David G. Cookson's Blog, page 21
January 25, 2018
Mrs. Fletcher
Mrs. Fletcher by Tom PerrottaMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Mrs. Fletcher is a story told from shifting perspectives which mostly revolves around a middle aged divorced woman who is navigating a world with a son going off to college (who has issues with his treatment of women yet becomes involved with a student activist who believes him to be something he is most definitely not) and an ex-husband who suddenly became Mr. Wonderful after his new wife gave birth to their autistic son. She does what she can to occupy her time, taking a class in gender roles at the local university, led by a transgender professor, where she meets a young man who can’t stop thinking about her…
Mrs. Fletcher is lonely in her empty nest and eventually engages in a nightly porn habit…which honestly provides the most hilarious bits of the book.
I have read almost all the Tom Perrotta books (save for Bad Haircut and The Leftovers, which I didn’t like but was extremely popular. I don’t know why I even bother to mention this. I overshare. Sorry.) I have to put this one right in the mix with his better books. It’s somewhat harmless fun, the usual mix of suburban characters living their lives and having their affairs and having their occasional deep existential epiphanies. I could certainly see this one as another movie in the vein of Little Children, which I’d probably say is his best book.
Breezy little book that I read on the Kindle and knocked out in about a week. Can’t go wrong with that.
View all my reviews
January 24, 2018
Davezine Release date???
I have only one piece ready, I have only the vaguest of ideas, but I'm lighting a fire under myself and telling the world that the new Davezine (Self-published personal/fiction zine) which I haven't done in exactly 10 years will come out of retirement on March 31 of this year, God willing....
March 31, 2018....
(And anyone who wants to read something before then...can read Pain Center: the Novel!) http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCen...
March 31, 2018....
(And anyone who wants to read something before then...can read Pain Center: the Novel!) http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCen...
January 23, 2018
"What the Hell Do You Want?"
“What the Hell Do You Want?” In the early 90’s, When I was a teenager back in Massachusetts, me and couple of my friends were in the studio audience of a local cable access show called “What the Hell Do you Want?”—a novel show that featured a middle aged man who went by the name Bob Bitchum. He sat in a bathtub and took phone calls from people watching at home and would answer every call with his trademark greeting: “What the Hell do you want?” It was a classic in the old days of Pittsfield Cable Access Television. As a man befitting the name BOB BITCHUM, Bob was a total crank. Terrifically opinionated and not afraid to tell the truth as he saw it, his opinions carried a lot of weight with the blue collar working class of my hometown. To this day, I believe that his constant hammering on the Mayor, a woman he referred to as “Queen Anne” almost single-handedly brought her down.
One day, as a member of the audience, my friends and I were asked to sing the national Anthem for the audience at home. For whatever reason. It was just part of Bob’s free format, which featured bands, phone calls, diatribes, and this that and the other. He asked us to sing the Anthem. Which we did. Badly. Very, very badly. We were young and stupid and all of 14 or 15 years old. But even so, I never thought we were deliberately trying to disrespect the Anthem. We couldn’t help it if we had spiky hair, safety pinned jackets, (I think I was wearing a sleeveless raincoat indoors and my railroad hat...) and looked like grubby little freaks. We were grubby little freaks. It was just how we dressed back then. However we sang it, not long afterward, one of Bob’s callers called in. “What the hell do you want?” After which the caller took us all to task for our disrespect for the National Anthem in what he felt was a lackluster performance, where we did not do it justice…
Let me tell you one thing about Bob Bitchum: he was a bulldog. A warrior. You want him in your foxhole. Because HE WENT OFF on this guy.
“I WENT TO VIETNAM AND I GOT SHOT AT AND I SERVED MY COUNTRY AND I CAME BACK SO THAT THESE KIDS CAN SING THE ANTHEM ANY DAMN WAY THEY WANT TO!!!” I don’t know how long he went off on this person, but it came from somewhere deep inside that little man…
And at that moment, we erupted in cheers at the man who had defended us while tearing the caller a new asshole.
I’ve never forgotten it.
For on that stage of that odd little cable access show, Bob Bitchum in his own profane and rough way, defined what it means to be an American. Maybe we were stupid kids, punks who didn’t know any better, but Bob was not going to stand for his kids being attacked. Because this was America, and that meant something to him. Right or wrong, he felt that in America, kids had the right to be stupid and sing the Anthem badly. Just a thought.
