is a Briny Mistress - This is the centerpiece of the trilogy, and I wanted it to run at least a thousand pages, maybe more. My desire was for The Sea is a Briny Mistress to become one of those difficult-to-read "classics" assigned to bored and resentful teenagers in high schools across America. As such, the plot would move extremely slowly and the language of the book would be very poetic and flowery, with lengthy philosophical digressions. In short, I wanted this book to be a slog for readers so that, when they finished it, they would feel like they had truly overcome something. 

The story concerns a young man who grows up in a shipping town in the Northeastern United States in the 1850s. Everyone in town is very practical and business-minded, but he is intellectual and curious as a child and is always asking impossible questions that the adults in his life cannot and will not answer. Frustrated, he takes comfort in staring at the Atlantic Ocean and develops the fixed idea that this vast body of water must hold some answers for him. 

As soon as he is able, then, he joins the crew of a cargo ship and embarks upon his new life on the ocean. But the people on the ship are, if anything, even more practical and hard-nosed than the people with whom he'd grown up. They offer the protagonist no answers to his questions. The young man becomes even more frustrated and focuses his attention on a fellow crew member, a grizzled, bearded old man who never speaks. 

Years pass in this manner, and ultimately the man gives up on his philosophical pursuits and settles into the reality of his life on the ship. There are storms and outbreaks of scurvy along the way, but these are presented as mere factual events with no symbolic significance at all. 

One calm night, however, the sky turns a rather incredible shade of reddish-orange, and the man temporarily regains at least a little of his old curiosity about the universe. He stands at the railing, staring at the sky, when he is unexpectedly joined by the bearded old man. The young man senses the presence of the older man but does not turn his head to look at him; neither wants to avert his gaze from the sky. "The silence of God," says the young man, "she is deafening." "Aye," says the old man. It is the only conversation they've ever had. The ship sails on towards its next destination. The end.

A Life Asea (or: Elysium on a Tramp Steamer) - After the ponderous tome that was The Sea is a Briny Mistress, the so-called "Maritime Trilogy" would end on a light note with this slip of a book that barely qualifies as a novel and clocks in at only about a hundred pages. It's simply a series of gently nostalgic monologues by an old salt who reminisces about his life, shares some anecdotes about his experiences on a tramp steamer, and indulges in some crude philosophizing about the nature of existence. Though vanity and memory loss make this fellow a less-than-reliable narrator, he nevertheless manages to convey a genuine contentment with his lot in life. I want to note that I first envisioned this book at least ten years ago, well before the 2013 release of the movie Elysium.

CUSTOM OF THE AGE IN THE HOUSE OF INNOCENCE

Edith Wharton, my taskmistress.

In college, I had two consecutive courses in which the career of Edith Wharton was covered in great detail. Along the way, I managed to read most (or a great deal) of what she had written and eventually came to resent her the way anyone might resent a demanding boss, though I got some enjoyment out of the novel Custom of the Country and the short story collection entitled Roman Fever.

I felt that Wharton ended up repeating a lot of the same ideas and themes in her writing again and again, and I decided that I could write a Wharton-type novel myself.

The plot would have centered around a handsome but weak-willed man who meets a beautiful, slightly mysterious woman at a snooty society party. They converse only briefly, and the height of eroticism is reached when his glove accidentally brushes her elbow. He is engaged to be married, for reasons of social convenience rather than love, to another woman; and she has a vaguely scandalous background, so a relationship between them is unthinkable. But, still, they obsess over that one fleeting encounter.

The elbow and the glove haunt their memories. Nothing much else really happens here. They both spend about 27 chapters feeling lousy about this arrangement, and eventually one of them dies. The other considers attending the funeral but ultimately decides against it. The end.

LIFE WITHOUT THE POSSIBILITY

This probably would have ended up as a short story, but who knows? I might have padded it out to novel length had I really been overtaken by inspiration.

This is the strange, supernatural saga of an unrepentant, irredeemable criminal (most likely a child murderer) who is given a very lengthy prison sentence and then, defying all natural laws, virtually stops aging. The plot would unfold over several decades, maybe even a century. The world outside changes, but this one particular criminal never does. He leads a very quiet, orderly existence inside the prison and rarely speaks, preferring to spend his time reading, but the other inmates give him a wide berth because there is something deeply unsettling about his very presence.

Prison officials try to suppress the story of the seemingly deathless inmate, but eventually word gets out and he becomes internationally famous. There is a widespread belief that he is the Devil or God incarnate, and cults form in his honor with devotees around the world. Scientists, too, take a keen interest in this most unusual man and demand to study him. I don't know where the plot would have gone from there, but I would have read a lot of Stephen King to get in the proper mindset for this one.

THINGS GOT SUPERPORNY SUPERQUICK

This would have been one of my few attempts at writing something in a purely contemporary vein. I pictured this as the kind of slightly "hip," irreverent novel that might be a minor success in paperback form at chain bookstores.

This would be a sort of modern picaresque novel about a fellow who more or less blunders his way into situations reminiscent of pornographic films, minus even a hint of eroticism. Our protagonist and narrator (calling him a "hero" would be pushing it) is dumpy and underemployed, as are most of the people he bangs in public lavatories and other equally unappetizing locations as he goes about his day.

The weirdest thing about this guy is how blasé he is about all of the unlikely events of his life. The title of the book gives you an indication of his sloppy, informal way of talking. He's fond of adding the prefix "super-" to words, for instance.

This is a tough one to explain in the abstract. The humor of the novel derives (one would hope) from the main character's way of talking, thinking, and behaving. After spending a chapter or so with the guy, the reader would get a sense of what he was like and how he tends to react to things.

THE VERY IDEA OF IT

I don't know why, but I tend to think about The Very Idea of It just about every time I use the bathroom at work. Gross, I realize, but nevertheless true. The title comes from The Very Thing That Happens, a 1964 collection of "fables and drawings" by Russell Edson. I've never seen or read Edson's book, but a copy of it appears in Daniel Clowes' Ghost World comic, and I suppose that sparked my imagination.

My book, The Very Idea of It, would start out as an Agatha Christie-ish mystery: a locked room murder in a stately English home. Chief Inspector Pembroke of Scotland Yard is brought in to solve the case, and he interviews the handful of relatives and servants who were also on the grounds that day. But none of these folks strike Pembroke as suspicious, and no clues are forthcoming. The dead man's will is read, and everyone is satisfied with it. There is no conflict over the distribution of his estate, and no one seems to mourn the dead man at all after a while.

The story quickly fades from the headlines, and Pembroke moves on to another case without having solved the locked room murder. His reputation is slightly tarnished by this but still basically intact.

Meanwhile, however, Pembroke is secretly miserable. A man has been brutally murdered, and yet there's no outpouring of emotion for him, no public or private outcry over this terrible crime. And Pembroke, the supposedly great detective, has been revealed as impotent in the face of evil. He takes to drink. His marriage falls apart. He loses interest in his job and stops showing up at work.

