When he is deemed "too passionate" about his job, he is let go. Shirting makes it his mission to return to the frothy Capo's fold by singlehandedly breaking into a new market and making freshly postcommunist Prague safe for free-market capitalism.
Unfortunately, his college nemesis, Theodore Mizen, a certified socialist, has also moved there, and is determined to reverse the Velvet Revolution, one folk song at a time. After Shirting experiences the loss of his sole "new-hire" β a sad, arcade game-obsessed prostitute β it is not long before his grasp on his mission and, indeed, his sanity, comes undone, leaving him at the mercy of two-bit Mafiosi, a pair of Golem trackers, and his own disgruntled phantom.
Poised to be an underground classic, it asks: what does it mean to be sane in a fast-changing world? How was it? How was the reception? I felt very lucky because book tours are almost a thing of the past for any author.
All in all, it came off pretty well and got me back to New York City, so that was just fine. You told me you worked on the novel for about ten years. I did some research and found another version online. What made you change the novel? Is the published one the final version? I wrote three or four versions of Bedlam over three years. It took another ten to find a publisher. In the intervening time there were great strides made in self-publishing technology.
I put it out on Amazon under the title Lumpen. Paul found it there. Nothing I write ever comes in a single draft. I did save some of the original angst, however. After rereading your novel I just realized there are several layers in it for interpretation. You can interpret this novel as a drug story, a story of solitude, a post-Soviet era expatriate story or a story of a mission statement for the lost.