One day, as a member of the audience, my friends and I were asked to sing the national Anthem for the audience at home. For whatever reason. It was just part of Bob’s free format, which featured bands, phone calls, diatribes, and this that and the other. He asked us to sing the Anthem. Which we did. Badly. Very, very badly. We were young and stupid and all of 14 or 15 years old. But even so, I never thought we were deliberately trying to disrespect the Anthem. We couldn’t help it if we had spiky hair, safety pinned jackets, (I think I was wearing a sleeveless raincoat indoors and my railroad hat...) and looked like grubby little freaks. We were grubby little freaks. It was just how we dressed back then. However we sang it, not long afterward, one of Bob’s callers called in. “What the hell do you want?” After which the caller took us all to task for our disrespect for the National Anthem in what he felt was a lackluster performance, where we did not do it justice…
Let me tell you one thing about Bob Bitchum: he was a bulldog. A warrior. You want him in your foxhole. Because HE WENT OFF on this guy.
“I WENT TO VIETNAM AND I GOT SHOT AT AND I SERVED MY COUNTRY AND I CAME BACK SO THAT THESE KIDS CAN SING THE ANTHEM ANY DAMN WAY THEY WANT TO!!!” I don’t know how long he went off on this person, but it came from somewhere deep inside that little man…
And at that moment, we erupted in cheers at the man who had defended us while tearing the caller a new asshole.
I’ve never forgotten it.
For on that stage of that odd little cable access show, Bob Bitchum in his own profane and rough way, defined what it means to be an American. Maybe we were stupid kids, punks who didn’t know any better, but Bob was not going to stand for his kids being attacked. Because this was America, and that meant something to him. Right or wrong, he felt that in America, kids had the right to be stupid and sing the Anthem badly. Just a thought.
January 22, 2018
Davezine 14, 1st excerpt.
I'm writing a zine, my first one in ten years. This is a bit I'm writing about a grudge project from 10 years ago, which starts with explaining my former musical career and its role in all of it.
"Long story short, this effort to push my musical 'career' at the exclusion of all common sense led to my quixotic effort to try something I had never seriously tried before:
I wanted to win City Paper’s Best Musical Artist.
"Looking back…I never had a shot at this. I know this now. But at the time, it was a huge labor that I spent quite a bit of time trying to make happen. I’m not above putting my energy behind a stupid or hopeless cause. After all, what is the point of living if you aren’t willing to do something pointless at a 100 miles an hour once in a while? I made flyers, I blogged about it, I posted to my Myspace page, I told all my friends from the Pub where I worked, I shoved ballots in front of people to get them to vote for me…it was a push like I’d never pushed before. I tried so hard, in fact, that when I didn’t win so much as an honorable mention, I just said 'to hell with it.' And while I can’t say it was the whole reason for the birth of this project, it was at least a catalyst."
"Long story short, this effort to push my musical 'career' at the exclusion of all common sense led to my quixotic effort to try something I had never seriously tried before:
I wanted to win City Paper’s Best Musical Artist.
"Looking back…I never had a shot at this. I know this now. But at the time, it was a huge labor that I spent quite a bit of time trying to make happen. I’m not above putting my energy behind a stupid or hopeless cause. After all, what is the point of living if you aren’t willing to do something pointless at a 100 miles an hour once in a while? I made flyers, I blogged about it, I posted to my Myspace page, I told all my friends from the Pub where I worked, I shoved ballots in front of people to get them to vote for me…it was a push like I’d never pushed before. I tried so hard, in fact, that when I didn’t win so much as an honorable mention, I just said 'to hell with it.' And while I can’t say it was the whole reason for the birth of this project, it was at least a catalyst."
January 18, 2018
Goodreads Giveaway, redux.
(THIS MIGHT BE A WORK IN PROGRESS. I'M NOT PROMOTING IT, I'M JUST PARKING IT HERE.)
Because I am a writer and all I ever really want is to be read, and because all I ever need is one person to care, I am writing this expanded blog post to accompany my blog post of the other day…in which I tried to tactfully explain my displeasure with the new GoodReads Giveaway program…all because one person asked….
