“For the readers who want to know, what is your favorite band and television show?”
“I listen to Animal Collective and enjoy the show Amazing World of Gumball.”
Nodding, as if I knew what the heck she was talking about, I asked a last annoying question, “Favorite color?”
“You're out of good questions, aren't you?”
I nodded and lowered my head in shame as she said, “Indigo. Now depart and finish thy masterpiece of literature.
I fled and wrote up this fascinating look at the author of Fortunate Cookie.
Chef’s Surprise really came from nowhere in particular and pissed me off to no end.
I’d started it several years ago and liked the beginning and middle quite a bit. It was discovering an ending, which I also liked, that was a pain.
I’m not sure how many people are ready to boil over and kill their bosses, but if your supervisor or boss has never made you mad I don’t know how well you can empathize with the chef. Every now and then someone just goes nuts and shoots up their workplace and fellow employees then almost always commit suicide; most often after the cops have been summoned.
The following is just a personal observation- Wouldn’t it be nice if they’d be considerate enough to just commit suicide and leave everybody else alone?
Crazy people, or people pushed to insanity, are in my personal opinion much more dangerous and scary than the nastiest undead types of monstrosities imaginable.
The end of Chef’s Surprise was the last hold-out from my finishing this collection and for a long while I toyed with, deep regret, the idea of simply leaving it out of the book altogether. My confused bewildered simmering brain often wondered, usually while I tried to fall asleep without success, WHY not? Who would know or care if I left it out? It was an annoyingly valid and logical question, but something odd happened a week after my self-imposed deadline was blown past, like a 1985 Yugo GV at a NASCAR race.
I had started doing revisions on the rest of the stories and just finished a six hour ordeal trying to make THE FALL OF BAYONNE read like a great piece of fine literature. Needless to say it didn’t turn out that way, but I liked it nonetheless. Weary yet not at all sleepy I fell into my bed and tossed and turned for awhile.
Chef’s Surprise was itching at the back of my brain and I turned my somewhat disturbing thoughts back to my dilemma of the ending. Up to that point I had gotten as far as the detective averting his gaze as the chef changed his pants, and even had an ending in mind that could work but didn’t (as my buddy Derek might say) “Float my boat.”
The hidden surveillance camera ending that had recorded the murder would quite nicely end the story, but it felt ‘flat’ and uninteresting. I don’t like the idea of spending great gobs of my life writing something I feel to be uninteresting. I could get probably a job at a newspaper reviewing current television shows and movies if I wanted to do that. HA HA HA!
But then the answer sneaked up and punched me in the face. The chef was serving his sentence at Bayonne when it was overthrown! YES! Now, that was something that definitely could “Float my boat.”
Personally, I always loved watching Lt. Detective Columbo as portrayed by Peter Falk on TV and on DVD. And while my Detective Frank Falkner is perhaps a poor substitute to the original, he is presented as a loving and grateful homage and a tribute back to a time when television still had writers who created interesting characters and stories.
Rest in peace, Mr. Falk, and thank you.
Cato aka Mr. Jacobie, the elderly ninja was a fluke, but I like him quite a bit.
Some of you who have read Chronicles of the Undead- The Emperor of Bayonne Prison may be wondering if Chef Maurice LeBeouf and Cato will make an appearance in the next Chronicles novel. It's a very good question.
TIME TO GIVE OUT SOME THANKS
Who should I thank this time?
Hm? It's actually a pretty big question if you consider it. A hundred years after my body has turned to dust, after the worms tired of playing pea-knuckle (It’s a card game) on my snout someone theoretically could be reading this. Thus, it’s a big responsibility regarding who to offer thanks to.
I could give thanks to Mrs. Veal or Mrs. Scarbrough, my third and fourth grade teachers. But I always hated doing homework when I was a kid. I'd always prefer watching Gil Gerard in Buck Rogers rather than learning proper grammar stuff, such as where commas should go and not go.
Actually, I'm still kind of pissed at Mrs. Scarbrough. Just after I mastered the ability to print letters and words that were somewhat legible she introduced cursive handwriting. I was so pissed off! You wouldn't think a little kid could be as angry as I was, but it's true. I still remember her saying, “This is an S,” and me thinking, BULLSHIT! That squiggly thing doesn't look anything like an S!
But I digress... as I often do.
Who to thank? Perhaps I should just thank the second most popular/successful horror author of the last few decades. He wrote a novel I picked up on sale at Wal-Mart for $3.00, back around 2009. I'd read at least a dozen of his earlier works and though some were hit and miss they were usually entertaining. (Certainly at least three bucks worth, in every prior case)
And this particular story he’d written started out okay, but around page thirty or so everything started to feel bad. There were long boring descriptions (well written, with commas in the right places and everything, but boring) that seemed to go on forever. I became nauseated and light-headed the more I tried to read it. Eventually around page seventy I did something I'd never done before.
I gave up and handed the book over to a coworker that I knew also read the same author's stuff.
Later he told me he'd managed to finish the book but only after struggling to get through it. We sat around smoking fine Cuban cigars and drinking Cognac on his yacht (okay it was a bass boat and we were swilling Budweiser and smoking Winstons) and we compared notes on this particular novel.
