Between the Lines - The Alarm Clock

This is an idea that's been brewing in my head for a while, but I've been so busy with other things - not the least of which is my trilogy - that it's been consistently put on the back burner for other things. Finally, in an attempt to keep my poor blog from being neglected while I write the next great YA series, I thought I'd give it a test run and see how it goes. Consider this a "story behind the story" feature that I like to call Between the Lines. We'll kick off this first installation with the first of the short stories that I've posted here...

The Alarm Clock

First off, let me say that I should never edit my own stuff. I'm not objective about my writing at all, and what makes a great story in my head doesn't necessarily translate that well onto the page. For the first short story of The Everyday Divinities Project, I should really have let someone else read it first to see if it made for a strong intro to the world that I'm creating in my fiction. Oh well, I'll eventually figure that out later on in the Project.

That said, I wanted the EDP to focus more on the inanimate objects rather than the people, a contrast to the style of storytelling I'm using for the trilogy where the focus is on a human protagonist. The first story, then, was going to set the precedent for featuring the divinities over the mortals, which is why the boy barely gets more than two paragraphs to himself. I also wanted to start strong with a god that is often abused and rarely gets any appreciation at all. I don't know about you, but I dread my alarm clock going off in the morning, and I can imagine that enough people thinking similar thoughts would adversely affect such a divinity. Garvin, then, would give as good as he gets.

It should also be noted that the alarm clock god was one of several featured gods in the initial draft of Inanimate Gods, albeit under a different name. His character changed radically enough in the rewrite, however, that I decided to revive his original concept here for the EDP. Sometimes ideas that don't work in one fictional arena work just fine in another.

As an aside, Garvin is a modification of someone's actual name. No one I know personally, but I borrowed the name and altered it to fit with the peculiar naming conventions I'd set up for my divinities. With that, Garvin was born!

Oh, here's one more little tidbit about this story, straight from the Twilight Zone. After I'd posted the story up on my blog, my alarm clock refused to work. Well, that's not entirely true. It still displayed the time, but the alarm function refused to work. It simply wouldn't wake me up anymore, as if silently protesting my portrayal of him in my story. Either that, or he decided to move on to a new position in the divine hierarchy, satisfied that he had finally received the attention due to him after all these years of faithful service.

Do you have a question you'd like to ask about The Alarm Clock story? Go ahead and post it in the comments section below, and I'll post answers on this very page!