(The following is an excerpt from my book, Prelude to a Super Airplane. It can be purchased by clicking on any of the roughly 400 banners adorning this site, or by clicking here. It’s also available on Amazon.
I’ve posted the first 20 chapters (roughly 55 pages of PTSA) on this site. Links to each of those are at the end of this post, or you can download all of them as a pdf by clicking here.
Ah, ye ole Writing Hat – this one is simple, because a writer is a person who does writing.
Movie scripts entail the vast majority of my writing work, and I’ve been told that I have a singularly unique ability best described as, and I quote, “an a-hole-like ability to take anything and turn it into a screenplay”.
(The fact that you’re reading this book makes this ironically true.)
Additionally, at various times and for various reasons, I’ve written songs, and for a brief window, I attained godhood in the professional basketball online internet blogosphere.
(There were six months in my early 20s wherein I illegally drew up contracts for a large lawyering firm in Cleveland, Ohio. They paid me under the table, which for that and other obvious reasons, I won’t elaborate on. I don’t even know if that counts as writing.)
What you’re doing now is reading my first attempt at writing a reading book. I’ve never done this before, and I hope it doesn’t affect the text and/or clarity of this reading book, as it is my first attempt.
As such, I think you can probably expect repetitive phrasing, amateurish melodramatic prose, incorrect grammar and syntax, overwritten prose, adverb abuse, bad prose, over-identification of characters, and a host of other poor book writing indicators, including, but not limited to, completely making up new words, and giving up on certain sentences wholesale.
There are also a host of words, phrases, and extra commas I use all the time that I’m 90% sure I’m using wrong or whatever.
A few I can remember, in this moment:
* any and all forms of “ironic”
* raw, savage
* alpha dawg
* fingering
* ,
* or whatever
As a gift to you, and in an attempt to mask my amateur book-writing status, I’ll try to keep in mind the best writing advice I’ve ever gotten: KEEP IT SIMPLE.
That said, in this moment, one thing I know I’ll do is enhance sentences with stuff like “furthermore,” or “in this moment,” just to make things sound more like critically acclaimed literature should sound.
Now that I’ve described my various entertainment industry hats, we can probably get on with the heavy lifting of the narrative. I do want to go over one more thing, and please know that the following words came to me in a dream – a dream I’ll never, ever talk about.
This is some raw, savagely honest stuff, so turn away if you’re sensitive. Call this a reading book mission statement.
My name is Brian, and I think about airplanes.
I’ve been called many things in my life, by many people, and will continue to have these things said about me in the future, no matter where I take myself, and what I achieve.
At various times, I’ve been told I am irresistibly attractive, unfairly gifted, deceptively muscular, and more than anything, people who meet me tell me I’m a force of nature, and singularly unique.
For many years, I’ve tried, often with great success, to suppress the animalistic need I have to embrace my vast power as a superior human being.
And perhaps this is why, in my most private moments, I hurt inside, sad.
With a sadness.
***
I have no idea why I centered that, but it was effective, yes?
Welcome to the first reading book that I’ve ever written. I’m not even sure what this reading book is about yet – I just love the title.
It sounds epic and pretentious and stupid all at once, and if I were going to write a book, that’s exactly what it would have to be like.
Brad Radby’s Foreward, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 31
Other Ways To Volger Me
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