First off, I have to say that I love Goodreads. I have been using it for 9 years, both as a reader and as a writer. It is a great place to find new books, connect with other readers, leave reviews, and (as an author) find new readers of my own work. Goodreads, however, is owned by Amazon, the company that is taking over the entire world in a very frightening manner. That means it is a business, and business does what business does: operates at a profit motive above all else.
And to that end, it has begun a revision to their Giveaway Program, one that I had been using to great success over the past year, as detailed in a previous post. https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/16253196-i-love-you-goodreads-giveaways-but
I read through their blog post announcing this, I read what the new features of it were, but what really popped out at me was the whopping 119 dollar charge for a standard giveaway, and 599 for a Premium Package. (!) Ok. It’s easy to simply say that this is a lot of money for a simple writer to give away his/her hard work. But I wanted to get into the nuts and bolts of the program and why it irks me so much.
From their post: • (NEW) Everyone who enters your giveaway automatically adds the book to their Want-to-Read list, promoting your book via updates in their friends’ updates feeds, and building an audience for your title.
• (NEW) The author’s followers and anyone who has already added the book to their Want-to-Read list get a notification, letting them know there’s a giveaway starting. This helps generate even more entries, creating more stories in the Goodreads updates feed.
• About eight weeks after your Giveaway ends, winners receive an email from Goodreads to remind them to rate and review your book. This will help other readers discover and decide to read your book too.
Ok. These things are available and they are…nice…but let’s be honest: it’s only marginally different from what they had been offering all along FOR FREE. But somehow being able to add your book to a person’s TO READ LIST, notifying their followers, and then notifying the winners to read and review the book…does ANY of this make it worth 119 bucks?
And What about Premium?
• (NEW) Exclusive placements on the Giveaways homepage on Goodreads with tens of millions of visitors each month, giving your giveaway significantly more visibility and more entrants.
• (NEW) Everyone who enters your giveaway automatically adds the book to their Want-to-Read list, promoting your book via updates in their friends’ updates feeds, and building an audience for your title.
• (NEW) The author’s followers and anyone who has already added the book to their Want-to-Read list get a notification, letting them know there’s a giveaway starting. This helps generate even more entries, and creates more stories in the Goodreads updates feed.
• About eight weeks after your Giveaway ends, winners receive an email from Goodreads to remind them to rate and review your book. This will help other readers discover and decide to read your book too.
• Giveaways are shown in the Giveaways section of Goodreads and the book page,allowing readers to discover new books.
Honestly, it sounds like more of the same. And this costs a whopping 599 bucks.
Here’s the thing: Sending these books out already costs me. Before I’ve even put the Pain Center book in an envelope, I spent roughly 4 months with countless hours assembling the books myself. It all comes out of my own pocket. When I make a sale, I am ecstatic. But because I am still an unknown author, no one is lining up to buy my book. But with the giveaways, I was building an audience. I was gaining traction. Yet not one of these giveaways has actually led to any sales. Now they are making people PAY for this???
I understand they gotta make money. But couldn’t there be a compromise? Maybe a cheap option for the rest of us? There has to be some way that these things can be done without fleecing the authors!
Curiously, and apparently singularly, this blog post announcing this change has been closed to comments. Maybe I wasn’t the only one upset by paying so much for something that used to be free.
Because I am a writer and all I ever really want is to be read, and because all I ever need is one person to care, I am writing this expanded blog post to accompany my blog post of the other day…in which I tried to tactfully explain my displeasure with the new GoodReads Giveaway program…all because one person asked….
First off, I have to say that I love Goodreads. I have been using it for 9 years, both as a reader and as a writer. It is a great place to find new books, connect with other readers, leave reviews, and (as an author) find new readers of my own work. Goodreads, however, is owned by Amazon, the company that is taking over the entire world in a very frightening manner. That means it is a business, and business does what business does: operates at a profit motive above all else.
And to that end, it has begun a revision to their Giveaway Program, one that I had been using to great success over the past year, as detailed in a previous post. https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/16253196-i-love-you-goodreads-giveaways-but
I read through their blog post announcing this, I read what the new features of it were, but what really popped out at me was the whopping 119 dollar charge for a standard giveaway, and 599 for a Premium Package. (!) Ok. It’s easy to simply say that this is a lot of money for a simple writer to give away his/her hard work. But I wanted to get into the nuts and bolts of the program and why it irks me so much.
