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I'm Gonna Write a Book

January 5, 2009 10:31 PM

s is my custom, I bought a horrible book for the flight back from Los Angeles. I find that nothing passes the time better than a ridiculous tale of international intrigue, ancient mysteries, and furtive glances. The particular book that I bought, though, was terrible even by the standards of its genre. It was The Alexandria Link by some douchebag named Steve Berry.

Still, my need to know what happens next drove me to finish the thing. When I was done, I literally wanted to throw the thing int he trash--something I've never even considered doing with any book.

But I started thinking: how hard could it be to write one of these things? Not very hard at all, apparently. Therefore, here's the synopsis to my first novel, which I hope will be the first of a series.

Adonis Stone is an ex-government operative that left his high-security-clearance intelligence job to pursue a quiet life as a professor of ancient languages and advanced computer decryption at some prestigious university in New England. But things get extremely complicated when Sophia--the daughter he hasn't spoken to in years--sends him a cryptic e-mail about Atlantis, the pyramids, and Henry Ford. Most disturbingly, however, the e-mail suggests that Sophia is in some sort of danger. We follow Stone as he has to call in favors from his old friends in the intelligence community to get to the bottom of a centuries-old mystery that ties together the Knights Templar, Ashton Kutcher, and the Aurora Borealis.

Along the way, Stone meets up with his old friend Albert Pennywinkle Worthington Smith XII, a wealthy Briton with a well-developed interest in booze, women, and centuries-old mysteries that could rock the very foundation of Western civilization. Smith also has some sort of disfigurement or disability or something. And he's known as "the Twelfth" to his friends. Imagine the possibilities. Sample passage:

Stone set his jaw as if he had finally made a decision about their next step and put the car in gear. He started driving towards the outskirts of London, careful not to draw the attention of the bobbies.
"Where are we going?" she asked, her chest still rising and falling quickly as she tried to catch her breath after the firefight they'd just been in.
"To see a friend," he said.
"A friend? Who?" she asked. He kept his eyes on the road, his face's strong features betraying only a fraction of his weariness. She couldn't help but wonder how many other women had felt about him the way she felt right now.
"The Twelfth," he said. [Chapter break]
Awesome, right?

Anyway, so The Twelfth appears to double-cross Stone at one point, but it turns out that he was actually protecting Stone from a second conspiracy lead by anti-Semitic werewolves. But then you find out that The Twelfth was actually only protecting Stone from the second conspiracy in order to preserve his own, third conspiracy, which depended on Stone successfully figuring out the first conspiracy. Because you see, even though The Twelfth figured out the second and third conspiracies (distinguished by the notation C' and C''), he was unable to figure out the first conspiracy--even though his own plan depended on details of the first conspiracy (simply C) that he couldn't have known at the time.

In the end, Stone finds his daughter inside of Ayers Rock, only to find out not only that she's actually The Twelfth's daughter but also that she's working for the anti-Semitic werewolves because she's a werewolf herself. Or something. At that point things get really convoluted, but that's cool--I'll throw in some Christian iconography and some titties and it'll all work out.

Then, after some ground-shaking revelation, I make it clear that the secret will remain burried. That way, when readers are done reading, they'll think "Wow, that could absolutely be happening in real life--we wouldn't know!" It would go something like this:

Stone stood there, holding the Shroud of Turin--a relic that he only now was beginning to understand--and the flash drive that spelled out how the whole of Earth's history had been manipulated by unseen hands. He looked at his old friend. The Twelfth held the two other pieces of the puzzle--the dinosaur bone and Columbus's sextant.
"No one can ever know," he said.
Stone looked at Sophia. She looked back at him with a mixture of disdain and understanding. She set her jaw, indicating that she had made up her mind. He didn't care what genetics said--that woman was his daughter.
"He's right," she said.
He knew that they were right and that the world simply couldn't handle the truth of what they had uncovered. But he wondered how he could go back to his normal life now that he knew the truth. He toyed with the idea of writing a book about his experiences, but he knew that doing so would only further destabilize the relationship between all the world powers. Everyone that knew what had happened was dead. Everyone except the three of them.
He looked at The Twelfth again. Once, Stone thought he could trust him with his life. He knew better now, of course. But Stone also knew that The Twelfth would take this secret to his grave--his fortune depended on it.
As for Sophia, Stone knew that the werewolves would be back, but he also knew that Sophia would keep her word.
"Ok." He said. And he knew he'd never see either one of them again.

