The StOrY of The EnD of FUN
Not long after my 31st birthday I got a call from a friend of mine who was WOOFing on a farm in Colorado (not a marijuana farm, just a regular farm). She was going to start a satellite farm in town, and asked if I’d like to come and help. So I moved to a town of 8,000 in southern Colorado.
Tara and I worked on the farm for a season, spent the winter in a straw bale house at 8,000 feet without electricity or running water, and then we moved into town. I got a job at the community college. We were living in the Purgatoire Valley, and we joked we had died and gone to the astral Purgatory, and I started writing some essays from the perspective of a man who has killed himself and lives in Purgatory (me), and then one day I was coming out of the basement and Tara was standing at the top of the stairs with the sun behind her and she looked so beautiful and she was like, “You know that one story you read to me that one time? I liked that one.” It was like she freed me somehow.
So I stopped writing about a dead man and returned to the book Tara was talking about, which was the one I’d started back on the marijuana farm. I started calling it The Fun Trip. Also, I asked Tara if she would like to marry me, and she said yes.
I spent another three (!) years writing and rewriting and rewriting the book. My workspace at the time was the rock-wall-dirt-floor-basement of our home. There was a hole in the ceiling and Tara would sometimes hand me down food.
And then I finished. It was about a 25-year-old who returns home after his grandfather dies. And also augmented reality. And buried treasure. It was about a lot of stuff. I sent it to my agent, JC. She suggested I try to make it into a young adult book.
So I took another year and rewrote the whole thing again as a young adult book.
During this time I decided that even if no one wanted to publish the book, I’d do it myself. I’d already put so much work into it, I couldn’t just let it die. I envisioned an interactive book with images and animations.
I had never made a website before and I didn’t know how to code, so I had to figure that out. I did everything by myself. Images, animation, web design, writing, all from scratch. I was pretty amazed that it actually mostly worked.
I started posting chapters of my book, one at a time. You can check them out at supermagicfuntrip.com. I did 13, I think, and then I got a call from JC that an editor at Disney Hyperion was interested. Some people just say “Hyperion,” but I always made a point to say “Disney Hyperion” because I was so totally proud to be working with Disney. I mean, it’s Disney. It felt like, what’s bigger than Disney?
Turned out Disney and I had some editorial differences of opinion. My editor was awesome, but I was also dealing with a big company and focus groups, etc. Mostly they wanted a less risqué relationship, fewer “fucks” and “shits”, and less drug use and drinking. When I would get edits, the name on the track changes in the word document said Walt Disney. So it would be like:
Walt Disney: Could you find a way not to say fuck here?
Walt Disney also wanted me to change the title. He said The Fun Trip was no good because of the implied drug reference and paradoxically also sounded like a little kid’s book. So we settled The End of Fun.
I moved back to Portland with my wife and our new daughter, and The End of Fun came out.
Here’s what one reviewer said about The End of Fun: “. . . this is wildly funny, bittersweet, and wholly original, and is perfectly pitched to a teen audience that has grown up being targeted by media . . .” Another said it would be a "cult classic for the tech generation."
And another called it "annoying," and one reviewer just said, "wtf is this?"
Who was right? You'll just have to read the book and find out for yourself.
As for me, I think the lesson I learned from all this, and am still learning, is work hard, try to have fun and be kind to all living creatures, and try not to look to others for validation because the only thing you maybe have any control over (and this can be debated) is your bad ass self.