Read my new running novel online for FREE -- I ask only two favors....

reader wrote:

hey gmatics, you say you are working on a sequel. when do you think that will be complete. i think it would be very interesting to have vince as a coach in the next novel

I am indeed at work on the sequel, but unfortunately it won't be finished any time soon. I had put it aside to work on other projects, including a collection of Penn Relays-themed short stories and a television pilot based around a running specialty store (what I lack in talent and success, I make up for in ambition), but I've recently moved it to the front burner again since it's a story I really want to tell.

I have a lot of the basic plot hammered out and am about 7K words into the first draft, and I can tell you it will be not only significantly longer but a lot more complex in terms of number and depth of characters. When I started CBCU, I felt that four main characters plus a couple of very minor characters was about the limit of what I could juggle, but in this one there are more minors who will be more fully developed.

I can also tell you a few things that I doubt will change and that I don't consider plot spoilers:

-- The prologue is set immediately after the Trials race, but the main action picks up the following April as the characters start gearing up for the World Championships in Helsinki.

-- Vince is indeed coaching in the sequel; in addition to Rich Bolton, he is an assistant at his alma mater outside Philadelphia. He no longer coaches Ryan.

-- There is a certain amount of tension between Vince and Corey, who hasn't yet made the move from Illinois since she's finishing out the school year with her students.

-- Rich plays a much more central role, equal to those of Vince and Ryan.

-- Since I'm from Philly and am a Penn Relays geek, you can be sure there will be an epic Jumbo Elliot Mile fairly early on -- but the really interesting stuff will happen AFTER the race, later that day.

-- And for the "Who Shot J.R.?"-style cliffhanger (you young'uns, ask your parents about that one), one character won't be alive by the end.

That's about all I can tell you for now. I may post updates or excerpts on the board from time to time since I've found it a very valuable experience.

BTW, I have taken all the feedback so far on CBCU to heart, and there are at least two things I'm definitely going to revise as a result. So thanks again to all who gave feedback, and if you have any more, keep it coming.

hersfda wrote:

There are a lot of things that just didn't ring true to me. It felt like it was written by a high school boy.

I have a hypothesis about the age of the protagonist and the implied age of the narrator. In this story, OAR, and Again to Carthage, the narrator is very present- he has a male voice and he's directly guiding the story. I never forget he's there. His tone fits OAR, fails miserably in Again to Carthage, and really didn't work well here either.

It was immediately obvious to me that the narrator's voice in OAR was identical to Cassidy's- the young man writing his own biography. Cassidy is a college aged kid who thinks about his life as a somewhat flowery, romanticized, overly wordy narrative, and so is the narrator.

In Again to Carthage, the voice of the narrator didn't really change, although Cassidy had gotten older. There was a narcissism and sense of entitlement surrounding him that was charming and endearing in a 21 year old... and rather repugnant in an adult lawyer.

I can't help but feel the same way about Vince as I did about older Cassidy. The narrative voice is out of place- a kid writing a story about a man. If Vince really made it to adulthood still internally sounding like the narrator, he's pretty unlikeable.

yetanotherchick wrote:

I can't help but feel the same way about Vince as I did about older Cassidy. The narrative voice is out of place- a kid writing a story about a man. If Vince really made it to adulthood still internally sounding like the narrator, he's pretty unlikeable.

I agree.

Ryan was actually my favorite character. The snot-nosed immature kid part was believe and I disliked him at first, but I turned a corner when he yells at Vince in the end (the part about his mom didn't change my opinion of him, but it did add to create a more complex character). Although there's one part where the narrator makes it too obvious -- he says something about being amazed by the tone the kid had taken. You have to give the reader some credit -- we're not going to be amazed because you're telling us to be amazed, the story actually does that for itself; but you kind of ruin it by announcing it as a tender moment. I wonder if the book could have been told from Ryan's point of view.

I remembered a couple things on the way to work this morning:

1. I didn't like the part where Vince convinces the girl to start hanging out with him, and I didn't really like the bet. I liked that he started running to run after her, but it was all too creepy. It was a bit too logical, and logic isn't usually endearing. It made me think he was extremely creepy throughout the first portion of the book.

2. I didn't like the part where they worked together during the cross country race. This isn't cycling -- working together like that doesn't really work as dramatically as the book makes it seem, slowing down to speed up isn't effective in running. And the communication (both between the runners and to the reader) can be less verbal. The passing runner just needs to encourage the other runner to speed up for a while, a fierce "Come On!" would be enough to get the point across, if they're really getting all buddy-buddy during the race it means the competition isn't very serious to begin with.

