Okay, so we had an idea for a tiny dramatic found footage film called ONION percolating for a few years, which was about a devious asshole indie filmmaker who pretends to have terminal cancer and secretly films his "expiring" life in order to draw out the greatest, most tragic authentic "performance" ever from his struggling actress girlfriend.

Well, the idea was always pushed to the back burner in favor of more well-developed and commercial film projects, but we always loved the Neil LaBute-esque audacity of a character pretending to be terminally ill, especially if it’s because he’s simply too lazy and defeated to continue on with life as he knows it... but then a funny thing happened along the way:

One of us was diagnosed with Stage III cancer. So, this book is what you could call a cathartic screed and clearing house for all of the nihilism, soul-searching, despondency, depression and the like that comes with that particular territory—but to avoid sending our readers roiling through the very depths of internalized hell, we decided to make the protagonist a failed stand-up comedian in order to lend the dark proceedings a bit of acerbic, train wreck levity. Imagine this first-person narrative delivered in the gruff, east coast articulation of a constantly cursing Artie Lange and you’ll see what we’re after.

While we abhor the forced transformative arcs that are so often prescriptively shoehorned into mainstream Hollywood films, this is a story in which one comes naturally: in having pretended to be afflicted with colon cancer in order to move back home and no longer face the cold, harsh realities of adult life, our anti-hero is confronted with the mother of all "godsmacks" when his own mother is then tragically and ironically diagnosed with the disease. This brusque, belligerent, uber-selfish monstrosity is forced to grow from a petulant, traumatized man-child seeking the nurturing of his estranged mother into a man who must instead nurture the woman who gave him life through her final days.

As for how readers can help shape the draft, we are mostly curious as to whether or not the ubiquitous profanity is too much (it will wane as he "grows up," don’t worry—but you gotta come strong with it up front to better track this arc), and whether or not the departures and asides are generally entertaining or intrusive (we love them, but can see how two paragraphs of internal monologue between the set-up and punchline of a joke while he’s on stage might be hard to track for some). Also curious about how some of the more meta and direct address bits strike you. While we have blown the big reveal here, there is definitely some nodding to Dostoevsky and his famously unreliable narrator in Notes From the Underground, a work that greatly influenced us in the early days.

Thanks guys, and we hope you enjoy following our crass, curmudgeonly bastard of an anti-hero as he finds his humanity and heart and maybe, just maybe, a new lease on life.

Best,

Chris & Jay Thornton