“CORNER POCKET”
Genre: Urban-Drama
Publisher: Lulu Enterprises Inc. & Lulu Press Inc (lulu.com)
Publish Date: Jan. 2012
by F. Kenneth Taylor
Available on Amazon.com
While coping with the recent loss of his mother, and trying to mend a failing relationship with his father, Damon, aka ‘Panther’, quickly learns the street-life isn’t all its made out to be when he’s framed for murder by his childhood best friend. This is a fast-paced, Urban-Drama that teaches us about the things that really matter in life such as; family, redemption, and love. A definite page-turner!
Corner Pocket was re-written 3 times, including the final, currently published version which took a year for me to complete. The 1st re-write was done because I felt there were too many ‘gaps‘ in the overall story, and too many grammatical mistakes. The 2nd re-write was done a couple years later because I had a few new ideas for the story, and didn’t like the ‘flow‘ of it. I started the 3rd and final re-write between late 2010 and/or early 2011, because by this time I had grown quite a bit as a writer, and felt the story was too ‘cliche-ish‘, with too many unnecessary characters, plot twists, and factions, and I still wasn’t satisfied with the overall ‘flow‘, I still didn’t think a lot of things connected.
In the final re-write, I completely eliminated unnecessary characters, factions, and elements, and shortened my character-base by only using the characters I needed to keep the story moving forward. I also gave each chapter a specific ‘title‘ that gave some indication of what it may be about, which was a technique I adopted from Dorothy Dandridge after reading her autobiography, “Everything and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy”, very interesting and good read, I might add. I also felt titling the chapters was ‘different‘ and ‘unique‘, and would give the book it’s own, ‘special-something‘. Finally, I decided that would be my signature ‘niche‘; to specifically title each chapter in all my books so you’ll know you’re reading a book by F. Kenneth Taylor, when the chapters are titled. Lastly, I changed the font size, which made the book about 50 pages shorter.
The decision to publish Corner Pocket came about when, I realized there was nothing left for me to do with it, and I was completely satisfied with it, and my ‘pet‘ project, Aftermath: A Saga Begins, was nowhere ready for publishing. My fellow WP blogger, writer/author, long-time, and childhood friend, K. G. Bethlehem, author of “Avenging Knights: Rebirth of Lost Honor”, had encouraged me for years to check out Lulu.com to get my work published, finally, I did. I found I could not only publish my books for free; but also retain the rights to my work, which would allow me to move any book I published with them, and re-publish it with another publisher at anytime. So, since Corner Pocket was not going to be a big project like Aftermath: A Saga Begins, I decided I would ‘test-the-waters‘ with it, that way, if something went wrong, it wouldn’t be too big of a deal to me because I would have a ‘heads-up‘, and still have my primary project, “Aftermath” waiting in the rafters, but everything turned out ok, so from the time Corner Pocket was published in late Jan. 2012, I took about 2 weeks off from writing, and then started re-editing, re-formatting, and re-tweaking “Aftermath: A Saga Begins”.
I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about Corner Pocket, a lot of people say I should write a sequel, but personally, I just don’t think there’s enough material there to do so, because I didn’t write it in that manner. Granted, I could ‘produce‘ or ‘create‘ the material, but it’ll be a far cry, or long-stretch, I guess only time will tell. So, pick up a copy today, leave a review at the link below, and let me know what you think. Thanks again for reading and supporting me.
– F. Kenneth Taylor
