Jeb Wright's Blog: Blast from the Past Blog - Inbetween the Pages - Posts Tagged "blast-from-the-past"

In-between the Pages (Volume I)

By Jeb Wright

Welcome to my blog! This is the spot where I open up and tell you what it was like to write my novel, Blast from the Past. Before we get into all of the nuts and bolts of what it takes for a 56 year old, white dude from a small town in Kansas to decide to publish his first novel, I thought I’d tell you what inspired me to undertake this experiment of words, in the first place.

You may think it was my love of the English language, or my desire to write over the need to eat or sleep that drove my desire to create a novel. After all, I’m a writer. The only reason to write a novel would be derived from my lifelong long of reading. Right? Trust me, I wish any of those things were true. The real reason I ended up writing Blast from the Past has nothing to do with any of that. It all happened because I had a really wild time road tripping to a rock concert back in 1983.

I wish I could tell you that the band I went to see with my three friends and our thirty-something year old pot dealer was wild as hell like Motley Crue. They weren’t. It was the band Yes. While they are some of the most skilled musicians to take the stage, wild they are not. Still, what happened that night…was wild. We got high. We got drunk. We ate mushrooms. Dave and I got lost and ended up backstage and sat in the bands’ limousine. There was a broken Steppenwolf 8-track and we got lost on the way home and ended up in a redneck truck stop where attempted to dine and dash. And we would have gotten away with it if it were not for the Oklahoma Highway patrol.

I’m just scratching the surface of the wild night we had as juniors in high school going to see an old band reinvent themselves with their platinum selling album titled 90125. Yes ended up having two FM radio hits off the album. The first was the now classic “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” The other was a cool tune with an even cooler MTV video called “Leave It.”

I have a little secret. I have written three other novels. They still need work. I need to do what all writers will relate to…I need to rewrite them a few more times and get them to a completed state. Oh, they are finished…they are just not done. Anyway…with each book I wrote, I learned. My mentor, the award winning crime novelist Chad Sanborn, pushed me to get better. So, when that old itch reared it’s ugly head, I knew it was time to write again. I thought of the Yes concert. I decided this time , I was going to do it. The story ended up not being about that Yes concert at all. Well, that’s not true. A better way to explain it would be to say that the story became about much more than a Yes concert.

When I started, I didn’t have a drunken ghost. I didn’t have a protagonist so stuck in the past he was ruining his present life. I didn’t have a lady named Desiree that ruined my best friend’s life. I didn’t have anything, other than a wild night at a concert over thirty years ago.

I took that inspiration and made an outline. I weaved the Yes album 90125 into the story, almost as a character. I created a story with a message. By the time I was done, I was ready to start writing, or so I thought I was. My mentor, Chad, read it and told me I was being a wussy and taking many easy ways out. He challenged me. I was pissed off at him…more than once. But, he was correct. So, I went back and outlined the story again. I made major changes. I pushed myself until I was ready to write the tale. I made sure each chapter pushed the story forward. I made sure the characters were alive…and real. I made sure they had a reason to be in this tale.

Before my eyes, it began to take shape. I knew at that point, I was writing the best novel I was capable of. Then, I ended up writing it about a dozen more times. I’m very thrilled with what I ended up with and I am happy with the early success I am having, including being a Hot New Release in a couple of categories on Amazon. I’m confident that more great things are to come, but it all started way back in 1983 when a much younger version of me bought a ticket to see a progressive rock band play a sold out show in the state of Oklahoma. Isn’t it funny how life works out?

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. Keep checking back and I will show you the frustration I went through trying to write this wild story. The story between the pages will hopefully give you a rare look behind the curtain and tell you the secrets that made this one a winner. I bet this is gonna be fun!