A GONZO NOIR: An Internet Novel # 13 – Yea, Verily, It Is Accomplished

A Minister for Propaganda Elf writes: “Herewith be the final instalment of Declan Burke’s internet novel, A GONZO NOIR (right), and thank blummery for that, it was all getting a bit ludicrous at this stage. Anyhoo, many thanks to those of you who have stayed the course, and particularly those who have left comments on the various sections – hi, Ann and Gerard. Thanks too to Claire, Gavin and Adrian for taking the time to read and support it, and to Bill Crider, Sinead Gleeson and The Rap Sheet for giving it some oxygen. What happens with the story now we have no idea, but we kind of like the idea of simply cutting it adrift to float around the blogosphere under its own steam, just to see where it might end up. Does the blogosphere have a black hole that sucks in orphaned blogs only to recycle them in a parallel dimension? We can only hope and pray.
  “In the meantime, it is done, over, finito. Make of it what you will. Peace, out.”

The story so far: Failed author Declan Burke (right), embittered but still passably handsome, wakes up one morning to find a stranger in his back garden. The stranger introduces himself as Karlsson, a hospital porter who assists old people who want to die and the hero of a first draft of a novel Burke wrote some five years previously. Now calling himself Billy, he suggests a redraft of the story that includes blowing up the hospital where he works. Intrigued, Burke agrees to a collaboration, but things do not go swimmingly …
  For the reasons we’re publishing a novel to the interweb, go here.
  If you want to skip all that malarkey, the novel starts here.
  If you’re one of the 34,014 readers who have been following the story, the latest update can be found here.
  Now read on …

A GONZO NOIR: An Internet Novel # 12

A Grand Vizier writes: “Pootled along to see the new Batman flick The Dark Knight yesterday morning, and terrific stuff it is too, an unusually bleak and philosophical movie for mainstream viewing, especially given the cartoonish quality of most superhero movies. It’s chock-a-block with story, so it’s probably not too much of a spoiler to tell you that, among his many outrageous acts (the ‘disappearing pencil’ gag is hilarious), The Joker gets to blow up a hospital. Which is quite the bummer, as A GONZO NOIR is rapidly approaching its conclusion (the penultimate section comes below) with hospital porter Billy / Karlsson poised to – oh yes! – blow up his place of work. Oh well, it can’t be Mills & Boon every day, right? Anyhoo, on with the show …

The story so far: Failed author Declan Burke (right), embittered but still passably handsome, wakes up one morning to find a stranger in his back garden. The stranger introduces himself as Karlsson, a hospital porter who assists old people who want to die and the hero of a first draft of a novel Burke wrote some five years previously. Now calling himself Billy, he suggests a redraft of the story that includes blowing up the hospital where he works. Intrigued, Burke agrees to a collaboration, but things do not go swimmingly …
  For the reasons we’re publishing a novel to the interweb, go here.
  If you want to skip all that malarkey, the novel starts here.
  If you’re one of the 34,014 readers who have been following the story, the latest update can be found here.
  Oh, and as a special treat for Ms Witch, this is the view Billy / Karlsson has from the decking where he and the Grand Viz have their little ‘hospital incineration’ chats …

  Now read on …

A GONZO NOIR: An Internet Novel # 11

The story so far: Failed author Declan Burke (right), embittered but still passably handsome, wakes up one morning to find a stranger in his back garden. The stranger introduces himself as Karlsson, a hospital porter who assists old people who want to die and the hero of a first draft of a novel Burke wrote some five years previously. Now calling himself Billy, he suggests a redraft of the story that includes blowing up the hospital where he works. Intrigued, Burke agrees to a collaboration, but things do not go swimmingly …
  For the reasons we’re publishing a novel to the interweb, go here.
  If you want to skip all that malarkey, the novel starts here.
  If you’re one of the 34,014 readers who have been following the story, the latest update can be found here.
  Now read on …

