Saturday, November 9, 2013

Writing for Fun ... and Probably No Money

There's another book on which I'm working but it's not my book as my nephew, the Raven, has written it.  It's a huge piece of work as it stands now at three hundred and forty-two pages.  The problem is that it's riddled with grammatical errors.  (I'm not talking out of turn as he knows it and we have been talking about it.  Unfortunately, we haven't yet come up with a plan for what to do about it.)

I have maybe a better idea than many as to just how hard he has worked on it so I'm not willing to just blow it off and say the book can't be salvaged.  It can ... but it will take a ton of work.

Writing is a lot like rock and roll in that a lot of people do it but hardly anyone makes any money at it.  The Raven wants to publish the book but he wrote it because he had to write it.  Having written it he's not sure of the next move so that's where I come into it.  I can't say I really want to be the old guy spending the rest of my days helping the young 'uns get going but, wtf, it's a blood thing and it's worth it for that alone.

The regular readers may remember The Raven doing a really outstanding performance in the show I did in Cincinnati in which he played the Devil tempting Donika with crack which she consumed until she died.  That was dark stuff but I loved the job they did with it so there's some payback in helping him out with this book ... plus I couldn't possibly ever repay what Lotho has done to help me but working with his kid can't hurt.  The thing that has knocked me out about The Raven's performance was that he had no idea he would do it until the night of the show.  Every single bit of it was improvised on the spot.


Something that may amuse you about the video is that it gets muddled about how to end.  That was because we knew how the dance would go, sort of, but we hadn't worked out how to end it so I was waiting for a sign from Donika and she was waiting for one from me.  She was improvising as much as The Raven as she didn't know he would be part of it either.  Improvisation is a beautiful thing.

I won't be presenting The Raven's book as it's not my property.  It just may interest you to know this is happening.  I'm not exactly Truman Capote but I do know how to publish things and it'd be cool as hell to see him do it.  Probably the biggest problem will be tearing him away from other things he is doing as he is running a fire show in Knoxville with his friends.  So far they have managed to do it without any fatalities but they damn sure do some crazy stuff.  Cat would dig this stuff as she loves circus too and The Raven isn't any more interested in clowns with red noses than she.



The Raven's troupe is now Der Zirkus but they're still operating out of Knoxville, TN.  (Link is to Facebook)

Ordinarily one says 'break a leg' to a performer but with these kids it's more like 'try not to turn yourself into a human torch.'

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