From their post: • (NEW) Everyone who enters your giveaway automatically adds the book to their Want-to-Read list, promoting your book via updates in their friends’ updates feeds, and building an audience for your title.
• (NEW) The author’s followers and anyone who has already added the book to their Want-to-Read list get a notification, letting them know there’s a giveaway starting. This helps generate even more entries, creating more stories in the Goodreads updates feed.
• About eight weeks after your Giveaway ends, winners receive an email from Goodreads to remind them to rate and review your book. This will help other readers discover and decide to read your book too.
Ok. These things are available and they are…nice…but let’s be honest: it’s only marginally different from what they had been offering all along FOR FREE. But somehow being able to add your book to a person’s TO READ LIST, notifying their followers, and then notifying the winners to read and review the book…does ANY of this make it worth 119 bucks?
And What about Premium?
• (NEW) Exclusive placements on the Giveaways homepage on Goodreads with tens of millions of visitors each month, giving your giveaway significantly more visibility and more entrants.
• (NEW) Everyone who enters your giveaway automatically adds the book to their Want-to-Read list, promoting your book via updates in their friends’ updates feeds, and building an audience for your title.
• (NEW) The author’s followers and anyone who has already added the book to their Want-to-Read list get a notification, letting them know there’s a giveaway starting. This helps generate even more entries, and creates more stories in the Goodreads updates feed.
• About eight weeks after your Giveaway ends, winners receive an email from Goodreads to remind them to rate and review your book. This will help other readers discover and decide to read your book too.
• Giveaways are shown in the Giveaways section of Goodreads and the book page,allowing readers to discover new books.
Honestly, it sounds like more of the same. And this costs a whopping 599 bucks.
Here’s the thing: Sending these books out already costs me. Before I’ve even put the Pain Center book in an envelope, I spent roughly 4 months with countless hours assembling the books myself. It all comes out of my own pocket. When I make a sale, I am ecstatic. But because I am still an unknown author, no one is lining up to buy my book. But with the giveaways, I was building an audience. I was gaining traction. Yet not one of these giveaways has actually led to any sales. Now they are making people PAY for this???
I understand they gotta make money. But couldn’t there be a compromise? Maybe a cheap option for the rest of us? There has to be some way that these things can be done without fleecing the authors!
Curiously, and apparently singularly, this blog post announcing this change has been closed to comments. Maybe I wasn’t the only one upset by paying so much for something that used to be free.
January 17, 2018
I Love you, Goodreads Giveaways, but…
Last year I did 5 giveaways for my self-published novel, Pain Center: the Novel! The purpose of these were to get the book into the hands of potential fans, via a random giveaway, in the hopes that it would give me a good cross section of reviews, thereby boosting the visibility of the book.
To that end, it worked pretty well. I gave away 55 copies, got 17 ratings, 13 text reviews, and after all that, I’ve averaged about a 3.06 average, with most people liking it, a few really liking it, and (unavoidably) a very small number of people actually hate it. (I mean, what can you do? I know it’s weird, and that it's not for everyone.)
Hoping to push the needle a little on the book, which has been pretty much resting at 3.06 for a while now, I dropped a quasi-cryptic note on the Pain Center Facebook page that I would be doing another giveaway soon.
Yeah…sorry, that’s not gonna happen.
Basically, What I did for free last year is now going to come with a price structure. You can read about it here.
https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/1108
I don’t want to debate the merits of it, but there is a financial reality to this: it busts the budget. The standard price is more than it even cost me to make this book.
Everything about this book, I did myself. I wrote, edited, made the cover, copied hundreds and hundreds of pages (5 toners were used) and did the back-breaking work of assembling it all in my house, collating it on the stairs in my basement. And because I did it like this, it was cheap. I paid for it with the pain in my back. I love you, Goodreads Giveaways, but I just can’t do it anymore, at least, not now.
Anyway (my favorite transition word!), that’s why there will be no giveaways. If you are interested in buying a copy, I have many avenues available to get one, starting with my website, which links to the stores that sell it.
http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCentertheNovel.html
Thanks for reading,
David G. Cookson,
Author of Pain Center: the Novel!
To that end, it worked pretty well. I gave away 55 copies, got 17 ratings, 13 text reviews, and after all that, I’ve averaged about a 3.06 average, with most people liking it, a few really liking it, and (unavoidably) a very small number of people actually hate it. (I mean, what can you do? I know it’s weird, and that it's not for everyone.)
