It's back - the return of Bent Highway

So, I've been in a bit of a writerly funk lately. If you're a writer, you've been there too. It isn't what I'd call writer's block - it's more like I can't write because I don't want to. The words have been dripping out of my brain like something that drips out slowly. Honey? Molasses? Cold blood?

You get the picture.

So I have decided to re-launch something... something I started quite some time ago and always meant to finish. Yep, Bent Highway is coming back.

When I first launched this serialized novella to the world, it was a bit of an experiment. I posted chapters weekly here at woofreakinhoo, and wondered if anyone would read it.
At its height (depth? width? whatever), it was pulling 2000 readers a month.

Recently, as in just today, I was reminded that some people really liked this thing. And a twitter friend (one of the very few to review it) kinda inspired me to return to the story of M.

Now - for those of you who have read part one (you can grab the whole deal on Amazon) - BUT you should know 2 things.
1. I am going to be editing, and adding things as I post those chapters again. So there will be new things to read. Think of it as a director's cut.

2. I am going to continue the story and write part 2. Yep. You heard right... part 2.

So to end this post, I'll give some of the backstory. And then I will launch into posting weekly (director's cut) version of the Part One.
News about Part 2 will be forthcoming.

Bent Highway

Here is a bit of the backstory.

The story of a man unleashed in time has always appealed to me – maybe echoes of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, where Billy Pilgrim was unstuck in time. Maybe it is my rebellion against telling linear stories - I've never been much interested in the storyline where B follows A, and then comes C (etc.).

For me, life is not like that. Memories, some vivid, some blurred at the edges, some downright obscure, all fill my head. Combine with that my general love of a good road book (see Correction Line), and I came up with the story of M, a man where time has become unhinged. 

What if time did not flow like a river, but bent like a highway?

This has been the undercurrent of the story. True, rivers do bend as well (and some highways are damn straight), but if you have taken a corner at about 80 mph (about 130 kph) and felt the wheels hugging the asphalt and the wind pushing the hood - well, maybe you know what I am talking about.

M has escaped from his linear life, and met a woman he knows as chalk girl, or sometimes by her initial "L". She shows him a different way to escape and introduces him to Walt, a giant of a man who knows how to straddle time. For M this means getting bit by a large wolfhound, and having a knife stuck in him periodically. It also involves a lot of Tequila.

Let's get this fucker started.