putting it out there

Many, many years ago, suckered into doing NaNoWriMo by a well meaning friend, I first wrote about a character named Grant. He was a heavy drinking, pill popping artist in the midst of an existential crisis who woke up one morning to discover something had gone terribly wrong in his neighborhood. I didn’t write more than two chapters before life got in the way of my finishing NaNoWriMo.

The next year I tried my hand at it again, choosing to start something totally different rather than pick up Grant’s story again. It was here where I created Stu, a middle aged disc jockey at a radio station that played nothing but hits of the 70s. I also abandoned that mid month.

Several years later, I got the urge to write again. I thought about dusting off Grant, then thought about dusting off Stu, then I got the idea to combine their stories. And thus, There Goes the Neighborhood was born.

That was ten years ago. I worked on it in fits and starts. Sometimes I would work feverishly, spending days and nights at a time pouring myself into the novel. Then I would go weeks without looking at it. Then I’d start up again and write five chapters in one go. No matter what, it was always on my mind. The characters were always with me, the story always begging me to tell it. I dreamed about, I talked about it, I wrote about it.

My friend Kirk, an experienced writer and editor, spent a good portion of time with me, helping me to myth build and world build and add flourishes where needed and delete entire scenes when called…