I was just remembering where I was when I first discovered Arlo Guthrie online. The first time it was on the Prodigy service (remember that?) and I lived in Pennsylvania. I was working in radio. That seems like someone else's lifetime. Before taking my next job at a radio station in Virginia, I took a side trip to Woodstock 94 and rushed back to my computer to report on the experience. I remember, too, while living in Virginia, discovering Dave Downin's modest Arlo Guthrie web page. Just being a web page was kind of exciting in those days. I watched the discussion forums grow and evolve. I made friends through the regular on-line discussions. It's been a while since I've posted here. Blame it on Facebook. It occurs to me that back then I was one of the young 'uns. I was sometimes called "puppy" for my youth. Now I feel like an old timer. Anyway...

An interesting thing with writing fiction is how you draw on your own experience and by making it into a fictional story almost forget the stuff that actually went into its creation. I never write autobiographical fiction any more. My process now I compare to taking all of the ingredients of my life, putting them in a blender, and seeing what comes out.

My new novel is Arlonet inspired. I am not making that up. That is to say that all of the action starts when the protagonist who has been a lurker in a fan forum sees a post from her favorite rock star. (In the novel it is an 80s pop star with one of those single names-- Blast. He's something of an Adam Ant figure.) That fictional moment was colored by all of the early excitement I remember when the folksinger himself would interrupt our nonsense about... whatever injokes we had back in the early 90s. I don't think it was mooses then... and post his own nonsense. (He seems to be posting more reflective loveliness these days.)

I remember how thrilled I was myself the first time he appeared in a forum and how self-conscious I became about what I posted knowing that I might be observed by the man himself.

Of course, being fiction, my novel goes off in an entirely different direction. The person who posts is not actually the rock star but a bored guy working in his office. He will eventually lead our protagonist into a world of confusion and mistaken identities. (Forgive me for coming here to post when I have a project to promote, but I would be remiss if I didn't. I'm funding Identity Theft's production through advance orders on the Pubslush site https://pubslush.com/project/3991. For the price of a book you get a book.)

But I wanted to share the Arlonet inspired passage:

Candi returned to the living room, and with the concert still playing on the television, she opened her laptop and navigated to the official Blast web page. She read the latest blog post about the band's show in Phoenix then she navigated to the fan forum. She liked to glance at the forum from time to time and see how the fans interacted with one another. There were a few people who posted all the time. They had clear personalities and many of them seemed to know each other in person from meetings at various shows. They had their own catch-phrases and in-jokes. There was never enough news to satisfy their need for a Blast fix and so they would make things up. They polled each other on their favorite Blast songs, favorite concert moments, favorite costumes. They talked about what movie roles he would be great for, speculated on what movie stars he ought to date. Some of them wrote fan fiction and uploaded Blast inspired art. Candi was a lurker, she observed without participating. There was something a bit naughty and voyeuristic about this, like peeking through the windows into someone else's party.

On a normal day, there would be several active topics vying for the top position in the forum. Now one topic had sucked the energy from every other conversation. The number of responses was easily double that of any other thread. She clicked on it.

“This is an interesting place,” was all it said. It was signed “Blast.”

The “reply to” address was the rock star's. It was the same address that appeared all over the site, and when Blast updated his blog. Blast had decided to interact directly with his fans. There was an electricity in the thread as the fans posted comments and questions trying to grab Blast's attention.

“I saw you in Boston last year. You signed an autograph for me. I was the one with the red hat, do you remember me?”

“No,” said Blast.

“No.” That was all he said, but the poster (whose screen name referenced the title of Blast's first album) went into a swoon. “Blast talked to me!!!!!!!! I can die now!!!!!!” she had typed along with an ASCII cartoon that vaguely depicted someone fainting.

After that Blast did another amazing thing. He stayed. He responded to questions and joked with fans. It was amazing. You dream your favorite star will be as interested in you as you are in him, but you never expect it. And yet here he was. The reality of Blast changed everything.

That night Candi lay in her bed unable to sleep. She could not stop thinking about Blast. His experiment with posting in the forums might not last forever. She had to write something that he would see. She wanted to convey everything to him, what his music meant to her, how important he was in her life. She needed to sum it up in a paragraph. One shot. What could she say?

She got out of bed and went back to the computer. She went to the forum and clicked reply under Blast's first message. A text box appeared. She stared at it, and stared at it. She stood up and paced. She sat back down and put her fingers on the keys.

“I'm Candi,” she wrote, then deleted it. “I love your music.” No, that was no good. Everyone loved his music, that's why they were there.

“Blast, I have never written a fan letter before, but I just had to....” Delete. Delete. Delete.

Everything she wrote was coming out as a cliche, embarrassing, cheesy, flat or pointless. What did she need him to know? What was the truest thing she could say?

“Blast, when I saw you here I couldn't let the opportunity go by to talk to you. I don't know what to say because you don't know me, but you have meant so much to me. When I can't deal with the stress of my everyday life I play your music at full blast. I blast Blast! It makes it better.”

There was an option to attach a graphic file to her post. She clicked on the paperclip and searched for the picture of the costume she had worn the previous Halloween. She'd dressed as Blast in his “Lamplight Explosion” period. The costume featured a shiny 19th century vest in a velvet purple with a long matching cape and a top hat. The original must have been expensive, and she had searched through thrift shops for months to come up with pieces for her approximation. Should she include the image or did it make her seem silly? She decided to attach it.

She was happy with her message, but she wasn't sure there was anything in it that might lure him into responding. She needed him to acknowledge her existence. She needed to ask a direct question of some kind. “What music do you blast when you feel that way?” She hesitated for a moment before hitting “post.”

She felt elated and also nervous. She hoped he would read her post but she also feared it. Being known was a risk. As long as he was unaware of her he couldn't think badly of her. She reassured herself with the thought that if he did read her post and hate it he would forget her very quickly.

Very interesting.