A BLAST OF GAS FROM THE PAST
This here (below) is more-or-less a copy of the final blog posted by my pseudonymous self, Deren, as he/I came forward, at last, to extinguish himself as a former GOODREADS author. Although you can still find him around somewhere. Gawd.
All the good stuff about what he did is there in his bravado tone, noted. Shame, shame. All that narcissism and the la-ti-da about all he's gonna do. Goody-goody.
Well, we know where that led.
Right here.
No four-book boxed set. There are trees to be saved in the jungles of Indonesia, pal. Get an iPad, you friggin' moron.
Well, no hissy-fits for me. That's just one item on the list. You can figure out the remainder for yourself. If you want to. I can't stomach it, myself... Here goes:
No matter what anyone has to say about what I write, and no matter what anyone calls it—cozy indeed—just being in the same room with Robert B. Parker and some of the other notables here, including some of my own friends, gives me goosebumps. That under the bridge…
Speaking of bridges, first, or second, I am moving, one of several reasons I have not been writing, here, lately. If any of you have ever relocated, and I’m certain that most of you have, it is often quite nerve-wracking to say the least. In my case it is more trauma inducing, having to leave my world of beasts, and even animals behind. Well, you can have the beasts, frankly, but I loved my animals, just about all of them. I watched several generations of them grow, named half of them, fed and cared for them day and night.
I’m feeling as though I should never have left New York. Well, maybe not that traumatic, but close.
But there you are. And here I am. Having to leave my little estate in the woods and move on to the city once again with its air pollution and noise. I wonder what I’ll be writing about in the future?
And back to this cozy thing…
These young misses in that cozy mystery place (www.goodreads.com/group/show/1357-coz...) aren’t talking about cozies at all, are they (you)? Not with the likes of Parker and Steve Martini? I never considered my book(s) cozy’s. (Hey, do you apostrophize that or not?) I thought putting a lot of humor into a mystery/thriller, like they do in Die Hard or Lethal Weapon only added to the mystery/thriller. Plus, I was trying to do something different altogether (maybe I didn’t succeed in that regard but…). Throw in all kinds of disparate elements and crack open the genre an itsy-bitsy bit. Not cozy at all. I’ve even thought about putting in some recipes. I know people like that, and I have plenty, oh brother do I. And not just for people. In fact, the third book has a couple. But not for people. It’s a tease, you might say. The second book has a lot of wine talk and travelogue. That’s very trendy in cozy mysteries, I know...
But cozy? Nah. I think it’s too tough for cozy, even with the humor. So, seeing that so many other books and authors being mentioned aren’t cozy, I suppose it’s okay.
Anyway, someone there, someone named Emily, said something about the first book, but I haven’t the faintest what it was. Apparently, she didn’t actually read the darn thing (that’s okay, Emily; no hard feelings) and there’s no way I can ask anyone about it because, well, I can’t. Rules be rules around here. Maybe she said something nice like, “I read all those great comments and I can’t wait to read it, but I’m just SO BUSY!” That would be cool. And I do have a thing for people named Emily, after all.
Speaking of being busy, I’ve been SO BUSY:
1) Revising books one and two for re-release in the four-book boxed set. Now, why do I keep calling it “book one”? Because, friends, I have changed the title. You Belong to Me was a mistake of epic proportions. I have made many in my life, but this was a doozy. I’d always planned to entitle the other three with lines or partial lines from Emily Dickinson’s poetry. But I chose to steal a line from an old song for that one due to sentiment. So, proof that you never let sentiment get in the way of hard-assed poetry.
2) Also revising for the sake of better reading (not mine; yours, silly). Most people who liked book one really liked it, and that’s great, but I did see some flaws that I wanted to correct. Then came book two (which I’ll keep calling “book two” even though I haven’t changed the title). Readers were ticked for reasons I won’t argue about. I needed to address those reasons, even though, at some gut level I did not want to. But I had already made the second book more readable on the basis of the way the first book had been received so, what the hell.
3) The third book has been very challenging because of its subject matter and the difficulty I’ve faced in pulling the disparate parts together (unfortunately, there are loads of disparate parts—I wonder if I am becoming dissociative…) and getting it all done in under 2500 pages. The fourth book, already mapped out, will only be a struggle writing because the telling of the story will be so difficult (and wouldn't you like to know...).
Last but, as the old baseball announcers used to say, not least in your yeast, I had to make an important decision that will affect us all here, first, in the following disruptive manner:
This will be the last Deren Beck post, for Deren Beck c’est morte…
In fact, Deren Beck, he never was.
If you look back a ways (how boring…) you’ll find a post or two where I discuss the matter of writing under a pseudonym and why I was doing so. Well, the most important of those reasons have essentially disappeared and when the four-book boxed set is published, with the newly revised first two books, all four books will be published under my real name.