The novel ends with a drunken Pembroke sprawled across the bed in a cheap hotel room, leafing through a folder of evidence related to the locked room murder in a futile effort to make sense of what has happened. He repeatedly mutters to himself: "The very idea of it... the very idea of it..."

The Caballeros; Chuck, Buddy, Elvis, Jerry Lee, and, Richard.

THE LOST CABALLEROS

Perhaps my favorite of the unwritten novels. This one requires a little bit of music history.

In October 1957, Little Richard was so unnerved by the sight of a piece of the Sputnik satellite falling to earth that he temporarily renounced popular music and joined the ministry. In March 1958, Elvis Presley was inducted into the Army. In May 1958, Jerry Lee Lewis suffered a major career setback when the British press made a front page scandal of his marriage to his 13-year-old cousin. In February 1959, Buddy Holly died in a plane crash while on tour. In December 1959, Chuck Berry was arrested under the Mann Act for transporting a teenage girl across state lines for immoral purposes.

And so, in a little over two years, five of the founding fathers of rock 'n' roll music were felled in one way or another.  By 1960, it really seemed like rock music had been little more than a passing fad. Was this all coincidence or were there sinister forces at work?

This novel suggests that these five young men were a victim of a rather outlandish plot by the Central Intelligence Agency (then a fairly new organization) to "reclaim" America's youth by destroying the corrupting influence of rock 'n' roll. One by one, these five men are rounded up by the CIA and told that they have been selected to take part in a top-secret government mission and that their participation is not optional.

They meet in a secret sub-basement deep below the White House, where a CIA agent informs them that they will be going undercover to collect information on communist subversives hiding in the United States. Their cover is that they will be disguised as a mariachi band from Mexico called "The Los Caballeros." Buddy Holly, a Texan, informs the CIA that "los" means "the," so the band's name translates as "The The Gentlemen." Begrudgingly, the CIA changes it to "The Lost Caballeros."

In truth, none of this matters. The CIA just wants to control the lives of the five men for a while and get them conveniently out of the way so that the seeds of their downfall can be planted elsewhere. (Buddy's plane is tampered with; Elvis' induction process is set in motion; even the Sputnik incident is orchestrated.)

Meanwhile, the Caballeros embark upon their manufactured mission and encounter internal problems of their own as they travel incognito through the United States playing mariachi music to smallish crowds. Ornery, money-hungry Chuck Berry becomes the group's leader because no one dares challenge him. Buddy is the naive small town boy who treats this as a great adventure. Elvis is the flirtatious ladies' man, more interested in chasing skirts than hunting reds. Little Richard is the religious one who believes he has a direct pipeline to God. And Jerry Lee is a whirling dervish of chaos never more than a few seconds away from a fight.

Naturally, a woman comes between them at one point. Specifically, Buddy meets and falls in love with a young lady named Riley Switch, with whom he carries on a chaste, sweet courtship. He even writes a song for her, a tune he thinks will be a smash hit: "Riley Switch/Riley Switch/You done make my heart a-twitch." Later, he finds Riley in bed with Elvis in the motel where the Lost Caballeros are staying, setting up an epic Holly-Presley fistfight. Later, Buddy changes the lyrics of his song ("Riley Switch/Riley Switch/She's a low-down cheatin' bitch."), then discards them altogether and uses the melody for a song called "Peggy Sue."

I was toying with the idea of having the entire story be told by an elderly Jerry Lee, who is supposedly writing his memoirs from the Missouri ranch where he has retired.

THE GELDED GIFTHORSE

Never got too far with planning this one, but The Gelded Gifthorse was to be a savage parody of young adult (or YA) novels in general and ones about horses in particular. The "hero" is Trevor, a dishwater-dull lad of 11 or 12 whose parents are so bored with him that they send him to live with his aunt and uncle who have an estate in the country. There are no other children on or near the estate, and Trevor spends much of his time in the stables, carrying on one-sided conversations with the horses. After a while, he is given a steed to call his own: a sullen, broken-down gelding named Toby who is just about ready for the glue factory.

Trevor puts a lot of time and effort into bonding with Toby and even invents an elaborate fantasy life for the two of them, but the disgruntled, phlegmatic animal is having none of it. In the climax, Toby kicks Trevor in the head, leaving him simple-minded. The uncle considers shooting the horse but ends up shooting the boy instead.

GAMESHOW! (or: CA$H AND PRIZE$)

This is not a "novel," per se, but rather a themed collection of short stories. The idea for this took hold in my mind when I bought an album of TV game show theme songs. Looking over the track listing, I noticed that the titles of these programs often suggested danger, drama, conflict, and intrigue. Some of them sounded almost like vintage spy novels. But these names could be applied to all kinds of situations. So Gameshow! would consist of stories called "Password," "To Tell the Truth," "Jeopardy!," "The Wheel of Fortune," "Let's Make a Deal," and more.

None of these would have any direct connection to the shows for which they are named. The titles would just serve as inspirational starting points. Maybe "Password" is about a double agent with a lousy memory who forgets an important phrase he's supposed to say at a crucial time. Or "To Tell the Truth" might be a humorous story about someone who is forced by circumstances to tell an uncomfortable truth about himself in a social situation, perhaps meeting his future wife's parents for the first time.

Anyway, this book would have been a chance for me to indulge in my love of game shows without actually writing about them.

THE BIG BOOK OF ROCK 'N' ROLL FABLES

This is one of the more recent additions to the roll call of books I'll never write. Like Gameshow!, it's another collection of short stories built around a single theme. In this case, the idea would be to write an alternate-universe version of rock history, one incident at a time. The stories would be wildly fictional, but the characters would all be drawn from reality. "Crazy Man Crazy," for instance, is about the declining years of Bill Haley, arguably rock's first superstar; it would have been written in the style of Cormac McCarthy. "The Lost Caballeros" (see above) might have been reborn as a short story for this collection, too.

And best of all might be a twisted tale called "The Last Sullivan Show." In reality, The Ed Sullivan Show ended in 1971 after 23 years of presenting some of the biggest names in entertainment, including Elvis and the Beatles. In my alternate timeline, however, it ends in 1978 when Ed reluctantly agrees to have the Sex Pistols on his show. The story builds to an incredibly violent and bloody climax with Ed Sullivan and Johnny Rotten fighting each other to the death on network television.

PINK FLAMINGOS

Yes, this is a novelization of John Waters' 1972 cult classic movie about the battle between two families for the title of "the Filthiest People Alive." But it's not what you're thinking. Most novels based on movies are artless, mercenary hack jobs that merely take a film's script and turn it into clumsy prose. It's not so much writing as it is reformatting. But I wanted Pink Flamingos to be a genuine, honest-to-goodness satirical novel. It would actually be written in the style of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and would treat the events of the movie as if they were absolutely real.

