The Pool Is Drained

There is no surer sign that summer is over than the pool is drained and starting to fill with leaves. I remember a trip to Chicago a while back and it was summer on our way through - with 90 degree heat and humidity and people sweltering along Lake Michigan. Two weeks later, when we returned, the air was crisp, people were starting to stay indoors, and the pool was completely drained. The hotel was empty as well, but that may have been because of the neighborhood we were in.

My brain is fried. I just finished editing the second act of my Novel. Its my favorite act. It begins with the main characters in real dire straits - peripherally - and it ends with them in real dire straits internally. At times it just seems to meander along, but I'm hoping you can hear the white water just ahead and the plunge that's about to occur.

The problem with the novel has always been the third act. The ending. Not since the glory days of "Old Spies Never Die," have I really had a great ending. The problem with this story is that the focus on the main characters changes in the third act, as needs be, and they slowly become peripheral characters to the main story. It'd be like getting to Return of the Jedi and discovering that R2D2 and C3PO were the main characters all along (and every one else dies in a climactic battle with the Empire... now that's a Star Wars movie I'd pay to see!) I'm reminded of a comment that a Tolkein scholar said about him in the hours of bonus interview footage for the Extended DVD's - "It was like he had no idea how you write a story." His story worked, though, and worked well perhaps as a result of him not following the tried and true formula for story telling. I'm hoping for the same result.

Since I really have nothing else to say, I'm going to add here the brief summary of the Novel from my website - so that if I ever run out of things to blog about again, you'll know what I'm talking about next time I mention the Novel.

The Thin Line is a cautionary tale of two men, Colonel Thomas O'Malley and Rob Winter, on different ends of life's spectrum who meet only hours before the assassination of a political leader, that binds them together on a journey through the pages of a future history that finally answers the question, can it happen here?

Rob Winter is a normal young man looking for his place in the world until the day he meets Colonel Tom O'Malley and finds himself in the middle of a historical event - the assassination of a key political leader. Their bond only grows when a reassigned O'Malley hires Rob Winter to be a lab assistant at a top secret government lab. When the theft of a biological agent occurs at the lab, both men begin to suspect that there may be something sinister going on behind the scenes. After the biological agent is used to deadly effect, Colonel O'Malley goes off in pursuit of the truth while Rob Winter mulls his role in events. When O'Malley discovers the truth, he goes into hiding, while Rob tries to get free of his fate by cooperating with the government.

As Colonel O'Malley and his family remain in hiding, Rob Winter finds himself increasingly in a world of fear and greed, moral ambiguity and danger. Forced to accept money from a stranger in order to get a job, Rob is drawn into a shadowy revolutionary underground movement whose intent is to open the eyes of the common man of the increasing danger to the United States. With the backdrop of an unpopular and deadly war overseas, Rob begins to relish his role as a revolutionary and eventually takes over the intellectual control of the underground movement - trying to steer it clear of any morally dangerous shoals, but becoming increasingly aware that forces beneath him are trying to take the revolution to the next step - all out civil war. It is only a matter of time before the two men are reunited and each one must meet his destiny and embrace his fate.

The Thin Line has been almost twenty years in the making. Started as an adventure novel based on a game created by Nick Kibre, Will Robison's tale first evolved when Nick Kibre challenged him with the notion that a dictatorship could exist in the United States without a post-apocalyptic future. After two weeks of deep thinking, Will Robison realized that his friend was right and began to craft a tale that would explain how America could become a dictatorship underneath everyone's noses. With three years of experience as a Naval Intelligence Specialist and countless hours spent doing research, Will Robison has finally started to craft the tale that began to percolate in his mind in 1985.

The Thin Line is a story of betrayal - of country, of friends, of family, and of one's self. It is a complex novel exploring the way people can blind themselves into believing that evil is never done in one's backyard - that it could never happen here. It is a tale straight out of today's headlines, written over the course of twenty years, that is as timeless as the fall of governments throughout history. If you want to know what happens next, read The Thin Line.

(Hey, you know... that's pretty good. I should write book jackets for a living! ;)