GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #745: A VISIT TO THE EYE DOCTOR

 When you have the 'Beetus you've got to keep an eye on your, uh, eyes. For most of my adult life I've gone to my optometrist once a year for regular checkups, but once I learned of the 'Beetus, those visits got a little more involved.

I think it would be worse to go blind than to loose my feet, so I make sure to get the whole nine yards looked at. And I've been going here since I was a kid (I think because that's where Harry Caray got his glasses). When I was in third grade I got my first pair of glasses there. The ones with the Smurfs on the arms.

Yet when I went yesterday it was like I was a new patient because they had a brand new system, and guess who their first patient was. Oh yeah.

I hate filling out forms. I hate filling out forms online. Worst of all, I hate filling out forms on my phone, which is what I had to do. My aversion to this is because I'm terrible at remembering medical details, and I rely on the fact that I'm already in their system so I don't have to remember them. So guess who fumbled through all these questions I was unprepared for.

The first part of the exam was business as usual. I hate it when they numb your eyes and then tap on them to test pressure. At least it's better than the spray of air, though. And I can't stand eye drops in my eyes, so it was the usual struggle to get them in there, although this guy was gentler than most. Then I was sent out for more paperwork while I waited for my eyes to dilate.

Usually when this happens I take care of other stuff that doesn't involve reading, so I had a few tasks lined up specifically for this time. But did I mention there was a new system? And no one was really quite familiar with it yet? They weren't even done puzzling through this paperwork before the doc wanted to look at the insides of my eyes.

Congrats to me, nothing foul is afoot. My eyes are getting worse merely because I'm getting older. No 'Beetus interference on that score. I was able to successfully put off the bifocal conversation another year.

So I had to finish the paperwork, and holy shit, I was there so long that my eyes were almost back to normal by the time I left. I had a bunch of non-reading and -writing stuff lined up to do during this time, but since I was OK I just did some reading and writing. All's well that ends well, I suppose, but getting there was a hell of a hassle. At least I didn't have to get new glasses. That's always a pain in the ass.

On that note I'm taking another hiatus from Goodnight, Fuckers. From all writing, in fact. I go in for my hand surgery next Friday, and I've been instructed to not use that hand at all. For anything. Including typing. It's also the hand I write with, so nothing longhand, either. I've gotten it to where I post these GFs in five intervals, perfectly matching weekdays, and I'd like to keep it that way.

I'll still be writing until Friday, and then I shall stop until I'm healed enough to resume. This is assuming, of course, that everything goes well. With my luck they'll discover something that necessitates the amputation of my right hand. If *that* fucking happens, I'm going to start drinking again. I take solace in the fact that the guy cutting on me is one of Chicago's best surgeons, so he's not likely to sneeze at an inopportune moment.

Oh! Printers Row starts tomorrow. I'll be doing a live reading at the S&M Salon of a story that will be published soon. This all means that Sunday's newsletter will be a short one because I have to get back to the city by nine or ten, I forget which. This, along with the surgery, also means that the following newsletter will not happen at all. Just to give you all a heads up.

OK, try to behave yourselves while I'm gone. I'm especially looking at you . . . (casts my gaze around at you fuckers) . . . ALL OF YOU.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #737: A RELIABLE PEN

 Ever see the movie Four Rooms? Half of it is good, and I'm talking about the segments directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. In Tarantino's, there's this bet. It's inspired by an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but it's based on a very good short story by Roald Dahl. I recommend reading it if you can find it.

Anyway, the bet is, this guy's got a reliable lighter. He's betting that he can light it the first time he tries. If he succeeds, he gets his friend's awesome car. If he loses, the bellboy is going to cut off his pinky finger.

(It should be mentioned that everyone involved is drunk on Cristal. Because "it's fucking good, Ted." And "everything else is piss.")

You can watch it here to see how it all turns out, but I won't spoil it for you. The conclusion is very fast and very funny.

I expect peak performance from my pens, and I very rarely get it. If I have a gel pen, it will always work the first time I use it unless it's at the end of its life, but everything else? It could happen, but more often than not I have to scratch it on paper a little bit first before it starts writing.

