Book Pitch 6

This guy drops like acid out of the sixties! Why me?

He sits down at my table. I hit the timer. Yeah, he has his entire manuscript with him! I ask him his name and he says his current fantasy is Ken Kesey! And just when I think he’s going to try to read the entire thing, he leans back in his chair and pulls out a canteen and a couple of Dixie cups.

“Kool-Aid?” he says. “A toast.”

Well, I’m going to kick the guy to the curb at the bell, so the least I can do is accept a drink. And besides, I’m dying to hear the toast, right? So, we drink up. And it’s really orange Kool-Aid, no vodka even! He just grins and lays his cell phone out on the table. It’s playing this weird techno-rock music with a laser light show flying up between us! And his smile starts talking.

“I’ve been doing this security gig out at the local mental toolbox. Just for the money, y’know? Then it kinda became my freak, ya’see? So I started to write about it, how the patients were like zombie meerkats and how it wasn’t clear who was leading who. Like, are you holding my hand or am I holding yours. See? I’m calling it One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 'cause it’s like I did a fly-by to their reality and......Understand?”

I look over to Snarky’s table and she’s got a smirk and her magic wand waving in my direction. Game’s on. I reach up into the clouds and pull down the guy in the white suit and he’s carrying a 5,000 page manuscript. Something about urban decay, as I recall.

“Sic ’em, Wolfey, give her every detail,” I say. “Bwaaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha – and her little dog, too!”

--wendy