My story about private investigator Alain Guest comes with a confession of my own.
No, it has nothing to do with doing my story research by actually visiting bondage bars (if that had been a requirement to do this story, my wife would have made sure it would never have been written). It also doesn't involve my revealing actual people that this story is based on or written about—thank goodness. No... this confession is about the story itself (and no, this is not a spoiler).
Are you ready?
It was originally supposed to be a mystery.
It's true. I admit it. This is not the story I set out to write. A few months before I started this story, various people who had read my science fiction novels suggested to me that they loved mysteries, and that they'd love to see me write one. It took me a while to consider the suggestion, since I'd never written a mystery story before. But one day a plotline came to me, and as it so happened, it was a mystery story, so I said, "What the hell? I'll give it a shot."
So I started to develop the story, fleshed out the characters, sweated out my opening, and got started. I was writing a mystery story then, and I looked forward to seeing how well things would develop.
But somewhere along the line, I realized that things had changed. Occasionally, a writer will start to write a story, only to discover that the story has its own idea of what should be written. What finally comes out is sometimes nothing like what the writer imagined it would be at its beginning. As I labored on my mystery, I realized that the mystery itself had quietly shifted out of the driver's seat, and was now the passenger of my vehicle. Someone else was now firmly behind the wheel.
So don't be fooled. This is a story about the personal journey of investigator Alain Guest. The mystery is just along for the ride.
Poor Alain Guest is a sort of Everyman that many of us never see. He has problems, sure... lots of us have problems. But some of us do not have the support of friends, relatives, even a close bartender, to help us through tough times. Some of us are alone and unknown. And as Alain demonstrates, that lack of support can sometimes be the only thing separating sanity and psychosis. The next time you see homeless people walking about aimlessly and talking to themselves, reflect upon the fact that many of them are there because of a lack of a connection to others that would have helped ground them in reality, and could have helped save their lives.
To those who were expecting a classic whodunit out of me, I can only apologize. You'll just have to settle for a little noir-style psychological drama and social commentary instead. Maybe next time.
Copyright © Steve Jordan. All rights reserved.
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