At work we have shitty pens. Sometimes I have to really scratch at them to get them going, and it irritates me because if I'm physically writing something down, as opposed to typing it, time is of the essence. Not too long ago our 401(k) company visited us and left us with a bunch of gimcracks, including a bunch of pens. I took a few because it's always good to have a decent supply of pens.

I didn't expect much. I figured it would be good for a month, tops, and then it'll be done. Much to my glee and pleasure, it wrote perfectly the first time I used it. And it has written perfectly each and every time since.

I'm always after big things to make me happy, but more often than not it's the little things. Like a reliable pen at work.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #707: BULLSHIT, REDUX

Ah jeez, we're back to this.

 You might remember a while back I wrote a piece about people wanting to earn a ton of money using ChatGPT to write ebooks. One of the things I mentioned is that a big argument is whether or not a chatbot could create art. I said it wasn't a question we should be bothering with, and I stand by that. I'm kind of surprised no one asked which question we should be asking.

That question is, WHY ARE WE DOING THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

It's become a more important question now because of the writers and actors striking for better treatment. The CEOs of entertainment companies have decided to play the long game. They don't want to share the profits from streaming because they're greedy assholes who found a loophole and are exploiting it as hard as they possibly can. So they're waiting out the writers and actors, most of whom are NOT the millionaires you all think they are. What it comes down to is, who has more money? Certainly not those on strike. It's definitely the multimillionaire CEOs of Disney and Netflix and Discovery, etc. So who is going to lose their homes first?

Let's say the bastards win, and these writers and actors are now homeless. What do these studios expect them to do? Beg for their jobs back? There might be a few who relent, but the majority are going to say FUCK YOU to the bastards. As they should. So who will the studios turn to? Scabs? Sure, there will be a few people willing to do the work but not many. Why? Do you really want to be known as That Guy? You might have a shitty paying job at a big studio, but is it worth the hate and disgust and the scorn of your peers?

And that leaves our li'l buddy, ChatGPT. And my answer for the question I posed above. Which, by the way, is to make writers obsolete. Actors? They'll just CGI their faces onto scabs' bodies. But I'm here to talk about ChatGPT.

Simon Pegg has a few things to say about it:

All true, of course (anyone really want their movies and TV shows to have the same quality as commercials?), but let's go a little deeper than that. ChatGPT does what it does because it has access to data. ALL the data. More data than you might think. I saw a rumor that if you use Google Docs, then your work, published or not, is part of the ChatGPT grist. It's apparently in the user agreement that they can do this, and there's nothing you can do about it because you clicked on ACCEPT without reading it, just like they thought you would. We all know my feelings on user agreements. I haven't looked too much into it because I don't use Google Docs. But who knows? Maybe Microsoft has something similar in their user agreement. Not that it matters because I *don't* use their online product. I have an offline app from almost two decades ago that I use. Which, by the way, I recommend if you can do it.

But getting back to the data, ChatGPT knows enough to fake it. Yes, it has never had its heart broken and has never suffered any personal tragedies, but remember, it has ALL the data, and with that much it can easily fake those things. So my unpopular opinion is, yes, ChatGPT *can* create art. But as stated before, this is meaningless.

Because there is one thing that human beings have that ChatGPT will NEVER have. It's one of the most important things about writing, and it cannot be faked because if you lack it, you can't pretend to have it.

And that, my good fuckers, is A REASON TO WRITE. Every single thing I've ever written was done with a purpose. Yes, even my two "Monster Cock" stories. Yes, even things like Dong of Frankenstein and John Holmes, Vampire Slayer and even 6669: Demon Porn. Any writer worth their salt isn't just full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. They all have reasons for writing. The only reason ChatGPT has is because some doofus typed a prompt into it. It has no other reason to "write."

ChatGPT was not created to write books. It was created "to hold a conversation with the end user," "to simulate natural human chat in an interesting, entertaining and humorous manner." Perhaps we should leave it at that.

