katster | Finis! or how a book of bad endings can contribute to new beginnings. (Reply)

I've been meaning to write about this since the Pennsy trip, but first that trip and then Westercon got in the way of making this post, so I want to share with you now (and maybe get a few more pre-orders on the book.)

In the fall of 2005, shortly after my namesake hurricane took out New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, I was approached on Pyramoo by

macklinr. He knew I'd been taking the destruction rather hard (seriously, you try watching news footage that's all "Yourname did this," and "Yourname did that," and "Currently, the death toll from Yourname remains incalculable...") and offered me a small way of making it better. That way was to contribute to a book that he was thinking of putting together.

You remember Choose Your Own Adventure, right? It's all written in the second person, and you'd make decisions on where you wanted to go next in the book. I loved those things. Anyway, occasionally, you'd make a bad decision, and it would come to a bad ending. Well,

macklinr theorized, how about a book that's just bad endings? Wouldn't it be fun to write one of those and give the proceeds to charity? He approached me with this, and I agreed to help.

Flash forward two years. A lot has gone on since then, a household move to Sacramento and a few other things, but the gears have been slowly grinding, and the book is just about due to come out.

macklinr has been posting random bits to his journal as they come out, and OMG! this thing is excellent looking. You can see some of the sample stuff either by going to the website for Finis or by poking through the posts about Finis in

macklinr's journal.

But the part that finally moved me to post this? This:

And there it is in black and white, buried along with all the other authorial credits, my own name. It adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the project, I think, having somebody with the same name as the hurricane contribute. *grin*

Anyway, seriously. What the fuck are you waiting for? It's my first published work and all the proceeds go to charity! You can't go wrong in buying six copies! Preorders close next week, so you need to jump on it, but by preordering, you get a copy signed by most of the contributors. And my humble self will go to the preorder signing thingy, so I'll be among the most. :)

Anyway, yes. Hie yourself over to Indie Press Revolution and get your six or eight or well, just one copy today! It'll make me happy. :)