Go down to your local courthouse and spend a day looking up local crimes from the past year or so and you’ll find that ninety-plus percent of your local neighborhood lawbreakers aren't razzmatazz-talking Tarantino-type underworld philosophers but bonafide moronic mouthbreathing idjits.
How did I come to write my novella WEED? I was a newspaper reporter and editor and bureau chief for many, many years and I really don’t remember if I reported on this story myself or if I just read about it or edited it or what, but in any event, the dumb, violent incident that concludes the novella is utterly true. A couple criminal masterminds - unsurprisingly no longer active in my locality - actually made that brilliantly fatal mistake, and I couldn't get it out of my head as a potential plot point.
(*What* brilliant mistake, you ask? Why, please do pick up the story and see for your own self! If I did my job adequately you’ll have fun along the way!)
A couple things:
*Weed - as in the plant that carries the THC, as in the herb, as in Mary Jane herself - was a totally different animal when I wrote this short novel. For one thing it was still illegal most everywhere across the U.S of A. Still is contraband, as I write, in my home state, the home state of Mr. Vice President Pence, but that’s bound to change soon enough, I’m sure. These days it really, truly is legal most everywhere else, though you’d better not cross the wrong state line without your stash hidden well and good. What’s *my* stance? Well, all I’ll say is enough alcohol will make you want to kick your best friend’s ass because he looked at you sideways. Look at your best friend sideways, though, after enough mj and … and … wait, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah, *hell* yeah, Van Halen *was* the perfect name for that band because two of those guys were *brothers*, man, and those nachos *are* looking *damned* tasty, just like Eddie’s solo in this song and *now* do you *see* how that *proves* that, in the end, *everything* melts together cheesily, man? Damned straight, buddy! High five! (Except your hand’s too darn heavy to lift from this easy chair and you just realized you haven’t spoken a word of this out loud and there’s no stereo on and everyone else is talking about the Bugs Bunny cartoon on TV.)
* A concept I was fascinated by at the time - and I still am - is that video games are the next up and coming, important form of storytelling. I am, unfortunately, not a big videogamer. I frankly do not have the time. BUT! I *have* finished 100% of every version of Grand Theft Auto from III onwards. It’s my one and only videogame vice, and I managed to include what I think is a chapter of a hyper-surreal version of GTA in this story. I am, dare I say, particularly proud of this section. I think the GTA series says so much about our culture and is just unbelievably well put together. I can only hope to aspire to Rockstar’s stellar worldbuilding! Please do let me know what you think!
A lot of readers seem to like the bad guy - Mickle. He’s a young, unbalanced dude, but he’s also a big dork. He was fun to write. He appears in at least one more tale, D&D NIGHT AT THE BREWER BROTHERS’ METH LAB, a prequel to WEED - it brings together a couple other unrelated tales too - written quite a bit later. That’s the story where Mickle earns his nefarious wings, the tale that sets him up for the stuff he does in WEED.
* It was the first time Quintin Allen narrated the audiobook for something I wrote. I think the Q-man is fantastic!
* Q. Who is Daryl Burns? A. Daryl Burns is a figment of his own imagination! (His birthday is in April, twenty days in...)
WEED is available in ebook and audio versions. Amazon Audible iTunes
Like all my books, WEED is free to read via Kindle Unlimited.
How did I come to write my novella WEED? I was a newspaper reporter and editor and bureau chief for many, many years and I really don’t remember if I reported on this story myself or if I just read about it or edited it or what, but in any event, the dumb, violent incident that concludes the novella is utterly true. A couple criminal masterminds - unsurprisingly no longer active in my locality - actually made that brilliantly fatal mistake, and I couldn't get it out of my head as a potential plot point.
(*What* brilliant mistake, you ask? Why, please do pick up the story and see for your own self! If I did my job adequately you’ll have fun along the way!)
A couple things:
*Weed - as in the plant that carries the THC, as in the herb, as in Mary Jane herself - was a totally different animal when I wrote this short novel. For one thing it was still illegal most everywhere across the U.S of A. Still is contraband, as I write, in my home state, the home state of Mr. Vice President Pence, but that’s bound to change soon enough, I’m sure. These days it really, truly is legal most everywhere else, though you’d better not cross the wrong state line without your stash hidden well and good. What’s *my* stance? Well, all I’ll say is enough alcohol will make you want to kick your best friend’s ass because he looked at you sideways. Look at your best friend sideways, though, after enough mj and … and … wait, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah, *hell* yeah, Van Halen *was* the perfect name for that band because two of those guys were *brothers*, man, and those nachos *are* looking *damned* tasty, just like Eddie’s solo in this song and *now* do you *see* how that *proves* that, in the end, *everything* melts together cheesily, man? Damned straight, buddy! High five! (Except your hand’s too darn heavy to lift from this easy chair and you just realized you haven’t spoken a word of this out loud and there’s no stereo on and everyone else is talking about the Bugs Bunny cartoon on TV.)
* A concept I was fascinated by at the time - and I still am - is that video games are the next up and coming, important form of storytelling. I am, unfortunately, not a big videogamer. I frankly do not have the time. BUT! I *have* finished 100% of every version of Grand Theft Auto from III onwards. It’s my one and only videogame vice, and I managed to include what I think is a chapter of a hyper-surreal version of GTA in this story. I am, dare I say, particularly proud of this section. I think the GTA series says so much about our culture and is just unbelievably well put together. I can only hope to aspire to Rockstar’s stellar worldbuilding! Please do let me know what you think!
A lot of readers seem to like the bad guy - Mickle. He’s a young, unbalanced dude, but he’s also a big dork. He was fun to write. He appears in at least one more tale, D&D NIGHT AT THE BREWER BROTHERS’ METH LAB, a prequel to WEED - it brings together a couple other unrelated tales too - written quite a bit later. That’s the story where Mickle earns his nefarious wings, the tale that sets him up for the stuff he does in WEED.
* It was the first time Quintin Allen narrated the audiobook for something I wrote. I think the Q-man is fantastic!
* Q. Who is Daryl Burns? A. Daryl Burns is a figment of his own imagination! (His birthday is in April, twenty days in...)
WEED is available in ebook and audio versions. Amazon Audible iTunes
Like all my books, WEED is free to read via Kindle Unlimited.