Lazlo Zalezac: Blog

I have just finished posting The Millionaire Next Door. Some might feel that it came to a rather abrupt end. Perhaps, but perhaps not. I could have continued by introducing other problems and describing how he solved them. I could have told about how he cleaned up the school system. I could have told about Kim's life. I could have... Well, you get the idea. There were lots of little things I could have written about, but it wouldn't have been about Dan's effort to achieve happiness.

With his marriage to the three women he loved, Dan Parker achieved his happiness. There wasn't more to be told about his pursuit of it. Everything after this point would have been about maintaining happiness.

I am still considering writing the articles. The e-mail is running about three to one for writing them. The main problem is that it is a very different kind of writing endeavor. Many people feel that the story itself presents the articles in just the proper fashion to be useful. Others have suggested that no matter how well they are written, that they won't be good enough. I tend to agree.

I have thought about creating an on-line magazine in which people can submit their versions of the three articles. Readers have submitted a lot of variants of the facts of life to me. Maybe I agree with them and then again maybe I don't, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that it is a beginning. Right now, I don't have the time to pursue this. Perhaps some interested reader might take the idea and run with it.

As the New Year approaches, I find myself reminiscing about the past twelve months. If I may say so myself, despite the rather hectic end of year schedule at work, this was a productive year. I have completed stories:

General Sid
Hunter
Oscar Meyers

Admittedly, Hunter was rather controversial, but I'm rather proud of all three of them. In addition to the stories I finished, I have three other stories in progress:

The Quatyl
William Redman Carter
The Millionaire Next Door

Due to work related issues, I was not able to complete posting of The Millionaire Next Door although I had finished the first draft of it well before the end of the year. I expect to finish posting it within a week of the New Year. Admittedly some of the errors in that story remain because of a rush to post it by the end of the year.

I have not forgotten the other stories and will be posting additional chapters in the near future. There will be a galactic war in the Quatyl and William will direct the world towards a better future.

My work schedule has slowed down, but I am still very busy. Odds are good that my life won't slow down until the beginning of summer. I doubt that 2008 will be as productive. I do have a story in progress -- the Victorian. It is an odd little piece about a young man who inherits a spooky old house from an old friend of the family. I'll probably start posting it at the end of spring.

Several people have written concerned that I haven't been posting as regularly as usual. I appreciated the concerns about my health. Fortunately, my health is not the reason I haven't been posting daily. Real life has grabbed me by the ear and dragged me off to work.

It has been eighteen hour days for the past few weeks and it doesn't look better for another week or two. I'll post some more, but it will be a few days between posts.

I'm not sure how many chapters I've posted, but you would think that I know how to do it by now. I accidentally uploaded chapter 14 as chapter 13. When I uploaded chapter 14, I received 175 e-mails in about an hour notifying me that I had posted chapter 13 twice.

Sorry about that.

Today I posted chapter 3 of The Millionaire Next Door and within 8 hours received 30 e-mails asking for links to the three articles mentioned in the story. I wish that I could give out links to them, but I can't. I would if I could, but they don't exist. At least, I've never found such an article.

Some readers may enjoy a little history about the facts of life presented in this story. I used to hear about the facts of life quite frequently, but no one could tell me what they were. On television shows, movies, and stories, people would say that it was time to explain the facts of life to their children. Usually this was followed by a lecture on human reproduction that was more often fiction than fact.

The whole idea of a set of statements that constituted the facts of life intrigued me. I felt that there had to be some facts about living that constituted the facts of life. I set about trying to come up with a list of statements that were always true and meaningful in terms of making decisions about life.

I came up with the first draft of the ten 'facts of life' presented in this story over twenty years ago. I've refined them over time trying to get them in a form that was as succinct as possible. I've had people argue against them, but no one has ever convinced me that they are anything other than fact.

Some observant readers may have noticed that I have included a few of the facts of life in the Damsels in Distress stories. I was about to start another story in that universe when the thought came upon me to showcase the facts of life in one story rather than distributed across multiple stories. The result of that thought is 'The Millionaire Next Door.' I hope that you enjoy that story.