Although to be fair I'm sure ChatGPT could come up with stories for the studios that would please everyone and not be problematic in the slightest. Maybe that's the goal. I suspect the goal might be, and here's where I get a little crazy but stick with me, that eventually the only people around will be the super rich. I always kind of thought that they needed us poors around for unpleasant tasks, but what if AI could just do that instead? Why keep the poor around? Why not better humanity by getting rid of them all. And then, after a hard day's genocide, let's kick back and say to my computer, "Tell me a story."

Pretty grim. A little terrifying. Possibly a conspiracy-of-one theory, but it's better than what those Q shit weasels have. I wish them the best of luck with that whole JFK Jr-is-alive thing.

Anyway, did you know that ChatGPT is on our side on this argument? A clever wit posed it an interesting question, and we got a perfect answer, so ChatGPT isn't entirely bad. I'll end with this:

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #679: THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

 

So I found this last week or so while going through my things, trying to figure out what I want to save and what I'm OK with never seeing again. I thought, why not save this for a GF? And then I posted last night's column, and I realized tonight would be the perfect time for this.

If you can't tell what that is in the picture, it's a photocopied bundle of pages from a Writer's Market book. Once upon a time, around when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, I took a creative writing course in high school. I'm fairly certain it was the first year it had been offered, and it was supposed to be for seniors, but I took it as a sophomore.

Mr. Langner was the teacher, and he must have recognized something in me because I'm pretty sure he didn't take any of his other students aside like he did me. That bundle of pages above? He put that in my hand and told me that there are people in the world WHO ACTUALLY MAKE MONEY FROM WRITING. It was a real eye-opener for me. He even knew what I wanted to write, so he copied the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror section of the Writer's Market. The keys to the kingdom.

If you weren't writing back then, the Writer's Market was an annual book published by Writer's Digest. It contained places to send your work to. That was our version of the internet back then. So I pored over those pages and started submitting stories immediately.

Long story short, if you're looking for someone to blame for me, you might want to think about Mr. Langner. I probably would have found out eventually, but because of him I got a very early start and got the hope appropriately beaten out of me earlier in life and got me very familiar with rejection from the beginning.

More things a beginning writer needs to know. But that's all for tonight. Goodnight, fuckers, and good luck.

PS: If you want to know what is in those boxes, they are packed to the brim with reject letters. There are three boxes there, and that's not even all of the rejects I've gotten. I've gotten rejected by some of the best. One day I might go through those and look for the ones with personal notes. For nostalgia.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #645: BURN OUT

 For the last few weeks I've been having a bit of difficulty writing, so I've been leaning on putting together that bible I was telling you about as well as editing on something else. It's unusual for me because writing always comes easy. I sit down and let it flow out of me. Sometimes I'll stop and ponder, but that doesn't happen very often.

Even the Zimventures kind of got clogged up on me. It took me a few days to figure out where that was going, and once I worked it out it came pretty easily. But there's a novella I'm working on that just won't come out of me. It's like having painful intestinal pressure where you're certain you need to shit, but nothing comes out no matter how much you strain.

Writing is usually easy because I meditate. I used to go out for long walks and get a lot of thinking done, but that's off the table now due to my bad leg. Now meditating takes the brunt, but even that's not working. I think the problem is, I didn't know what I was trying to say with the piece. I usually know that when I start a project, and if I don't, then it works itself out while I'm writing. And this one wasn't doing that.

Yesterday I figured out what I was trying to say, but the writing still didn't come easy then or today. I think I'm burned out. That's the only explanation. I write a lot, so maybe I need to take a step back for a little bit and let things simmer.

So that's what I'm going to do, and that includes Goodnight, Fuckers. I'm going to see if I can go a week without writing anything. I'll bet that recharges me. I'll bet that when I start writing again on the Monday after next, I'll be chomping at the bit. We shall see.

For now? Goodnight you sweet, sweet fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #603: A QUANDARY

 Whenever I see a Kindle book for free, I pick it up. I have a library of unread books on my phone, but I will get to them all eventually. It takes a while because I only read them when I'm on lunch at work (I don't want to soil the pages of a book with my crumby fingers, so I use my clean pinky to swipe at the screen) or when I'm waiting at a doctor's office or something along those lines. But I feel it's important that when I pick up those books, I leave an honest review. That is the unspoken cost of a free Kindle book, and I never want to ignore that.

So now I come to a quandary because I'm currently reading a really, really bad Kindle book. Whatever you're imagining, it's waaaaaaay worse than that. I don't really want to leave a review because it could only be harmful, but at the same time I don't want to shirk my responsibility.

\

It occurs to me that a few of you reading this might think I'm talking about you. Don't worry. I'm not. I'm not naming the author, but I'm 99.9% certain I don't know this person, and this person doesn't know me.

Anyway, I thought maybe a wishy-washy way to get out of it and still complete my duty would be to leave a one star review and say that it didn't do it for me. But a part of me feels that it's not fair.

What I really want to do is leave constructive criticism. Because I get the feeling that this is the author's first book. Or, possibly, the author is a teenager who doesn't know what they're doing yet. There is a statement at the front of the book about how the author wants to become a better writer, so why not offer my assistance?

Except I've been told that when I give writing advice, I can be very abrasive. I swear I don't mean it that way. I try to be as nice as possible, but for some reason, almost every time, that person tells me I'm being a dick. Considering how I have a somewhat known name in the writing community, it would probably look like I was punching down. That wouldn't be my intention, but I feel certain that would be how it would be taken.

I'm probably going to finish the book during my lunch break on Saturday, so I have that long to figure out what I'm going to do. I could just not finish it and delete it from my Kindle library and pretend I never saw it, but that would be the coward's way. I'll probably figure something out. Maybe.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #578: CREATIVE WRITING

 Earlier today I decided to upgrade my tiny notebooks in which I kept track of all of my story submissions over the years. I had some Office Depot points, so I got a couple of Moleskine notebooks for free. I'll be using those going forward.

But I've been using these things since high school, when I first learned that I could actually make money from writing stories. I'd taken a creative writing class with Mr. Langner. It was a class for seniors, but I took it as a sophomore. They let me in because they saw how serious I was about writing. There were fourteen of us, I think, including my friend Rob Tannahill's sister. At the end of the year Mr. Langner published a booklet with the work we'd created as a result of our time in that class.

He was the one who introduced me to Writer's Market, and up until the internet age I got that book every year and sent thousands of submissions out. He'd photocopied the SF/Fantasy/Horror section and put it in my greedy little hands.

Anyway, almost everyone wrote poems for that booklet. I wrote a story. A very long story, actually. Considering the subject matter, if I had done this as a student today, I'd be on the news as some kind of potential school shooter stopped by a forward thinking teacher. Even by the standards of 1994/95 it was pretty bad.

I'd written a story called "Serial Killer." And you don't have to imagine very much to figure out what it was about. There were a few grisly murders in that one to say nothing of the sexuality involved.

I still have a copy of that one. Two, actually. I'm pretty sure Rob gave me his sister's copy at some point in my life. I eventually expanded it into a novel length work, and it is the one and only novel I've ever written that a Big Five publishing house wanted to see in its entirety. This was back when there were more than five. In case you're wondering, an editor at Random House read my sample chapters and asked to see the rest of the book. I can't tell you how happy that made me feel. I had a chance at the big time!

And then they rejected me. They probably should have. If I remember correctly I was a freshman in college at the time. That book, by the way, will never see the light of day. It's pretty bad, and there's no amount of editing that can fix that.

To think of how different my life could have been!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #570: A NEW WAY IN

 So I'm working on this story, but I'm taking a much different approach. It's rare when I sit and think about what I'm going to write. Story comes naturally to me. Execution? Not so much. I know right away if something is going to be a short story, novel, etc. I know the POV right away. The tense. What it's about. The stuff that is going to happen. More often than not, I know how it ends. Most importantly, I know how it begins. Can't start without something that grabs the reader by the proverbial (sometimes) nuts.

CHAAAAAARGE!

