Blog on the Lillypad
Saturday, July 17, 2004
 | Secret Radio follow-up
I printed and spiral-bound the first 102 pages of Secret Radio 2.0 for Barry this morning (hat tip to Kinko's). That's the first 52 entries, which takes the reader to the middle of November in the story. This is the new version, so there are more entries than in the previous version, and new characters and events, though it is mostly the same story. |
I ran the manuscript up to Quail Ridge Books and got the opportunity, as it so happened, to meet Clay, one of the staff, who has written several of the famous Tick comic books and kid's books. I shook hands with him and told him how much I love The Tick (And to all you evil doers, I say, 'Stop all that evil doing!') I asked him a lot about the work itself, how he got into it, and I told him about Lilly in Secret Radio and her love of comic books. The heroes she creates are recognizably the inflated immortals of comic book lore, and yet you can also see that they are drawn from the fundamentalist culture. He thought this was a funny twist to the story. Clay gave me some great information on the way the comic book industry works, and I may add some details to SRv2 to make the reality more vivid.
Barry came in by then and was glad to see the manuscript. So far, most of my readers have been either people abused in fundamentalism or people who witnessed the abuse of others, and they read the book from a desire to know that somebody identifies with them. Just seeing it all in print is a catharsis for many people. Those are great reasons to read the book, and such reasons figure into why I wrote it.
Other people read it because they heard about it and are angry that I have written it (though I don't know if any of its detractors have read it through).
But few people (if any) have read it simply as a book. The mainstream readability of Secret Radio has not yet been evaluated. So I look forward to Barry's review and comments, if he has any.
