Punishing Yourself

I leave the country for just a couple of days and the nation falls into anarchy. I got this email while I was away:

Your friend James Kosub has posted some damn fine -- and damn patriotic -- PUNISHER fan fiction on his blog. I've read it and, well, it made me think and it moved me on an emotional level.  And, of course, he mentions you in the premamble to the post...

Jim is, afterall, the President of my fan club. So I took a peek at his introductory comments:

It isn't the greatest thing I've ever dumped out of my brain and onto paper, but it's still a solid, post-9/11 action/commentary story.

[...]Coupled with my very positive experience playing The Punisher on the Xbox, and finally seeing the new movie with Thomas Jane, I figured now was as good a time as any to share.

And already the critical raves are coming in...from his wife.

Still a powerful and effective piece, and it could easily be expanded beyond the "Punisher" main character.

I haven't read the fanfic, but I doubt anything could capture the enormous cultural, political, and emotional impact of 9-11 quite as well as some of James Kosub's fanfic stylings. But I'm with Jim's wife on this one. It's a crying shame that he chose The Punisher as his muse instead of Willy Wonka. 

Comments

[theeviljwinter]

"And already the critical raves are coming in...from his wife."

Hey, my wife loved NORTHCOAST SHAKEDOWN! Should I have used her for a blurb? My upstairs neighbor liked it, too. So did my mother-in-law.

Damn, the money I could have made using my own obscure relatives and in-laws. And here I went annoying guys like Ken Bruen and Steve Hamilton for blurbs. Sorry, guys. I didn't know. I'll do better on the rerelease. 'Kay?

[Tribe]

Say what you want about James...but still, it's sort of a low blow to include his wife in the mix.

[Bill Peschel]

James, you'd do better to query my wife. She's got great taste in fiction. She's culled through my pile of review books and shoved under my nose authors like F. Paul Wilson that I could have overlooked.

[Jimbo]

Tribe: I don't believe he said anything about the man's wife, other than that she was the biggest fan of his latest piece of nonsense. Hardly a "low blow".

Once again, Big Jim actually does something and it's "solid" and "entertaining". Someone else does it, and it's trash.

Interesting corollary, no?