A GONZO NOIR: An Internet Novel # 10

The story so far: Failed author Declan Burke (right), embittered but still passably handsome, wakes up one morning to find a stranger in his back garden. The stranger introduces himself as Karlsson, a hospital porter who assists old people who want to die and the hero of a first draft of a novel Burke wrote some five years previously. Now calling himself Billy, he suggests a redraft of the story that includes blowing up the hospital where he works. Intrigued, Burke agrees to a collaboration, but things do not go swimmingly …
  For the reasons we’re publishing a novel to the interweb, go here.
  If you want to skip all that malarkey, the novel starts here.
  If you’re one of the 34,012 readers who have been following the story, the latest update can be found here.
  Now read on …

A GONZO NOIR: An Internet Novel # 9

The story so far: Failed author Declan Burke (right), embittered but still passably handsome, wakes up one morning to find a stranger in his back garden. The stranger introduces himself as Karlsson, a hospital porter who assists old people who want to die and the hero of a first draft of a novel Burke wrote some five years previously. Now calling himself Billy, he suggests a redraft of the story that includes blowing up the hospital where he works. Intrigued, Burke agrees to a collaboration, but things do not go swimmingly …
  For the reasons we’re publishing a novel to the interweb, go here.
  If you want to skip all that malarkey, the novel starts here.
  If you’re one of the 34,011 readers who have been following the story, the latest update can be found here.
  Now read on …

  Update: on the basis that it’s far, far more popular than Crime Always Pays’ spin-off site A Gonzo Noir, here’s the link to the latest upload to Lilyput’s World. Sigh …

A GONZO NOIR: An Internet Novel # 8

The story so far: Failed author Declan Burke (right), embittered but still passably handsome, wakes up one morning to find a stranger in his back garden. The stranger introduces himself as Karlsson, a hospital porter who assists old people who want to die and the hero of a first draft of a novel Burke wrote some five years previously. Now calling himself Billy, he suggests a redraft of the story that includes blowing up the hospital where he works. Intrigued, Burke agrees to a collaboration, but things do not go swimmingly …
  For the reasons we’re publishing a novel to the interweb, go here.
  If you want to skip all that malarkey, the novel starts here.
  If you’re one of the 34,008 readers who have been following the story, the latest update can be found here.
  Now read on …

A GONZO NOIR: An Internet Novel # 7

The story so far: Failed author Declan Burke (right), embittered but still passably handsome, wakes up one morning to find a stranger in his back garden. The stranger introduces himself as Karlsson, a hospital porter who assists old people who want to die and the hero of a first draft of a novel Burke wrote some five years previously. Now calling himself Billy, and desperate to escape the limbo of non-publication, he suggests a redraft of the story that includes blowing up the hospital where he works. Intrigued, Burke agrees to a collaboration, but things do not go swimmingly …
The novel starts here. If you’re one of the three readers who have been following the story, the latest update, section 7, can be found here. Now read on …

A GONZO NOIR: An Internet Novel

Failed writer Declan Burke (right), embittered but still passably handsome, writes: Many thanks to everyone who took the time to leave a comment when I asked if it made sense that the interweb novel A GONZO NOIR were to get its own blog, so that its instalments will read in an linear fashion rather than in the clumsy way I was posting them to Crime Always Pays. The answer, surprisingly enough, was a resounding ‘Yay’, and so the new blog opened for business yesterday with post on the Crime Space forum announcing the news.
  It was a somewhat less-than-auspicious beginning, as the ever-radiant Angie got in touch some hours later to say that I was in breach of the Crime Space protocols on self-promotion, and that the forum article would have to be removed. ‘Lummee,’ says we, ‘we can’t even give our stuff away for free these days.’
  Bloodied but unbowed, we herewith announce the arrival of the A GONZO NOIR blog, to which the entire novel will be posted in the coming months. The plan is to upload a new instalment at least once a week; when we do, we’ll provide a heads up on CAP and a link direct to the new section. The story starts here; for all three of you who have been following the tale already, the latest update comes here.
  Finally, yesterday’s post on Crime Space, which explains the reasons behind posting a novel to the interweb, to wit:

