For Writers - Or Anyone Struggling to Believe in Their Abilities

I had reserved Thanksgiving weekend to do a hard edit on Ed Calkins' Ruthless. The novel is part of the BryonySeries world and harkens back mostly to the original "drop of blood" trilogy.

As outrageously entertaining Ed's novel is (a mixture of the real Ed's back story, the back story of his fictional Ed, the fictional Ed I further fictionalized for the BryonySeries, and the further fictionalization of all that in Ruthless), are some real gems.

I'm sharing just four short paragraphs of it. I had hoped to share it with WriteOn Joliet Thursday, but we ran out of time, which s just as well because now I can share it with more people. Our topic was "And the winner is..." and as I'm listening to the pieces WriteOn Joliet members shared, I suddenly remembered this excerpt I'm sharing today.

To put this in context, the main protagonists in Ruthless are Ed and a woman named Trudy - a bipolar alcoholic police officer and former best friend, and "once or twice" lover of Ed Calkins who is convinced she shot Ed. She's brilliantly crafted, and I think readers will like her.

But at other times, the real/somewhat real/completely fictional vampire Ed breaks the fourth wall and talks in first person. This is what's happening in the excerpt I'm sharing. It sounds like the end of the novel, but it isn't. It's simply the last time Ed speaks in first person.

BTW, Ed really is terribly dyslexic and only wrote this novel with a great deal of prodding. It wasn't my idea either; one of my super fans really wanted me to write it, and I felt only Ed could and should.

And he did.

May you be encouraged today.

             

My dear spy…er literary genius, we must now talk of endings. This well have to be my last chapter writing to you directly in first person. I’ve done everything the future requires of me except meeting my best friend in a field of battle. It’s not the combat I fear any more than the result. It’s you, I fear. I fear you will think badly of me for something terrible that I did while I was still alive with my own damaged soul.

              The day I won the lottery…I behaved badly. Maybe you should skip the next few chapters and just read the ending. If you did that, you’d think better of me.

              Whether or not you do, I must thank you. I know I was a jerk when you first started reading, but I didn’t really believe that I could write anything worth reading. But you kept on reading, and I started believing. It’s believing in you that helped me believe in me. Isn’t it strange that a novel that asks both writer and reader to believe in wood sprites, leprechauns, and brownies and all sorts of other myths sound find the hardest belief of all is ourselves? I find myself at the end of a story I thought I would never tell. I find myself finishing a story that is actually worth reading…expect of the next part. Thank you for believing in me when I could not believe in you. Now, with your skills as a reader, a world of brownies, rainbows, clovers, lovers, and leprechauns are just one good dream away and maybe if you so grant it…one good laugh.

              Fare thee well, reader. May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live.