EPISODE FOUR NEWS!

LESS THAN THREE DAYS UNTIL EPISODE 4 HITS THE WORLD IN THE EARDRUMS WITH A ROUNDHOUSE KICK OF AUDIO AWESOMENESS!! SUNDAY AT MIDNIGHT ON SUNDAY

SURPRISE: THE FIRST TWO CHAPTERS OF THE UPCOMING SEQUEL

Chapter

1

Blood, he is surprised at how it feels on his hands. It’s sticky and thick. It has such a unique and haunting smell to it, the kind of smell that will alter the way you relate smell to your memories. It can be related to the smell of wet metal, and the unsettling side effect is that smell has a way to change your taste buds. He couldn’t literally taste it but the smell was so pungent his brain was creating a taste in his mouth to relate to the smell. His heart was beating irregularly and his skin felt uncomfortable over his muscles in its current nervous state. He had never seen blood like this before. He was holding his friends hand so hard that he could have broken the bone in his finger. Tears were running down his face and his brain and body had seemed to disconnect themselves from one another. He was aware that he was screaming but he heard nothing. His head vibrated as he screamed. Sounds from the room spun and reverberated erratically in his brain as if trying to penetrate his state of mind and draw him back to the situation. His consciousness was calling for him to do something but his body and his mind were in a state of shock. He looked down again at his friend, lying in his arms. He was on the floor, his friends back on his up faced palms and his right hand pressing down on the wound. His eyes raced around the room and his brain tried to slow down the spinning sensation. The two other people in the room were frantically attending to other things. One was getting towels and water for the wound in their friends stomach, the other was pacing and trying to get thru to 911 while staring down at a limp body on the floor, blood dripping from his knuckles. He blinked several times and all the blood came rushing back into his brain and he became aware again. He heard screaming and crying and squinted at the light flickering on the ground. The body in his arms started shivering. He looked down at the bloody face as its lips started to move and he muttered something that pierced the room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter

2

 “So tell me Braile, did you ever expect your book to publish and sell over 250,000 copies?” the young attractive blog reporter asked Braile with an over exaggerated smile.

“Um,” he started nervously, “I never really expected it to publish at all actually.”

“So then what was the ultimate goal when you wrote The Topics of Heroes?” she rebutted.

“Well, Topics was really more of an essay that was written to pass one of my classes in junior college. I had an extremely anal retentive creative writing professor and every single time I turned something, it just wasn’t good enough for her.” Braile started to tell his story.

He sat in the small red leather chair, still very nervous and sweating far more than he would have admitted. The interviews never became something he got comfortable with and even now with his book hitting the 250,000 copy milestone he still wasn’t sure how much he liked the attention or how proud he was of the work at all. He had done interviews for various blogs, social media sites, various eBook websites but this was a dedication to his book and he just wanted to get thru it without too much of an embarrassment. He had other successful friends, some in acting, some in producing, some in recording and even some in sports and ironically his personality was a very typical A-type personality who loved to be the center of attention, but for some reason the book, the way it was published and the finished product never felt quite right to him and he hated that this was the first thing he was known for.

Braile had been writing fiction since he was in the third grade, started out by writing a weekly piece in their schools’ newspaper but he was always very protective of his work. When the publishing contract was offered to him originally he was young and excited and accepted it naively, not fully understanding what it meant to waive creative rights to his work. The final published product had been manipulated and skewed so drastically that he never even told anyone about the publishing for almost a year until it picked up unavoidable momentum on eBook circuits online, now six years later his little book was celebrating a milestone and he sat uncomfortable and nervous on a small chair counting the seconds until it was over.

 

He continued his story with uneven pacing, “Ironically most of the content in Topics is real, and based on real friends of mine and what they would have said in those conversations. One of my best friends, Agi; whom I’m sure you know from the book and his production company, suggested that I turn our conversation into a book and I did just that. I wanted to present something to that professor that would blow her away, I really wanted to present the most passionate, pure and relentlessly honest thing I could think of, so I chose the people I knew best, got their permission and wrote about a wild night we all had. I even included in the book him making that suggestion to make sure he got due credit.” Braile finished and laughed while trying to conceal taking a deep breath.

“Yes well if we have learned anything about Agi Rodriguez it’s that he is full of, well interesting ideas.” The young woman responded uneasily.

“Absolutely, I’ve known the guy now for over 25 years and he never runs out of ideas, some good some bad but they are definitely constant. I was so happy he pushed and got his production company off the ground. Now only if he could stay out of trouble.” Braile said.

“And your life has certainly taken some exciting turns lately? You and your wife just gave birth to your first child?”

“Yes, a couple of weeks ago we had a baby girl, Emery. We really wanted to wait at least two years and then tried for about a year and then nine months later God blessed us with this beautiful little girl.” He explained.

“That’s adorable. Emery is a really pretty name; where did that come from?” she asked.

“Well, my wife, Lynn’s grandfather’s name is Emery. He was a track star for University of Southern California way back in the day and won Gold in the Olympics. He is really special to her and the name has been passed down in their family before so I wanted to respect that tradition and give her something strong to grow up with.”

“So what’s next for you? It’s been five years since you published The Topics of Heroes and have yet to publish anything else?” the interviewer inquired.

“Well, it’s been a ride that’s for sure. I’ve been doing some exciting stuff, got married since that book and just had my first child so I had some things I wanted and needed to do but honestly now I’m ready to get writing again.”

