What Is This Place?
This website began as a side project. It still is one. It may continue to be one for awhile or it may not. More on that in a moment. The author is enamored of these characters and their story. He enjoys spending time with them. But to be honest, this website exists only because he - enough, I - wanted to get back into the practice of writing creatively. In college, I wrote a novella (terrible) and several short stories (some not bad). After graduating, and before growing up, I wrote 3 screenplays (improvements, each) and also the occassional short story (some even good). One or two were submitted to a contest or a magazine. They received nibbles, but no bites. Then one day I stopped. Or perhaps more accurately, looked back and realized I had stopped. It was never a conscious decision. It just happened. The desire to put words down creatively, however, never went away. It did begin to manifest itself differently, though. For example, these characters here were invented while exhanging emails with a friend, just for grins, in a style imitating the Sherlock Holmes stories. He wrote as Mr. Fairfield, Esq., I wrote as Dr. Littlejohn. The subject of the exchange was Rothchild, who was partly based on yours truly and a ridiculous break up he (I) was going through. I rediscovered those emails, written many years ago, when my hard drive died and I had to sift through old USB drives and floppy disks (yes, floppy disks!) for stuff I'd lost and desperately wanted back. (Kids, back up your stuff.) That even required firing up an old PC with a floppy drive. (Kids, save your old PCs.) Ever read something you wrote so long ago that you'd forgotten about it, then upon re-reading it thought to yourself, "hey, that's actually pretty good?" I have some ideas for bigger projects. Maybe screenplays, maybe novels. I know I can write a screenplay. I don't know that I can flesh out a full-length novel. If I can't do it well, then I don't want to do it. I do know I'm not ready. I'm rusty. So Rothchild's Parlor began as an effort towards getting back into some sort of creative writing discipline or routine. And for some odd reason, I like writing this way. A bit of the pompous mixed with the silly. Perhaps I myself am pompous and silly. (The word my wife would use is asshole, but I digress.) I'm well aware this is a very, shall we say, taste-specific endeavor. In other words, any audience for it is smaller than that for something like, oh, maybe Star Wars. Let's face it, most of you aren't telling your friends about this site are you? You are?! Ah, no I didn't think so. So listen, just between you and me and the screen, I don't plan to abandon this story so long as you keep showing up as a "unique visitor" in the stats. But as you now know, I've abandoned things before unintentionally, so fair warning. And in some ways, Rothchild's Parlor has served it's purpose. I've reminded myself I can still sit down before a blank screen with no idea of what is about to happen, spill a bag of words, and make a bit of story out of them. (In case you were wondering, I almost never have any idea what is going to happen in a post until it happens. I like to finish each one with a puzzle that needs solving in the next one. Keeps it interesting. My favorite thing about RP is finishing a post and wondering how I'm going to write my way out of it, then finding out as I write the next one. It's much better than playing Zombie Trailer Park for two hours. Although if you haven't played ZTP, I do recommend it. Speaking of Star Wars, I'm prone to tinkering with older posts in order to tidy things up, so you are encouraged to revisit them on occassion in order to get maximum utils. If you - yes, you Dear Reader - comment, offer feedback, or otherwise engage in some form or fashion, it would please me to no end and help keep this story going. It would mean those "unique visitors" are actually readers much like yourself, not bots (hey Weebly, Wordpress kicks your ass in providing helpful data and sense of community, by the way, and all for free). Because with the possible exception of someone like Salinger in his later years, no writer wants to go unadore-- I mean, unread. Some of us may drink alone, but we don't want to write alone. At least not when the writing part is done. By the way, some of the tinkering I mentioned is necessary. Especially on those nights when I'm not entirely sober and post anyway. My guess is that if you are here with me still, this far down the page, you probably have some writer in you, don't you? I bet you do. Let's talk. Congrats on reading the longest About ever. Yours with vigorous cordiality, Walt Walker @walkerwalt P.S. Please visit waltbox. Another site created for exactly this same purpose. P.P.S If you haven't read Sherlock Holmes, do so. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a unique ability to arrange English words in a way that just seems so very perfectly in order. |
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