This Friday, I will be sharing the tenth chapter in my (possibly maddening) online literary creation/experiment/novel Permanent Spring Showers.

A new book that can be read in two very different ways.

Permanent Spring Showers is the story of a half-dozen different relationships and how they interact with each other (good and bad) over the course of two to three months. The relationships are romantic, funny, serious, sad, hard, lost, falling, rising, and passionate… basically the same as a rainstorm in that turbulent season.

Each of the earlier nine chapters in this literary experiment (I will discuss more how this is an experiment for those that don’t know below) can be found on the Permanent Spring Showers page here. (Minor spoilers below after the jump.) So how can this book be read two different ways?

The First Way to Read the Book: As a Book

I’m not a big fan of spoilers for any type of story, so I will do my best here to only briefly describe the characters and some of the action so far. Hopefully, it will be enough to make you want to check out this “novel in process.”

Dr. Rebecca Stanley-Wilson’s marriage is falling apart. Her husband Bob has had an affair and Rebecca, angry and frustrated, had one of her own; but unlike Bob she is going to do everything possible to keep it a secret from her job and her husband. Unfortunately, the person she slept with has different motives…

Vince lives and breathes art, and after a torrid evening with Rebecca in Chicago, has become obsessed with her. Where this obsession with his “inspiration” and “love” will take him no one knows, not even his own closest friends, but truly something new is in the works…

Jenn idolizes Vince and has changed her life in many ways to mirror his. She considers herself a new groundbreaking writer and has created her own literary genre. Unfortunately, for this genre to work she needs a “victim,” someone to manipulate and change to become a character in what will be the final product. Her unknowing “literary creation” is Steve…

Steve lost the love of his life. Anna ran out on him six months ago and he has not been the same since. What is more frustrating is he has no idea why she left; just one day she was gone, taking all of her things from their apartment when he was away. His friends try to help him but how much help Steve in this emotionally limbo state really wants is debatable…

One of Steve’s somewhat helpful friends is Ralph. Ralph is secretly homosexual and is in an “arranged” marriage to hide this fact from his conservative family, allowing him, more importantly, to keep a relationship with the family’s wealth. His partner in this arrangement is Lilly, and to keep up with his end of the bargain Ralph only has to do one thing: support her dream for going to the Olympics for rowing. Something that should be fairly easy… if it wasn’t for her rowing partner…

And there is more! There is Mary (who is always perfect), her twin brother Marty (who is not perfect), Viv (Marty’s girlfriend who is becoming bored in the relationship), Gordon (Mary’s silent boyfriend), Clark (Steve’s brother who is marrying a stripper), and Karen (Rebecca’s sister who wishes she was marrying a stripper)…

And over the course of this one season all of their lives are going to come together.

The Second Way to Read the Book:  As an Exercise in Creativity Unhinged

I once joked that I could epically fail in the creation of this book and I was being completely honest.

While most authors have the capability to go back, change things, and edit, edit, edit. I don’t. I am writing this book in real time, and each Friday a new chapter goes up. First draft? No, there is only this draft. Which means, I need to be more on my game than I had to be in creating my other books.  All I can do is keep moving forward and hope I don’t trip along the way.

Mistakes might be made. Things might be forgotten, and the end product might end up very different than I originally planned. But I can’t worry about that, all I can do now is just work on a chapter a week, keep my fingers crossed, and try to keep my cursing at myself down to a minimum.

Over the course of the writing of the book, I have been writing essays on my experience; they include everything from my regrets to my hopes to my delight. On the Permanent Spring Showers page (here), not only do you have the already completed chapters, but my essays as they are written.

My hope is that these essays will become a unique insight into the mindset of a writer working, a glimpse into creativity and what it takes to write a book like this.

So far for me, it has been exhausting, exhilarating, terrifying, and wonderful… I hope you will check out Permanent Spring Showers.

Chapter 10 is up on Friday.

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If you liked reading my article (and maybe my book in process, Permanent Spring Showers), why not check out some of my published books? I had two novels published in the last few years, My Problem With Doors and Megan. You can find them via my amazon.com author page here, or as an eBook on Google eBooks here.  Thanks for reading!