THE DULLARD TRILOGY

I never really got as far as imagining the plots or characters of these novels. The general idea, however, was to write a series of books with the most boring and uninviting titles imaginable. They'd be "normal" novels on the inside, whatever that means, but the titles and covers would make them look like unimaginably tedious textbooks. I have decided to call this a "trilogy," but the series would have gone more than three books if I could have come up with more titles for them. For now, the trilogy consists of Ice Floes of Norway, The Lost Art of Scrimshaw, and The Mating Habits of Migratory Seabirds. You have no idea how much pleasure I've taken in imagining people's bafflement over these non-books.

TROLLEYTOWN FROLICS: The Making and Unmaking of an American Classic (and other pseudo-reference books)

An example of the fictitious Trolleytown Frolics comic strip. There are so, so many more.

I'm just wild about pseudo-documentaries, mock biographies, manufactured histories, and utterly fraudulent reference books, so there's a whole file drawer in my brain devoted to such projects.

The most dominant of these is probably Trolleytown Frolics: The Making and Unmaking of an American Classic, the story of the creation and development of a comic strip that debuted in the 1930s and is still (supposedly) running today, even though its original creator is long dead. Loosely inspired by the sad saga of cartoonist Percy Crosby, Trolleytown Frolics is the story of how an artist has his creation basically stolen from him, leaving him broke and insane. His comic strip passes from artist to artist over the years, with each transition taking it further away from its roots. New characters are added, others dropped, and the gentle whimsy of the early days evaporates over time.

The current version of the strip is churned out by an assembly line of anonymous writers and artists, and the cast is a confusing jumble of human and animal characters, only a few of whom actually date back to the Great Depression. With newspapers in decline, the very existence of the strip is now in doubt.

I was much more interested in the Trolleytown Frolics saga several years ago, when I wrote and (crudely) drew dozens upon dozens of examples of the strip, mostly from the later "bad" days of the feature when it had become a pale clone of Garfield. My ardor has since cooled, but I still have a thick folder filled with Trolleytown Frolics strips, most drawn in ball point pen or pencil on lined notebook paper. In addition, I still occasionally draw characters from the strip -- Rabbit Sam, Thirsty Lad, Mean Maxine, Sadie Nightingale, Skippy the Wonder Boy, and Uncle Penguin -- on any scrap of paper that lands in my possession.

I have a couple of other false history projects, too, but nothing so well-documented or baroque as the history of Trolleytown Frolics.

One is the saga of the most tampered-with television series of all time. It starts in the late 1950s as a frothy domestic comedy called Oh, Those Lembecks! and ends in the early 1970s as a gritty cop drama simply called Lembeck. Never really a hit, it stays on the air mainly due to network politics and the exchange of favors among the top brass. Over the course of 13 years, this television show inadvertently manages to reflect all the changes in television programming over the course of an extremely volatile period of American history, not just shifts in audience taste but in morality as well.

Without intending to do so, the producers of Oh, Those Lembecks! managed to create the perfect document of mid-Twentieth-Century American popular culture. Along similar lines was the story of a Martin and Lewis-esque comedy team and their rise and fall in show business. I can distinctly remember typing up a complete timeline for this duo, including various milestones in their career.

THIS IS US AT THE LAKE HOUSE

These five friends reconvene at Copco Lake every 5 years.

Considerably more straightforward and sincere than most of my proposed novels, This is Us at the Lake House was directly inspired by the Five-Year Photo Project, in which a group of five friends recreate the same vacation photo once every five years at California's Copco Lake.

I don't know why exactly, but I was truly fascinated by these otherwise unremarkable photos and what they conveyed about the nature of time and its often devastating effect upon our lives and our bodies. I made a collage of the mens' faces to show how they changed over the course of 30 years. That collage was essentially going to be my "outline" for the novel, which would have spanned the years from 1980 to 2010.

I tried to avoid learning anything about the real-life guys and their lives. I wanted to make up all that stuff on my own. Judging these five men solely by their faces, I developed character profiles for each of them.

The central character is a smart, sensitive guy who acts as sort of the Kevin Arnold/Gordie Lachance of the group. He notices and remembers things more than the others do. Then, there's the unshakable zen master, the one who simply accepts whatever happens to him and is fond of quoting fortune cookie messages as if they were profound philosophical statements.

There's also a shy, nerdy guy who acts as a sort of sidekick/tag-along to the group and never feels like he quite belongs among them. He's nicknamed "Me, Too" because of his overuse of that phrase.

And then there's "Bulldog," a short but scrappy fellow who makes up in loyalty what he may lack in refinement. He's always there when you need him, and he is very protective of the rest of the group.

Maybe the most interesting and dynamic character is the one guy who's a wild card: possibly brilliant, possibly insane, possessed of great talent and potential but also dogged by a fearsome self-destructive streak. His life is much more up-and-down than those of the other guys, but he keeps making it back to the lake house every five years, right on schedule.

There are marriages, divorces, successes, and failures along the way, and through all of these calamitous events, the five men still find the time to meet and reconnoiter at the lake house they once knew as teenagers.

PRESCOTT, WEST PERTUSSIS

I'll end this survey (for now) with a sentimental favorite. I read Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio as an adult and realized that it would have had a profound effect on me when I was 14 or 15. As an adult, however, all I could think to do was parody Anderson's book and the characters and stories contained within it. I can remember coming up with ridiculously frumpy names for the townspeople, like "Hearth Haverbrook" and "Mercy Pumpkinquaver."

Here's a representative example of the text, one of the few cases where I actually bothered to write something down for a potential novel:

     Boredom is an inevitable fact of life in Prescott, West Pertussis.  A layer of dullness covers the town like a fine, even coat of whitewash on a good picket fence.  It is the kind of place where the prevailing form of birth control is apathy and dreams regularly go unfulfilled without significant protest.
     To Chalk Whitcomb, Prescott was simply "regular."
     "Yes, sir," he'd often remark, "what we have us here is a "regular American town," and all who heard this statement were inclined to agree, for Chalk knew of which he spoke.  In his capacity as editor-in-chief of the Prescott Morning Bee, Chalk Whitcomb had diligently chronicled the goings-on in the town, such as they were, for some thirty years.  No one in Prescott, not even the Reverend Milksop, was better acquainted with the very heart and soul of the town than Chalk.
     The summers are hot here in Prescott.  Winters cold.  Middling in between.  The town went for Roosevelt in the last election and seems poised to go for Taft in the next. Does it matter that both Roosevelt and Taft died decades ago? It does not.

And that'll just about do 'er. If I ever abandon another novel, I'll add it to this article.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 40: "The Secret Testimony of Miserable Souls"

American Airlines pilot Jeff Trent: "I can't say a word. I'm muzzled by Army brass!"

