The Battlefield Known

Predator Press

[LOBO]

In the last post, an anonymous commenter asked if I had thought of writing a book and -ego stoked- I caught myself giving a big, longwinded answer as if I had any idea what I was talking about.

Now I don’t generally let my lack of knowledge about any particular subject get in my way, so that’s nothing special. But I did make myself laugh at my own apparent willingness to wax on and on over the topic of becoming a professional author; in truth I think if it were to be it would have happened already ... now a combination of age, lifestyle, and a total lack of connections and resources pretty much renders the whole thing moot. Worse of all, I lack the single quality most authors rely on to overcome these obstacles: talent.

-But then I started to think about that. Why should these “talented” people get all the breaks? Were the playing field leveled, who knows? I could be the next Hemmingway!

What would be required for my success would be sort of a “neutron bomb” for talent. Picture it: a blinding mushroom cloud, and a shock wave encircles the Earth; instantaneously “talented” authors like Chuck Palahniuk, Steven King and William Gibson –and all their works- are completely vaporized in a hellish, agonizing firestorm, and I am left to misuse semicolons and hyphens and otherwise butcher the English language with utter impunity.

(I said picture it, dammit!)