Oh man, I'm all excited.



12 Comments


morenonesense said:

I'll say this. One, why do you read that crap to begin with. Two, pretty good start on a horrible book, i like the way its headed. Three, sometime after i start making money, we should actually collaborate on a crazy stupid book... I doubt that the world has never since the likes of what horrible nonesense we can come up with. With your lack of genius and my lack of genius, I think we can make "The K Virus" or "Renegade Fires" or "Sack Lunch" into something big.

January 6, 2009 8:48 AM



tRJ said:

Do it! This could be as big as The DaVinci Code!

January 6, 2009 10:23 AM



Vice said:

You fucker.

You just stole the EXACT PLOT of my actual book-in-progress.

Now I'm going to have to start all over.

You fucking fucker.

January 6, 2009 7:09 PM



The Reeg said:

Bahahahahaha. I laughed all the way through your synopsis, and this will be genius.

But, I think your book needs one more element to make it complete, since one of the characters needs to be defined by their vulnerability and lend the story some emotional depth (read: make the middle-aged ladies in stirrup pants cry). I therefore propose one of the following:
*An adorable, innocent, but precocious tot (think a cross between Molly from Heroes and Cindy Lou Hoo) who has some sort of extraordinary talent, such as ESP. She could even turn out to be Sophia's daughter or something.
*An idiot savant or a genius with autism or some other sort of developmental disability (think the guy from Cube);
*A trusty, intelligent, and maybe mildly psychic dog or cat. He dies fighting the werewolves and they bury him along with the other crap at the end. This REALLY makes the middle-aged ladies in sweatpants cry.

You're on to something here, man.

January 6, 2009 10:44 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

Morenononsense,
I read those books because they're disposable, easy, I don't have to think about them, and I can generally finish one of them in a round trip. But I bought this book on the return trip and it all went downhill from there.

Anyway, I'd be down to collaborate on a terrible book. One condition, though: since the goal is to write a horrible book, you get final say on sentence structure and word choice.

tRJ,
It could be. I would totally include a Dan Brown-style explanation about how all my descriptions of things are 100 percent accurate.

Mr. Vice,
What's that they say about great minds? I guess that applies with equal force to terrible minds and terrible ideas.

The Reeg,
I like all of your suggestions. Consider them adopted. My only reservation is the kid with ESP--I mean, we wanna keep this thing believable, you know? Maybe instead of ESP, the kid is a math whiz with aliens for parents. Much more believable.

January 7, 2009 1:58 AM



Dee said:

oh snap! this is a totally plausible soon to be now a major motion picture book! i love that the main character is named adonis. mr fxv always wanted me to write him as a character in a story, and describe him thusly: "like an adonis, but better looking".


can't wait to read sack lunch, by the way. have they been shrunk or is it just a really big sack?

January 7, 2009 7:44 AM



Lauren said:

DO IT! You'll make me rich! I'll be the one all the network channels come to when they want to do a documentary on your ground-shaking book and want to lend some academic credibility to the whole endeavor. Of course, I'll have to say that the entire argument has been a topic of widely debated controversy for some time and the academics have known for at least fifty years that Mary Magdalene was banging Jesus. And my very obscure book on the Roman Sibylline books will suddenly become a best seller on all the non-fiction lists and I'll become one of the leading experts in the field of ancient necromancy. DO IT NOW!

January 7, 2009 1:16 PM



TheExpat said:

Yes! I support this idea. When you get your foot in the door with the publishers you can squeeze Dee and I in with you. We will rule the airport fiction rack!

January 8, 2009 12:08 AM



Justine said:

You really need to submit this to the publisher of the book you wanted to throw away and see how they reply. There is no way it couldn't be good: either they encourage you to continue working on it/submit a manuscript, or they respond by trying to explain how the piece of shit that they published is better than this. Either way, it will be very entertaining, and you will create work for the idiots who give the green light to this crap.

January 9, 2009 6:22 PM



Kassie said:

Now I feel stupid. That's cleraed it up for me

July 10, 2011 5:48 AM









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