Prefatory note: For the fortieth entry in this series, I have decided to do an article that is entirely self-indulgent. Rather than a review of a movie or book related to Ed Wood, it is a piece of original fiction inspired by his work. This idea goes back to November 2011 when I made a pitiful, abortive attempt to turn it into a full-length novel for NaNoWriMo, only to run smack dab into a nasty case of writer's block. But the idea never quite left me, so I thought I could turn it into a short story. Here, then, is that short story. It's written in sort of an exaggerated pulp style. This is more for myself than it is for you, but I hope you will enjoy it anyway.

"We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files.

We'd like to help you learn to help yourself.

Look around you. All you see are sympathetic eyes.

Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home."

-Simon and Garfunkel, "Mrs. Robinson" (1968)

"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed:

 blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

-John 20:29 KJV

Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.

Jeff knew that sound too well. That heavy, horsey stride was etched in his memory. Pretty soon, Old Nursey, with her bulletproof hair and battleship body, would enter his room, brandishing a metal serving tray with the usual contents: a pleated paper cup with three pills, two pink and one blue; a squat little glass of orange juice; one tangerine; a small plate with exactly three limp, triangular pieces of toast; and a copy of that day's San Fernando Gazette, folded neatly along its equator and then into thirds.

Jeff sat up in bed, awaiting her imminent arrival. Never a show of weakness, Jeff. Not for a second. She was just doing her job, he supposed, but Jeff disliked her anyway.  As he saw it, she was another obstacle standing between him and everything he wanted: Paula, his home, his job, his life.

A moment before Old Nursey even showed her face, Jeff could already detect that cloying, fruity perfume of hers, which intermingled uneasily with the sour, nostril-stinging smells of the hospital. And now here she was herself in the overgenerous flesh.

"Good morning, Mister Trent!" she said in that damnable sing-song voice of hers.

"That's Captain Trent," Jeff replied, testily.

 "My apologies, Captain." She smiled broadly but without warmth. Her eyes looked glassy and dead.

"Hmm," said Jeff by way of reply. It was important to be noncommittal with these  people.

If Old Nursey took umbrage at this, she didn't show it. With the precision of a true professional, she rested the tray on a dresser and went about her morning ministrations, checking this and that—first adjusting items around the room, then performing little tests on Jeff himself. She measured his pulse, took his blood pressure, and put the back of her hand to his forehead to see if he felt feverish. This little ritual had become automatic for both of them, so much so that they could carry on a conversation all the while.

"We missed you at breakfast this morning, Captain. We were very much hoping you would join the other pa... er, guests in the Common Room."

She'd slipped up and almost said what she really meant instead of what she was supposed to say. The word "guest" implied someone who dropped by the place of his own free will and could leave whenever he chose. Jeff was no more a "guest" here than Hess was at Spandau.

"I'll continue to take my meals in my room, thanks." His voice was measured and firm.

"If that's what you prefer."

"It is."

"But you do realize that for the sake of your long-term treatment here, it would be best to..."

"I know! Play the game! Follow the rules! Go along to get along! Is that the idea? That I should run around on the big wheel like an obedient little hamster?"

This time, Jeff had slipped up. That attitude didn't cut it in a place like this. Old Nursey—he now remembered her name was Violet —looked stricken. The miniature tirade hadn't gained him an inch of ground.

"Listen," he continued after pausing and noticeably softening his tone, "why don't you attend to the other... uh, guests, and I'll be along later for Remedial Finger Painting 101 or whatever it is they have planned for us later today. And I promise to play nice. Scout's honor." He made the Boy Scout salute he still remembered from his youth and gave Old Nursey the sly, flirtatious smile that had once won him Paula.

"We still have a little business to attend to," said the now-blushing Violet. Snapping back into her cheerfully professional default mode, the nurse brought the metal serving tray over from the dresser and set it upon the nightstand next to Jeff's bed. This task completed, she stood over her patient and watched him expectantly. Jeff knew the routine from here on out. He picked up the pleated paper cup and emptied its contents into his mouth. He then chased that with a slug of orange juice.

"Ahhhhhh!" exclaimed Jeff in the satisfied manner of a man who'd just quenched a nagging thirst after, say, mowing the lawn on a hot summer day. Old Nursey looked pleased. Wonder how pleased she'd be, thought Jeff, if she knew her precious patient had secreted the pills between his lower lip and gums?

After the orange juice had disappeared down his gullet, he deftly used his tongue to transfer the capsules to the hollow of his left cheek, where they would stay until Jeff, alone at last, found a toilet in which to dispose of them discreetly. This was a routine he had worked out over a number of weeks. It helped that Old Nursey, who wasn't really that old but just seemed that way because of her frumpy personality, was not terribly observant, anesthetized to her surroundings as she was. Flying on autopilot, Jeff thought, flashing back to his not-so-long-ago days working for American Airlines. Would he ever make it back there?

"I'll be back for your tray later," said Violet. "Don't forget, you have a consultation with Dr. Fineman scheduled for eleven o'clock. That's..." And here she checked the improbably dainty watch on her thick linebacker's wrist. "...Forty-five minutes. Let's try to be on time."

"Oh, I will be... Mother," Jeff retorted, punctuating the remark with a jovial chuckle to indicate that this was merely a conversational witticism and not a swipe. But it didn't matter either way. Old Nursey had already started clip-clopping her way out of the room and down the hall.

Jeff noticed, and not for the first time, that she hadn't so much glanced at the room's only other occupant. She never did.

This poor devil, who was likely in his sixties but looked at least 90, reminded Jeff of the old prospectors he'd seen in history books. A miner forty-niner, like in the song. He had a long, gaunt face accented by wildly bushy eyebrows and a scraggly, salt-and-pepper beard. His eyes, seemingly open all the time, were ringed with faint, purplish-grey circles. He looked liked he'd seen something awful and never gotten over it. Jeff had nicknamed him "Fred C. Dobbs," after the Bogart character. Fred didn't take his meals in the Common Room, nor did he participate in egg-decorating or basket-weaving alongside his fellow captives.

As near as the younger man could tell, Fred received nutrients through one tube and refunded the waste through another. Fred's preferred -- and, in fact, only -- activity in life was to lie on his side, his back facing his younger cohabitant, and stare at the room's featureless, sea-green plaster wall for hours at a stretch. The old man's standard expression was like that of a luckless pet owner who had once witnessed his poodle being run over by a moving truck and never recovered from the trauma. Once or twice, Jeff was sure that Fred had died, but the man would very occasionally moan or utter something that nearly sounded like an intelligible word. These vocalizations were both rare and doleful.

