About a third of my normal readers are engaged in reading Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon, Volume 1. That’s great! Not everyone is interested in following the adventures of a 4,000-year-old demon who is trying to make his way through the world the best he can. After all, it’s not a fifteen-year-old shrimp geek accumulating a harem!
Only it sort of is. Bob’s adventures are mounting and at the moment he’s negotiating building a temple for a Mesopotamian god. My guess is he wanted it air conditioned.
Back last summer when I was working through Team Manager SPRINT!, I decided I needed to take a drive and just listen to the characters for a while. I do that a lot. One of the things I’ve loved about my life on the road is that while I’m driving is when characters talk. Ignoring me. I figured Dennis was going to reveal big stuff on this drive.
Instead, he kept getting interrupted by Bob.
“You know what would be funny? Write a memoir about a demon.”
I distinctly heard snickers.
“What demon?” I asked.
“Oh, let’s call me Bob. You know. It’s like a drunk mage was trying to summon Beelzebub and got Beetlebob instead.”
More snickers.
“Call you?”
“Well, it’s my adventure.”
“And who are you that I should care?”
“I’m Bob and I’ll be your demon today.”
Oh, great. I drove for two hours and still didn’t know where SPRINT! was going, but I had a new story that I was supposed to work on.
I told my story consultant, Doug, about it and we sat around camp brainstorming what would be in the book.
“Spells always come out a little unexpectedly,” Doug said. “Like the one that brought him here.”
“Like the time he cast a transformation spell on himself and used the feminine form of the verb instead of the masculine and turned himself into a woman!”
“Exactly. Only it seems things always work out right for him because he’s just a happy-go-lucky—mostly lucky—demon.”
Doug and I had a few fireside chats before I took off for the winter. I made several months’ worth of notes as I finished SPRINT! and launched into COACH! If I was going to work on Bob, it was going to require all my effort, because 4,000 years is a fucking long story.
I didn’t know how long until I started writing for NaNoWriMo in November. By then I was in Las Vegas and settled in my winter campsite. And the words started flowing. By the end of the month I had more than exceeded my goals.
My official NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words.
My secondary NaNoWriMo goal of topping 2 million words in my 17 years of NaNo participation.
My tertiary personal goal of writing a complete novel of 150,000 words in a month.
Then, of course, I needed to start rewriting Bob because I just flew past a lot of places that needed more development. Doug read the first draft, as did Les, and both had all kinds of comments on how it needed more in certain places and “Why didn’t you
mention his time in Australia?” (Just one example.) By the time I’d rewritten it, it was two volumes, totaling 206,000 words, and I had a drawer full of ideas for volume three.
Well, now I’m pressing toward the conclusion of the first draft of Team Manager CHAMP! so I can spend April’s Camp NaNoWriMo writing volume three of Bob’s Memoir.
A demon with his own view of history, mythology, religion, magic, and famous people (who collects a harem and manages to keep them alive and young for 4,000 years) just won’t appeal to everyone, but I’m having a blast.
And people have compared the writing to Lubrican, who always has a lead character named Bob, and to Christopher Moore whose books have included comic fantasy best-sellers like Practical Demonkeeping, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. If you are ever lacking something to read, just look up some of the seventeen books by Christopher Moore. Or read Bob’s Memoir.
And now, Bob keeps telling me he wants to go into outer space and get away from earth. Hmm. We’ll see how that works out for you, Bob.
I'm traveling this week. Came up to Western Washington to surprise my daughter for her birthday and help her move into the new house she and her husband just bought.
In other words, I'm doing more work now than I have in years. Yesterday, I sanded the inside of all the kitchen cabinets to get them ready to paint. I'm still shaking the dust off. Caulking cracks seemed to be another big job. I think there will be painting. (My least favorite task. Even ranks below doing dishes.) Possibly packing and getting ready for Tuesday's move. It will be a busy couple of days.
I'm still managing to get a little writing done, though. I'm closing in on the end of Team Manager CHAMP! Making some big decisions about the future of that project. This book gets them to the end of high school and brings the final harem group together at last.
I'm preparing to start writing the third volume of Bob's Memoir next Friday. I hope to have it completed by the end of April's Camp NaNoWriMo. We'll see!
And I got a new client project in hand yesterday, so there is that to look forward to. I'll probably start it tonight.
If you are in the UK, Happy Mother's Sunday. Tell her you love her.