Now look. 2012 and 2013 were two of the best years of my life. Maybe the best years. I had a great sketch group I’d brought to the New York City Sketch Fest. I was writing constantly and getting paid for a lot of it. I ran a comedy show every week at a bar near my house. I had a great job that sometimes sent me to warm places in cold months and paid for me to stay in five-star hotels. I was living The Dream … or at least a version of The Dream that happens before the Real Dream of being a bestselling novelist takes hold. But things were good. Things were great!
Things were shaky. And I didn’t even know it.
On New Year’s Eve, my husband Shawn and I toasted 2014 as another fantastic year. Why wouldn’t it be? Everything was laid out for some major plans, and I was at the head of the change. Never stopping. Always going. Drive. Will. Adrenaline.
Then the bar I did my weekly show at burned down. Not entirely. But burning happened, and when the sprinklers came on, water damage destroyed the place. Now, the owner of the place absolutely had it worse. She’s a sweet woman who didn’t deserve to have something that horrible happen. The fact was, though, that I was out a night of comedy, and because one of my credos was to always pay people who performed, the Boston comedy scene was out a paying venue to peddle their entertainment. I never paid a lot, but I paid what I could. Doing right by people is one of those karmic things.
Then the sketch team imploded. I won’t go into the whys and wherefores, but some stuff went down that made me realize the current trajectory was untenable. I still think dissolving Duct Tape Revolution was the best move for what happened, but it hurt. It hurt like hell to do that, and that plunged me into one of those clinical depressions I have every few years.
Was that before or after the eye infection? It was definitely before I had to have gum surgery, but after the bronchitis I had for a few weeks. Oh, it just keeps piling on.
Then, last week, one of my four jobs abruptly and shockingly let me go. Now, I knew the terms. It was a temp job. More weirdness: it was a temp job at the place I used to work at that laid me off in 2009. It was strange being there, but I liked the people I worked with, and the pay was great. It ate up a lot of my time (especially given that I was also working my normal full-time job on top of that), but I needed the money. And it was good money. The plan was to have me there until either May or June, and then I’d transition out once they hired someone real.
Only it turned out that I actually wasn’t supposed to be working there that long. Some snafu with payroll meant that I should have sort of stopped working there in January. Maybe February. The problem was, no one told me that, or my supervisors, or anyone in power. They just sort of figured it out Friday an hour before the close of day. And so I was gone. My most lucrative job set me free. Just like that.
When I set out to do a Kickstarter campaign for a novel I’m writing, it’s not for the money, not really. It’s for the freedom of being able to live my writing life without having to worry about getting a fourth or fifth job to support myself. (That is not hyperbole. I am currently working four different jobs, one of which mostly pays enough to live on, the others … not so much.) I love to write. I’ve written my whole life. I’ve been writing novels since 1999, so technically I’ve spanned three decades of novel writing. I’m good at it. More, I finish my work. I’ve turned in the completed books for my last two Kickstarter projects, and they’ve been polished, clean, publishable novels. Now I want to do it again, from scratch.
I love to write, but I need to be able to justify not getting yet another draining, time-sucking job I don’t want so I can keep doing it. That’s where this campaign fits in. My novel Panic Town will be a crime novel in the grand tradition: long-ago murders, missing manuscripts, sexy widows, scheming families, and a worn-down private eye who needs a reason to live again. I can’t wait to start writing it. I’m clearing my desk now and getting my research and outlines in order. I have a lot of work to do, and with your help, I can do it more easily.
I have four days to go, and I need to raise less than $1500 to get there. Thank you for all your help and support. My year looks to be getting better already!
Donate here to get PANIC TOWN off the ground!
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