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A Brief History: “Amusement” was created for a number of reasons, the primary reason being that in October 1999, I was enrolled in a class at UCF called Advanced Fiction, under the instruction of Dr. Susan Hubbard (author of The Society of S series, which I haven’t read because it’s teenage vampire fiction, which I haven’t been into since I’d first seen The Lost Boys on TV, but I’m sure it’s really good since it’s sparked a couple of sequels), and one of the primary requirements of passing the class was that we had to write advanced fiction. So, I mined my bank of ideas for the perfect story, and decided to work on the one that I had written a page for that summer and wanted to work on anyway, “My Dinner with Bugs Bunny.” Except, I didn’t want to actually write that story because there was nothing I could really do with it at the time, being that it was based on a licensed character. So, I changed the potential dinner with Bugs Bunny to one with a made-up cartoon star, Nippy the Cat. Only, I didn’t want Nippy to be a hero or even lovable. For that to work, I needed a natural foil, someone who had hardly any sense of humor. That marked the beginning of Sammy the businessman’s existence as the story’s “hero.”
I still needed a vehicle to tell this story. I needed some excuse to toss Sammy into this cartoon world where his negative attitude could greatly upset the balance of this whimsically nightmarish place. I couldn’t exactly rip off Who Framed Roger Rabbit? for this, so, I went to my next go-to, a computer game I was obsessed with in 1999 called RollerCoaster Tycoon. Suddenly, I had my vision for “Amusement” in full. Once I wrote it and turned it in to the class for workshop, my instructor thanked me for writing something unique (meta!), and even suggested I send the revision off to a literary magazine she had familiarity with, the North Atlantic Review, I think, or North American Review—one of those. But I still had some rough edges to polish and a chunky number of words to lob off from the word count. I never found a way to cut it down to a publishable length without wrecking some of its charm, however, so I never shopped it around. But thanks to futuristic innovations like ebooks, I no longer have to.
The original story was very much like the current version, but with one caveat: the entire premise was about pissing off happy people who were happy because they were brainwashed. That’s basically it. As much as I was content with that angle, over the years I’ve realized that it wasn’t enough of a motivation, or story problem, to call it “good.” I didn’t actually want to change anything, because I still found it entertaining, but the more I thought about extending the story for a possible ebook release, the more I thought about who Sammy is and what would make him so easily irritated, and ultimately what would make him a better star of a better story. The end result transformed a story about a guy looking to shake things up at a clichéd amusement park to a guy looking to exact revenge on those responsible for a personal tragedy in his past.
Of course, the tragedy and those responsible for it, in this version of the story at least, are unclear. We just know the incident had greatly disturbed the order of Sammy’s life, enough to ruin his good cheer and to send him down this dark path of emotional vengeance and “extreme professionalism.” But at least now he’s not completely one-note. I’m happier with the outcome. Hopefully you are, too.
A Brief Future: This may not mark the end of Sammy’s story (or even the beginning of it). Even though “Amusement” is a standalone story and was always intended to stand alone, recent ideas have prompted me to draft a much longer (novel-length) story related to the tragedy that befell him and the vengeful course he takes to rectify the wrongs created by those responsible. It’s unlikely that story will surface before late 2016 or 2017, but I do have parts of it written already, and I do want to see just how wide his character arc can stretch. So, stay tuned for that.