It would probably be more accurate to say The Spanner is out of the works, or at least out of my head. My little novella, The Spanner, is now sitting quietly in the Kindle store, not disturbing anyone or creating a fuss.
I wish it would create some kind of fuss. Even a small fuss.
It lives here ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Spanner-A-Novella-ebook/dp/B009QEJMN2) and here ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Spanner-A-Novella-ebook/dp/B009QEJMN2 ).
It's not an easy story to summarise, but I'm inclined to call it an absurd comedy. It started to form in my head one day when I was on a conference call with the IT manager for a project I was working on, and I found myself in an argument I couldn't quite believe was taking place. This guy, who forms the basis for the title character, Stan Ramble (so that's how I'll refer to him from here on), was insisting that "completed" meant something very different to "done". I of course decided to represent sanity in the matter and argued that in the context of the discussion they were exactly the same thing. One just had fewer letters.
Stan wouldn't have it.
This is just one example, one very small example, of the nonsense which came out of this guy's mouth. The term "stranger than fiction" had never been so apt. I thought I could never write a book about this guy, it would be too far a stretch; but then I thought about it some more, and my colleague in pain (call him S) pushed me to get it all written up. So I started writing about Stan Ramble, just for a bit of fun, and I ended up dropping two other projects to get it finished.
Thanks S.
It is finished now, and I like it. I started out hating the guy, but now I'm quite fond of him. I doubt he bears much resemblance to the real-life Ramble who started it (I hope not, for his sake), but I still can't help feeling a gentle affection for the man who'd probably stab me in the eye with a pen if he knew what I'd done.
