Hello, all – taking a bit of a break (don’t really want to, but there are other things that need to be done and a couple of them require my full attention) from the novel, but I plan on coming back over the weekend and making up for a little of lost time. I can still make my August deadline since I got one of my editors looking over the first three chapters. If I do that, I should be able to get all the main editing sealed up beforehand. My editor is an exacting soul and will take her time to get it right. So I figure that giving her a few chapters at a time should get me there ahead of time. I might even be able to have some hamburgers next weekend!

I’m going to make the main character sweat it out as far as getting the response from the company. Whether or not I am going to put Daniel in there with another offer for a crash-and-cash that could keep him going for a while is up for debate. Honestly, when I’ve applied for work, I rarely if ever heard from a prospective employer for at least a few days (and with some, not at all!). The thing I am leery of is taking away Daniel’s sting when he appears. While his presence is not to be terrifying, but we should feel some sort of concern. I liken him to Mephistopheles in Faust: he’s a tempter, a high-end drug dealer who’ll give you a couple of tastes for free, then will politely ask you for your wallet. We should only be afraid when Daniel’s mask starts to slip in the Third Act and he goes off the rails in the Fourth Act. I don’t know if I had said this earlier, but in my head, I had cast the role of Daniel to Jeremy Piven because I always liked his smarmy, slick attitude. Now, I’m changing that in my head to John Goodman. Where Mr. Piven has a certain metropolitan feel to his characters, I couldn’t see him being the loud good-time guy with a hint of physical menace. John Goodman can pull that off – watch him in “Fallen“. The big confrontation scene in the novel (close your eyes if you don’t want to be spoiled) between Daniel and the main character has this exchange as they shake hands and lean in:

Daniel: You have no idea who you’re fucking with, son. I will slaughter you and piss on the corpse.

Evan: You’ve got some anger issues. You should try some green tea and a deep breathing exercise…and maybe a breath mint.

Having John Goodman say that line and seeing someone like Johnny Knoxville say that response works for me a lot better mentally with keeping the main character as someone who looks like they’ve been tossed to and fro by fate taking a stand for something once in his life.

Well, I should get back to things here. As always, thank you for reading and please check out the writers to the right (and maybe a little bit down depending on your computer screen) and maybe buy a book or two… or ten… I’m not picky. I’ll talk to you all later.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy