OF COURSE YOU DID

Yet Another Breathless Update

www.megeoff.com is awake and alive. This site dedicated to Of Course You Did is your link to various retailers, including Barnes & Noble and, naturally, Amazon. The most economical price for Canadian readers is through the FriesenPress online bookstore. Available editions include hardback and softcover. While I can’t pretend to understand the various ebook file options, there are multiple formats to choose from, they all depend on your thingy, I guess.

The first draft title of Of Course You Did was unwieldy, Pete and Tom Danger: Atomic Space Rangers! I was writing about the friendship between a pair of brothers who grew up in the late fifties and sixties. I wanted something retro, a title to suggest those times, something Tom Swift, something like Chuck White’s Treasure Chest, a Catholic comic book the nuns used to distribute when I attended elementary school. I shortened the title to Atomic Space Rangers! on the second or third rewrite. A lifelong friend who normally reads my stuff in its early stages refused to read the latest draft I’d sent him. I asked why. He said, “It’s science fiction. I hate science fiction.” I replied that it wasn’t, really. “Whatever.”

A focus group of one told me I had an off-putting title. And so I sat out on the front porch over the course of a few evenings and thought about the story I was attempting to tell, the relationships between my characters, the gratitude, the regrets. I’d used variations of a particular phrase a few times. My new title changed the tone of the narrative absolutely. My friend’s complaint also got me thinking about the jacket.

Tom, the narrator, a failed writer and the younger brother, sells print for a living. I’d spent 25 years in advertising marking up printers’ proofs. Registration marks resemble gun sights. Typography and fonts and their usage have always fascinated me. What if the Of Course You Did cover art not only presented my real-life changes but also suggested the usage of my “story within a story” (the science fiction parts) narrative device? And wouldn’t just two fonts without an illustration on a neutral background present well as an online thumbnail? Have a look at www.megeoff.com.

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of self-promotion since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is out now. If you read just one book in 2021, well, you’ve got a problem. Bookmark this blog for more breathless updates.