Prologue
I was just so angry, about everything. Didn’t matter what it was, however slight it might seem to anyone else, it just pissed me off. Internet self-diagnosis says it was post-traumatic stress disorder. Sounds about right. This stupid industry is enough to tip anyone over the edge. Couldn’t tell the doctors that though, they’d just laugh in my face. What the hell do you have to be stressed about? You write kid’s TV for a living - that’s fun, right? Oh, let me count the ways it’s not. But I got one last big chance, one last karma gig that should have paid back for all the shit that had gone before. Just had to remember, don’t tell them you know more than they do, even though you do, don’t tell them their idea is rubbish, even though you know it is, just take the money, and the royalties, pay the rent, and finally start the pension.
But that didn’t happen - just couldn’t smile nice for them. Just had to screw it up, one last time. And then everything was over. A hundred miles away from home, but nothing to go back to. I finally proved, to the industry, to friends, and family, and to myself, that I’d lost it. I once made people billions of dollars with my ideas, but not any more. Never made myself even a small piece of that of course - I was just the hired gun. But that’s kind of the point. One day I was at the top of the heap, next thing I knew I was at the bottom of it, slid down into the dirt, with nowhere to go but on a full-on breakdown road trip, a last chance power drive into my past, mentally and literally, to try to find some answers, and some peace, and this is what I wrote down while it was happening.