Eventually, after consuming most of a twelve pack of alcohol, we agreed the problem wasn't the story per se but the long and relatively pointless descriptions that went on for pages and pages. If the story had a quarter to a third of the long boring descriptions slashed out of it we agreed it would have been a pretty good tale. I won't mention the title but somewhere below you might find the author's initials cleverly hidden in a very brief short story, but it would probably take a detective or some kind of inspector to figure it out.
You may have noticed that I like rambling when I write.
Yes, I realize I just spent the last two paragraphs saying how much I hated a book that had long boring descriptions, but rambling really isn't the same thing.
Don't you guys roll your eyes at me! It's really not the same at all.
If the rambling or meandering helps spell out how or why a character acts or behaves the way they do, I believe side trips can be worth taking. Plus, they can be fun if they’re interesting.
What? You're rolling your eyes again. Not all of you, but I can imagine some of you sitting there staring at your tablets and screens shaking your heads.
It may come as a shock to some of you people, but I get to have fun too when I write stuff. I know some writers will swear up and down that spinning a story is a tedious frustrating experience, and yes sometimes it is; but I must be extra weird because I generally enjoy what I write.
I get to exercise, or is it ‘exorcise’, some demons and dole out punishments sometimes for truly nasty characters.
A goofy example might help to clarify this.
My son and I were cruising along and had to stop for a red traffic light. (Sometimes we stop at green ones just for fun)While stopped, my offspring spotted a cretin in the next car tossing cigarette butts out of his window.
“Dad, did you see that! He's littering?” My sometimes goofy, but always observant son most astutely pointed out.
I nodded and said something like, “Yep, that's not a good thing to do.”
“Well, go do something,” he sa
id, staring up at his heroic father.
In reality, I simply told him the sad truth. “Son, there's not a lot I can do. I can't make him clean up his mess.” (I left out explaining that the cretin could have a gun and might have shot his heroic father in the face) But I did say, “If you become a cop when you grow up you could do something about it, but until then we just have to put up with jerks like that.”
That's pretty much how things happened that day, boring but typical. However, if I were wearing my writer's hat (it's a black fedora, by the way) I could probably have done things much differently.
SAME SCENE TAKE TWO (wearing my writer's hat)
“Dad, did you see that! He's littering?” My sometimes goofy, but always observant son pointed out.
I put the van's transmission in park and said, “You stay here, son. I'll handle this.”
Stepping out and hurrying over to the car, with its pile of freshly deposited refuse of cigarette butts and ashes, I flung open the door. I seized the startled young man around the throat, and growled, “Good afternoon, citizen. I believe you 'accidentally' dropped some trash onto our fair city's streets. Perhaps, you'd like to rectify this inadvertent oversight,” I said while squeezing his neck until faint crackling sounds could be heard.
The young man nodded weakly as oxygen deprivation quickly began setting in.
I released him so that he could put his vehicle into park and then stood aside, hands planted firmly on my middle aged hips, as my red cape fluttered in the brisk breeze.
I watched him carefully and pointed out the few stray ashes he missed and suggested he try using his tongue to get them up.
Rather than face the righteous fury of DADDY MAN, he quickly slathered the pavement until all offending remnants of the ashes were gone.
As the young man climbed back into his car, I called out, “Remember what my good friend Woodsy Owl says, give a hoot don't pollute!”
After climbing back in my vehicle I noticed my son's eyes were quite rightfully filled with hero worship for his old man, and we soon continued on our way to the Zoo.
Like I said, it's a goofy example, but it's representative of the way I'd like things to be. In Valley of Death- Zombie Trailer Park readers met Charlie Farro and learned quite a bit about the guy. He's a veteran who managed to get blown up pretty good and had his heart broken, but then I swung things around so he was seen more as a nauseating pervert than anything else.
I don't care for perverts too much, personally. So when a host of horrible things happen to the guy who richly deserved them, plus a lot worse, I'm having just as much fun writing it as the reader is in reading it. (Except for the perverts who must have felt pretty bad for Charlie)
I generally like the underdog character. Not the movie or the cartoons about a kind of super dog, although I liked those too. The underdog is the guy you wouldn't think could ever be a hero, but somehow manages to pull it off.
A QUESTION FROM MY EMAIL BAG
What are your favorite TV shows?
Most current TV shows are painful to watch, at least for me. I'll make the list short, so people won't say, “He's padding the book's word count with stupid stuff!” (Although, I realize they probably will do that anyway.)
My Name is Earl was a fun yet thought provoking series that looked at the issue of Karma and it's probably my favorite comedy of all time.
A close 2nd would be the only current comedy (As of January 2013) that I regularly watch on TV; The Big Bang Theory.
In no particular order the rest of my favorite comedies include: Mary Tyler Moore, Barney Miller, Seinfeld, The Cosby Show, 3rd Rock From The Sun, Drew Carey Show, King of the Hill, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Black Adder, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Malcolm in The Middle, Bernie Mac, The Brady Bunch, News Radio, Gilligan's Island, and a precious few others.
