K Sawyer Paul

Bret Austin is the central protagonist in my upcoming book, A Record Year For Rainfall. Being the central character in the plot, Bret has a lot on his shoulders. Not only are his actions responsible for setting everything in motion, he has to carry the emotional weight for the majority of the text. And much like the city the book in which the book is set, I didn’t really want everyone to feel the same way about the guy.

When I wrote No Chinook, I handled my main character with a fair bit of fragility. He was somewhat innocent at the beginning of the story, and learned to sharpen his edges chapter after chapter. With A Record Year For Rainfall, I wanted to write a main character that was difficult to like at first. Certainly, there are going to be people who read this book who do not like Bret at all, and that’s fine, because there’s plenty about him not to like. He works at a Paparazzo, he moved to a new city with his girlfriend and then left her once it became difficult. His days are largely spent wandering and stalking, his fun coming from the time he spends with his boss. Finally, he messes up his relationship with his new girlfriend by destroying the career of her boss. And the worst part about all of this is how passively he goes through it all.

In some ways, the book is about Bret finding his footing. He hates who he is and the life he’s chose, but he’s apathetic about changing. So, why follow this guy? Why read a story about a man slowly disintegrating? For one, I’ve done everything in my power to make this unlikeable asshole a sympathetic character. He gets his ass handed to him on numerous occasions. His back luck with women isn’t entirely his fault. And the celebrities deserve what he does to them, for the most part. Also, he has a stalker. There is a man who will not leave Bret alone, but has no intention of providing identification. He’s the big mystery throughout the book. Who is this man following Bret? Is he being paid by the defamed governor? Is he another paparazzo, out to ruin his career? Is he another scorned victim of Bret’s reckless photography?

A Record Year For Rainfall, like all my finished works, took several forms before reaching the current plot. I always wanted the story to in some way involve Bret, the main character and paparazzi, to break open a political scandal. In the beginning, though, the story would eventually climax in Bret taking the pictures and taking them to the press. The original idea was for Bret to not even be in Las Vegas at the outset. Here’s a couple paragraphs from the first version of the first chapter:

I could hear airplanes above me, that vacuum sound amplified to a billion. I’d just left the Los Angeles airport, now officially redefined in my mind as the saddest place on earth. I’d said goodbye to her there for probably the last time. It wasn’t that I didn’t try to win her back. I thought that a dramatic appearance seconds before liftoff would convince her that the worst had past and there were better times ahead. It would be like in the shitty Sunday movies that end in voiceover montages. I had it all worked out. I thought I had her worked out. But the only thing I got out of her was a lonely and altogether too brief final rejection.

“Bret,” she said, in an entirely new and dismissive way she must have picked up in the two hours since leaving our home.

She said, “I’m sorry.”

I stopped at a red light. It was mid-afternoon, and with any luck I’d be out of the vast orbit of western California before night fall. The street sign next to the lights had been halved in a mysterious and possibly violent manner. I couldn’t tell from where I sat whether it had been broken off or shot, but half the sign was gone, along with half the name of the street. I was just about to cross “…den st,” it told me, but it was obvious there was more to the story than it was going to give me. It didn’t matter, though, because specific the names of unknown street names weren’t as important as avoiding all the familiar roads I had shared with her. I needed new streets, new corners, new buildings.

There are three options for those in California with broken hearts and an encompassing need to be elsewhere. They can go north, east, or south, and I had places to stay in all three directions. If I drove for a day I’d find myself in Vancouver’s haze, comfortably sleeping on the couch of my cousin Richard’s two-story. If I went east, I’d call up Tess, my one-time sort of girlfriend, who three years ago took up residence in the city of sin. And if I went south, I’d head straight for my old man’s house in Tijuana. He wasn’t Mexican, but he married one and fell in love with the city all during one confusing as all hell winter.

It wasn’t really a choice as far as I was concerned. I was headed for Vegas. Tess would understand what happened better than anyone, and besides, the neon swell of cheap thrills and good old American excess might distract the voice that was telling me to burn all my possessions and go work for a K Mart in Iowa.

Originally, the outset of the book involved Bean leaving Bret, where he would find solace in Tess’ Vegas apartment. His boss, a J. Jonah Jameson-type character, would bark orders at him over email to get certain celebrity shots. He would be someone who only existed electronically. The story would weave through these assignments, stopping every now and then as Bret broke down, got high, found quick Vegas love, and eventually fell in love with a Republican named Leslie. This story worked well enough, but it wasn’t holding me in the way it should have, the way No Chinook held me for years. It didn’t need a re-write, but it needed some heavy adjustments.

