No doubt about it, this Feb 14th may finally have been the long awaited dawning of the Age of Aquarius, but in its present form this is the closing “act of Quality Lit” as T. Southern use to call it. We need to come up with another handle for quality writing or some crank Emperor’s-New-Asshole like Malcolm Gladwell is going to do it for us. And if me, you, any of us want to make a living writing Quality Lit that doesn’t constantly have to blow the LCD to get read, I propose we call this new writing “speculation”, not “spec”. Spec’s too close to the obvious Hollywood hogshit “spec script” that describes the writer’s own (unpaid for) ideas in their story as opposed to the studios’ usual pounding of square blocks into the round holes of marketing surveys that always tell them blood and guts sells. Pure speculative writing, on the other hand, is meant to be a betting proposition because the writer is speculating on what happens to a certain character or characters in a certain situation at a certain time and place, that may or may not pertain to Captain Sully landing his plane in the East River, or what happens to one of those potential victims (not heroes!) that go down in the drink with the plane, but haven’t learned to swim yet (heart warming, shit, no?). Or even better yet, once the old noodle starts boiling in the brain pan, how about this herd of Canadian geese heading south for the winter because the head Gander Gordo’s got the hot-cha-chas for this beautiful Wild Goose who may or may not be waiting for his horny ass south of the border. If we’re looking at Gordo closely we all think we know he can’t get his mind off her ’cause to him “she’s better’n’ butter from a duck” — then WHAP! The stupid pud puller flies straight as an Arrow into the propeller – WHAP again!. On second (or is that third) thought, if you were a betting reader, you have to ask yourself, who’s to say it was an accident? Certainly not the on the job Morally Correct New York Post. They know the odds are 2-1 that Gordo the Gander has read in Page Six that Ms. Butter–from-a-duck is dumping him for smarmy billionaire Porky Pearlman — Now that’s not a love story Gordo wants to speculate on, not a love story he wants to participate in, so very deliberately he eyes the prop of the oncoming plane, and slowly he turns his internal radar, then flap by flap, inch by inch, he draws closer to the spot where his baby will never dump on him again – WHAP! Wanna bet that’s not the poor blue-blue Gander’s point of view - whoo-hoo? ? ? Or would you rather PICK the New York Post’s headline for Gordo’s suicide? If you’ve got the urge to get in on the action, you may be part of the future of Quality Lit’s new gaming manifestation. Not just interactive for the sake of interactive, but a living breathing betting crap table of the soul that makes you think again, makes you care again, because you finally have a stake in how the story turns out again. . . Unlike the unscrupulous hustles of the stock market, Quality Lit will always have a WARNING giving you the odds on every story you decide to bet on, which basically will say, Just remember, lit buffs, “blood & guts sells.”
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