I usually just sit down and charge, full speed ahead. Don't stop. If I fuck up, I fix it as I go. Sometimes I write myself into a corner, but then I can unfuck it pretty quickly. I do my best to have my first draft resemble the final draft fairly closely so that editing is mostly fine tuning, not reinventing the wheel.

This story is making different demands of me. I'm open to it. The story needs whatever it needs. That's my philosophy. So I had to actually sit and think about this one. I had the idea first. What kind of character should this be happening to? And what other characters do I need? Wait, the guy I thought was the protagonist isn't. It's this other guy over here. It makes more sense that way. But how do I let this guy know what's happening to the other guy? Because this story depends a lot on that other guy being alone for a lot of the story.

There is an object at the center of this story. Who did it belong to before this guy? What happened to that owner and why? Is it something to do with the previous owner? Of course it is. So how do I get my new protagonist to find out about that stuff? Especially since I'm basing it in the 'Nineties when the internet was in its infancy and Google didn't exist yet?

These are usually the kinds of things I think about when I go out for night walks, but I can't do those anymore because of my bad foot. Not unless I want it to be amputated sometime soon. Thankfully I have meditation, and that usually helps me find a new way in. 

I haven't gone so far as to have an outline. I'm not that crazy yet. But this is an interesting experience. Maybe someday you'll all read this story. Hopefully in a venue that will pay me a lot. We shall see.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #569: 37?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

 

Holy shit. I've been writing stories for 37 years. To give you some perspective, I'm 44 years old. That's right. I barely had enough of a conscious life before I decided that writing was what I wanted to do with my life. That's crazy.

I know it's been 37 years because my mom made me date my first story, and that goes back to this day in 1985. To give you an idea of how different the world was then, here is a list of things that happened in that year.

Calvin and Hobbes debuted.

Gorbachev became the leader of the USSR.

Coca-Cola introduced New Coke.

"We Are the World" happened.

Michael Jordan was the Rookie of the Year.

Nintendo was released in the US.

And if that's not enough, the price of gas was $1.09 per gallon. A house cost $22.1K. Monthly rent was $375.00. You could buy a brand new car for less than ten grand. And so on.

To quote a great man, "The world has moved on."

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #535: AT LONG LAST

This is my first night without my regular IOP meeting. I kind of miss it, yeah, and I certainly miss the people who attended with me, but I have to do a lot of stuff I put on hold, more or less, so I could do IOP. I got to meditate gtoday for a full session, which was very nice. I went pretty deep, too. I'm very relaxed as I write this now.

More importantly I got a shit-ton of writing done, and it has been a long time since I did that. It felt very good to feel the words flowing out of me at full force instead of the tiny gasps stolen from a couple of minutes here or there.

I'm actually pretty surprised at how good I feel now even though my world continues to crash around me. I still have to worry about my car, which may or may not be totaled. And there is the looming prospect of homelessness. And a bunch of other stuff that I'd rather not talk about right now.

At long last I had a great deal of time to myself with very few tasks at hand. And it felt really fucking good.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #531: NOT WALKING

 I miss being able to do a lot of things because of my bad foot, but the one thing I miss more than anything is night walking. I used to walk two and a half miles almost every night, and I got a lot of thinking done on those walks.

The most important thing I thought about during such sojourns was writing. That's when I figured out most of the writing problems I got myself into. I unpaint my way out of corners during these times. And I really don't have any way to do that now. I'm pretty much working without a net now.

I don't know if my writing has suffered because of it. I have a suspicion it might have, but I'm not sure.

I really, really miss my long walks. Now? I might make it around the block if I'm OK with being in agony for a while. An agony I can no longer drink away. Although I did manage to get some walking done in Oak Park the other day, and I managed to stand up for more than an hour on that day. The pain is always there, but it was pretty minimal that day.

Fucking hell, I wish I could walk my usual circuit again. Just once. Just one more time.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #348: MUSIC AND WRITING

 I can write under any conditions and have over the last few decades. I'm fond of saying that I'm sure I could write in a war zone. I've never tested it and don't really want to, but I'm sure I could do it. But writing with music is very helpful. I try to tailor said music for each project.

