I Want to Inconvenience My Readers

I want to inconvenience my readers.

I want to make them wonder, Shit, did I feed the cat? Did I feed the kids? I want their laundry and dishes to pile high, flies flitting overhead. I want them to lose sleep, wages, their sanity, their knowledge of themselves and the world, because they’re so goddamned invested in my books.

I want them to constantly think, Just one more page, just one more chapter, until they look up and see the night slipping into dawn, and they’re bleary-eyed, exhausted, and totally fucked for their day ahead, but it’s OK, because they have a secret, a delicious secret: A world they’ve entered, a world where anything can happen, a world they can return to in their minds during diaper duty and dog poop patrol, during boring conference calls, during trips to the company cafeteria with its inane chatter of co-workers playing in one endless loop as they stand by the microwave, counting down the seconds until they can take their Lean Cuisine and escape to their cube for a few more pages.

I want them to curse my name, because they’re addicted now, they can’t let go. I’m booze. I’m coke. I’m that thing that gets wedged in their craw, uncomfortable, riding up. I’m the feeling they have before they scratch the itch, before they sneeze, before they cum, and the only release is one more page. One more page until they get to the end and close the book, tingly and sad, but satisfied.

I want to disrupt their lives so that they are never, ever the same.

If I do this, then I’ve done my job.

 

[UPDATE: Someone said I should include a link to one of my books, the one I think will inconvenience readers the most. What Happened in Granite Creek is it. If you decide to give it a go, thank you. Hope you find it equal parts disturbing and disruptive.]