forever. Fatboy grew up; heâs a man. Maybe you should just let him have a life. Write the best last book you can, I mean really bust it out, no holds barred. Write the most exciting, darkest, wildest Fatboy and Priss you ever have. Then letâs brainstorm some new ideas.â
I donât really remember leaving the restaurant. I think I made some affirming noises and then zoned out, getting kind of internal about the whole thing. I walked out of there in a daze and started back to the loft. I remember the day was warm and humid, the sky threatening rain.
Fatboy break up with Priss? It was unthinkable. Yet I knew Zack was right. It was time. At first, the thought filled me with a sick dread. But then came a rush of giddy excitement. A fresh start, a shedding of all the old baggage, the person I used to be, the hold Priss had over me. I could walk into my life with Megan free and clear of all of the negativity from my past. I could come up with a new idea, a hundred of them. It was that easy, just pen to paper. If only I could get Priss out of my head once and for all.
I couldnât wait to get back to the loft. I was more inspired than Iâd been in months.
But back at my place, I made the mistake of going online, checking e-mail, cruising through the social networks. It was all the usual stuff, notes from readers around the worldâangry at Fatboy, in love with Priss, asking for more sex in the books. There were a couple of people who had posted pictures of themselves wearing a Fatboy mask.
I have crazy fans. And since my publisher, Blue Galaxy, started a merchandising initiative, the fans seem to have gotten crazier. For a promotion at the last Comic Con, my publisher produced one thousand Fatboy masks. It was a hideous rubber face, complete with jowls and riddled with red-and-white plastic acne. It had a head of wild black hair and gaping holes for eyes, and a wide, maniac smile. They sold out the entire run and went back into production after the convention and began to sell them online, sent out a bunch to fulfill orders from various independent comic book shops around the country.
When the masks first came out, fans would send me pictures of themselves wearing them at parties, at the office, at home, alone in front of their computers. Then Blue Galaxy started a promotion where if you posted a picture of yourself somewhere with the mask, you were automatically entered into a contest to win free comics. So then the number of pictures I received increased tenfold. I have to tell you, it freaked me out. It was a scary-looking mask; it was utterly beyond me why anyone would wear it. After all, I couldnât wait to shed the Fatboy I used to be.
Then a couple months after the release of the mask, some thug in the Bronx wore one during the commission of an armed robbery in which a store clerk was killed. There was a rash of other incidentsâsomeone in a mask robbed a taxicab driver, someone menaced a couple of girls as they were leaving a club, and exposed himself. Another man wore one while running naked through Washington Square Park. The bad publicity this generated increased orders exponentially. The last I heard, there were over fifty thousand masks out there, mainly in California and the tristate area where my books were most popular.
I had one of the masks resting on a Styrofoam head, sitting on the shelf by my computer. I put it on once and looked in the mirror. I never put it on again. But I reached up now and took it off the shelf, held it in my hand. It was the cheapest possible piece of rubber, made in China, probably toxic.
âFatboy,â I said. âWho are you without Priss?â
He didnât answer.
Chapter Eight
Fatboy is coming home from his partnerâs funeral. The sky is black and itâs raining hard. Lightning is splitting the sky above him. But Fatboy doesnât run. He walks, slow and hulking, up Lispenard Street, the buildings thick and gray, seeming
I donât really remember leaving the restaurant. I think I made some affirming noises and then zoned out, getting kind of internal about the whole thing. I walked out of there in a daze and started back to the loft. I remember the day was warm and humid, the sky threatening rain.
Fatboy break up with Priss? It was unthinkable. Yet I knew Zack was right. It was time. At first, the thought filled me with a sick dread. But then came a rush of giddy excitement. A fresh start, a shedding of all the old baggage, the person I used to be, the hold Priss had over me. I could walk into my life with Megan free and clear of all of the negativity from my past. I could come up with a new idea, a hundred of them. It was that easy, just pen to paper. If only I could get Priss out of my head once and for all.
I couldnât wait to get back to the loft. I was more inspired than Iâd been in months.
But back at my place, I made the mistake of going online, checking e-mail, cruising through the social networks. It was all the usual stuff, notes from readers around the worldâangry at Fatboy, in love with Priss, asking for more sex in the books. There were a couple of people who had posted pictures of themselves wearing a Fatboy mask.
I have crazy fans. And since my publisher, Blue Galaxy, started a merchandising initiative, the fans seem to have gotten crazier. For a promotion at the last Comic Con, my publisher produced one thousand Fatboy masks. It was a hideous rubber face, complete with jowls and riddled with red-and-white plastic acne. It had a head of wild black hair and gaping holes for eyes, and a wide, maniac smile. They sold out the entire run and went back into production after the convention and began to sell them online, sent out a bunch to fulfill orders from various independent comic book shops around the country.
When the masks first came out, fans would send me pictures of themselves wearing them at parties, at the office, at home, alone in front of their computers. Then Blue Galaxy started a promotion where if you posted a picture of yourself somewhere with the mask, you were automatically entered into a contest to win free comics. So then the number of pictures I received increased tenfold. I have to tell you, it freaked me out. It was a scary-looking mask; it was utterly beyond me why anyone would wear it. After all, I couldnât wait to shed the Fatboy I used to be.
Then a couple months after the release of the mask, some thug in the Bronx wore one during the commission of an armed robbery in which a store clerk was killed. There was a rash of other incidentsâsomeone in a mask robbed a taxicab driver, someone menaced a couple of girls as they were leaving a club, and exposed himself. Another man wore one while running naked through Washington Square Park. The bad publicity this generated increased orders exponentially. The last I heard, there were over fifty thousand masks out there, mainly in California and the tristate area where my books were most popular.
I had one of the masks resting on a Styrofoam head, sitting on the shelf by my computer. I put it on once and looked in the mirror. I never put it on again. But I reached up now and took it off the shelf, held it in my hand. It was the cheapest possible piece of rubber, made in China, probably toxic.
âFatboy,â I said. âWho are you without Priss?â
He didnât answer.
Chapter Eight
Fatboy is coming home from his partnerâs funeral. The sky is black and itâs raining hard. Lightning is splitting the sky above him. But Fatboy doesnât run. He walks, slow and hulking, up Lispenard Street, the buildings thick and gray, seeming
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