Regions of Passion by Tag Cavello - HTML preview

AFTERWORD

Hello everyone, and thank you for riding along.

I hope you had a good time with this book. Its primary aim was to show you the healing effects of love, but I’m also hoping it managed to take you away from your own life for a little while and show you some interesting things. I like to take what pleases me in the real world and place it into my fiction (what writer doesn’t?). Windy days and rainy nights. Candlelit corners, old library books. The laughter of children. A kiss between lovers.

Regions of Passion is a fantasy novel. It’s also my first ever novel, though fingers crossed not the last. The idea for it came during the early nineties. At the time, I was taking piano lessons on Columbus Avenue in Sandusky, Ohio. There are (or were, at least) a lot of shops down by the wharf, a lot of night clubs, a lot of old boats docked in still older boathouses. After my lessons I would often walk to the wharf and daydream in front of Sandusky Bay. Amidst one of these daydreams I imagined a boy and a girl sitting on a bench, holding hands, looking at the water. That boy and girl eventually became Scott and Ingrid.

I should also point out that my two favorite novels in the whole world are Weaveworld and Imajica. Both of them are written by Clive Barker. Both of them are fantasy novels. And after reading them, I simply had to make one for myself. You understand.

Unfortunately, I was not a very good author during this time period. Most of my stories lacked voice and structure and tried way too hard to be cute with their prose. To give you a better understanding of what I mean, think of a baseball pitcher who decides he wants to throw nothing but ungodly breaking balls that fly all over the place—they fly everywhere, in fact, except into the strike zone. That was me. My stuff tumbled like a bumble-bee in a storm, never once coming close to its target.

I wrote the first one hundred pages of Regions, which was then called My Summer With Ingrid, if you can dig that, and then quit. Cold turkey.

How come? I could give you lots of reasons. I could tell you my short stories were being rejected by every small magazine I sent them to (some with rather harsh words from the editors warning me never to darken their doorstep again). I could tell you I got tired of licking and pasting countless self-addressed, stamped envelopes. I could tell you that Tag Cavello was just too damned good for the literary world (yeah, yeah). But the truth is I liked playing video games way, way more than I liked writing. I had this kick-ass title for my PSX called Final Fantasy VII that really had me hooked. Screw writing. Who needed it?

Also…the novel sucked. Big time. Come on, man, I was in my twenties then. And before you say it, yes, I know that lots of authors hit it big in their twenties. There was Stephen Crane and Stephen King and everyone in between I guess. This author, however, needed a few more years to bake. And Christ, I’m pretty sure I’m not done yet.

The original novel had Scott and Ingrid fighting all the time. They swore at each other like truck drivers in heavy traffic. In fact, by the time they actually reached the region, Ingrid was pretty close to hating Scott. This, of course, is patently ridiculous, considering the prerequisites for accessing the land in question. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the book lacked structure. Oh I had an ending for it in mind before ever sitting down to type, but as for what happened before then…I was pretty much making things up as I went along. That is a bad, bad way to write any story.

So I quit writing and played video games for a few years. Let’s make that fifteen years. I also moved to the Philippines to work as an English teacher. And it was with this job, at last, that I learned the importance of structure, of outlining your projects start to finish before ever beginning them. I have my old boss, J.C. Besona, to thank for that. My first ever project pitch to him went something like this:

Me: Hey J.C. I have this cool idea for a new class, let me explain it.

J.C.: Sure.

He listens to the pitch and I stand there looking like a new father. J.C., however, only gives a vague nod.

J.C.: That’s great. Where’s your outline?

Me: My what?

J.C.: I need an outline and a synopsis for the project, okay?

Me: Uh…sure.

J.C.: In fact I’ll want an outline for every single project you dream up, all the time. Okay?

Me: Wow.

J.C.: Now go on, shoo, get out of here.

I went and wrote the outline mainly to please him. But when it was finished I knew I could never create any project again without one. What J.C. basically did was point out that while a journey and a destination are great, you also need a map if you plan not to get lost in the middle.

Know what else? Ingrid is the most classic, old-style romantic girl I have ever known. She waited fifteen years for me. She sat in the back of my mind and brooded, and waited, and brooded some more. It’s true goddammit. I just couldn’t stop thinking about her. I guess she really wanted me to write her book.

So I did. This time with a map to show me the way.

And now our journey is complete. I think the ending disappointed her a little. It was supposed to close with her, Scott, and O’Connor setting off to kill that last ogre—the one that ran off at the beginning of the novel. Instead we got O’Connor going after a steak dinner at our protagonists’ expense. If it’s any consolation I think both Ingrid and the baby survived that attack. Scott I’m not so sure about.

You survived, too. You read a book by an indie author and lived. Congrats. And again, thank you. I do hope you enjoyed the ride.

Take care, and we’ll see each other again soon (that isn’t a threat).

--Tag Cavello, September, 2014

cover photo courtesy of wallpapersafari.com