Old Nursey's duty roster did not include Fred. If there were maintenance to be performed on the forsaken man, Jeff noticed, it was carried out by several uniformed male orderlies, who were in and out of the room with the efficiency of a top-flight pit crew. Once or twice during Jeff's stay, he noticed that a couple of these fellows would wheel poor Fred away on a gurney, and he would be gone for a few hours. This was always, without fail, in the middle of the night, and Fred would be back in his rightful place -- if that nicety could be applied to this rotten situation -- by the time Jeff awoke a few hours later.

In all, the pilot was quite pleased with his elderly roommate. You could scarcely ask for someone quieter or better behaved. What's more, Fred was an ideal audience. When he was sure they were both quite alone, Jeff would tell him the whole, impossible-sounding story -- the flying saucers, the aliens, the ghouls. And never was there a hint of protest from Fred. No incredulity. No scoffing. No condescending remarks about how this was all in his head and that he should get over it and get on with his life. All in my head, my foot! thought Jeff, ruefully. He'd been there that night. He'd seen it all with his own two, perfectly-functional eyes. So had plenty of others. But where had they all gone? Why had they abandoned him?

Crimson? Crawdad?

Jeff picked up the newspaper and scanned it with his usual, methodical seriousness. This was a privilege for which he had fought and won, but now he wondered why he had even bothered. The Gazette was a sleepy, small-town rag that never contained anything the least bit useful, certainly nothing related to the events of that fateful evening in '57, the very things Jeff had witnessed first-hand.

Narrowing his eyes to slits, he inspected each column of text, looking for tell-tale phrases like "from outer space" or "risen from the grave." But they were absent from the paper today, just as they'd been absent every previous day and would be absent every succeeding day. If you wanted to read about how San Fernando's mayor had cut the ribbon at a newly-constructed bank or how local hurler "Sharpie" Kennicott had pitched a no-hitter for the local triple-A ball club, then the paper was just fine. Otherwise, it was a waste of printer's ink and a poor use of the typesetter's art.

The closest thing to an "expose" about the flying saucer affair that had appeared in the paper was some mumbo-jumbo from that gooney-bird psychic with the syndicated column. Jeff couldn't quite remember his name. It was Crimson or Crawdad or something like that. The fella had a platinum pompadour with a kiss curl in the middle of his forehead that looked like an upside-down question mark. Anyway, since his nonsense appeared in the same section of the newspaper where you could catch up on the latest adventures of Walt and Skeezix in Gasoline Alley, no one paid him much mind. Funnily, that old kook had gotten closer to the truth than anyone else in the mass media. Even a stopped watch is right twice a day, thought Jeff. Who else could have gotten away with saying that aliens had visited Earth and had even resurrected the dead, just to put a scare into us, and it was all a bid to prevent the human race from destroying the universe with our weapons technology? No reputable reporter could get that past an editor. Never in a million years. But this gooney-bird could say it.

How could such fantastic, history-changing events be covered up? Well, Uncle Sam could sure slather on the whitewash when he needed to. Jeff had been on the ship itself. Hell, he'd even punched one of those uninvited visitors right in the jaw. And he hadn't been alone that night either! That Army colonel and that police lieutenant had been right there with him. Both had since recanted their stories. Across the board, the military and law enforcement communities denied that any such alien invasion had ever taken place. The order had come from on high, and it applied to all, from the top brass to the rank-and-file.

So if you happened to interview Officer So-and-So or Private Such-and-Such, you'd always get the same answer... or the same set of non-answers, more accurately. Those strange floating objects spotted on both coasts? A mix of weather balloons and experimental military aircraft. Reports of bodies missing from graves? An unfortunate case of vandalism. And what about that small California border town, Loma Rosa, which had been all but wiped off the map in the course of just a few hours? A natural disaster, most likely the result of subterranean volcanic activity. Rest assured, citizens, that our best men were looking into the matter, and a full report would be forthcoming. In other words: Move along, folks. Nothing to see here. The whole thing turned Jeff's stomach.

The last year had been a tough one, he had to admit. It wasn't easy being the one domino who refused to topple over. But, then again, a formidable stubbornness was part of Jeff's character, informed both by his strict Southern Baptist upbringing and his experience in the military. For him to change his story now would be as contrary to nature as Newton getting that apple of his to fall upward. This was no longer a mere battle of wills. This was a test of a man's integrity. He had served four years in the Marine Corps during the "good war" and had seen some action in the Pacific Theater. The experience changed him permanently. When you shoot a Jap soldier right in his Jap guts and look him square in the eye as he bleeds to death right in front of you... well, that's the kind of thing that makes a man take inventory of his deeply-held beliefs. You take whichever ones you have left and put them in a strongbox where nobody can get at them. And when somebody tries to jimmy open that strongbox and monkey around with what's inside, you damned sure better give 'em hell.

The folks in charge of the military industrial complex said there were no such things as flying saucers or men from other worlds, and they were making Jeff sit in the corner with a dunce cap on his head like a misbehaving schoolboy until he was ready to say he was sorry in front of the whole class. But he hadn't done it yet. He held out for the sake of the 179,323,175 Americans who deserved to know the truth. Because of that, he was here in this strange and awful place. And it wasn't just the big things, like being away from Paula, which made it so bad. It was the little things, too. Like the food, for instance. Jeff thought back to the previous night's repast. He reckoned it was boiled fiberglass with a side order of sewer rat, with a glass of bilge water to wash it all down. Even hard-headed Jeff  was starting to see that the immovable object that was his heart would eventually succumb to the irresistible force of the pressure being placed upon him by the Powers that Be.

He sure could have used some support, but none was available to him. Most of the witnesses who'd spotted the UFOs had been drunk, elderly, or hopelessly confused. Poor Paula—who had seen plenty —fainted on the terrible night that she had encountered the deceased-yet-somehow-ambulatory Inspector Daniel Clay in the cemetery. She had come to after the worst of it had ended, but she wasn't very communicative -- partly from shell-shock and partly because she had few, if any, pertinent memories of the events. She was living with her mother in Sausalito now, and Jeff honestly didn't know if she would ever again be the feisty little gal he'd met at a USO dance. He affectionately called her "kid," another verbal tic he'd picked up from Bogart.

That seemed so long ago now. It hadn't helped that her husband, the big strong airplane pilot, had been shipped off to the happy home to live among the fruits and nuts because he just couldn't or wouldn't stop babbling about little green men from Mars. But the visitors had not been little or green or from Mars; they had barbershop haircuts and Oxford accents and looked like anybody you might see on the street -- apart from those queer uniforms of theirs. Jeff strained to remember the details. Their shirts, he thought, were shiny and kind of billowy, almost blouse-like, with high collars and a strange little insignia over the heart -- a jagged lightning bolt inside a semi-circle. Strange how the mind files away little tidbits like that.

The strange insignia.

