The Story Behind The Story

My friend Drew used to own a bookstore, and since I was between jobs during that period of time, and I'd met Drew in the first place because I worked for him at a different bookstore, it was only natural that I went to work for him again. Except... "work" isn't quite the word for it. Unfortunately, business wasn't great, so there was a lot of sitting around and shooting the breeze. On one such occasion, we somehow got onto a discussion about Stephen Hawking and colonizing the moon and comets and... all kinds of things. I don't remember exactly the point in the conversation where the words "eat the comet" were uttered, but they were, and the phrase stuck in my mind.

It just happened that I left the bookstore that evening and decided on a whim to stop by the pub, knowing that big-brother Josh would be there and a cold beer sounded good. As it happened (was meant to happen?) Josh was indeed there, but so was his friend Chip, with whom I'd only been vaguely acquainted up until that point. To make a long story short, I made not only a new friend that night, but a new writing buddy. My work had been stagnant at that point as I was driving myself nuts editing and re-editing a story until I'd gotten sick of it. It had been months since I'd really produced anything new, but when Chip started sending me stories and new chapters, I felt the muse stirring.

Not long after that, I'd picked up a job at a tiny diner in the industrial part of Norfolk. It was just the owner and me all day, and we had very little in common, so during the slow parts of the day, instead of trying to force conversation, I started jotting down story ideas in the margins of the day's newspaper, which always got piled next to the cash register after the breakfast rush. At some point, I remembered "eat the comet," and came up with a character, a scene, another character, a head in a jar...

I sent the beginning to Chip, and he informed me that finishing the story was not optional. Turned out it wasn't easy, either. I've often referred to it as my red-headed step-brainchild because of all the fits it gave me. If you count all the times I had to walk away from it for weeks or months at a time, all the while enduring well-deserved guilt-tripping and needling from Chip, who had taken a personal interest in the story after I threw in a Star Wars reference, it took about a year just to crank out those 1500 or so words. I wrote other things in the meantime, but for Chip and Drew, I had to finish it eventually.

I'd never been that impressed with the result, but they loved it. I eventually revised it some more and sent it to other friends, who shocked the hell out of me by reporting that it had made them laugh. I sent it out to a few magazines & ezines, but no one was interested. Oh well, I thought, feeling like it wasn't my best work anyway, and that it had made my friends smile, so that was really all the paycheck or validation I needed for it.

Cut to a few years later. I hadn't even read Eat the Comet in months, possibly a year, when I got a message from Corbin Silverthorn about a new page launching at Silverthorn Press, asking if I'd support the endeavor by contributing some writing. It was with mixed feelings that I sent him EtC. I knew that this story was not my best work, but is the most apropos for that particular site, so off it went, my problem-child, back into the world.

It turns out, Corbin liked the story too, and it wasn't long before I received another message from him saying he'd like to use it and feature me as the first writer showcased on the new page.
You can find it here.

Once it was up, I went ahead and read the story again. I still have mixed feelings about it. I still feel like it isn't my best work. At the same time, it is my work, and I finished it, and it doesn't completely suck. Every time someone new tells me they enjoyed it, I remember that that's what this story was all about. It wasn't about dazzling the world with my talent and manipulation of the English language into something that'd win prizes. It's about a certain kind of people - my people, and how sometimes, it's okay to be flawed and dorky.

I hope you like my little story, but if you don't, that's okay. It's not for everybody. It's not even for me (I personally think I should have left in more of the head in the jar), but maybe it's for you, and if it is, I couldn't be happier.