Super Mega Disco Fantastic

It is with a humble heart and a sense of great humility that I come to you with this message:

!!!WE DID IT!!!

Oh my God, guys. So, last night I'm at Starbucks, alternating between my Finance Sorta job and going full-bore research on a book called Stephen King Limited when I got the alert that someone had pledged ten dollars. At once, I went to thank them ... and that's when the outpouring began. Within minutes, folks were donating $50, $75, more - lots more. After Starbucks, I stood outside at the bus stop in the freezing cold Boston chill, my hands blocks of ice, typing to one of my friends to assure him that, yes, he could up his donation if he wanted to.

And on. And on.

My far-flung hope with Roller Disco Saturday Night was that people would care enough about the project to get me just past the goal. It was initially with some trepidation that I settled on the amount (then added $100 for expenses). In the darkest recesses of my cynical soul - and believe it or not, I do have at least some cynicism, especially when it comes to my history with publishing - I knew, knew, this would not work out. I would become another Kickstarter statistic. Fun while it lasted, but it was too much to ask for a weird book with a silly title.

But it wasn't.

Folks, here are the things I bring to the table: faith, inspiration, tenacity, ambition, and drive. I have been writing novels since 1999 - close to 15 years - and only now are they finally getting some interest. I have, what? Eighteen books in my time as a novelist, not to mention a whole bunch of short stories and a crazy number of poems. No matter how much I kept not getting published, I never stopped writing. Ever. Well, there was that one time I had writer's block, but it didn't last. It never does.

As I said yesterday, a lot of what makes a sustained writing career is luck. When I got laid off from my job, luck (and a whole raft of Stephen King book reviews) brought me to the attention of my publisher, who then discovered that I not only wrote well, I also wrote fast. I've been with them since 2009 because of those things, and I haven't let them down yet. Last year, they e-published my short story collection This Terrestrial Hell and my poetry collection, Surf's Up. So they're doing good by me. But in the time since I started with them, I got a real job. And another. And another. And then I took over as producer of sketch comedy at ImprovBoston. Then I decided to direct. And act, sometimes. Then there's the column I write for FEARnet.com, one or two a month. All that's good - it's amazing. I am pretty much living the life I want to live.

But it's hard on fiction. When you're writing nonfiction about a subject you love, knowing that you are guaranteed money for it, it becomes easier for that to rise to the surface. Made-up people and their made-up problems have a tendency to get lost in the morass. Plus, the longer you work on a book, the more you start to doubt. I have a huge problem second-guessing the structure of my books. I'll stop in the middle because the structure isn't working, and I'll get to work re-organizing it, and then at some point, I'm an architect, not a writer, and I abandon my books. Both Tangerine and American Storm were victims of that, and my current novel, My Agent of Chaos almost befell the same fate early this year before I realized that I was repeating the pattern. Now that book's almost done, the first wholly original work of fiction I've completed in 3 years.

Roller Disco Saturday Night started off life as a NaNoWriMo novel. I wrote a chunk of it in a month, got past my goal, and then froze. Painstakingly, over the course of the next year, as I was working other jobs, I completed the first draft. Right now, it's not bad. Parts are. And there's these abrupt character shifts and tonal shifts and all this other stuff that just weigh the book down. What I need is to be able to shake off some of the other stuff and fully concentrate on making Roller Disco the best book it can be. Ruth, Seth, Oliver, Barry, Don, and Charles - the six teenagers at the core of my book - are depending on me to make them live. And now I can.

This doesn't mean the Kickstarter has ended, however. We still have 10 days, and all those rewards are still valid. You can still make your way into my book as a character name, you can still get the anthology I'm compiling, you can still get yourself a personal poem. Every penny donated will continue to help me fund my writing time to get this book written faster and better. I appreciate ALL your support.

Of course, if you're sick of me, you can also throw money at a project I'm donating to, a student film called Writer's Block. The daughter of a good friend of mine is the DP and editor on the film, and I'd love to see it take off. If you want to also help make this happen, give money here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/465885239/writers-block-1

And if you still want to help fund my dreams, my ambitions, my faith, and my drive, once again check out Roller Disco - and my manic video starring me being hyper - right here:

Thank you ALL!

Love, Kev