***LYSERGIC FAIRYTALES***
What I’m about to tell you will sound like whining at first,
but I swear it has a positive purpose. Are you ready? Here it goes. My last
four unpublished novels have something in common: they’re about mentally ill
protagonists who find healing through Manic Pixie Dream Girls. Watch You Burn
features a schizophrenic college student named Mario Bryan whose obligatory
MPDG is an anime fan named Jessica Harley. Demon Axe is about a heavy metal
singer with PTSD named Daniel Mercer whose special someone is an elven warrior
named Raven Triscloud (my friend Heather’s former D&D character). Silent
Warrior is about a high school student with night terrors named Scott George
who dates the daughter of his nasty ass history teacher. And then there’s
Beautiful Monster, which is about an elven mercenary named Windham Xavier who
gets raped for a week straight and becomes infatuated with fellow mercenary
Tarja Rikkinen.
So what do I do with four novels that have way too much in
common? First order of business would be to edit the shit out of them and make
the female supporting characters more than just MPDG’s. And then once that’s
done, I’ll do what any sensible author would do: publish them together in one
volume and call it “Lysergic Fairytales”. Besides the mental illnesses and
subsequent love interests, the other thing these novels share in common is that
they’re trippy as fuck. You don’t necessarily have to drop acid or smoke weed
in order to enjoy these stories…but you’d probably be more likely to give them
a five star rating if you did. Pleeeeeeease? Hehehehehe!
Of course, Silent Warrior is a modern day drama and not a
fantasy story, but I still consider it to be part of the Lysergic Fairytale
genre because it has its own set of trippy moments, whether it’s Scott having
an awful nightmare about puppet teachers or Alan Young (bully) hallucinating an
entire conversation with his mother in a solitary confinement cell. I once
joked that Silent Warrior was basically Pink Floyd the Wall fan fiction. That
might not be a joke anymore.
Now that I’ve got plans to combine these four stories into
one volume, I should probably try to figure out how they’ll be interconnected,
if they are at all. I think back to other examples of this such as Tales From
the Hood or Pulp Fiction, where there were four acts apiece. Pulp Fiction’s
acts were all tied within the canon while the Tales From the Hood stories were
standalone and were only connected because an undertaker named Simms was
telling them out loud. Considering Beautiful Monster takes place in the distant
past and the other three stories take place in the present day, I don’t see how
they could be easily connected unless I happen to pull off some kind of
miracle.
Maybe they don’t have to be connected, though. Maybe they’re
just in one volume because I’m insecure about the size of my books. Anytime I
talk about how my only published novel Occupy Wrestling is less than a hundred
pages, I feel as though I’ve stumbled upon a Viagra commercial. Well, I’m
pretty sure these four Lysergic Fairytales novels are individually shorter than
Occupy Wrestling. Shorter books don’t get as much recognition as longer ones.
It’s sad and unfortunate, but it’s a truth I’ll have to come to terms with
eventually. For all intents and purposes, the four novels are complete stories
with beginnings, middles, and ends, so it’s not like I cut them off too soon.
It’s just that I don’t have the endurance for longer stories, mainly because I
wouldn’t know what else to do with them.
On the day I do decide to publish Lysergic Fairytales, it’ll
be pretty damn far into the future due to how painstaking it is to edit the
shit out of complete novels. I plan on starting with Beautiful Monster and
working my way backwards chronologically. But the important thing I have to
remember is that there’s no rush for publishing novels. I’d rather have a late
blooming book that’s clean and readable than a quickly published book that’s a
piece of shit. That’s one of the knocks on Occupy Wrestling: it was published before
it was ready, which is probably why it’s rated at less than three stars right
now. Well, that and I foolishly marketed it to non-wrestling fans. I won’t make
that same mistake with Lysergic Fairytales, that’s for damn sure.
It’s a long road ahead of me in terms of editing, but it’s
one I’ve traveled before and it’s one I’ll happily travel again. What does this
mean for novels like Incelbordination and Filter Feeder? Nothing. Absolutely
nothing. I’ll still put in the work for Incelbordination like I always do.
Filter Feeder, though not beyond repair, doesn’t fit in with the Lysergic
Fairytales motif, so it’ll be left out. Anthologies should be somewhat
homogenous when it comes to genres and I’m pushing that envelope by including
Silent Warrior, a modern day drama.
Wish me luck on my long and tiring journey! I’m not naïve
enough to deny needing it! I’m Garrison fucking Kelly! Even when you feel like
dying, keep climbing the mountain! My, how true those words will become during
the editing process.
***BOOK REVIEW***
As many of my Good Reads followers can tell, I’m on the
verge of finishing and reviewing “Truth Is Fragmentary” by Gabrielle Bell. I’m
only twenty-five pages away from pulling the trigger on this creative project.
I should have finished it a long time ago since it’s a graphic novel and it’s
easy as fuck to read. Psychological exhaustion, like it always does, got in the
way of my best intentions. But read this book and review it I will. I still
haven’t decided if I want to give it a passing or mixed grade. While the themes
of exhaustion, depression, and being overworked are all relatable, I’m not so
sure if the overall story did anything for me personally. Like I said, I
haven’t decided the final grade yet, which means Gabrielle Bell has 25 pages
left to, in Steven Crowder’s memetic words, “Change my mind.” And by the way,
I’m only channeling the meme he’s famous for, not the actual person. The actual
person makes me cringe.
***LYRICS OF THE DAY***
“Take one of those and two of these, then watch the walls
begin to breathe. I can taste the color of the lights. Wings are growing out of
me. The floor is floating underneath. I can see the future burning bright. The
ceiling has us mesmerized. It feels like we can never die. Heading for the dark
side of the moon. As we lift off into the sky invincible and so alive. Ten feet
tall and fucking bulletproof. Insanity is setting in. Reality is getting thin.
The universe just started slowing down. Then suddenly we’re traveling a million
miles an hour. The shadows all start breaking free, no longer held by gravity.
How did we get so far off the ground? Speaking to the galaxy, received and
sending back to me. I can finally hear the speed of sound. I like this
everlasting pill, ‘cause time itself is standing still. Why’s the room still
spinning just the same? Turn off your phone so no one calls, ‘cause you and I
are tripping balls. I can still hear ringing in my brain. Insanity is setting
in. Reality is getting thin. The universe just started slowing down. Then
suddenly we’re traveling a million miles an hour. Insanity is setting in.
Reality is getting thin. The particles are dancing all around. I can’t deny the
hardest thing for me is finding time to finally breathe. See no signs of ever
coming down. Another wave is coming in a million miles an hour.”
-Nickelback singing “Million Miles an Hour”-
***POST-SCRIPT***
I came very close to giving you guys a sneak preview of
Incelbordination’s fifth chapter, but I won’t do that because even the
slightest details could be deemed spoilers. No spoilers for you, motherfuckers!
Even if you bribed me with a Quintuple Whopper with extra bacon and cheese, I
still wouldn’t give you spoilers! Hahahahahahaha!