The first for-real novel I wrote (not just something I threw together in high school) had a protagonist obsessed with old time rock songs. His father was an abusive Elvis impersonator, and the character never put two and two together as to why he loved that kind of music so much. While writing this book--which will never see the light of day, in case you're wondering--I listened to a lot of Elvis. Chuck Berry. Buddy Holly. Roy Orbison.

When I wrote STRIP I listened to the kind of rock you might hear in a strip club. AC/DC. GNR. Whitesnake. I also listened to the kind of rock you might hear in a honky tonk. George Thorogood in particular.

POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS needed wall to wall punk music. From Sex Pistols to Dead Kennedys. Anyone who read that book is probably thinking, yeah, no shit. Those influences came right through.

While writing the short bizarro novel I just finished, I listened to the score for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It gave me the exact feeling I wanted for the story to go. And while rewriting my splatter western, I listened to the score for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (and if I was still writing when it ended, I'd go over to A Few Dollars More).

For the splatter SF I'm currently editing, I listened to weird spacy music. Shit that wouldn't make a lot of sense unless you were thinking with the distant future in mind.

So yeah. I believe that the music you listen to while writing not only helps, but it gets into your mind and inspires. I highly recommend the process.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #343: NOTEBOOKS I HAVE LOVED

 

I love notebooks. Always have. Every year just before school started, I'd con my grandparents into getting me extra notebooks, just in case. I even love those stupid spiral notebooks that usually fell apart pretty quickly or the wire would warp so you couldn't open it properly. To this day I still buy all kinds of notebooks that I will probably never use. Like the one above. My version has a different design on the cover, but otherwise it looks just like that. Handmade. You can still see the wood pulp in the paper. For some reason I thought I'd gotten it at the Bristol Ren Faire. Nope. Looking back I actually picked it up at Wizard World Chicago back when I still went to that wretched con. I still haven't used this notebook. I'm saving it for something special. I will probably write in it using my quill pen.

While still in high school I started writing my stories--the ones I would actually submit to fiction magazines--on these yellow legal pads. I was possibly inspired by Thad Beaumont in The Dark Half. I wrote in pencil--Black Warriors, not Black Beauties--and I was always happy with the result. I may one day return to this practice.

Then I started writing a nightly journal in composition notebooks. I felt I'd really classed myself up with this move. I used to write with Pilot Precise pens, but those wound up pissing me off because the tips were so easy to bend or break. Now I use a Uniball whenever writing in my journal. I rarely do this anymore because I write Goodnight, Fuckers instead.

I'm a huge fan of Field Notes, even though I only recently figured out what to do with one of them. I write down my ideas for Goodnight, Fuckers! In fact, Notebooks I Have Loved is written in my Field Notes. These were used by reporters back in the day. Watch on old fashioned black and white movie, and you will see reporters hounding City Hall while scribbling madly into these things. Sometimes I fantasize that I'm doing just that while writing in this thing.

I love a good Moleskine notebook. Hell, they're all good. I have one in which I write story ideas. Many of the books of mine you've enjoyed/despised had their starts in this notebook. I also got a Moleskine pen to go with it, but I stopped using it because it does not have a natural feel. Pens are supposed to be rounded for comfort, not squared so you kill your fingers every time you use one. Inspired by Warren Ellis on this one. Yeah, he suffered the consequences of his unsavory actions, and I'm glad he did, but credit where it's due.

Yes, I have a waterproof notebook. I have no idea what to do with it, but I like that I have it. I'll probably write in it with my space pen. Yes, I have a space pen. Jealous?

I also have a tiny notebook that looks like a Canadian passport. I bought it for the laugh. Who knows what I'll ever do with it. It's got a map of Canada in there, even though I was pretty familiar with it to start with. Well, more than most Americans. At least I know more than just Montreal and Toronto. There is even a list of helpful phrases for the French areas. Also, they list if an area has bears. Good to know.

The second fountain pen I bought came with this notebook. It looks pretty cool and sturdy. I imagine that when I figure out what to do with it, I will use that fountain pen to write in it.