Very entertaining, I enjoyed it emensly but some tweeking.

1. If you are going to make a book very much in the vein of once a runner, do not mention/quote it ever much less more than once, same with the title of the book in the story mutiple times "heres to coming back and coming up" BARF!

2. You talk about Athens as the past olympics in the middle and the rest of the book it is where they are headed reread and fix it, easy fix.

3.Your name selection could be better, Ngugi realy Noah Ngeny wants his name back. Ryan is fine, corey is not female enough. And Vince Taggert is a bad detective novel not a runner to me. May be nit picky, but bugged me the entire way through.

4. Replace the red head with and antagonist, their is none, and it leaves the story flat.

Only one wrote:

4. Replace the red head with and antagonist, their is none, and it leaves the story flat.

Another option would be leaving the redhead guy in and addding an antagonist, who beats the redhead but loses to Vince at the trials. This could set up the sequel where Vince tries to coach the redhead to beat the antagonist.

Anyway, you said that Vince wouldn't be coaching Ryan in the sequel. So does that mean that Ryan got a new coach, or is he coaching himself? Or, did he retire after the Olympics?

hersfda wrote:

2. I didn't like the part where they worked together during the cross country race.

...

if they're really getting all buddy-buddy during the race it means the competition isn't very serious to begin with.

It wasn't a big or serious competition. The second paragraph of Chapter 10 says

"he'd even won a race, albeit a low-key one, toward the end"

road rabbit wrote:

It wasn't a big or serious competition. The second paragraph of Chapter 10 says

"he'd even won a race, albeit a low-key one, toward the end"

You can have serious competition in a low-key race. :) My impression was that he was trying pretty hard to get a gap on the field.

Rich Bolton = Red headed step child.

I just finished reading the book. Ended up reading it in one sitting. Stayed up way too late in the process. Guess that is a good sign that I loved it and found the story hard to put down. I have no intention of providing criticism. Frankly, I would not change anything, since if you did, it would seem less authentic.

As a reader, I wanted more than the one sentence explanation of the semi-final (round 2) results to close out chapter 15. Yet, I also understand why, in a literary sense, the brevity works in this situation.

Even though you made this available for free online, I am more than willing to send you $10-15 for the privilege of getting to read your work. I would suggest a PayPal link for donations on the site, similar to the one that appears on RunningAhead.com (which uses Google checkout). If the novel is ever available in print form, I will buy a copy for my shelf as well.

Thanks again for sharing your novel. It was an inspiring read.

Not a bad idea, Finance Guy. If only you had posted 1,500 hits ago....

Seriously, thanks for the kind words. I am going to make a few limited changes but nothing wholesale. Certain things cropped up more than once among the comments here that I thought were valid, enough to show where there might be problems, but since I'll be the one deciding what to fix and how to fix it, I don't think the end result will be less authentic. If and when CBCU is published, I can promise only that it will be the best book I know how to write at that time.

And again, I'm not offended by any and all constructive criticism, whether I decide to change something based on it or not. Pats on the back are great, but that's not why I did this. I purposely exposed it to the most brutal audience I know. Truthfully, LRC being LRC, I braced myself for a lot more brutality. But the things I was most worried about getting slammed on -- some of the more technical running aspects -- weren't even mentioned, not even by those who didn't much care for the book. To me that means either (a) I managed to get those things right, (b) I made them seem right even if they aren't, or (c) people were caught up in the story enough that they didn't notice or didn't care. From this audience I'll take any of these, but I'm hoping it's (c) because that bodes well for the book's chances outside the running community.

Thanks again.

I feel like I keep saying thanks, but two specific thank-yous are in order and I have no other way to do it: first, to my Canadian friend bcg who posted a link to my site on a message board up there, and second, to whoever copied my original post and posted it under my name on the Runners World forum. I had no idea until I started getting hits from those sources.

Appreciate your spreading the word, guys.

Personally, I'm not interested in fiction based on running (strange), but I admire your effort. Keep going!

Procrastinator wrote:

Personally, I'm not interested in fiction based on running (strange), but I admire your effort. Keep going!

Concur. It's like reading about fictional mathematicians.

What doesn't make sense is when Vince runs so fast at their first practice that Ryan pukes. If Vince was so good, why was his cross country time (26:10) over a minute slower than Ryan's (sub 25) when they ran races later in the season?

I thought Vince Taggert was a bad name, but now I found this:

http://www.hawkeyesports.com/sports/c-track/mtt/mactaggart_eric00.html

Any progress on this?