Unlike last time where you actually had give something — money — to get something — t-shirt — this time you don’t actually have to give me anything. In fact, I’m the one who is going to do the giving. Why? Because I’m such a nice guy, that’s why.
Not legally binding.
Last November I wrote a post titled “A Rainy Night on Drury Lane”. Back when I wrote that post I didn’t actually have any plans to continue the story I started.
Yeah pretty shocking news, I hope you were sitting down for that one.
The biggest reason I wrote it was because I was writing a post-a-day as part of a challenge to myself and obsessed with finding the perfect gingerbread recipe I just felt like writing something that drew tangents — really really vague tangents — to that. That’s why our protagonist ends up with a ring of cookie cutters in his hand at the end of the first part, later titled “With Sensual Red Lips”.
Done. Having written that short piece — with no future plans to continue it — I carried on with my challenge of writing a post-a-day and didn’t give it much thought. That is, until my wife — eager to find out how it continued — asked me when I was going to write the next part.
“The next part of what?”, I replied in confusion. It was only after her explanation that I understood that there was at least one person interested in finding out what was going to happened next.
Now looking at some of the statistics would suggest she’s probably the only one interested in reading about our incompetent hero, as the view count is usually slightly lower whenever I publish the next instalment but for the sake of this one reader I decided to continue.
So I wrote another part. And another. Thinking that whatever stories I have that need to be told — and I’ve noticed I have quite a few — I should start with simply writing. The idea that the first draft is always shit spurred me on even further as I imagine that the other stories will be so much better because I’m getting this one out of me.
Even though I still have two more parts to write I can already see sections that are, for lack of better words, incoherent faeces. The excrements of a writer with diarrhoea. I suspect you get the idea.
But that’s okay. Because as I was writing the latest instalment, titled “Nothing But Yellow Newspapers” I had an idea.
What if I were to publish this “thing” as a book? Not just any book though, but a self-published book as a downloadable ebook in multiple formats (ePub, PDF, and Mobi) with a price tag of “pay-if-you-want”. In other words, for free. Gratis. I will accept donations — because I can’t think of a reason why I shouldn’t make that a possibility — but will give the book away regardless of if someone donates or not.
I will continue to post the remaining parts and then put together — and rewrite where I feel it’s needed — all the instalments into one short story and publish it.
However. Many times I work in secrecy, being all sneaky and shit but it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t? So, aside for the self-publishing experiment, I’ve also decided to try to build some anticipation for this book by writing more openly about it before it’s actually done. This post is the first of those — don’t worry though — there’s only going to be a couple of them as I have plenty of other things to talk about.
My plan is to have this book ready by early November and will be downloadable through carloseriksson.com when the time comes. But I will of course link to it here once that happens.
And one last thing. I need your — yes You there — help with a few things. No, I’m not going to ask to you share this post on various social media sites. I’ll leave that decision entirely up to you. I have a few questions that I would love it if you could answer, in either the comments down below or on Facebook or Twitter.
- Did you notice that Detective Wentworth was/is a chronic masturbator?
- Would you like an extra “Trivia” section in the book?
- Do you have any questions or concerns?