JUNE – AUGUST 2010
No entries were posted these months
SEPTEMBER 2010
“CKR” Diary Post No. 48
Thursday, September 02, 2010
When I booked our summer trip to Malta (and Italy, to celebrate our 20th Anniversary), sometime last spring, my intentions (and I think Scott’s wishes) for the break were to wash myself clean of CKR and fully immerse my psyche in the Sixteenth Century, specifically the childhood world of Moncado LaCassiere DeSain. Yes, I can submit CKR to another publisher since, as I was informed in an email I read just after our vacation, Two Dollar Radio Publishing isn’t interested. But I’ll get to it. Eventually. For now, for the sake of my family and in the best interests of my fragile, easily-distracted mind, I need to let CKR go. For a while. Maybe a long while. It (apparently, hopefully) made it into Bob Ritchie’s hands—the best place for it to be—whatever will happen will happen, and I can’t sit on my ass waiting for it. Last spring, I knew I needed to distance myself. Malta, a tiny archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea located just off the southern tip of Sicily, seemed like the perfect place to do that.
Two weeks before we left, I saw status updates on Facebook announcing Kid Rock was in Malta. I refused to believe it. The next day, there was a picture posted of him standing on the docks at the Msida Marina. Of all the ports on all the rocks in all the oceans…Malta? Having given up the “coincidence” theory long ago (sometime after the concert Josh and Chris were at/in when we all made the list, but no one got into the after-party, but before we knew about Katie – and Emily – next door), I took it as a sign. I just wasn’t sure if it was meant as an approval, saying I was right to go to Malta and, thusly, work on the DeSain book, or as a distress signal, alerting me not to let Malta get in the way of CKR. That’s the trouble with signs, they can be interpreted in as many ways as imagination allows. Especially when the plot thickens…
On a two-hour stroll around Malta’s northern harbor, starting from the tip of the Sliema peninsula, Scott and I, inadvertently, walked by the Msida Marina. Stopped and ate, too. I don’t think he was aware of the…coincidence. I brushed it off; it’s a small island (world), after all. Around midnight, aching and sweaty from ending our leisurely stroll with a grueling hike up a long, merciless incline, our hotel finally came into view. Approaching the crosswalk at the end of the block, four sheets of paper, taped to the chain-link, privacy fence running along the sidewalk, caught our eye. We stopped to read them. DRESSING ROOMS, complete with directional arrow, was printed in big, bold letters on the middle sheet. Above it, and barely visible until we stood directly in front of it, were the words KID ROCK. We’d stumbled onto the two-week-old remnants of an MTV concert venue. After a day of pretending to each other we weren’t curious as hell to know, Scott finally asked someone at the front desk if Kid Rock had stayed in our hotel. The clerk said he had, two weeks earlier. He’d checked Rock in, himself.
Of all the hotels on all the rocks in all the Mediterranean…
Undaunted by what I’ll admit started to feel like a purposeful attack on my concentration, I dove into DeSAIN shortly after our vacation ended. Skimming over my character sheet one morning, I decided I didn’t like Raffaello Balzo as Moncado, a decision I’d made a few weeks earlier. Instead, I moved the Italian actor’s picture to the yet-to-be-named, best friend-slash-cousin character, and went to HBO.com to check out Talbot from TRUE BLOOD as a possibility for my main man. He’s older than I’d like, but not much, and his look is exactly how I’d pictured the young version of IB’s villain. In order to Google him, though, I needed his name, which HBO helped me with. Turns out, the actor who plays Talbot—fabulously, I must add—is Theo Alexander.
Now, I get that two out of three, though a majority, still means you’re holding a losing ticket, so, like the rest of these mental distractions, I’m not giving much weight to the connection-slash-“coincidence” involving DeSAIN and CKR. Don’t get me wrong, had the guy’s name been Theo J. Alexander, I might have shit myself. But this? Barely a blip on the radar. So the guy playing the title role in my new book has the same name as two of the title characters from my last one. So what? It’s a small world (island) and blah, blah, blah. Right? Besides, given HBO’s (seemingly unending, persistent) tendency to steal my ideas*, it’s more of a shock these things don’t happen more often.
But I hope they don’t. Seriously. To be honest, if I didn’t know better, I’d think the Gods were screwing with me. It’s like I’m on some fourth-dimensional Kid Rock mailing list, maybe one I automatically enrolled in when I signed on—against my will, I’ll remind you—to write the book. When I least expect it, POOF! Kid Rock shows up in my cosmic in-box. Not that it’s a bad thing. It’s just that…I mean...come on. Aren’t the mood swings, hot flashes, and run-ins with the teenage daughter entertaining enough to watch from those lofty heights? I’d really like to get back to work.
* No, HBO doesn’t actually, literally “steal” my ideas. We do, however, seem to be drinking the same Kool-Aid.
No entries were posted these months
(to be continued...)
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