Tag Archives: conspiracy

The Quirky Brain

Courtesy US Army





Seeking Unindicted Co-conspirators

Now that I have your attention…


If you study ancient history and old texts, you may have heard of a novel written in 1969 that was deliberately written to be as awful as possible. Each chapter was written by a different author.

It was awful.

Any good writing was edited out to make it even more awful.

It contained a lot of sex.

It became a best seller.

The authors disclosed the hoax.

It sold many more copies because the hoax made it even more intriguing.

Now I have no desire to write something awful, but I thought it might be fun for me to start a story, introducing the characters and the general scene, then pass that on to another author to write the next chapter, etc.

Each chapter would be published on this blog, although any authors who agree to participate could either link to this blog and/or publish the entire work on their own blog. I figure each “chapter” would be about 300 – 1000 words, just to make it easy.

If you’re interested, let me know either by comment or by e-mail (steve@sfnowak.com). I’d like to line up who’s interested first so we’d know how many chapters we’d be writing.

If you’re a regular reader but not interested in personally contributing, you could cheer others on and convince them to volunteer.

On the other hand, if you’re a regular reader and have no interest in this whatsoever, not even in the slightest, here’s the thought for the day…

You get up in the morning and stop at Starbucks for a coffee and see the inevitable tip jar. You catch the subway to work and pass a street musician playing, his guitar case open in front of him to collect tips. Maybe you’re in the service or retired military, so you shop at the Commissary; there are signs that remind you that the people who bag the groceries work only for tips. At dinner you tip the waitperson. Since you had a few adult beverages, you take a cab home, and tip to cab driver. You stay at a hotel and you tip the chambermaid.

Given the current state of affairs would it surprise you to find a tip jar at your doctor’s or lawyer’s office?

How much of a tip would you leave?

Now, comparatively speaking, don’t you wish you had been more interested in contributing a chapter to the story?