That's the brief tour. What are your favorite notebooks? Please let me know in the comments and send me links so I can get them, too.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #330: YE OLDE BOOK WORM

 So I was recently in a Half Price Books, and I made a lot of nostalgia purchases. I don't usually do that, but I found myself looking at these books, and I couldn't help but buy them. I keep saying I'm going to post a picture of my finds that day. Maybe tomorrow. Who knows?

You've heard a lot about the person who abused me when I was a kid, but I'm going to say something nice about him for a change. Like both my biological mom and dad, this guy encouraged me to read.

I've been on record before stating that without the Hardy Boys, I probably wouldn't be writing today. I'm talking, the teenaged sons of Fenton Hardy, not the WWE (F?) wrestlers. Or the awful TV shows. I mean, the books.

Funny thing about the books. I'll get to that in a bit.

My stepfather loved reading, maybe as much as I do now. He loved hard SF because he was a biologist. But whenever he had the urge to buy books he asked if I wanted to go, too. He said he'd let me get some books. So I always said YES! Please!

We walked across the tracks, went down the road, past the White Hen and the Ace Hardware. Over the bridge to York. We'd turn right and head down and just across the street from the York Theater there was this great used books place called Ye Olde Book Worm. My stepfather would browse around the SF area, which was fuckin' huge, and the owner knew me, so he allowed me into the back room, where he kept all of his Hardy Boys books.

I am 90% certain that this is where I got the book that changed my life, that sent me down this path to becoming a writer. The Haunted Fort was the Hardy Boys book. It was an updated version, but I loved it so much I started writing stories of my own. I made up The Detective Boys. Yeah . . . But hey, without my Hardy Boys rip-offs, we wouldn't have, say, Tales of Unspeakable Taste. Or Dong of Frankenstein, for that matter. Sorry, Franklin W. Dixon, even though you never existed. Yeah, Dixon was the name that all these work-for-hire writers did the Hardy Boys books under. I hear it was a flat rate of $100 a book. Not bad for back then.

My stepfather would get his books, and then he'd check with me in the back room. I always had one Hardy Boys books too many. I figured that out early., No matter how many I held, it was always one too many. He said I had to put one back. So I got into the habit of picking up an extra one that I didn't want, and when confronted with this rule, I'd put that one back. I'd fib, of course, and hem and haw over it, but that's what happened. I devoured these books as soon as we got home.

And one day Ye Olde Book Worm disappeared. In fact the building they were in was no longer there. It broke my heart. It was a great place. I loved it. It was the first used book store to go out of business on me. I'd experience that at least a dozen more times in my life.

Fast forward until I'm in my late twenties or early thirties. I was driving around, looking for a place, and what the fuck did I find in Bensenville on the railroad tracks there? YE OLDE BOOK WORM! They hadn't gone out of business! They'd just moved! I parked and, since it was payday the day before, I went directly in. Obviously the old man who ran the place didn't remember me. Shit, he'd been in his late seventies when I'd seen him as a kid. He had to be pushing 100 by then. But he was there! And he still had a back room full of Hardy Boys books!

I went on the biggest book buying spree I've ever gone on in my adult life that day. I bought a lot of books, including my copy of Poker According to Maverick. And yes, I got a few Hardy Boys books, including the one that taught readers how to become crime investigators, which I always wanted as a kid.

The thing about the Hardy Boys is this: every generation has their own version of them. In the Thirties, the originals were, to put it mildly, racist. Then they were reprinted with changes in them to make them more friendly to young boys who weren't just white. And the next generation had them rewritten again. The Eighties got kung-fu Hardy Boys from S&S And then, the generation I was a part of, just barely as I was passing out of that phase, they decided to do the gritty reimagination of the Hardy Boys called The Hardy Boys Casefiles, in which Joe's long-running girlfriend gets killed in a car bomb by a Middle Eastern terrorist whose name translates to The Bullet. Fuckin' weird, right? But I was still on board for a while. And then the next generation got their Hardy Boys, which looked really silly to me, but the kids loved it. I'm sure there have been two more versions of the series since then.

