Prologue
Prologue
"It was a dark and stormy night..." Fred stared at his computer screen, ran a hand through his hair, mumbled unintelligibly, and then took a sip of day-old coffee from his mug. Fred grimaced. "I should have known better than to trust Mickey D's coffee for a period longer than 24-hours." He dumped his mug out into his metal wastebasket and then stared back at his glowing computer screen.
The one line haunted him, confused him, teased him, and most of all taunted him. So much for his hopes of being a "world-renowned writer." He couldn't get past sentence number one. He was supposed to be writing a "book to top all books." It was going to be filled with adventure, humor, mystery, romance, and inevitably, cup after cup of coffee. If it had taken him two days to think up the opening sentence, then he'd probably become the world's top consumer of coffee and bring a couple of third-world countries up a notch because of the greater demand for coffee bean importation to 4567 Pleasanton Drive.
Fred banged his head against his keyboard in frustration. Who was he kidding? He hadn't even figured out a plot. His funds for his rent would go bottom up in two months, and still no story idea had made its way through his head...well, there was that one about the iguana detective from New York who couldn't swim, but somehow that one had made its way to his computer's recycle bin before you could say "iguana detective from New York who couldn't swim."
Suddenly, Fred looked up at his computer screen. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and stared openly. Somehow, when he had hit his head on the keyboard, words had formed after his first sentence. The words were processed by his brain, and then were quickly formed into ideas--glorious, long-awaited ideas! Fred leapt up from his chair and danced around the room, shouting with joy. It was the formula for a best-seller...it would make millions!
The story was about: