My author’s notebook series will consist of my outline for a piece of fiction or nonfiction that is in progress and is scheduled to go up for sale. Realistically we are looking at six months to a year from writing the thing to publishing it. Eventually when it comes up for sale this may be used as a content guide for deciding if it is something you wish to purchase. In the meantime, you might put some comments in at the bottom of the page as to how you feel about this kind of thing even being written.

My actual writing time for a novelette ranges from a day to a week. For the shorter nonfiction works like The Most Evil Presidents, it is generally two days per chapter. For something big like Of The Sunset World or The Broken Dance, it takes about a week per chapter, factoring in supplementary research breaks.

My inspiration for the author’s notebook entrees comes from my recent reading of comic books and graphic novels, which often have ‘galleries’ in the back that give the curious reader some insight into the evolution of the project. Likewise, if you end up purchasing and reading Menthol Rampage after its release, you can reference this as a gallery, and note where I made changes in my outline, if any. Once I place a notebook outline here, I will not change it here, only making spelling corrections, etc.

I usually write these first, but not always.

Menthol Rampage is the story of Jay Jay, a carpenter who suffers from something I suffer from, a neurological condition that causes eye-pain, dizziness, fatigue, loss of mental acuity, and nausea. One day, while going to the gym to sleep because my roommates’ cigarette smoke was making me so nauseous that I could not do so at home, I had great difficulty avoiding cigarette smokers at bus stops, one of whom became rude with me because I stepped away from her when she lit up. I never ask someone not to smoke even though it makes me deathly ill. I just avoid them.

But what, I thought if I had some grunt job where I could not avoid the smoke? In one of my darker moments I drifted into my mind’s eye back to my compulsively violent youth. What would I have done then, to a world of dope fiends pumping their toxins into my body and then cursing me when I simply step away? In what kind of workplace could this occur? The answer is private construction. Those guys even drink beer on the job.

Menthol Rampage is not one of my more complex plots. It boils down to one question: how many cigarette smokers can Jay Jay kill with the contents of his tool belt before the cops put him down?

The Four-by-Four

Doctor Quarry

Bessandra

Fat George Mason

The Bus Stop

Antwyn Haze

Five-O Yo

Tyson’s Lane

Tyson and Browning Parkway

The Watering Hole

Rehab

Teddy Roosevelt Fo Yo Ass

Thirty Million Strong