Jeff had replayed that momentous evening a thousand and one times in his head. The male spaceman -- there had been two of them, a man and a woman -- talked quite a bit. He had a name that sounded something like "Eros," and his snooty, fussbudget personality reminded Jeff of a particularly disagreeable English teacher who had given him a lot of grief back in his middle school days. But that wasn't the reason he had socked ol' Eros in the jaw. No, that was an act born of pure animal instinct. At that moment, a familiar feeling of savagery—Jeff called it "The Beast"—had risen up within him and taken possession of his entire body. "The Beast" had also been with him on that blood-spattered day when he'd shot the Jap on that flyspeck of an island in the Central Pacific.

In retrospect, punching Eros had been the turning point in the whole evening, but at the time there hadn't been any real strategy behind it. Had he not done it, he, the colonel, and the police lieutenant might never have gotten off that ship alive. But, in the long run, had he truly done the right thing? Since then, Jeff had had ample opportunity to consider the words that Eros had spoken, focusing on their meaning rather than the uppity way in which he'd said them. Maybe that unwelcome wayfarer had been on to something. Maybe the human race really was on a collision course with complete annihilation. It was a cinch that Earth hadn't heard the last of this. They'd be back, those aliens... eventually. And who knows? Maybe they wouldn't make their presence known the next time around. For all Jeff knew, those things might just press a button on a console and, just like that, we'd be wiped out -- erased from the cosmic map like writing on a chalkboard.

Oh, but what was the use of dwelling on things like this? Even if he could assemble any tangible evidence or persuade any witnesses to speak out on his behalf, this wasn't a story that America was ready to hear, let alone the world. And, besides, how much longer could he hold out? If he stayed here much longer, he would wind up like those miserable souls he saw in the Common Room, staring gape-jawed at Romper Room, with its chirpy little anthem about what we viewers should and shouldn't do: "Do be a plate cleaner! Don't be a food fussy! Do be a car sitter! Don't be a car stander!" Jeff was in no hurry to join the plate cleaners and the car sitters of the world. Those bastards in the Common Room looked like wax dummies that had melted a little, and their brains had long since turned to oatmeal. Thanks but no thanks, brother.

What Captain Jeff Trent really wanted was to rejoin the world. Hold Paula in his arms. Breathe the air outside the walls of this terrible place. Truly live again. Maybe he could even get his old job back. It sure would be nice seeing Dan and Eadie again. If the universe was going to come to an end, so be it. That wasn't his department. He just wanted to get the most out of whatever time he had left on this crazy blue marble called Earth.

So that was it. He'd just have to recant his story. Repent. Not all at once, though. That would seem suspicious. They'd never buy it. They'd figure it for a ploy... and they'd be right. No, he'd have to start building this thing slowly and carefully over the course of a few weeks. And he'd begin with his consultation with Dr. Fineman at eleven. He glanced at the clock. Jesus, that was only ten minutes away. He'd better start thinking up what to say. "Say, doc, I've thought a lot about what you've been telling me, and..."

"DON'T DO IT!"

Who had said that? Jeff looked around the room, his eyes darting wildly to every corner in search of the voice that had disrupted him so suddenly. Jeff was so disoriented that he accidentally swallowed the three pills he'd been hiding in his mouth, and he had to cough a little to catch his breath. Once he regained his composure, he looked up and stared across the room. To his surprise and utter disbelief, he saw Fred C. Dobbs sitting bolt upright in bed, looking right at him. The two men locked eyes, and there was a tense moment of silence between them. The pilot was unnerved. It was all he could do to keep "the Beast" at bay.

Nothing like this had ever occurred before. Jeff had never once heard Fred utter a coherent thought, nor move of his own volition. The old man hadn't ever acknowledged his roommate's existence in any demonstrable way. Jeff assumed that the duffer was completely oblivious to him. Obviously, that wasn't the case. This was like seeing Lazarus rise from the tomb or Pinocchio become a real live boy. All sorts of thoughts raced through Jeff's head. Had the old man heard everything he'd said? And if so, what did he think of Jeff? Was this a dream? What was going on here?

Fred spoke again, this time in a calmer, more soothing manner: "You are confused, I see. I will explain. My name is Erebus."

The old man pulled his hospital gown down a little on the left side so that his shoulder was exposed. On it was branded a symbol: a semi-circle with a lightning bolt in the middle.

"You have already met my late countrymen, Eros and Tana," Jeff's roommate continued. "They were part of an unsuccessful initiative designated Plan 9. I, however, am here as part of Plan 4, which involved infiltrating Earth society and finding out just how much your people know about our activities. As I have learned, the individuals your society has deemed 'mentally ill' are unusually receptive to our presence. Your government has known this for some time and has, therefore, made a concerted effort to round them up, institutionalize them, and drug them into a vegetative state. My job is to monitor them, and the best way to do that was to become one of them."

Jeff was thunderstruck. He grasped for words: "B-but... how do I fit into all of this?"

"You believe in us, Captain, because you have seen us with your own two eyes. You possess no special sensitivity to extraterrestrial life. You were just, as your people say, in the right place at the right time. But your government deems you a threat because you know of us and are unwilling to deny our existence. That is why you are here."'

"So... what do I do?"

"Simply put: stay the course, Captain. You have great courage and emotional strength. These will be vital weapons in our ongoing campaign to change the public's mind and avoid further unnecessary violence. Sometimes, though, you underestimate yourself. A moment ago, for instance, you were considering surrender."

"How could you possibly...?"

"We have mental capabilities far beyond those of your species. You are not particularly difficult to read. There's no need for envy. Eventually, the human race will evolve to have this ability. It may take a few eons."

"Great," Jeff snorted. "What am I supposed to do in the meantime? I can't very well make much of a difference if I'm cooped up in this place."

"Relax, Captain Trent. The Ruler is aware of your situation and is devising a stratagem to assist you, even as we speak. Plan 10, he calls it. It should be ready any..."

Suddenly, the old man went as limp as a rag doll and collapsed back on his bed. Jeff was puzzled. It was as if his battery had died. Then, he looked up and saw Old Nursey standing in the doorway. She was making a show of pointing to her undersized wristwatch. Erebus must have sensed her arrival. That was why he was playing possum now.

"Captain Trent," the nurse said in that contemptible, saccharine tone, "it's eleven oh-two. And we mustn't keep Dr. Fineman waiting."

"No," said Jeff glumly, "we certainly mustn't."

Jeff hauled himself out of bed and checked himself in the mirror to make sure he looked even halfway presentable. Naturally, his roommate's words were still spinning 'round and 'round in his head. The pilot knew he had a long and difficult path ahead of him. He understood that now. For whatever reason, Sweet Lady Destiny had chosen him to save the universe. When he thought about the situation in its totality, it was overwhelming. Best to take these things one day at a time. Break it down into smaller, more manageable tasks. Step one: develop a taste for boiled fiberglass and sewer rat. Maybe a little ketchup would help.

...

An excerpt from a hand-written draft of this story. Most of my articles are written on a computer. 

