With all the trouble I’ve been having finding something good to read, I decided to try one of my own books — Bob: The Right Hand of God. I was surprised both by how much of the story I have forgotten and by how much I liked it. It’s playful in spots, sometimes beautiful, and seems to do a good job of showing the mind fog of sudden trauma while keeping the hero on the move as he tries to survive the suddenly hostile Earth. Oddly, though it was meant to be a simple story with the theme of freedom (how much freedom would we give up for security, and how much security we would give up for freedom), it reads like an allegory.
I found myself smiling while reading — apparently back when I was writing, I still had a sense of humor. I also found myself bemused that the book slipped through literary cracks. It should have found a readership. Even more, with some of those visuals, such as a shrinking city turning into a field of blue flowers then into a lake, it should have been made into a movie.
But it was here today for me to read, which fulfilled one goal I had for the book. Even back then I had a hard time finding books I liked to read — books with familiar people and familiar settings that skew into strangeness — so I wrote the story for my future self. And this “future self” was grateful for the forethought. I truly did enjoy the book! I read it all and didn’t once want to skip to the end as is my habit nowadays.
My only critique is a personal one since I doubt anyone else would have seen the weird changes that had been made to the submitted manuscript.
In one spot, poor Chet, the rather hapless protagonist of the story, passed by an old store that people were using as some sort of church. He sees an ill-formed red cross on the top of the building that resembles a “T” and then trips over a broken sign. What he was supposed to see on the sign was “im’s Plumbing,” leading us to believe that the red “T” on the building was part of the broken sign, but somehow between my submitting the manuscript and the publication of the books, “im’s Plumbing” was changed to “Tim’s Plumbing.” (Maybe I was too subtle with that hint?)
I also noticed that the beats — the bits of action that replace “he said/she said” to indicate a new speaker — got separated from the dialogue so that each was on its own line. I have no idea how that happened. It’s not really important except that in a few places I was confused about who was saying what. It’s hard for me to believe I didn’t notice the separation when checking over the formatted manuscript. Assuming I did check it over. Since I don’t have the master copy, perhaps I didn’t have a chance to proof it. It was published during Covid, so anything could have happened.
I am lucky — and grateful — the book was published at all. And anyway, those disappointing changes, noticeable only to me, don’t affect the thrust (and readability) of this whimsical and satirical apocalyptic story.
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Bob: The Right Hand of God
What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive? A fun story for not-so-fun times.
Click here to read the first chapter of Bob: The Right Hand of God
Click here to buy Bob: The Right Hand of God
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