The Death Trip — The Story of an Ending and Why I’m Giving It Away

Just looking at the most recent Goodreads review of my novella, The Death Trip, the reviewer deals directly with the ending, which readers either seem to love or hate. She vigorously defended it, coming close to but carefully skirting, spoiler territory.

Some readers think the open-ended ending is clever, while others are convinced I simply ran out of steam. Few are neutral. In a sense, both are right.

The Death Trip was written as my first entry in The International 3-Day Novel Competition. The contest could more accurately be entitled The Three Day Novella Contest because I don’t know think most people get past 40,000 words. (I’ve done it three times and never got past 30k). As its name implies, you write a novel (or something close to one) in three days. You are allowed to write an “outline” beforehand although each time I entered, I wound up not really following anything I’d prepared. In the case of The Death Trip, I’d had a concept floating in my brain for some time, and wrote up a character list a few days before the contest started.

This is what I knew when I started the writing: The story would involve a Philip K Dick-like hallucinatory process, by which terminally ill people would be put into a dream-like state where they could experience an entire life — maybe one that turned out better, the road not taken, or even the future they weren’t going to get. The process would be so appealing that people who weren’t ill would want to experience it recreationally, like the old joke about people dying to get in to cemeteries.

I wanted to have a character, inspired by the then recently deceased disability activist, Harriet MacBryde Johnson, who I was sure, based on her writings, would have been appalled by such a process. While I always found Ms. MacBryde Johnson’s writing thought provoking, I didn’t always agree with her positions. As I wrote the story, I found myself creating characters with different viewpoints as well as a protagonist, Chuck, who hasn’t fully developed an opinion.

The three-day experience is a pretty intense one. With only a few hours left on the clock, I knew I had to wind the story down. I was not going to get around to actually taking one of the main characters into a “death trip” and telling that story. I’m no philosopher, but the construct of characters with different positions and then taking those positions to their logical conclusions, owed as much to Plato, or my memory of reading the dialogues as a college sophomore, as it did to any storyteller I can think of, Dick included. I never lost control of the story, but at the same time, I was allowing it to develop, enjoying the show, and a few hours before the deadline, I “got” how it would end.

Some have referred to Chuck as a “loser” or at least a not especially admirable character.  I had purposely  avoided making him seem heroic. I thought of him as a kind of every man, and I didn’t want to make a decision for him, nor did I want to make it obvious to a reader what he would choose. I wanted to present him with two clear choices and end it there, which at a few minutes before midnight, is what I did.

As for the contest, that first year, I didn’t even make the short list, but I did go back to the story later to make revisions and I put it on Kindle and Smashwords as my e-book beta. Because I was hoping to develop a readership prior to publishing Loisaida, a full-length novel, I decided it made sense to make the novella free on Smashwords. Amazon demanded a set price, so I charged the minimum, 99 cents.

A few months later Amazon matched the free price. Back then, they paid the writers the minimum royalty when they did that — a policy they’ve now wisely changed — so I actually got paid for the freebies. When they began charging again,  I matched the price on Smashwords and its affiliated outlets. Then last year, as sales slowed to less than a trickle, I “freed” it again on Smashwords, and Amazon soon “matched” the giveaway. Even though I knew Amazon would no longer pay me for free books, my feeling was that I was making so little on the story that it would  be worth giving it away to get more readers. Unfortunately, so far it hasn’t helped much in generating sales for the novel, but seeing the occasional reader-review on Amazon, Smashwords, Goodreads, etc. whether good or bad, always makes me feel connected to readers, and is especially rewarding when those readers comment on how the story exceeded their expectations for a “freebie.”

2 thoughts on “The Death Trip — The Story of an Ending and Why I’m Giving It Away

  1. Thank you for making The Death Trip free. My degree is in psychology with a focus on psychopharmacology with my person focus being in hallucinogens. I live in Portland Oregon where I settled after attending Reed college. I am a publshed writer myself with most of my work being about cannabis/cannabinoids and how they inter act with different biological systems and related medical conditions. I’ve always tried to be as objective in my work as possible even if most of the time my personal stance is pro therapeutic cannabis. I currently work in a call center in beaverton and have an hour MAX commute each way to and from work so I read a lot on the MAX but can’t always afford a new kindle download. One day last week I found myself scanning the free scifi books on amazon and stumbled upon your story. Considering where I live and my background I’m sure you can understand why I found it an especially engaging read. I would love to talk to you about it.

    Ally-Cat

  2. Thank you, Ally. Really, I made it free to find readers like you. I’m certainly willing to talk about it. If you have specific questions feel free to write me at ma****@ca*************.com. The answers, however, might disappoint. Per the post, it was written in a rush. I didn’t do any conventional research, but already had a good layman’s knowledge (not experiential) of hallucinogens. I honestly don’t know a lot about Oregon’s actual law or the process that got the law passed. That was purely fiction.

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