In two weeks: There is a man named Rick Tell, my friends, and he has a dream. He wants to stage a full-length musical about the life of Edward D. Wood, Jr. Warts and all! The ups, the downs, the sweaters and skirts, the monsters, and the booze. Crazy, you say? Impossible, you say? Then you've never met Rick Tell. Actually, I've never met him either. But I have been communicating with him by e-mail, and he seems really enthusiastic and sincere about this eccentric, improbable project of his. In a lot of ways, that's emblematic of the spirit of Ed Wood. So, as you might imagine, it is my sworn duty to give my readers the lowdown about all of this, providing both the relevant facts and my thoughts thereupon, so that you can make an informed judgment of your own. Sound like a plan? Then be back here in 14 days as I explore Ed Wood: The Musical!

The (short) life and (sad) death of my NaNoWriMo novel

These generic images are supposed to represent writers block.

It was supposed to be a month of triumph. Instead it was three days of miserable failure.

November is, of course, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) -- an event in which authors are faced with the challenge of writing a 50,000-word novel in only 30 days. I'd known about NaNoWriMo for a few years, but I didn't attempt it until 2010. That year, I actually completed the challenge with a full-length novel called Perforated. I waited until the very last moment -- the morning of November 1st -- before I even picked a subject matter for the book. I had absolutely no plot in mind, so I more or less improvised the entire novel day-by-day. Each day for about two hours, I would sit down at the computer in my kitchen (I hadn't gone wireless yet and was still "anchored" to the phone jack) and type whatever came into my head. Once I (barely) reached the 50,000-word mark, I stopped and pasted an arbitrary conclusion onto the end.

The trouble with all this was that Perforated ended up being a lot of random garbage, and it felt like I'd spent all month writing something that would never be worth reading ever again. I was proud of myself for finishing the challenge, but I wish I had something to show for it other than a downloadable banner -- something like an actual good book, for instance.

I vowed then that 2011 was going to be different. I was going to be prepared this time and would have a subject picked out well in advance so that the resulting book had a shot at being entertaining and readable. Back in June, I posted my plan for the second novel. Inspired by a terrible zombie movie called Buddy Bebop Vs. The Living Dead, I planned to write a novel in which the founding fathers of rock 'n' roll -- Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis -- joined together to form a Ghostbusters-type group of monster hunters. I actually did many months of research for this book, reading multiple biographies and autobiographies of my five main characters. I wanted my book to have a grounding in actual rock history, something sorely lacking from Buddy Bebop.

As late as mid-October, I was still planning to do the rockers vs. monsters book. I was nervous, though, that I couldn't quite figure out the plot. I'm not good on plot. It's not a strong suit of mine. As November 1st neared, I was feeling shakier and shakier about the upcoming challenge. That's when INSPIRATION struck! As I was driving to the train station to get to work one morning, a phrase started echoing through my mind:

"We are giving you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal!"

As b-movie fans know, this is a quote from Criswell's opening speech from Plan 9 From Outer Space: Plan 9 is one of my all-time favorite movies, and something about the words "secret testimony" and "miserable souls" must have triggered something in my brain. What was this "secret testimony?" Why were the "souls" so "miserable?" I thought I would write a book all about that testimony. It would be a series of statements from the surviving characters in Plan 9. I thought -- incorrectly, as it turns out -- that this was going to be a great idea for a book. My title? The Secret Testimony of Miserable Souls. So in preparation, I watched Plan 9 about a half-dozen more times and printed out a copy of a fan-made transcript to use as a reference guide. I ran into one problem right away: there were many pivotal events in the film for which there would be no witnesses. The deaths of the gravediggers, for instance -- since no one else was around when they died, who knows what their final moments were like? Even more damaging, we only ever see three aliens: two of them die and the third never gets anywhere close to Earth. So who was the "witness" to their scenes on the space station? Nobody!

The final death knell for Secret Testimony was the fact that the survivors of Plan 9 would include a lot of really dull, interchangeable policemen and military men who would not make for very captivating characters on their own. And since Criswell was not involved in the story at all, there was no justifiable reason for having him in the book. I was left with dullards like Col. Edwards and Lt. Harper. Just try writing for those guys! The most interesting of the survivors is Jeff Trent, the square-jawed pilot whose short fuse, overdramatic ramblings, and endearingly low IQ make him one of Plan 9's funniest and best characters. For a while I toyed with the idea of doing the entire book from Jeff's point of view, after he's been locked away in a mental institution as part of a government conspiracy to cover up the whole UFO story. But then that would make Secret Testimony a 50,000-word rant by a madman, which is too close to what I did with Perforated.

"I can't say a word. I'm muzzled by Army brass!"

Faced with these obstacles, I gamely flogged away at the NaNoWriMo project for three joyless, guilt-inducing days in which the words came very, very slowly. By day four, it was clearly time to fish or cut bait. I cut bait. This has been a really depressing, disheartening experience for me. It's like that moment in Barton Fink when Michael Lerner tells John Turturro, "You ain't no writer, Fink -- you're a goddamn write-off." Sigh. Well, at least I got a blog post out of the experience and maybe learned a valuable lesson about my own limitations. For the sake of closure, let's now all bow our heads for a moment of silence in honor of my dead novel:



Holy crap! Is that a real guy or some kind of animatronic dummy?

(perfunctory blog post) PLAY IT AGAIN, BOB!

Woody Allen (Rick Moranis) and Bob Hope (Dave Thomas) talk comedy in Play it Again, Bob.

While I am wallowing in NaNoWriMo hell, I thought I'd put a little something new on the blog today. And by new, I mean three decades old. It's a sketch from SCTV entitled "Play It Again, Bob," and I think it's an all-time comedy masterpiece. It's a parody of Play It Again, Sam the play (and later film) in which Woody Allen's nebbishy character receives romantic advice from the ghost of Humphrey Bogart, his idol. In this skit, the real-life Allen (played by Rick Moranis) wants to collaborate on a film with one of his comedic idols, Bob Hope (played by Dave Thomas). It quickly develops that Woody and Bob are not compatible, and the skit documents their clash of wills. I can't say enough good things about "Play It Again, Bob." The performances by Thomas and Moranis are eerily good, and the writing is spot-on. It's weird to think that these two jokers are also the McKenzie Brothers of Strange Brew fame. Be on the lookout for a nice supporting turn by Joe Flaherty as Bing Crosby.




Current NaNoWriMo word count: 863. Not good.

(today's zomby) AND THE DEATH OF THE OCTO-BEARD

That's what he looks like to me!

Happy Halloween, everybody!

Many people celebrate Halloween by applying disgusting and unpleasant things to their faces. I'm celebrating by removing one from mine. You see, all this month I have been participating in the Octobeard challenge at BuzzFeed. Today was the end of the month, so I was finally able to rid myself of this crumb-collecting, itchy, bristly, uncomfortable monstrosity.

