The Hook:
Imagine the sweetest-smelling perfume, something candy-like, perhaps worn by tweenaged girls. Now, pour a bottle of that into your eyes. Welcome to the joys of fairy embalming.
I stood beside a stainless-steel worktable on which a fairy’s parakeet-sized body rested, in the familiar chill and antiseptic smell of our family’s basement necrotorium—a mortuary for the magical.
Randy Henderson writes:
“So,” I said, “What do you think of the hook?”
Finn shrugged. “Well, I think it’s safe to say you’re not the world’s greatest hooker.”
“Huh, I feel weirdly defensive about that that on multiple levels, but okay, fine, what’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing I guess, it’s just strange seeing my life written out. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me how this all ends?” Finn asked.
“No, not in detail. Too much knowledge of your own future is dangerous.”
“Okay, Doc Brown, whatever. Just lay it on me.”
“Well, suffice to say, there’s lots of magic and adventure, drama and romance.”
“No doy!” Finn replied. “How about the next one you just make a straight up Romance novel?”
“I hate to break it to you, but even Romance novels put their characters into physical and emotional peril.”
“Fine. How about you make the next one a sex guide? The Finnasutra?”
“Dude, you’ve had sex, like, twice thus far, at least as written. I hardly think you’re qualified to teach on the subject.”
“Awesome.” Finn said. “Thanks for telling the world. So why did you start off with me sucking in fairy stench in a basement? Why couldn’t you start off with me laying around on a beach somewhere? Or playing some awesome new game on my Commodore 64?”
“Well, this is book two in a series. My whole goal with this book overall was to dig deeper into the magical world and into the characters introduced in book one, to really lay a solid foundation for the rest of the series, and to do so in as fun a way as possible.”
“And putting me in a basement with a dead fairy does that how?”
“Well, specifically, I put you in a situation where it was easy to reintroduce readers to the world and characters from book one, and then build on that in an entertaining way. You sitting alone in your room playing Genesis or Commodore 64 games wouldn’t really do that.”
“You know what else me sitting around playing games wouldn’t do?”
“What?” I asked.
“Suck. I mean, in the first book, I get back from twenty-five years of exile in the Fey Other Realm, and you immediately send me running for my life. I thought here, you’d at least give me a chance to chill out, enjoy the rewards of not being deadified in book one despite your best efforts.”
“Well, this one starts three months after that, so if you want to imagine you spent that time laying around playing video games, I’m fine with that.”
“Great. So you start me off with a dead fairy who looks like a parakeet. You could have spun that as a Monty Python reference, and sent me off to retrieve the grail from a castle filled with lonely maidens. But no, instead you send me off trying to find true love for a sasquatch, and get me mixed up in a feyblood rebellion.”
“Yeah, well, you wanted to make the world a better and brighter place with your adventures and all.”
“Uh, no, that was you.” Finn said. “I didn’t really have a choice in the matter, oh Great Puppet Master of my fate.”
“Oh. Right. Well — oh gosh, look, here comes the link. I guess we have to go!”
“What? Wait! No! I meant to ask you the meaning of — ah, bat’s breath.”
Buy Bigfootloose on Amazon
About the Author:
Randy Henderson is an author, milkshake connoisseur, Writers of the Future grand prize winner, relapsed sarcasm addict, and Clarion West graduate. His “dark and quirky” contemporary fantasy series from TOR (US) and Titan (UK) includes Finn Fancy Necromancy, and the sequel Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free. His website is www.randy-henderson.com.
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