The Story Begins

So this is how it starts-- my long time friend and I, a couple of Theater Guys, walk into a bar and we write a dystopian action adventure story with a mysterious Russian spy, new countries, a nAmerica languishing under a totalitarian theocracy, and the aftermath of a limited nuclear exchange. You know, everyday stuff.

Well we started that particular leg of the journey almost 30 yrs ago! Two out of work guys taking care of their daughters while their wives were out making rent, we cobbled the story together on typewriters and and a primitive Tandy computer that you had to install DOS from a floppy disk. Editing was a night mare-- make a change on pg 10 and you had to re type the entire chapter. Still we manged to come up with a compelling, if not particularly professional, story.

We researched the Writers Guide, made those 20 pg prospectus that you sent out to publishers, worked ona screenplay....and waited.....and waited.....an waited.

An envelope arrives with an NYC address on it! With a shot of whiskey, we open the envelope to discover.... "Thank you for your interest in our publishing house.............but "No Thanks" We had half a dozen of these letters, at one point I actually had them pinned to my bulletin board over my desk.

So after a couple of years of work, a trip to Vancouver BC, and a number of push pins punched through the rejection letters, we both sorta let life intervene, watched our daughters go off to college, and settled into the more accustomed ( for us) rhythms of life-- kids, theater, too many baseball games, even a couple of Superbowls!

After more than a quarter of century I went in and looked at the old girl when I was cleaning my study and found a copy of the manuscript on a CD. (I no longer had a computer that would read floppy disks!) What the hell I thought, might as well read it again.

While there were many things that needed fixing --and no doubt still are-- There were major elements of the story that had aged rather better than I had imagined. America has gone through some rough times with a depression, the world order of the Cold War has broken down, and it's replacement is beginning to crack, religious zealots seem to be everywhere, and very strange person inhabits the White House.

So if you take a look at the story, and see elements of out time, on this timeline, realize that these were prognostications when we first wrote this. We were careful not to let our own timeline seep into the major edit we did to clean the script up. Careful not let our past cloud the past of the characters in this book. Careful to keep the two worlds separate.

Even with a man called Donald.