Hoping to push the needle a little on the book, which has been pretty much resting at 3.06 for a while now, I dropped a quasi-cryptic note on the Pain Center Facebook page that I would be doing another giveaway soon.
Yeah…sorry, that’s not gonna happen.
Basically, What I did for free last year is now going to come with a price structure. You can read about it here.
https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/1108
I don’t want to debate the merits of it, but there is a financial reality to this: it busts the budget. The standard price is more than it even cost me to make this book.
Everything about this book, I did myself. I wrote, edited, made the cover, copied hundreds and hundreds of pages (5 toners were used) and did the back-breaking work of assembling it all in my house, collating it on the stairs in my basement. And because I did it like this, it was cheap. I paid for it with the pain in my back. I love you, Goodreads Giveaways, but I just can’t do it anymore, at least, not now.
Anyway (my favorite transition word!), that’s why there will be no giveaways. If you are interested in buying a copy, I have many avenues available to get one, starting with my website, which links to the stores that sell it.
http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCentertheNovel.html
Thanks for reading,
David G. Cookson,
Author of Pain Center: the Novel!
January 16, 2018
Fire And Fury
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael WolffMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Like much of America last week, I was dying to read this tell-all of the 1st tumultuous year of the Trump administration. Michael Wolff’s book, which promised to offer a view “From the couch” of the White House, for the most part provides just that. And the view is not pretty…
Wolff’s assertion is that Trump didn’t really want to be President, that he was just using a run to the White House as a platform to boost his stature, and that he is largely an unskilled and unqualified person to be running the country. While I can definitely agree with the latter part of these statements, I did find myself less convinced of the former, that he didn’t want to be President. It comes off as a clever hook for the reader, but I still think that is just a bit of conjecture.
But the year spent ensconced at the White House still provides the reader with an interesting insight, even if it winds up being a greatest hits of all the awfulness of 2017: The Comey fiasco, the transgender ban in the military, the weak response to racism and white nationalism, the constant shakeups within the administration, the off the cuff and often incoherent and rambling speeches, the promise to bring ‘fire and fury’ upon North Korea, a phrase for which the book is titled…and much more! True, it is a scary world out there, and the man in charge at the heart of it is not presented as one who is capable of handling it, at least if we believe Wolff (which I’m inclined to when he has as many sources, interviews, and direct quotes as he does.) The inner battles of the White House are featured, with Steve Bannon in the middle of all of it, as well as “Jarvanka” (Jared and Ivanka) and a whole host of other tools and half-wits. (Sorry. No, not really.)
Fire and Fury pretty much picks up where Katy Tur’s (“Unbelievable”) terrific book leaves off, and to be honest, that book is a lot better, largely due to the fact that it was more personal and relatable. Still, read Fire and Fury and hope that there isn’t a sequel. I believe that it tells the story fairly well.
If you are a rational person who is scared of everything going on in Washington right now, this will help you to understand it all. And if you are not, go ahead and re-elect Trump.
View all my reviews
January 11, 2018
So, thinking aloud about a writing plan for this year….
Should I…
1. Put out a new copy of the long dormant Davezine? Last one was Issue Number 13, sometime in 2007-ish. Follow-up question: What would go in it? I have some ideas involving…
2. …Beer Club, Book One: the Elephant Mascot! Yes, the limited release of 2015, a story I truly believe has all the potential for being a Cult Classic (It’s listed in my GoodReads Profile but has only been read by a handful.) Maybe it’s ripe for a ‘zine? Davezine Number 14???
3. Double Down on my Nano 2017 book, one which is admittedly a big ol’ mess but might have a few nuggets in there?
4. Find a lost project to resurrect? I have one book called “The Moderation Project” which has some potential in spite of a messed up ending that needs fixing. Also in that category: “The Council of Failed Public Figures” (2013), a good story that also has a messed up ending.
5. Shelve old ideas and forget about resurrections and look to write something new…?
Of course, there is National Novel Writing Month in November. But that’s a long way away. And this is all just stuff going through my head.
Stay tuned….
DIdn't he just post something yesterday?http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCen...