These blogs will remain (I hope) or they will be repackaged somehow and archived under my new blog by-lined with my real name when that joyous day arrives. The same will be true for my other social media. But I am still here (or at deren@asnen.net) to respond to your plethora of questions. See you then.
All the good stuff about what he did is there in his bravado tone, noted. Shame, shame. All that narcissism and the la-ti-da about all he's gonna do. Goody-goody.
Well, we know where that led.
Right here.
No four-book boxed set. There are trees to be saved in the jungles of Indonesia, pal. Get an iPad, you friggin' moron.
Well, no hissy-fits for me. That's just one item on the list. You can figure out the remainder for yourself. If you want to. I can't stomach it, myself... Here goes:
No matter what anyone has to say about what I write, and no matter what anyone calls it—cozy indeed—just being in the same room with Robert B. Parker and some of the other notables here, including some of my own friends, gives me goosebumps. That under the bridge…
Speaking of bridges, first, or second, I am moving, one of several reasons I have not been writing, here, lately. If any of you have ever relocated, and I’m certain that most of you have, it is often quite nerve-wracking to say the least. In my case it is more trauma inducing, having to leave my world of beasts, and even animals behind. Well, you can have the beasts, frankly, but I loved my animals, just about all of them. I watched several generations of them grow, named half of them, fed and cared for them day and night.
I’m feeling as though I should never have left New York. Well, maybe not that traumatic, but close.
But there you are. And here I am. Having to leave my little estate in the woods and move on to the city once again with its air pollution and noise. I wonder what I’ll be writing about in the future?
And back to this cozy thing…
These young misses in that cozy mystery place (www.goodreads.com/group/show/1357-coz...) aren’t talking about cozies at all, are they (you)? Not with the likes of Parker and Steve Martini? I never considered my book(s) cozy’s. (Hey, do you apostrophize that or not?) I thought putting a lot of humor into a mystery/thriller, like they do in Die Hard or Lethal Weapon only added to the mystery/thriller. Plus, I was trying to do something different altogether (maybe I didn’t succeed in that regard but…). Throw in all kinds of disparate elements and crack open the genre an itsy-bitsy bit. Not cozy at all. I’ve even thought about putting in some recipes. I know people like that, and I have plenty, oh brother do I. And not just for people. In fact, the third book has a couple. But not for people. It’s a tease, you might say. The second book has a lot of wine talk and travelogue. That’s very trendy in cozy mysteries, I know...
But cozy? Nah. I think it’s too tough for cozy, even with the humor. So, seeing that so many other books and authors being mentioned aren’t cozy, I suppose it’s okay.
Anyway, someone there, someone named Emily, said something about the first book, but I haven’t the faintest what it was. Apparently, she didn’t actually read the darn thing (that’s okay, Emily; no hard feelings) and there’s no way I can ask anyone about it because, well, I can’t. Rules be rules around here. Maybe she said something nice like, “I read all those great comments and I can’t wait to read it, but I’m just SO BUSY!” That would be cool. And I do have a thing for people named Emily, after all.
Speaking of being busy, I’ve been SO BUSY:
1) Revising books one and two for re-release in the four-book boxed set. Now, why do I keep calling it “book one”? Because, friends, I have changed the title. You Belong to Me was a mistake of epic proportions. I have made many in my life, but this was a doozy. I’d always planned to entitle the other three with lines or partial lines from Emily Dickinson’s poetry. But I chose to steal a line from an old song for that one due to sentiment. So, proof that you never let sentiment get in the way of hard-assed poetry.
2) Also revising for the sake of better reading (not mine; yours, silly). Most people who liked book one really liked it, and that’s great, but I did see some flaws that I wanted to correct. Then came book two (which I’ll keep calling “book two” even though I haven’t changed the title). Readers were ticked for reasons I won’t argue about. I needed to address those reasons, even though, at some gut level I did not want to. But I had already made the second book more readable on the basis of the way the first book had been received so, what the hell.
3) The third book has been very challenging because of its subject matter and the difficulty I’ve faced in pulling the disparate parts together (unfortunately, there are loads of disparate parts—I wonder if I am becoming dissociative…) and getting it all done in under 2500 pages. The fourth book, already mapped out, will only be a struggle writing because the telling of the story will be so difficult (and wouldn't you like to know...).
Last but, as the old baseball announcers used to say, not least in your yeast, I had to make an important decision that will affect us all here, first, in the following disruptive manner:
This will be the last Deren Beck post, for Deren Beck c’est morte…
In fact, Deren Beck, he never was.
If you look back a ways (how boring…) you’ll find a post or two where I discuss the matter of writing under a pseudonym and why I was doing so. Well, the most important of those reasons have essentially disappeared and when the four-book boxed set is published, with the newly revised first two books, all four books will be published under my real name.
These blogs will remain (I hope) or they will be repackaged somehow and archived under my new blog by-lined with my real name when that joyous day arrives. The same will be true for my other social media. But I am still here (or at deren@asnen.net) to respond to your plethora of questions. See you then.
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