Frank and Joe Hardy will be with us for a long time. Kind of like superheroes. Bruce Wayne will never die for real. Peter Parker will always be slinging webs and might be a teenager forever. Jonah Hex will always . . . well, maybe not. He wore the Confederate uniform, after all. That's really not a good one to come back from, and I'm sure DC is done with him. Maybe.

And then Ye Olde Book Worm disappeared again. I wouldn't be surprised if it was because the owner died at the age of 300. He was a great guy, though. He loved books. Or maybe he loved the experience of the smoke shop, because he still sold tobacco products there. And Lotto tickets. But I have loved many used bookstores in my life. Most run by elderly folks who probably died and had the business sold off by their inheritors.

But I really miss being in that back room as a kid. Selecting the Hardy Boys books I wanted.

So yeah. I bought a bunch of Hardy Boys books from Half Price in the nostalgia section. I also got some Tom Swift books. My dad gave me his collection from when he was a kid. I lost them somewhere along the way. (Read as: my stepfather threw them away when moving from the apartment I grew up in.) I got a few Tom Swifts, too. It felt really good.

Really fucking good,.

A WRITER'S DILEMMA BY JOHN BRUNI

 It was a mildly warm afternoon, and my socks were moist. 

What the fuck kind of hooker is that? 

I don’t know. I think it’s pretty quirky. Something Vonnegut would have liked. 

Are you writing for Vonnegut? 

Well, I don’t write for one person, but Vonnegut could have been a reader. 

Are you writing for Vonnegut? A dead writer? 

*sighs* No. 

Then ditch it. And don’t start with the weather. Remember Elmore Leonard? 

Okay, fine. Let’s see here . . . 

Sweat grabbed my nuts, holding them to my thighs, so I discreetly adjusted them from outside my pants. I cursed the heat and— 

What is this? Are you kidding me? 

What? It grabs a reader’s attention. 

You’re being vulgar for the sake of being vulgar. 

You think you could do a better job? 

Fuck yeah. All right . . . 

The severed head flew at him at seventy-five miles per hour, and when it hit him square in the chest, his ribcage collapsed. 

Whoa! Stop! That’s not even what the story is supposed to be about! 

You’re not going to stop reading it, though, are you? 

I guess not. But still. 

All right. Let me try again. 

The FBI agent removed his sunglasses, giving me a stern look. He seemed so ridiculous, so humorless, I couldn’t help it. I said, “Is that what you look like when you mechanically fuck your vanilla wife in the missionary position?” 

Come on, man. You’re just trying to be shocking. 

Maybe. But you don’t dare to stop reading. 

Holy fuck. Neither of us knows what we’re doing. 

Maybe you should start with dialogue. 

Huh. Okay, uh . . . 

“It’s so hot I think my balls are stuck to my knees,” I said. 

What did I say about the weather? 

Yeah, but— 

He’s right. No one wants to talk about the weather. 

Well fuck. 

Let me try. 

“Holy shit! Look out!” 

I didn’t know who tried to warn me, but I turned my eyes just in time to see a severed head coming at me quicker than a hummingbird. It struck my chest and caved it in. I couldn’t even scream as I collapsed. That was how I died. 

No. 

No. 

We can’t have the narrator die. How is he telling us his story? 

It’s his story in the afterlife. 

Oh? Shall we end it with it was all a dream, then? 

Okay, okay. You made your point. 

Maybe we’re just not sharing an understanding of the story we want to tell. 

No shit. 

Maybe we should think about it. Alan Moore said every story has to have a point. What’s our point? 

I figured . . . 

Well . . . 

I mean, I’d just figure it out as I go. 

Maybe that’s the problem. 

You think? 

Guys, stop it. It’s been, like, fifteen minutes since we checked Twitter. 

No, we have to write. 

Write on Twitter. You know, in posts. 

That doesn’t count. 

*sigh* Fuck it. I can do this tomorrow when I’m less stressed out. 

All right! Hey, there’s also a new show on Netflix we should check out . . . 

THE END