OldBillyBob: Blog

Queue... such a great word. I used it in a game of Scrabble once. Tripled the Q and doubled the word. Messed with my opponent's head. Good times...

Anyway, I've submitted chapter two of "Things Get Better' for posting on Saturday morning. I've gotten some good feedback on chapter one. I hope you kind readers (and all the rest of you reader types) like the next one. I'll turn on comments and voting when I post chapter four, which will be the conclusion of the story.

The story has begun. A second chapter is coming on Saturday. Four chapters altogether and it'll all be up within a week.

I'm leaving the voting and the comments off until I'm done. Be patient.

I've been inspired and/or intrigued by the cheating-and-revenge genre for a while. Some authors, like the late Xalir, did some of their best stories in the genre, in my opinion. The idea for "Things Get Better" has also been inspired by another genre: the one where the author takes a song title and writes a story to fit it.

I happened to be listening to some old soul music one day and heard the song, "Things Get Better" by Eddie Floyd. I had my title. Now for a story to fit it. Before something gets better it has to get worse, so I dropped my protagonist to the very bottom by having him discover his wife had cheated on him in the worst way: the birth of a child who's the wrong color. Since a double homicide in the maternity ward would leave his four-year-old daughter an orphan while he rotted in prison, he chooses another way to go forward, one without violent retribution.

There's no sex in this story. Our hapless protagonist doesn't even start a romance for twelve years. The revenge? Well, they do say the best revenge is living well...

When I say I've been working on a story, it means there are about two dozen ideas floating around and more than half of them have a file on the computer waiting for me to finish them. It also means that I'll be trying to finish one and my muse, fickle being that she is, will smack me in the head and say, 'not this one, the other one.' That's what happened this week. I've posted the other one. It should show up in the morning.

I didn't want you thinking I'd abandoned you. I'm here, huddled with the family and trying to stay healthy. My cue for when to venture out in public again will be when hospitals start allowing visitors again because an older guy like me who's had hinky lungs all his life doesn't need to take chances. I hope you're all being wise, too.

On the story front, I have a several fairly long stories in the mill. None of them are ready to start posting, though. I learned my lesson about that on Band Geek Diary and I'm not going to post a multi-chapter saga until I've finished writing it.