by Bill Alive
Talk to you soon.
— Pete
BORING BACK-OF-THE-BOOK BITS THAT YOU CAN SKIP TO LEAVE A REVIEW
DISCLAIMER
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ANY ACTUAL PERSONS, PLACES, THINGS, INCIDENTS, WORKS OF ART, PRODUCTS, COMPANIES, RELIGIONS, CARS NAMED “THUNDER”, OR ANYTHING ELSE, IS COMPLETELY ACCIDENTAL AND UNINTENDED.
GET OVER IT.
[Wait, what? Who put that disclaimer in? Ceci!?!? This is NOT a work of fiction! What are you talking about? You were just supposed to proofread!]
…
[Okay, I checked, and Ceci, you were totally right. There are so many crazy possible lawsuits!!! Fine, I guess we all just got transmogrified into fiction. I’ll add a bit more:]
For legal reasons, this is now officially a work of fiction. All characters, locations, murders, whatever, are completely made up, and any resemblance to real characters, locations, and stuff that actually happened are totally accidental, even if they happen to have the exact same names and seem really really similar.
Also, for legal purposes, the author of this book is now … um … “Bill Alive”. Sure. “Bill Alive” is a real dude who is not me, because I am a made-up character and he is real and everything I just told you is made up, because it was really him.
Yes, that totally makes sense. And now no one can sue either of us. Cool.
In fact, this Bill Alive guy is so real that he will now do a bunch of boring Acknowledgments.
You can read them if you want, but unless you personally know me, I mean Bill Alive, you’ll be bored out of your mind.
You’re going to read it anyway, right? Hoping there’s some last morsel of entertainment? Yeah, I always do too…
BORING ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IN BORING GUSHY AUTHORY VOICE
This book could never have happened without the help of so many wonderful people, I really barely did anything, blah blah blah [actually it was mainly me banging away for a million billion hours on this ancient laptop that Mark ruined with Linux so now it only runs LibreOffice … never mind, I’ll add this intro later.
For now, just start making up people.]
There are way more people than I could ever thank here, but I have to at least celebrate:
- My amazing wife and kids, the most understanding (and relentless) accountability partners ever. I have no idea know how I wound up surrounded with such an implausibly wonderful bunch of humans. Seriously, you blow my mind. [Meanwhile, ‘fictional’ Pete can’t even get a date. :(]
- My brother Mike, who freely gave me his awesome seed idea for the archvillain Numb. You are all set for my next decade or so of birthdays. [Shoot … maybe I should have made up a fake name for Numb? Too late now. Like he’s ever going to read this.]
[Umm. Who else? Maybe Bill has some writer friends?]
- The famous Team Ambitious [whatever that means, now I really am just making crud up] … without you I might still be muttering incomprehensible nonsense in post-Jeanne shock. (We love you Jeanne! Thank you for remapping our brains!) The world eagerly awaits our domination.
- Scott, Sharon, Cathy, Susan, Zarathustra [is that one too much?] and all the other odd critters who have taught me my post-Jeanne MFA. Without you, I’d probably still be thrashing and re-thrashing the first ten thousand words of Dillon. Plus … I would never have submitted a steampunk alien time travel musical to BCS, are you kidding? Rejection city.
- To my local writing partners these past few months, especially [should I do alphabetical order?] Ann, Daniel, Elizabeth, Kira, Mike, and, um, Michael [why not, Mike’s a common name], who’ve joined me for so many coffee-augmented writing sessions. Writing with friends and talking after … does it really get any better?
[That would actually be cool, I should try writing at the coffee shop.]
- Plus, all the indie authors who are not only rocking their own careers but making time to reach a helping hand down into the roiling Pit of Author Obscurity. Joanna Penn, your podcast was the first voice of hope after I finally finished another novel draft and realized there had to be a better way to make this writing thing work. Chris Fox, your amazing Write to Market launched my search for a new genre to play in. Who would have thought that one of my favorite genres ever still had room?
- Last but not least, our local Drama Club, of which my daughter is a proud member. Why? Because one of you kids will eventually read this and be like, so that’s what that super-silent dad was doing on his laptop at all those Robin Hood practices when he was supposed to be chaperoning. Even backstage on our opening night…that was so weird…
[okay, one bizarre non-anecdote is probably enough]
[Oh wait, wouldn’t he have a bunch of beta readers? I should actually do that for real…]
My awesome beta readers!
