Here's the deal--I wrote this book because I got a personalized novel from a friend who had thought it would make a cute novelty gift.  Yeah, I guess it was cute.  Until I tried to read it.  Aside from the really dry writing, someone had basically just replaced my name with the name of the main character--and then called it "personalized".  It went something like this:

"Expert New York detective, Eric Engel, arrives at the crime scene, and bla, bla, bla."

Hey, hold on here!  I'm not a detective, and I don't live in New York.  So the book really wasn't personalized at all, right?  It quickly found its way to the shelf--the one full of books that I'll never read, but I have to keep anyway.

But in all of that, I got the idea to write a real personalized novel.  The rules were simple:

1. Every male must be able to identify with the main character (sorry girls, I had to choose one half of the race, and since I'm a guy, the feminine side got shafted--maybe next book will be a personalized female version).
   
   
2. The main character's past or immediate present cannot be a part of the book, because everyone's is different.
   
   
3. The writing style must always have a degree of excellence--the reader must want to keep going.  Obviously, you'd want this in any book, but I wanted to list it so that you know I'm serious about this book as literature, and I NEVER intended to just create another novelty gift-book.
   
   
4. The plot must awaken that boyish sense of adventure that resides in all of us.

That's how this started, and that's how it finished.

I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you write back to tell me so.

Erice:>