Stuck On a Desert Island With Nothing But Your Own Books. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

I’ve often said that a fate worse than death might be to find yourself marooned on a desert island, with nothing but your own books to read.

There’s a grain of truth there.

But last fall and in the early winter, I went on a binge of throwing out old books. I’d read most of them fifteen or twenty times. Some of them were simply falling apart. I kept a few books, also very much read, but the sort of books I might want to read, one more time. Some of them are falling apart too—a bit of a chore to read when lying in bed, but I couldn’t give them up just yet. Those are mostly art books.

The other night, I was getting a bit desperate. Not quite ready to take up William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, or one or two comparable tomes, I finally did the unthinkable.

I went to the short row of my own proof copies, there in a bookshelf in the hallway, and took out something I wrote a few years ago. It’s under a pen-name, it’s about sixty-five thousand words, and it was my first attempt at a thriller. I don’t even have the full set of my own books.

(Lately, I don’t bother, but I do use various spell check programs to check my proofs, as well as preview on Amazon, Createspace, etc. Also, the damned things cost money, you can’t sell them and they’re full of errors anyways.)

What’s interesting, is that I read sixty pages that first night, before putting it aside and falling asleep.

Three or four years later, I couldn’t really say if this is a good book, or how it might compare to a more traditional product. What I can tell you, (bearing in mind it is a proof copy and that corrections were made), is that it’s okay. There are sections that seem a bit muddled—places with a bit of repetition.

There are typos, missing words, and quite a number of sentences that might have benefited from having that one last clause cut.

The sentence was just too long, and that last bit did nothing to add clarity.

I can also say that the characters are okay, insofar as that goes. The story is pretty good, inspired by Alistair Maclean, Jack Higgins, Robert Ludlum, and a hundred other thriller writers. There are some long and descriptive passages, ones that could be shorter. There is a long, introspective driving scene, where the thoughts pile up and it is probably, once again, just too long. There are some things, many things, which I would probably tend to avoid, with a few more books under my belt.

There are parts where I laughed out loud, and since it has been a long time since I wrote it, a few surprises as I simply forgot basic bits of the story. The structure seems good.

So. It’s not a perfect book, and the final product probably isn’t perfect either. I think I had to write that book, in order to write the one after that, and the one after that, and so on and so forth. I had to write a few books in order to learn the craft. To develop as a writer.

I had to make a few mistakes. I had to risk embarrassing myself, and trust me, that does happen.

I think there is some sort of learning curve, not the least of which is to learn how to finish what you start, to throw it aside, to begin the next one, and more than anything, not to take it too seriously.

Because if you listen to the critics, or even to your own doubts, we would never do a damned thing, would we?

End

(So, Louis. What book are we talking about. – ed.)

(No comment. But if we’re ever marooned on a desert island, this one wouldn’t be so bad. – Louis.)

Thank you for reading.