In the beginning, I wanted a relationship between a republican and a democrat in the midst of major political scandal, but what I came up with kept fighting to be something else. So in September of last year, I came up with the idea of shifting the narrative so that the scandal occurs just before the outset of the book. This way, the book begins in what was originally the denouement. Bret is settled but unhappy in Las Vegas. Tess is an old lover with leftover feelings, and Bret’s boss is in town, a Perez Hilton-style professional blogger with a video game addiction. Bean becomes the republican, but she lives in Vegas and is connected to the political scandal. The only thing I kept from the plot was that she leaves him just before the story begins.

The changes to the plot turned the book from being a story about a man slowly ruining himself to something more resembling a bildungsroman.

On Stand By, by Alissa Santiago.

Published by Gredunza Press.

My part in the publishing process was designing the book to Alissa’s specifications, as well as creating the website and procuring publishing information.

I’ve begun blogging daily links at Gredunza Press. It’s an attempt to drive traffic to the site through linking and Twitter. Plus, it’s a great way to keep up with cool angles in the publishing industry.

gredunza:

Click here to find us in iTunes.

Ms Busybody Balances Her Blood Sugar by Kirsten Bedard.

This is the first of a few releases this year from Gredunza Press.

My part in creating the book was to design both the title and the website to suit Kirsten’s specifications, as well as procure the ISBN and CIP information.

Kirsten is a great friend and excellent nutritionist.

While this page is for my personal work, I do have a different blog dedicated to things I think are great. Chocolate Castle By The Sea just passed it’s 1000th post, so I posted my favourite song ever. Chocolate Castle is absolutely my favourite procrastination tool.

I’ve been writing A Record Year For Rainfall for a long time. I’m handing it over to my editor this weekend, so I thought I’d share the timeline.

Spring 2008: I write the first words of the book while sitting in a park in Amsterdam. The initial story is about Bret Austin, a celebrity journalist in LA, who is dumped by his girlfriend and heads to Vegas for a reprieve. He meets Jenny, a republican secretary to the governor of Nevada, and they inexplicably fall in love.

September 2008: 40,000 words into the story, I scrap it. I don’t like where it’s going. But I do like Bret and Jenny, and I like the ending, wherein Bret catches the governor in a gay affair and takes it to the press. I keep those three parts and start over, with the scandal acting as the precursor to the main story.

December 2009: The entire book is framed out, with 10,000 words written. The key addition to the story is Album Yukes, a Perez Hilton-esque blogger with few moral quandaries. He plays Bret’s employer. Oh, and Bret is a paparazzi now. From Vancouver. Jenny is now the ex girlfriend, who dumped him for taking out her boss in the press. Another addition is Tess, Bret’s ex girlfriend from Vancouver, who works in Vegas as a promo girl. The characters are all pretty fleshed out. All that’s left to do is write the remaining narrative.

July 2009: I went through a small writer’s block problem here. I changed venues. About 5,000 words of the book was written this month using a 1960’s Smith Corona typewriter. It helped. In total, this book was written using a Macbook, a typewriter, a notebook, and three different word processors. Jumping from platform to platform seemed to work for me.

January 2010: The first draft is finished. The ending is abrupt, and there’s all sorts of timing/placement issues that plague all of my first drafts. I’m fairly happy with the plot arcs, especially the subplot with Bret’s nemesis, an unnamed camera man who stalks him throughout.

June 2010: Finished the second draft. Timing and placement issues are wrinkled out. Bret never gets his own place, and instead just crashes on Album’s place. You’d be amazed how many things need to be fixed for something little like that. For things like this, Scrivener has been invaluable. The book is also much shorter, as I’ve cut nearly 10,000 words from it. I’ve basically done the opposite most writers do. I don’t like padded books. I want people to think of this book like a 35 minute record that doesn’t have any lazy songs. Most importantly, there’s a real ending, with real resolution for every character.

It’s a really great interview. I think it would be really great to check in with him a year from now to see just how much Kobo–and the ebook world as a whole–will have grown.

Let’s start.

You’ve got a story. It’s a great story. Well, it’s a great idea for a story. It’s got all the elements of a really fantastic novel. It’s the kind of thing book clubs will want to buy in bulk. There’s going to be an awesome hardcover run, and even awesome-r paperback run, and then my god it’s going to get optioned and turned into a very respectable but somewhat racy miniseries on HBO. People are going to like it.

Let’s start with the basic presumption that any story can be a successful venture and go from there.

Let’s start with the idea you’ve got.

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