“Now followers of your blog, theinfamouschronicles, were given a little teaser a while back with the announcement of a sequel. What is the development, if any, on this?” she asked.

“Well yeah definitely I have always wanted to do a follow up. I mean, these characters were real people in my life and I have watched some of them come and some of them go and watched them changed and grow up so I always wanted to revisit that and see where they have gone. I think the biggest drawback to the original book is also the biggest draw,” he paused while the blog interviewer interrupted.

“And that being that The Topics of Heroes is one of the only books ever written almost entirely in dialogue?”

“Exactly,” he began again,” you know with that kind of context there were so many obviously limiting factors about writing that book. I mean, the entire thing takes place in one single setting. It became such a double edge sword because that was what the publishers used as the main push to the book and for me it was one of the most limiting things about it. So, one thing I knew for sure was that if and when I ever did do the sequel it would be a full narrative. I always wanted to make sure I kept true to the theme that made the original so real and so controversial but I needed the next book to be an evolution. I was so restricted while writing Topics that I knew a sequel would need to dramatically expand and have much more dimension.”

“That’s great. So what stages are you at with the sequel now and when can we expect to see that online? Also, do you still keep in touch with everyone from the original?”

“Well, honestly not as much as I would have liked.”

 

Her words began to fade in his mind as his thoughts wandered off. He always did have a short attention span and was really, somewhere deep in subconscious, hoping his face didn’t reflect his inner drifting. His mind raced of the plans he had tonight with old friends when the interviewer asked that question. He had lost contact with some of them but the true ones stuck by and his new ones would make for a great story. He tried to casually glance down at his watch, which he then realized was funny because he so very rarely wore watches as they covered up the tattoo’s he had on his wrists. This interview was lasting longer than he would have liked and the excitement from the evening to come was testing his patience. He looked up with a pleasant smile.

 

“The people in the story are mostly friends that I have actually lost contact with. The real life versions of Dathan and Mark are no longer in my life at all, not because of any audacious falling out or anything, we just all grew apart. The real Bean and I had an unfortunate falling out but thankfully have recently begun speaking again which is really exciting for me. Of course Agi and I always remained close friends. And as most everyone knows from the news there was the altercation I had with the real life character of Randon.”

“Right, Randon Chalk aka Brandon Rome, you’re old roommate. He was charged with felony vandalism, assault and just plain creepy stalking wasn’t he?” she reminded with a polite interruption.

“Well I don’t remember creepy stalking being one of the charges but yes there were a few that stuck after he tried to assault myself and my ex-girlfriend after his feelings of the way he was represented. But he is definitely not one of the ones I still keep in touch with. Five years can change a lot of things in a person’s life. However, to answer you previous question, I was saving this for tonight’s interview, but I have submitted the outline for the sequel and am looking forward to completing the full draft to submit for publication early next year. I have, admittedly, been dead stuck on the ending for the book. I have tried several things and just nothing really worked the way I wanted to. I know one of the rules of writing is to always know where your story is going, and I knew where about I wanted it to go and what I wanted to accomplish with it, I just haven’t found a way to finish it that I really loved. I am extremely passionate about the right ending since one of the biggest criticisms of the first book was that it didn’t really have a definitive ending.” He finished.

“Now getting your first novel published was obviously a long journey and we all you know the book really hard a difficult first two years. Once you started picking up some momentum and some higher profile reviews started coming in about The Topics of Heroes you started getting compared to other writers and screen writers. How did that make you feel?” she queried.

“Well, yeah the first two years were rough. Honestly, after the first full year had past, the book hadn’t even sold 100 hundred copies and I kind of just put it behind me. One of my publishers and dear friends, Reeve Colyns, called me about two years after the book was first published and told me we finally got into Amazon and asked if I wanted to go digital with the book. I got excited again because every writers dream is to see their book on bookshelves in stores, which at this point is kind of an obsolete dream, so Amazon was a big deal for us. And then everything changed and the next three years were just full steam ahead which really got me motivated again and focused and so many people were asking what happened to these characters. As far as the comparisons go, some of them are flattering of course it’s just a mental thing you know, I don’t really compare myself to other peoples work.” He said.

“In the review of The Topics of Heroes that independentficiton.com did the said, and I quoted, “Elder’s work is reminiscent of a S.E. Hinton or an entry level Robert Easton Ellis.” And in an interview you did with e-reader digital the book was compared to “discombobulated” Tarentino work, being that it was so dialogue driven. How do these more lavish comparisons make you feel?”

“Well like I said, I really try not to compare myself. The S.E. Hinton comparison was admittedly the most flattering as she is a personal hero of mine and I grew up reading and being inspired by her material. In fact I am a little worried of getting sued by her because the description I use in my upcoming book to describe the physique of one of the characters is word for word the description of one of her characters. I hope,” he chuckles nervously, “that she accepts this as a loving throwback to her work and how much she inspired me to begin writing. But let’s be honest, Tarentino?! Not even in my wildest dreams would I be worthy of that comparison.”

“Well, let me ask you just one last question and we will wrap this up….what did you learn from your first novel that will apply to it’s sequel?”

“Patience and protection of my work would definitely be the thing I am most glued to this time around that I did not give much regard to six years ago.” He finished.

“Well that is great news Braile! That is what fans have been waiting to hear, especially after all the rumors on your website. Well folks, there you have it, Braile Patrick, celebrating 250,000 copies and finally giving us the sequel to The Topics of Heroes.”