February 23, 2009

On a bookshelf in my office in Colorado is a small book called “The Book of Kells,” a replica of the ancient Irish illustrated manuscript given to me by my friend Karen Eddy—and the inspiration for my own THE BOOK OF O’KELLS, begun thousands of years ago (1993 or so) in a moment of despair in Naples, Florida. Despair? You bet. Not only had my family been unceremoniously ripp’d from Burlington, Vermont, but my publishing career was non-existent. Thus did I decide to say, in essence, the hell with it as I began something completely different with no real hope of publication, with no real chance of anything but obscurity.

This was the idea: write a Supernovel—a family history over 100 years in multiple forms (novel, play, screenplay, documentary, etc.) in multiple media (text, audio, video, photo, and so on). There were three big problems:

This was the idea: write a —a family history over 100 years in multiple forms (novel, play, screenplay, documentary, etc.) in multiple media (text, audio, video, photo, and so on). There were three big problems:

(1) When I started, was there was nowhere to put anything because there was no Web.

(2) Even when the Web came along in the mid-90s, there was no way to many any money doing any of this.

(3) The technology for multimedia was either expensive or non-existent.

The money thing never bothered me because I never made any money writing fiction, not a nickel. (I remember when The Crescent Review, bless them,  took my first published short story, paying in copies, and tried to charge me money for changes they eventually let me have for free.) Though there was no Web, there was this weird new “hyperlinking” software available on the personal computer. And I figured one day the technology would be dirt cheap.

Let me look at these things backwards and/or inside out, as any true Supernovelist would. Start with the technology. This weekend I received in the mail a microphone that is almost studio quality called “Snowball” for $59. Amazing. I have a digital camera bought several years ago for a couple hundred dollars, and a Sony Handycam video camera, all but unused, bought in 2008 for $700. All of that for little more than $1,000. After years of wishing and hoping for the right tools I finally have them.

The money thing? I suppose in a perfect world all my various novels would be published and my screenplays bought and put on the silver screen. In the real world that hasn’t happened, but after thirty (30) years of writing fiction for no money what difference does it make? And with the Web there’s always the distant possibility that the audience will find you. Being commercially unsuccessful as a novelist makes you realize the only thing that really matters is audience. You may never figure out how to monetize what you do. So what? On the list of priorities for me, that has to be on the bottom. Don’t tell my fiancée.

The Web, finally, solves all the major problems: distribution, functionality, multimedia—you name it. The Web, for me, was this enormous gift that arrived out of nowhere after I had spent fifteen years in shit-for-brains online media believing it was never going to happen. Now it’s here and it’s much bigger (and getting even bigger) than any of us could have imagined in 1980. A gift, like I said.

In the last fifteen years I have written these pieces of THE BOOK OF O’KELLS:

– THE BIG HOUSE, finished yesterday, a novel about the current O’Kell generation, based on my immediate family life and my mother’s family.

– SINS OF THE FLESH about the boy inventor and family patriarch known as Jake O’Kell and our randy fictional ancestor, the Great Fornicator Thomas O’Kell.

– MOTHER NATURE about Eleanor O’Kell, the billionaire nun turned radical eugenicist who tried to create a test-tube town entirely without men—written in diary form.

– DEAD IN THE WATER and DROP DEAD BEAUTIFUL, two mysteries starring former prosecutor Arnold Bagdikian, a man who keeps running into O’Kells.

– NATURE OF THE BEAST about Jake O’Kell, the bastard son of Thomas Edison.

– THE MADNESS OF HATTERS, a play set in the bomb shelter of The Big House during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

– GENE POOL, a script for a documentary about Eleanor O’Kell.

– HOT-WIRED, a screenplay centering on Will O’Kell and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

– KINGDOM COME, an oral history featuring Eleanor O’Kell.

Three novels, two mysteries, a novella, a play, a screenplay, a documentary, and the start of an oral history: a pretty good output for fifteen years or so, though looking back I wonder why I didn’t do more.

Which leaves me, in a way, exactly nowhere.

Because all of the above are merely words that exist on paper or maybe files on a disc somewhere and that’s it. There’s no audio or video or O’Kell Web site or anything to indicate I’ve made any progress.

But what I do have is story, story, story—and a bunch of characters I know better than myself.

So where do I go from here? That’s the part I have to figure out. Maybe it’s even the fun part as I pick up the cameras and the Snowball and start to see how it all fits together. I do know that my halting, faltering attempts at making something out of nothing are starting to look an awful lot like the future.