As Da Dan Brown Code stumbles towards an improbable if welcome conclusion the next comedic serialisation is well on its way to a blog near you. I mentioned Project:Evil in early November and posted an excerpt from the First Friday Brunch, which you can read here. Project: Evil isn't complete yet, but a large number of chapters are written, namely:
The Initial Interview
The Final Interview
Induction
First Friday Brunch
Inaugural Project Meeting
The Funding Meeting
The Design Review
The Convention
The Bidders' Conference
Another Friday Brunch
As I pointed out in my earlier blog, this isn't a dry document, it's a very tongue in cheek look at project management from a corrupt and evil organisation viewpoint - O'Feld Industries and its employees are not only the epitome of evil, they're quite proud of it, actually. When it launches you'll be able to follow the exploits of B L O'Feld as well as the other main evil megalomaniacs roaming the UK right now - Gold Digit, Doktor Negatif, David Cameron etc. as we watch O'Feld Industries attempt to design and construct a device capable of destroying the planet at least once over, possibly for gain but probably just for the hell of it.
Like all projects it hinges on the personalities involved, and in Project:Evil you'll be exposed to the dry, laconic wit of Daw, the Head of Human Resources, as well as Public Sector Man, recruited for his innate ability to procure warning klaxons and his sartorial approach to sandals; then there's catering by Dodgy and Flaky which should keep your bad taste buds watering. Holding this all together is Brian, a catering manager who manages to blag his way into O'Feld Industries on the back of supporting a European Space Agency project in the past by providing the sandwiches. Obviously Brian lied about his experience - a plus point in this industry!
The concept is that the classic James Bond movies (that is, late Sean Connery, all Dodgy Moore films but definitely not those starring the upstart from Ellesmere Port just down the road from my house) focus on. It's not about how good triumphs against bad, although if that doesn't happen there's no chance of a sequel, it's about the unlikely creation of a secret lair using cutting edge technology without it being detected.
Project: Evil will be serialised once Da Dan Brown Code is finished in early January. The chapters will be broken down into relatively short pieces, so each chapter will take several postings to complete. At the moment the book is just under twenty thousand words long and for a comedic novel I would expect to hit at least thirty thousand. Personally I feel that there's forty thousand in this one, but it's very gag intensive - there's hardly any supporting prose, just set ups and punch lines. That makes for very intense writing and does tend to shorten books. Anyway, the main point is that the end of the book is vapourware at the moment so I have to be aware that once I start the serialisation I have to make sure I finish the book pretty sharpish - no pressure, then!
I look forward to seeing you all then.
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