- Cathy, I hereby award you the Green Pen of Growth Award for Beta Reader Extraordinaire, for going above and beyond the call of duty in the quality and quantity of your generous feedback. I copy-pasted your feedback into a side editor in Scrivener, and more than once, in the slog of a difficult revision, a glance at your kind words reassured me that my frothing Inner Critic could not be entirely in the right if at least one excellent writer both thought so much of this was awesome and also seemed undismayed at the bits that needed fixing. Thank you.
To all my other beta readers, you also were generous and irreplaceable: Beth and Betsy, Mike and Michael, Cat and Cathy (same Cathy but I couldn’t resist) [never mind, start resisting, that name thing’ll get old], Brendan, Regina …
This story is so much stronger thanks to all your feedback. Thank you. A lot. I wish you could read it over again, it’s so much better! :) Especially Gwen’s character. [hehehe … don’t take that part out, Ceci.]
- Finally, my amazing designer. Chris, oh my gosh … this book cover is AMAZING. I still can’t believe it every time I see it. I am so blessed to be working with you. You rock.
[The cover is pretty sweet, isn’t it, Ceci? Except it’s weird to see all those stock photo models instead of us for real. Like, that guy who’s supposed to be me, did you see his hair? WOW. I wish!! And I know your character isn’t buff enough, Ceci, sorry about that. Mark and Gwen won’t be thrilled either, but it’s not like we were going to get them to pose for a selfie. I wonder if any of those models will ever see this book. That’d be pretty awesome — hey, I’m a star! Except we had to paste on “Mark’s” mustache from some other random guy…]
[Anyway, that’s it! Everyone’s acknowledged! Wait, does he have an agent or editor or something? No, cause this is self-published, right? What’s his deal, anyway? CRAP, the About the Author page!! ARGH! So many little bits…]
ABOUT THE TOTALLY REAL AUTHOR
Bill Alive is a totally real guy who is not me and, in fact, here is a picture of a real person to prove it. He has a nice smile, don’t you think? I could have done worse.
Bill Alive is funny and smart, although not quite smart enough to have figured out a more economically reliable way to spend the last several months than writing a mystery series. Which is officially fiction.
“Bill Alive” is actually his pen name. [Wait, what? A pen name for a made-up dude who is real instead of me … never mind, that’s getting way too complicated.] No, sorry, “Bill Alive” is his real, everyday, ordinary name. I think.
Bill is married. [I guess … he looks old enough … wait, yes, I just said he was married and had kids in the Acknowledgments … Sure, why not? Lots of kids. What the heck, let’s say four or five kids. No, no one’ll believe that, he doesn’t look THAT old and plus then he really wouldn’t have any business writing novels instead of getting a job.] Anyway, he has some kids.
What does Bill do for a living, you ask? [I don’t know, he’s a stupid writer!!! If writers actually did stuff worth talking about, they wouldn’t be writers!
Oh right, but this is the first book, I think, so I guess before he was writing runaway bestsellers he was … um … doing websites? Sure. That is a totally plausible occupatio
n that will not remind anyone of Mark at all.]
Bill Alive has a small business where he makes websites. This makes him a very interesting and unique person. Another fascinating, juicy tidbit about Bill is that … um …
[Oh my GOSH, Ceci, it’s like two in the morning and my brain is FRIED. I can’t do it anymore, it’s like I finish the ACTUAL book and Amazon is like, no no, here are the Ten Thousand Extra Torture Bits You Must Complete if you ever want to see your book alive. GYAH.
Okay. Deep breath. I think have enough here to work with, don’t you, Ceci? I mean it needs a little polishing and obviously we have to cut bits like this out but mainly I think we’re done. If you could possibly give this back matter bit the once over, maybe clean it up a bit? ;) Please?? :) :) :) I would do it myself but if I mess with this thing anymore my brain will self-destruct. I promise I’ll return the favor. I’ll do … whatever you think of. There must be something. Just say the word.
So yeah. If you could clean it up and send me the new, final FINAL version and I’ll re-upload it, that would be AMAZING! Just AMAZING!!! YOU ARE AWESOME.
Just make sure to send me the right version, the one you clean up and take out all these comments and things. Thanks, Ceci.
SERIOUSLY YOU ARE AWESOME CECI!! THANK YOU!!!!! See you in book 2!!!]
P.S. Everyone Else, if you really read this far but didn’t get your secret free novella yet, WOULD YOU JUST DO THAT ALREADY??? We clearly need to hang out!! Here’s the link…
https://billalive.com/free-empath-mystery
Thanks! You rock. See you soon. :)
[THE END, FOR REAL]