Even among loyal fans, after only four or five Kicking Dogs chapters and a few SIDECARS, interest in this project has waned. Fizzled away to fuck all, in fact.
The last bit is classic Leary alliteration, though he’d never say “fuck.”
Leary habitually seasoned his conversation with “gosh” and “darn.” Gosh was salt, and darn was pepper. Sometimes, if a communication required a bit of mustard, he might go so far as to say “frigging.” That’s how I knew the coffee Lek spilled in his lap wasn’t too hot. Otherwise he would have almost certainly described it as “friggin’ hot,” and maybe even asked Lek if she wasn’t a friggin’ spastic, as well, taking care to direct an apologetic “gosh” towards Eddie at the same time.
I had it on good advice—no less an authority than Eddie’s Lek—Leary’s language used to be rather more pungent still. In fact, he reportedly could use linguistic condiments so exotic even his associates on the oil rigs had been known to blush as brightly as young maidens at a panty raid. Lek had told me it was Nancy who was responsible for Leary’s retreat to this blander salt-and-pepper vocabulary, with occasional lashings of mustard. But of course that couldn’t be so, because Leary always said that a woman’s place was two meters behind her man, preferably with an armload of groceries and a sock in her mouth. You knew that Leary wasn’t ever going to take any guff from any broad, no sir. That’s right. Gosh.
Bangkok Knights
Leary recurs as a supporting character in four of my novels — he’s a 40-something-year-old in Bangkok Knights, a 50-year-old in Yawn, and a 113-year-old in MOM and Genesis 2.0
That was a spot of promotion for my books, in case you hadn’t noticed. Not that there’s anyone out there who’s looking.
Sales of my books remain constant at close to nil. Meanwhile the Muse has lit out for parts unknown. Any actual wordsmithery, these days, has been mostly limited to comments on social media. And obmutescence might serve my project just as well.
Obmutescence rools, OK! Our word du jour.
I cast my literary pearls before an uncaring world. (I do not use the word “swine.”)
I’ve received a postcard from my Muse, who says that’s the last straw, and I can expect no further communications from that quarter. She forgot to include a return address.
She’s probably kicking back within the same Void that accommodates my many fans, including multitudes of groupies.
“You really do have a flair for fiction, don’t you?” So says Sara, who’s never qualified even as Assistant Muse.
“The world should only thank me,” she says, possessed, it seems, by an acerbic New York Jew who thinks he’s funny.
“And you wonder why no one ever visits your website,” she adds.
This fan under the press of work had saved a couple of installments for Christmas day reading. Does my delay mean I get to take partial credit for your lovely rant? And would that make me something like a muse?
Just the other day on Facebook I berated the idiot who’d published my novel. Today I received a sympathy note from a friend who was sorry to hear my publisher had been so bad. I had to admit I’d been my own publisher.
Hang in there, Collin. You and Jack and Leary and the whole crowd of you. And Sara, too. After all, it’s Christmas Eve. Hawk the Hurled! Let’s kick those dogs while they’re Away and They’re Mangy.
Thank you, Brad. Not only are you nearly the only person in the universe who read my rant, you actual describe it as a lovely thing. Greater loyalty hath no other.
I love that story about the sympathy note and your response. Whatever. Nuclear Blues deserves a wide readership and, I hope, will find it.
Sara’s upcountry for a week, and I’d planned to fan the embers of my fiction project, should I find any, but discover I must first get some sleep, something I didn’t do last night, following an excellent dinner party. 🙂