Just for the sake of history, though, I decided to commemorate the death of the Octobeard with a little movie. Enjoy!



And here's a little photo montage, tracing the Octobeard from its beginning to its end.

The evolution of itchiness.

Those last two pictures were taken today, about 20 minutes apart.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Tomorrow, November 1, 2011, is the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. Once again, I will be participating in this event and will therefore have less time to spend on this blog for the next 30 days. But that doesn't mean I'll be going away. I plan to keep doing occasional Zomby cartoons, for instance, and there will (hopefully) be updates now and again on my NaNoWriMo progress. So stay tuned!

Coming this November: Wayne's second novel! Featuring rock stars, monsters, and more!!

Hello, one and all.

Because of ongoing (and still not totally resolved) technical problems and a heavier-than-usual work schedule, I have not been keeping this blog updated as much as I would like. But I wanted to share some news with you, dear readers.

I am currently in the process of researching my second novel! And for a change, I'm going to actually try to make this one good!

Last November, I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and actually did manage to finish a 50,000-word novel, an attempted satire about the paper towel industry called Perforated. If you're feeling brave, the whole thing is available FREE right here! I actually chose the subject of the novel on November 1 and improvised the entire thing as I went along. The novel is really a garbage dump of unused comedic ideas that had been percolating in my head for months or years.

This year, I wanted to plan ahead a little. A lot, in fact. My plan is to make my second novel -- still untitled (though I have a few ideas) -- actually readable and entertaining. The subject matter is directly inspired by an episode of the Mail Order Zombie podcast. Not long ago, MOZ's Brother D and Need a Nickname Scott reviewed a low-budget independent zombie movie entitled Buddy Bebop Vs. The Living Dead, which takes characters clearly based on Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley and pits them against the relentless undead hordes. Unfortunately, the movie itself is not terribly good. Neither D nor Scott enjoyed it, and when D generously sent a copy my way, I found it pretty disappointing as well. But I was still quite intrigued with the concept of taking 1950s rockers and placing them in a horror-movie setting.

So that's exactly what I'm going to do. My upcoming book is going to be about a world-class monster-hunting squad consisting of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. Basically, think of it as Ghostbusters but set in 1957 and starring 1950s rockers instead of 1980s comedians. Besides the luminaries mentioned, I am going to try to work in cameos by Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, President Eisenhower, and more.

This is going to take some planning and research. For the last couple of months, I've been reading up on all five of my main protagonists. After that, I'll be working on outlining my plot. I really hope this book turns out well. Either way, though, I'll find a way to share it with anyone who is interested.

Wish me luck!

Here's my NaNoWriMo novel: PERFORATED by Joe Blevins

Ready to read my unreadable novel?

Hey, kids!

Remember way back in November when I spent the entire month working on my NaNoWriMo book? In case you don't remember, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. The basic idea is to write an entire 50,000-word novel in 30 days, starting November 1. This was my first year attempting NaNo, and I'm proud to say I made it across the finish line.

Well, anyway, if you were curious how my book turned out, you can read the finished novel, Perforated, right here in this very blog.

ADVANCE WARNING: This novel is in no way "good" or "readable." NaNoWriMo is much more about typing than real writing. You should know in advance that the narrator is a very nasty fellow indeed, so the book contains a fair share of politically incorrect language and profanity as well. Also, absolutely no editing has been done to the text. Enjoy!

The entire text of the novel is included below. Just remember, I warned you.

I got dem ol' post-NaNoWriMo blues again, mama!

My fellow citizens of the world,

So here we are, five days into the month of December. The glory that was National Novel Writing Month is now but a flickering ember. (You see? That's just the kind of hackneyed metaphor you can expect from us amateur writer types.) In case you were wondering: yes, I finished my novel, meaning that I limped across the 50,000-word finish line before November 30 and dropped to the ground, exhausted. Here, incidentally, is the cover I designed for my book:



The cover design was inspired by one of Andy Warhol's silkscreens of Marilyn Monroe:



As you can see, the novel I spent a month writing is called Perforated, and it is about the paper towel industry. Specifically, it is a "memoir" written by an advertising mascot named Thirsty Lad. (That's him on the cover.) Essentially, this book takes place in a universe in which advertising characters like Tony the Tiger or the Jolly Green Giant are real and live among humans, somewhat like the 'toons in Roger Rabbit. The book is really meant to be a parody of those quickie cash-in books written by B-list celebrities. I pass by a bookstore on my way to work, and I see these silly, disposable pseudo-books prominently displayed in the window each morning. I guess something snapped in my brain, and I felt the need to parody them as savagely as possible. But I didn't know if I could get 50,000 words out of that premise, so I made it the story-within-a-story. The wraparound story is about how the whole book is actually being written by an insane dentist whose crimes against society are so ghastly, so utterly horrific that they cannot be described. I don't know where the "killer dentist" plot came in, except that I'm afraid of dentists and I'd recently screened both versions of Little Shop of Horrors for an article I'd written on another site.

Anyway, I'm glad to have "won" NaNoWriMo this year, but I mostly learned what not to do if I ever try this again. For one thing, I'm not going to wait until the morning of November 1 to decide on the the subject of the book, and I'm not going to try to improvise an entire novel from scratch with no outline or even a basic game plan. Perforated is an awful mess, probably unreadable, but it does exist. Anyone who is interested in reading it is certainly welcome to do so. Is there some easy, convenient way to post an entire novel on the internet (preferably with formatting)? If anyone has a suggestion, let me know.

Thanks.

A Brief Update on Why There Have Been No Brief Updates

Hello out there, blog reading public!

You may have noticed that this blog has not been updated since just before Halloween. What's my alibi? Well, it's that I have been doing NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month project. Essentially, in the month of November, you write a 50,000-word novel. I am trying to put every last scrap of creativity into the book I'm currently writing. So far, I am up to 30,000 words so the end is in sight.

My goal is to be the first Living Impaired American to complete NaNoWriMo!

Besides, I did so many posts in the month of October, I figure I was due for a break. If you have been listening to Mail Order Zombie, you know that I have still been doing my regular weekly segment, "A Few Minutes With Wayne Kotke," but I have not been doing the elaborate, prerecorded MP3 bits this month. I've just been calling in and leaving messages on the voicemail line. In a way, this is a return to my roots, because that's how I used to give feedback when I started contacting the show in September, 2008. If you heard my "Bottoms Up" song a few shows back, that was recorded the Saturday before Halloween. I wanted to make that one extra good, because I knew I couldn't do anything like it for the entire next month.

If you're wondering why I'm even writing these words rather than working on my novel, it's because I've already filled my 2000-word-a-day quota, and I felt guilty about not updating the blog in so long.

Once NaNoWriMo is completed, I will go back to doing my regular segments for MOZ and hopefully updating this blog a little more regularly.

Keep on keepin' on,

Wayne Kotke