1. Put out a new copy of the long dormant Davezine? Last one was Issue Number 13, sometime in 2007-ish. Follow-up question: What would go in it? I have some ideas involving…
2. …Beer Club, Book One: the Elephant Mascot! Yes, the limited release of 2015, a story I truly believe has all the potential for being a Cult Classic (It’s listed in my GoodReads Profile but has only been read by a handful.) Maybe it’s ripe for a ‘zine? Davezine Number 14???
3. Double Down on my Nano 2017 book, one which is admittedly a big ol’ mess but might have a few nuggets in there?
4. Find a lost project to resurrect? I have one book called “The Moderation Project” which has some potential in spite of a messed up ending that needs fixing. Also in that category: “The Council of Failed Public Figures” (2013), a good story that also has a messed up ending.
5. Shelve old ideas and forget about resurrections and look to write something new…?
Of course, there is National Novel Writing Month in November. But that’s a long way away. And this is all just stuff going through my head.
Stay tuned….
DIdn't he just post something yesterday?http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCen...
January 10, 2018
Notes on Re-Reading a month of my Writing.
As I slowly re-read The nap Story/The Sleepist/The nap Project/Nano 2017…whatever I was going to call it…I think about how I could steer these words I’ve written, what kind of story they could be if only I could understand what kind of story this is. Is it a comedy? An X-File??? (Kudos to the reader who filed my last book into the “Medical Thriller genre) Could this mess ever become a sensible narrative?
I think about how some of this does in fact work pretty well. There are whole pages and paragraphs and words that I actually enjoy reading back. And then there are a whole lot of words and crap that I just want to cut out, but I am making myself go through the whole story first before I do any such thing.
And then I think about my idea to completely rewrite the whole damn thing…yeah, I really don’t want to do that…
And then I reach the inescapable conclusion: short of just letting it go and never touching it again, this novel is going to be a lot of work. And I guess that’s ok.
David G. Cookson's latest 'Medical thriller' on sale now! http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCen...
I think about how some of this does in fact work pretty well. There are whole pages and paragraphs and words that I actually enjoy reading back. And then there are a whole lot of words and crap that I just want to cut out, but I am making myself go through the whole story first before I do any such thing.
And then I think about my idea to completely rewrite the whole damn thing…yeah, I really don’t want to do that…
And then I reach the inescapable conclusion: short of just letting it go and never touching it again, this novel is going to be a lot of work. And I guess that’s ok.
David G. Cookson's latest 'Medical thriller' on sale now! http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCen...
January 4, 2018
The Nap Story
My NaNoWriMo novel last November was about a man who needs to take a nap every three hours or else he will die. Now that the holidays are basically over I started taking a look at this first draft.
My first thought after I finished on November 30th was that it was going to need to do a lot more work to fix this one. I wanted to shake it off and start over because while I once again crossed the finish line of 50 thousand words, it didn't come out the way I wanted. I didn't make the hard choices that would have made the rewrite easier. I spent too much time worrying about explaining the man's condition. I didn't milk the comedy potential. And blah, blah, blah...First Draft Problems!
But then again, maybe it's not as bad as I thought. Maybe parts can be salvaged. Maybe it has a framework I can work with. It's just so hard to go back when there was so much pain the first time. My last book, Pain Center, was one of the rare stories that pretty much came out as intended. I knew as soon as I finished that the editing process was going to be smooth. But this new one is a reminder that the process is not always this way.
Anyway, I'll be back at work on it next week. Lots of possibilities. I'll keep you updated.
David G. Cookson is the author of Pain Center: the Novel! which is available here: http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCen...
My first thought after I finished on November 30th was that it was going to need to do a lot more work to fix this one. I wanted to shake it off and start over because while I once again crossed the finish line of 50 thousand words, it didn't come out the way I wanted. I didn't make the hard choices that would have made the rewrite easier. I spent too much time worrying about explaining the man's condition. I didn't milk the comedy potential. And blah, blah, blah...First Draft Problems!
But then again, maybe it's not as bad as I thought. Maybe parts can be salvaged. Maybe it has a framework I can work with. It's just so hard to go back when there was so much pain the first time. My last book, Pain Center, was one of the rare stories that pretty much came out as intended. I knew as soon as I finished that the editing process was going to be smooth. But this new one is a reminder that the process is not always this way.
Anyway, I'll be back at work on it next week. Lots of possibilities. I'll keep you updated.
David G. Cookson is the author of Pain Center: the Novel! which is available here: http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCen...