Favorites in drama include: The Twilight Zone, LOST, ALIAS, Columbo, The Rockford Files, Kolchak The Nightstalker, X Files- first few seasons, Little House on The Prairie (Odd but TRUE), Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Eureka, Breaking Bad, Firefly, The Wonder Years, and YES I watch The Walking Dead too.
If I failed to mention a show you love that doesn't mean I hate it but it's likely.
The nice thing about the deplorable state of television today (at least for me) is that it has, generally speaking, gotten so bad that I find myself with time to write fine literature (cough) as opposed to watching those shows currently being produced.
A few younger readers may have wondered about many of the older shows I mentioned above. Trust me, go find a DVD or check the internet for places that stream them and take a peek, you will probably like them.
BEGGING AND PLEADING TIME:
Now for the part I hate having to do, even more than revising my own work. I need your help. I really do enjoy milking my surly cow of a brain and squirting out stories. It's actually quite a bit on fun when the juices are freely flowing, so to speak, but...and this is hard for me to write...The cow likes to feel appreciated.
I know you already plunked down a few hard earned bucks and probably feel that should be thanks enough for such a beast like me who somehow learned something of the art of storytelling. And you're absolutely right, but if you could take a few minutes to write a review to share your thoughts wherever you got your copy of ZAOUT I would greatly appreciate it.
I realize it's a lot to ask but I truly do thank you.
If you're one of those shy types, you could always drop me a note at
[email protected] and I'll see it there.
A VERY POINTLESS SHORT STORY
The inspector stared at the assembled servants of the manor house and drawled in a deeply southern accent, “I suppose you all might be wondering who in tarnation wrote such a travesty of literature to spur an illiterate twit from the backwoods of Alabama, namely William Robert Bebb aka Billy Bob Bebb, to take it into his fool head to write stories himself; the type of stories that only the mentally deranged would pay good money to read, mind you.”
The one armed pianist looked at his wristwatch, attached to the arm that was still there, and yawned hugely.
The inspector wondered how the one armed pianist managed to put the watch on his wrist in the first place, before striding over to the bookcase. “Bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bebb- if that is his real name- said it was the second most popular and successful horror novelist of the last few decades that inspired him with a horrible novel. Which begs the question ... Who is the first most popular?”
The upstairs maid with the impressively filled blouse raised a hand timidly before saying, “Monsieur Steven King, perhaps? He writes many stories that give me the goose bumplies all over my body when I read his stories late at night, usually in bed. Is he not the king of horror?”
“Exactly, the point I was driving toward. Thank you, Babbette. Perhaps when we're done down here you could take to you room and show me your-” The inspector paused with a lecherous smile, apparently lost in thought before continuing “...your uh... literature collection. And perhaps I'll show you my hardcover,” he said with a wink and a wicked grin.
The one armed pianist waved his hand in the air over his head. The one attached to the only arm he possessed, that is, and asked, “Can we wrap this up, please. Or are you finished?”
The inspector spun around and asked, “Why are you in such a hurry… Lefty? You got some shoe laces to go tie?”
The gasps and irritated murmurs from the assembled staff, even Babbette, made the inspector take a step back as he asked, “Who pissed off William Bebb enough that he'd attempt to write novels? Typically, goofy oddball things laced with the gratuitous use of words like ‘boobies’ and’ balls’?”
The inspector looked at the bookshelves and perused the dusty tomes until he nodded slightly and muttered, “A-ha.”
Suddenly the drawing room was cast into darkness. A shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed and a loud thud was heard before the lights were turned back on.
The one armed pianis
t and Babbette were in the midst of a passionate three armed embrace, but no one seemed to notice them. All eyes were slapped upon the murdered form of the inspector. He was lying in a pool of printers ink and every square inch of his body was covered in discounted price stickers from Wal-Mart.
The chef crept over as everyone else went about their lives, supremely indifferent to the whole seemingly pointless affair. Chef Jeff Boyardee knew he'd need to go to the kitchen soon to check on his spaghetti sauce, but knelt down and saw the inspector's index finger pointing at the bookcase. It looked like he'd scribbled two letters on the knotty pine wood in his own blood.
After Chef Boyardee read the letters he adjusted his tall gleaming white poufy hat and wandered toward the kitchen, ignoring the fornicating Babbette and one armed pianist, while wondering who D.K. could possibly be. And if he knew what hell he had set loose in writing a book so bad that William Bebb began savagely pounding on keyboards, in revenge; Meaningless pointless revenge. (The kind that can be quite a bit of fun from time to time)
Okay, I'm done now. Thanks for reading.
-William Bebb
(PS: If you didn’t understand the clue and need the author’s name spelled out for you, drop me an email and I’ll try to explain it more simply)
The following is a scene from Chronicles of the Undead - The Emperor of Bayonne Prison.
I won't say it's my favorite scene but I like it quite a bit. To set it up I'll tell you this much, George is driving a very old semi tractor rig. (He's not very good at driving it) In the passenger seat there is Captain Renault, a retired Louisiana State Trooper. And sitting between them is one of the prison guard dogs George named Frito.
Also on occasion, George hears the ghost of an old ‘friend’ who was a fellow prisoner named Vito or perhaps he simply imagines he hears it.