What is this blog this time around, anyway?
A soap opera, maybe. “Hoosiers II,” except in North Carolina and with no basketball? A release of tension? A whoop of joy (or is that terror)? A stream of babble? The Alamo?
For now, this is a chronicle about a book I spent fourteen years trying to get right. It’s called The Book of Bunk, and it’s done, now. Whether another fourteen years pass before any of you get to see it remains an open question.
Or not, actually. Because I’ve decided not to let that happen. The question is what I’m going to do about it. This blog is the first step. It will chart the history of this novel from this moment forward. I’ll be posting all sorts of tidbits about this book’s journey to wherever it’s finally going. Plus excerpts, maybe. Teasers. Contests. Sing-alongs (not a joke, that last. You’ll see).
Who would care?
Well, me, obviously. But of all the bad moments there’ve ever been to be a novelist–and really, they’ve almost all been bad–this may be the worst: the end of publishing as we know it; the end of bookstores; the end of print book reviews; very possibly the end of books, whether any of the people who read or write them want that or not. The end of novels, because who wants to read a novel or even a blog post this long on a Kindle unless one has to?
The worst of times, then.
Unless it’s the best. The moment there was finally so little chance of actually making the money that may or may not still exist in this field, so little hope of attaining the fame and respect that were always ephemeral, always at best half-earned anyway, that the remaining writers–and they are legion–just up and filled the air with stories. Like kites over India. Balloons over Del Mar. Airships over the North Pole.
What is this, then? An act of defiance? A raspberry? A prayer?
Six years ago, at the Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank where we had all the meetings that led to the creation of the Rolling Darkness Revue, Pete Atkins and Dennis Etchison and I were in the midst of another intensive planning session (or else Pete and I were trying to distract Dennis from talking about wrestling, I can’t remember which) when Dennis put down his burger, stroked his beard in a remarkably Parisian Left Bank sort of way, grinned, and said, “You know it’s all folly.”
Maybe that’s what this is. A folly, in every sense of that word:
An extravagant fake, built to commemorate a real book about a fake book that no one can even get their hands on yet.
A mistake.
A parade.
A celebration.
Welcome to Bunk County. I hope you’ll like it here.