Embarrassing
as it is to admit, I was in a bad slump.I hadn't completed a
new novel in four years. Oh sure, I'd started several
projects, some of which I think were/are pretty good. But I'd
only get so far into them and then hit a brick wall. I just
couldn't push myself beyond that point, and then I'd lose
interest in them and give up.
I needed something that would sustain my interest, something
that would keep me going. Something, in short, that was so
much fun I'd keep on going because I didn't want to stop. Quiet Post was my
answer. I love comedy, I love surrealism, I love making people
laugh with offbeat humor. I grew up loving the Oz books and
graduated to Discworld, and have started doing post-graduate
study in Jasper Fforde's bizarre alternatives to sanity. I'm
not as witty as Terry Pratchett or as twisted as Fforde, but I
think my Quasiverse (the first syllables pronounced as in,
"You kwazy wabbit!") will offer readers some chuckles along
the way.
The heroine is Martia Rosenthal, a normally sane and competent
young woman who is thoroughly depressed at the end of a bad
love affair. To jolt herself out of her funk, she signs up for
a term of service in the Quasiverse, a place where anything
can happen and often does. Martia will find her patience, as
well as her sanity, tested.
Though Martia is the book's
central character, I think the show is stolen by a lady whom
some people call Bright, who appears briefly in the Prolog and
then doesn't show up again until midway through the novel.
Once she does, I believe she'll steal the show--like Gene
Wilder in Willy Wonka and
the Chocolate Factory.
This is a thoroughly silly book. It has no meaning, no
message, no reason for existence other than pure entertainment
and enjoyment. If anything serious accidentally slipped in, I
deeply apologize.