My book Poppycock: A Midsummer Night’s Mare has been set free this morning. At least the digital edition, the print book is not far behind.

It’s been a long road on this one. I wrote it in 2008. It originally began as a musical and I had written songs for it. I won’t say I wrote music. I wrote the lyrics and the tune. I have lost all those notes and cannot remember any of those songs now.

Poppycock is special to me for many reasons. One being that it is inspired by a favorite of mine and many, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which I had the comic relief part. We had such a wonderful time looking between my legs and proclaiming “I spy a chink in the wall!”

The best part of that play, however, were all the girls dressed up like pastel fairies that I kissed and flirted with backstage. Oh, youth!

Poppycock represents coming into my own as a writer. In this book I really worked to present only those elements totally necessary to the story. Indeed, I cut and slashed, rewrote and rearranged until I had it right. It was the first book I had done that with and at the time, I considered it a kind of Frankesteinian exercise, but years later, when I read it again, I appreciated my younger self’s foresight. It was damn good. I don’t say that as self promotion, but honestly. It was a tight, swift to the core read that was funny, sickening, humorous, fun, dark, scary, bloody, ridiculous and aptly true.

I remember the day I first envisioned him. Poppycock. He was so angry, so filled with hate. He was enraged of what his name had come to mean down through the ages.

My first encounter with the killer was when I saw him at a pastry shop. The owner of the shop, behind the counter, said something that rubbed him the wrong way. The level of utter contempt Poppycock displayed for that poor shop owner was truly disturbing. I knew then the shop owner was going to die.

That shop or its owner never made it into the book, per se, but was just one of the  many who was reported on the nightly news.

It was that encounter where I learned something about Poppycock. He hates humanity. Hates with a terrible loathing, but only because humanity has turned him out. You might say, he is terribly jealous.

The idea was borne. Such a disturbing emotion could only be conveyed by a character who had a story to tell, or star in. In this case it is the latter, though Poppycock is forced to share the limelight with his brother, Puk, and well, history repeats itself, doesn’t it?

Alex Donovan did a wonderful job on the cover and I have to thank my Beta readers, editors, wives (sorry…wife) and, of course, Mr. Sederquist, because, without him (or you, if you’re reading this, sir) I probably never would have written it.