The first question people tend to ask about A GONZO NOIR is, ‘Why waste a perfectly good novel publishing it to the internet?’
  This presupposes that it is good, let alone perfectly good.
  Actually, it doesn’t. What people really mean is, ‘Why publish a novel-length story for free when someone might pay you to publish it as a conventional novel?’
  Well, there’s a lot of reasons.
  The first is that I’ve always wanted to publish a novel to the web, because it’s there and because I can.
  The second reason is that I’m pretty sure the story isn’t a commercially viable one. I believe it’s up to the standard of my previously published novels, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG O, but the story itself – which concerns itself with a hospital porter who decides to blow up the hospital where he works – isn’t the kind of thing to get publishers’ hearts racing.
  The third reason, and this is a rather more vague one, is that I feel that its protagonist, Billy / Karlsson, belongs on the web as opposed to between covers. This is just an instinct, of course, and not something I can really explain.
  The fourth reason is that giving away something for free runs contrary to the prevailing spirit of our times, and I’ve always been a bit out of kilter what tends to be popular and profitable.
  Fifthly, and lastly, and pragmatically, my novel THE BIG O is being published by Harcourt in September, and publishing a free novel to the internet might well be an unusual way of generating some attention for it.
  If you do take the time to read some or all of A GONZO NOIR, let me take this opportunity to thank you in advance. And if you feel moved to make a comment on any aspect of the story, I will be most grateful.
  Yours,
  Declan Burke

A GONZO NOIR: A Short Interlude, And Two Questions

“As one or two of you may or may not have noticed, failed writer Declan Burke (right), embittered but still passable handsome, recently began publishing a novel, A GONZO NOIR, to this blog. Basically, the idea was that a character from a draft I’d written five years ago stepped out of the pages of the m/s and demanded a rewrite, as he – Karlsson – was trapped in limbo. It was an intriguing prospect, so I agreed. Unfortunately, the character – now calling himself Billy – decided that he needed at least a little autonomy when it came to deciding his fate.
  “That’s understandable on one level, as Karlsson / Billy, who works as a hospital porter, is something of a sociopath who is being investigated by the cops because aging patients have begun to die in what appear to be ‘Angel of Mercy’ assisted deaths; furthermore, Billy is now plotting to blow up the hospital.
  “Were I in his shoes, I too would want to believe that my fate wasn’t entirely in the hands of someone like me.
  “On the other hand, collaboration doesn’t come easy to me in any walk of life, and writing especially appeals to me as a private, solitary business.
  “What matters there is that Billy, as a character trapped in limbo, has nothing to lose. I, on the other hand, have a family and a young daughter, Lily, whom Aileen found in the garden shed after I’d had a dispute with Billy, this despite the fact that Lily is as yet unable to crawl.
  “So you can appreciate that there are issues that will have to be dealt with. I’ve already tried burning the manuscript, only to discover that, as Billy put it, the genie is already out of the bottle. For now there is an uneasy détente between us, as I wait to see what it is he will contribute to the story. Given that Billy will be reading this, you can appreciate that I shouldn’t really say any more than that for now.
  “There are, however, other issues, chief among them the technical aspect of revealing a story section-by-section. Serial instalments, of course, have a proud history, going all the way back to Homer and THE ILLIAD. Unfortunately, a blog doesn’t lend itself to the kind of seamless narrative that makes a story easy to read, as any reader who might come to the story as we go forward will need to go back in time in order to catch up. This is at best inelegant and at worst pointless, as most interweb surfers will simply not bother to click the relevant link.
  “So here’s what I’m proposing to do. Instead of uploading the novel section by section to Crime Always Pays, I’m thinking of uploading the story to a separate blog so that it reads the way a narrative should. As we are still redrafting as we go along, this means the story will be incomplete and a little rough around the edges, to put it mildly – in fact, it’s the writing equivalent of washing your dirty laundry in public.
  “From a reader’s point of view, however, a separate blog means the story can be read in a linear fashion and be more easily digestible than the way it is being uploaded here. And, as I’m a reader before I’m a writer, and always will, the idea appeals.
  “So, dear readers – all three of you – what say you? Yay or nay to A GONZO NOIR on a separate blog in a linear fashion that allows you to simply scroll down to the latest instalment?”