Below you can read the afterword to my new ebook, "The Best Thing". You'll find some insight into how it came to be written and what it's all about. Enjoy....
AFTERWORD
It
was mid 2007. I had gotten divorced just a few months prior and my
recruiting business had all but tanked. I was working a retail job
at my local Target store while I tried to figure out what to do next.
It was a very slow Tuesday evening and I was dutifully staying at my
post behind the electronics counter. It was about 6:30 pm and I was
resigned to another five or so hours of tedium when I decided to call
my friend/ surrogate little sister Carrie.
“Entertain
me,” I said. “I am bored out of my friggin' mind.”
Both
of us fancied ourselves as writers, so she suggested I start writing
a story. I would write a page or two, she would write a page or two
and we would complete it round-robin style. I agreed and started
writing the moment I got off the phone.
Given
my newly acquired singlehood, the prospect of dating was very much on
my mind. I started a story about a young couple, Steven and Karen,
on their first date and, well... I wound up completing it that very
evening. Oops. Sorry Carrie.
I
was more pleased than expected with how the story (called “Futility”)
came out. I started on a sequel shortly thereafter, picking up the
adventures of this couple. This one, which I titled “Possibilities”
was just a little longer and just a little more ambitious than the
first. I was happy with it as well and started to entertain thoughts
of pursuing writing as a career.
***
Flash-forward
several months later. I was still at Target but was plotting my exit
strategy, as I was about to start an “Account Manager” job at a
temporary staffing firm. I was dating a bit, but nothing serious at
that point.
It
was early afternoon on a Saturday and I was busily restocking DVDs.
A guy in what I guessed to be his mid-twenties stood nearby, perusing
DVDs with a little boy, probably around six years old or so. I gave
them a glance and nodded in greeting. I had a strong sense this was
the divorced dad with his son on the weekends scenario.
“What
about that one?” the little boy said, pointing.
I
turned and saw the father shaking his head vehemently.
“I
don't think so,” he said, and looked at me for support. “That's
not a kid's movie.”
I
stepped over and saw that the little boy had pointed out a copy of
the Deluxe Collectors Edition of “300”.
“Oh
yeah,” I said. “That is not
a
kid's movie. A lot of gory battles and, um... other adult stuff.”
“I
already saw it,” the boy said, looking up at his dad.
“You
already saw it?”
the dad said, his face reddening.
“Jason
showed it to me,” the boy replied.
The
dad was silent for a moment. He sighed.
“I
guess I'm going to have to have a little talk with your mom about
Jason,” he said quietly. He nodded to me and the two of them walked
off.
That
incident stayed with me the rest of the day.
I
started thinking that the life of a divorced dad was fraught with
difficulty. How does one effectively parent when you're not around
your kids every day? What happens when you meet someone special (and
maybe they have children of their own)? What I was going through
after my divorce had some challenges, but I knew I had it pretty
good, at least relative to how a lot of others had it. I knew I
needed my share of advice, guidance and support and it was a safe bet
that other divorced dads did too. I began writing an article that
night, starting with the incident that afternoon. I was going to
call it “The Divorced Dad's Guide to Life”.
I
worked on the article over the next couple days, but for whatever
reason it never quite gelled. I still found myself drawn to the
narrative of the little boy and his father, though. I put the
article aside and started thinking that I might have the seed of
another short story. Certainly there was no lack of drama and
pathos.
I
started the story soon after. I made Mike, the brother of Steven
from “Futility” and “Possibilities” the main character. The
short story I had in mind was drawing to a close when I realized that
Mike had a few more adventures in store. Should I build a series of
short stories around him? Or should I, dare I say it, turn this into
a novel?
So
I went for it.
Admittedly,
I wrote “The Best Thing” in fits and starts. I finished it over
a year later, having let the vagaries of life and employment take
over from time to time. Typing “The End” was a pretty big
triumph for me, right up there with getting published for the first
time.
Problem
was, “The Best Thing”, as you may have noticed, is somewhat on
the short side. It's technically novella length, which means it
falls shy of the generally accepted novel-length of 50,000 plus
words, but is vastly longer than the typical short story, generally
not much longer than 7,500 words. Novellas usually don't get picked
up by book publishers (unless you're Stephen King) and “The Best
Thing” was too long to be saleable as a short story.
So
what to do?
I
played with the idea of expanding “The Best Thing”, but I really
felt Mike's story was complete. So my novella rested in my hard
drive for quite some time.
***
Cut
to May, 2011. A screenplay, a host of short stories, a couple
relationships and more than one job later, I had come to realize that
I really needed to juice up my writing efforts. I had come to
realize that writing is what I have always been meant to do with my
life and it was well
past time to act like it.
I
started devoting much more time, discipline and energy to my writing.
An important component of that was learning all I could in an effort
to my improve my skills. It was late one evening, while reading an
article online called “10 Worst Writing Gaffes” (or some such
thing) that I saw an ad for a website that published ebooks. I
clicked through and quickly saw that this was exactly what I needed.
This
site would, upon uploading the “The Best Thing”, make my magnum
opus available to the general public, through a variety of means and
in a variety of formats.
Perfect.
I
spent much of my free time over the next month or so revising,
editing and formatting “The Best Thing” and its short story
companions. This free time was often at a premium, given the demands
of three pre-teen boys and a full-time sales job. It was that sales
job, in fact, that provided the genesis for the third short story in
this book, “Prospects”.
When
you work in a hardcore cold-calling environment like I did, sales
parlance becomes a part of your thought process and vocabulary,
especially when you spend fully half of your waking hours around
alpha male (and female) closers. I was also coming off a couple of,
shall we say, rather unsatisfying relationships and I was looking to
better my record in the romance department. A couple of my work
buddies suggested applying all I knew about sales... building
rapport, overcoming objections and yes, closing. I was skeptical
about approaching a woman as if I was selling display advertising or
photocopiers.
I
started thinking about what would actually if I “cold-called” an
attractive woman and soon started writing “Prospects”. I
incorporated Mark Haggerty, a character that who very well-liked
among those who had read “The Best Thing”... as a master
salesman, he was perfect to mentor my main character, Ben Patton, and
thus, “Prospects” was born.
