The Books That Inspired Me To Become Leslie Langtry, Part One

I came late to the writing-a-novel party (which was sad because they have fun hats and lots of cake). Well, I've been writing since 2nd Grade, but it took til I was almost 40 to write and sell my first book.

Two books inspired me to get off my lazy butt and do this and I wanted to share the first one with you now (the next one in a few days), BECAUSE YOU SHOULD READ IT.

The Gun Seller

THE GUN SELLER, by Hugh Laurie. Yes, THAT Hugh Laurie. You probably know him better as HOUSE M.D., but I originally knew him from his BBC hit from the early '90's A BIT OF FRY AND LAURIE (I'm a ridiculous anglophile when it comes to Britcoms).

Anyway - I read this hilarious book about a guy who ends up on the run and in trouble with mercenaries, CIA baddies and so on, and I realized that I wanted to write like this (apologies for the long excerpt to Mr. Laurie - but I really, really want you, my minions, to read this book):

"Imagine that you have to break someone's arm.
Right or left, doesn't matter. The point is that you have to break it, because if you don't...well, that doesn't matter either. Let's just say bad things will happen if you don't.
Now, my question goes like this: do you break the arm quickly - snap, whoops, sorry, here let me help you with that improvised splint - or do you drag the whole business out for a good eight minutes, every now and then increasing the pressure in the tiniest of increments, until the pain becomes pink and green and hot and cold and altogether howlingly unbearable?
Well exactly. Of course. The right thing to do, the only thing to do, is to get it over as quickly as possible. Break the arm, ply the brandy, be a good citizen. There can be no other answer.
Unless.
Unless unless unless.
What iv you were to hate the person on the other end of the arm? I mean really, really hate them.
This was a thing I now had to consider.
I say now, meaning then, meaning the moment I am describing; the moment fractionally, oh so bloody fractionally, before my wrist reached the back of my neck and my left humerus broke into at least two, very possibly more, floppily joined-together pieces.
The arm we've been discussing, you see, is mine. It's not an abstract, philosopher's arm. the bone, the skin, the hairs, the small white scar on the point of the elbow, won from the corner of a storage heater at Gateshill Primary School - they all belong to me. And now is the moment when I must consider the possibility that the man standing behind me, gripping my wrist and driving it up my spine with an almost sexual degree of care, hates me. I mean, really, really hates me.
He is taking forever."

That is from the beginning of the book. And that is why I started writing.

Now go get this book and read it.