Aliens, Drywall, and a Unicycle

In researching The Twin, I read countless books.  Well, maybe not countless, and not cover to cover, but I read huge chunks of almost thirty different books and many different web sources.  I mean, I was immersed in Josephus (the 1st century scholar), the Gnostic gospels and Pistis Sophia, and three different translations of the Bible (of which, Young's Literal Translation was especially useful).

After The Twin, for my next project, I wanted to do something completely different.  As one might imagine, my use of language, tone, and even huge pieces of plotting were constrained by historical events and my imagined expectations of the readers.  When the next novel came along, I decided I wanted to go a bit nuts.

Even the working title- Aliens, Drywall, and a Unicycle- started as a bit of a joke.  In fact, it was even worse originally, as Aliens, Drywall, God, and a Unicycle, but I decided to shorten it a bit.  I also know that someday when the ms is published, the title will likely be changed.  Novels differ from poetry that way.  With a poem, the title is part of the poem.  With novels, the title is part of the marketing.

Aliens, Drywall, and a Unicycle is the story of Tom Tibbets, who takes a job at a weekly newspaper in Portage, New Hampshire and an apartment in the old Cooper Building where the residents form a kaleidoscope of the odd, interesting, and insane.  Tom, against his better judgment, is soon assigned to write a series of features on his colorful neighbors.  

There’s elderly Marie downstairs, who is sure we are all the descendants of ancient aliens, and there is Ben, the pothead philosopher who works at McDonald’s.  There are the Lennox brothers who hang drywall for a living and play with explosives for fun.  There is Winnie, the albino vegan pacifist, and Rich and Becky Kapel, who despite renting a top-floor apartment, are nomadic born-again Christians who drop by in their Winnebago from time to time.  There is Leaf, the self-harming nymphomaniac who attempts suicide every couple of weeks, and Miguel who is a middle-aged, long-haired, chain-smoking schizophrenic, who is always seen riding his unicycle.  Finally, there is the mysterious and wise Mr. Hitch whom no one seems to know, but who appears at different times wearing such varied things as wetsuits, cowboy costumes, and roller-blades.

At first, Tom feels like the only sane person in the building.  However, he soon identifies more and more with his neighbors who are more three-dimensional than they initially appeared and who actually might have life figured out. The very people he at first considered unstable and strange become a lens through which he gets a new look at himself and everything else.

His contempt for his job, his boss, the outside world, and his life as he knew it grows.  Just as it seems Tom will simply be assimilated into the cast of tenants, the tragic accidental death of one of his neighbors not only derails his life, but leaves the tenant community forever changed and off-balance.  Tom comes to wonder if his karmaic weight, added to the Cooper building, has thrown off the bizarre status-quo energetic balance of the place.  In the end, however, the story is a tragi-rom-comedy featuring Tom’s growth from delusion to examination to awareness of what is truly important in life.

To say the book is strange is an understatement.  I think some of the fun of writing is the capturing of different facets of the author in the projects.  Wave Momentum, The Twin, and Aliens all come from different corners of my head.  

Tomorrow, I'll discuss a couple projects I began writing, which have not died but are sitting idle for now while they incubate.  Someday, I'll reopen them.