Mushroom: Blog

As expected, I got a lot of mail saying I ruined the story, and I completely changed Linda.

The truth is, I did not. She was always like that, we just could not see it because Pete did not see it. He saw her as wonderful, so that was how the reader saw her. But I have dropped hints all along to how she really was.

First of all, could anybody see her staying with Pete if he did not have his own car, and was just a poor kid from say Pacoima?

She was a girl who before Pete would give handjobs in exchange for McDonald's and a movie. She tried to change, because she thought he was a great catch, and wanted to keep hold of him. If she had not met him, by the time she was in High School she would have been the school skank, probably trading blowjobs and more for dinner and movies because handjobs were no longer enough.

She was always vein, selfish, manipulative, and a sex addict. She thought nothing of having a fling with Kimmie, but would get jealous if he did little more than talk to another girl. She had to be in control of everything, and even if she included Pete in some of her "sex games", she was the one in the center of it all.

Then there was the lifestyle. He had his own car, took her on really nice trips to nice hotels, had money to do things on the weekend, even bought a motorhome so they could spend time together. TO be blunt, she was also more than a bit of a gold-digger. And when Pete was finally gone, she was back to being a little girl in the Valley. No weekends in a hotel, no trips. Yes she had his car, but no job so little money for gas.

But rather than a little income at fast food, she chased the larger money and less work of dancing, then stripping.

No, all of those flaws in her if you read back through will see had always been there. Linda was never intended to be the "love of his life", it is another. Always has been.

But she was seen through his eyes, and he saw her as wonderful. And because I write through Pete's eyes and you all read through them, that was how you all saw her. But if you read again, the little hints I dropped here and there will now make a lot more sense.

Friends, this is known as the "Unreliable Narrator". The Joker is one, movies and books are full of them. In this case, few realized because Peter did not realize. Until much later.

He did settle her down, even her sister, mother and friends talked about how Linda "changed" after meeting Peter. But did she change, or just push it all into the background because she knew she had to if she wanted to keep him?

And when I finish, I am going to complete with a shorter story of her downfall from her eyes. How nothing she did is ever her fault, even when she turns to doing porn or prostitution.

The only real question I have in the "Saga of Linda" is how to end her. Does she finally realize what all she has done, and change and become a better person? Or does she continue her downward spiral of self-destruction. That I have not decided yet, and in many ways it is no longer important in the Saga of Pete. She is now a periphery character in the rest of his life.

For anybody that thinks I 'did her wrong", I apologize. But I promise, if you read the earlier book and chapters knowing this, it will be obvious this was always the path she was on. She could only keep another out of her panties so long as Pete was around (and sometimes not even then).

After all, she was the instigator of every one of the "sex games" they had. They were not about Pete, they were about her and finding a way to "fool around" safely.

OK, as I have warned, this is the part that is probably going to earn me a lot of hate. But for those that love the story, Chapter 15 may be rough.

As I had been warning, the story was not really about the love between Pete and Linda, although that was a major part of Book I and Book II so far. But that is about to draw to a close.

And this had been planned from the very beginning. Even before that story drew out as long as it did, the "downfall" of Linda was already planned. I even threw multiple hints at it all through the story, and I know at least some readers picked this up already. Their love was never intended to be forever, she was only an important step in his life to becoming a man. She will now go her way, Pete will go his.

However, he has already met the love of his life. He simply does not know it yet. And hopefully by the end it will be obvious that she is a much better match for Pete, and that together they will overcome anything life throws at them.

Oh, and the use of any fictional or non-fictional characters is purely for story reasons. I am not intending to malign anybody that is known, I do not know the actress who I name drop in the story. However, she is a little over a year younger than Pete, and a year older than Linda. And she lived in the San Fernando Valley st that time, so that is why I borrowed her name and likeness. This is an entirely fictional portrayal of said actress and should in no way be taken as my opinion of her. I only use her for story and character development.

For those who have been reading my "Country Boy" saga, there is actually a crossover that is now occurring with an older story of mine, "Okinawa".

Now the two stories do not actually cross, they are separated in time by about 6 years or so. But some of the locations and even people from the older stories will be making a cameo in Country Boy.

Case in point, alert readers who have read both stories might recognize a bar that Pete looks at in Chapter 14, and a hotel next to it. Yes, that is indeed the future home of "Cheers" shortly after it closed and over half a decade before Mike decides to re-open it.

And there are going to be at least a few more cameos here and there as the story progresses. Including a younger Mike Johnson (I only recently realized I had never given Mike a last name in that series. So if you are a fan of the older series, you might want to at least check out "Country Boy, City Girl Book II", starting at Chapter 14 when he arrives on Okinawa.

I want to apologize for the lapse of the last month or so in writing.

I recently moved from California to Oregon, and that put a lot of things on hold. One of those was my writing. But I am now starting to get settled in, and am going to be publishing more very shortly.

And I will warn some people now, the Country Boy saga is very shortly going to be getting into some very rough areas. I am sure that most of my fans that have been reading it are aware of it, but we are almost at that "fork in the road" now.

Well, somehow I ended up creating yet another series of stories. But I think this will remain as my Dark Tales one, vignettes that are not directly related to each other. The only thing in common is that they will have at least some kind of contact with a specific club, and that they will share the name of a song as their title and at least some of the story.

I sometimes get writers block, and the best cure for me is to take some time off and work on another story. And recently I had 2 that came to mind. The first one (Won't Get Fooled Again) came from an idea I had, which I originally called "Fools Rush In" (after the quote not the song). Which during editing made me realize it was also the name of a song, and there was a better song name I could use.

In "I Got It From Sally", I was listening to some Tom Lehrer as I was editing CBCG, and that song actually came on. And it started me thinking about what the story was about (and yes, it is a song written in the 1950's about VD), and realized I could write my own. And I was torn between making it a Dark Tales story, but that would have meant tossing out the epic title. So instead I decided to give it a happier ending, and post it alone.

And I may even write a few more and tie them together into a loose series. But probably only if I hear a song that inspires a new story.