Saturday, August 20, 2016

Thawing A.C. Nielen--Sharing Ch. 5

Today I am sharing chapter five of my new novel. I hope you'll read it and maybe tell others about it!

 I am wondering if any of you would consider reviewing the book. It will be released on Amazon/Kindle on October 18th. I need reviews posted to amazon on the release day, if possible. You get a FREE pdf, word.doc or kindle copy and plenty of time between now and mid-October to read it. Let me know, friends!

In chapter five I plop the reader inside a meeting between reality TV star/male mega-model Khail Santana and his financial advisor, Chris Bronsteyn, who is also starting to aid in other areas. I had a lot of fun writing this chapter and, yes, the reader is supposed to be wondering who these new people are and why the heck reality TV people are in a book about cryonics. That will all come together over time!




CHAPTER FIVE

“Chris, man, you writin’ this all down? You gettin’ all I got to say?” Khail asked.

“Yes, Khail, I got it. But you know, kale chips are supposed to be healthy. You can’t make them that crazy way. Mixing them up with fried pork skins in the same bag? Ridiculous! It doesn’t make any sense. It won’t sell.”

“Chris, everything I think up sells. All the little stuff, the big stuff. Dimi’s reality show, all the other shows, all the products. You’ll see, we make Khail Chips and people will eat ’em bag after bag after bag. People are conflicted, Chris. You know that word?”

“Yes, Khail, I think I know that word.”

“People try a little bit to be healthy, but the devil inside ’em wants to eat that salty, greasy food. I’m just playin’ to their angel and their devil inside. People like when they get played like that. It’s a delicious scenario, right?”

Scenario? Another fancy word, huh?”

“You bet. Glad you noticed. So we’ll call ’em Khail Chips: Yo, Fatback Flavuh. So maybe they get fat from part of the bag, but the kale part keeps ’em healthy. And you know most people want to have a big ass these days anyway, Chris. Even white girls. Big ass, fat lips, too. Hell, maybe we find a crazy spice to put in there to plump up their lips, huh? Yo, Chris, you so outta touch with the people. You’re like twenty-eight, but you think like an old man—it’s sad. I’m telling you now, Khail Chips will sell just fine. Anything with my name on it does.”

“You know how to spell kale, right? It’s K-A-L-E, it’s not like your name.”

“Chris, don’t go naggin’ on me again. Okay, next idea. You writing these down? So I heard there’s fires in the hills. Too dry, way too dry here in SoCal. I heard some report they puttin’ stuff in clouds to make it rain. Say it’s damned expensive to do. You hire me some smart dudes to make it work cheaper. I know you know smart dudes from where you went to school. Stanford, right? We make that stuff and we call it Khail Hail and we make millions. Save Smokey the Bear. Write it down, Chris.”

“Okay, done. That should be an easy one.” Chris rolled his eyes. He’d been suffering for what seemed like forever through these idiotic weekly brainstorming meetings with Khail Santana, superstar male-model/reality show star. Khail had hired Chris three years earlier to be his financial adviser, then decided to make Chris his personal adviser as well. What Chris couldn’t figure out—couldn’t for the life of him wrap his head around—was how often Khail’s moronic ideas clicked and made money, as in many millions of dollars. “So if I get these going you’ll green-light them? We put a lot of work into developing some of these ideas and you don’t always pull the trigger on them like you should.”

“What’s he mean, green-light, Khail?” asked Theo, one of the bodyguards employed by Khail and his wife, giant-boobied reality TV megastar Dimi Konstantos.

“Green-light means go, go, go—do the damn thing,” Khail exclaimed, pacing his production studio office. “Stop stokin’ yo’ joint at the stoplight and accelerate your damn Escalade. Do the damn thing—that’s what Chris and some of those other white folk do. I got no damn time to do that stuff. Sometimes I don’t even got the energy to make the green-light sign. My life is exhausting. I got the modeling—got to be The Ebony Adonis everyone loves. I gotta be with Dimi and make her feel special all day long, I gotta slug paparazzi dudes, I gotta pretend to be crazy on our reality show. You fuckers know hard that is?”
Theo broke out laughing, dropping the dumbbell he’d been using to do curls. “Yeah, Khail, you’re not crazy—you perfectly normal.”

“Damn straight,” Khail declared, shooting Theo a dirty look. “Okay, here’s another one.”

“Whoo—you on fire today, Khail.”

“That’s what she said,” Khail answered, flashing his perfect smile.

“Ooh, yeah bruthah!”

“Okay, listen now, Chris,” Khail said, “I’m tired of bein’ sweaty. I got some perspiration issues. It works for the modeling, ’cause they don’t gotta mist me with water or oil me up to look amazing on that runway. I got my own supply of slickness. Know what I mean?”

“Yes, Khail, I have noticed that you perspire a lot. So what’s your plan?”

“Something new for Khail’s Kustom Klothes—shirts with built-in antiperspirant and a damn sick odor. Maybe like it smells like money—rolls o’ Franklins. You smell like that, all the bitches go down on you.”

“So we embed all these chemicals into the fabric? And what happens when you wash it, Khail?”

“You don’t need to wash it—evah. It’s fresh forevah, man! Don’t you get it, Chris? Got ’nother scent—Cristal. You sweet like Cristal, muthah. Theo, good thing Chris here is good at minding my money—he sure got no creativity for anything else, that’s for sure.”

“Mmm hmm,” Theo said, nodding. “Hey, all y’all, you want some protein drink? I’m mixin’ some up.”

“Nah, man, I’m cool. Gotta work these new ideas. Chris, you want some of Theo’s drink? Boost up them flabby muscles on you? Damn, we gotta work on you. You pasty-white. You skinny. You got no bling. You got no imagina—”

“He gotta get out his comfort zone, Khail,” Theo bawled, testifying. “Say, how ’bout we give him a new name to start? Maybe like Chris X-X. Like X marks the spot, but he so damn awesome he got two Xes. What all y’all think?”

“Yeah, Chris, what you think—you like Theo’s idea?” said Khail. “Make you into Chris X-X? Get you some gold chains, get you a kickin’ grill—find out where Lil’ Wayne dumps his used ones at?”
“Sounds good, Khail,” Chris X-X lied, trying not to visibly cringe at the image of putting some rapper’s used dental grill in his own mouth. “Looking forward to it. So, are we done for today?”

“Yeah, Chris.”

“Okay, now remember about next week. We have a staff meeting to go over all those new show ideas.”

“You on top of that, right? How many submissions we got in so far? Five hunnert, six hunnert?”

“Khail, your flagship show has way more fans than that sending in their ideas for this competition. We’re up to four thousand submissions. I’ve got every intern on staff weeding through them during their entire shift. We have e-mail, we have videos. You should see them all. The grammar in the e-mails makes me want to heave, but hey, maybe that’s my problem, right? And the story lines—Jesus H. Christ, I didn’t know there were that many weirdos living here in the good old US of A.”

“That’s good, though, Chris. That’s our people, man. We got personality—they got it, too. We give them a chance to compete to be reality stars, man. And our people are special; they don’t work nine to five for the man. You think anyone in boring old Iowa or Minnesota got personality like we all, Chris X-X? I rest my case.”

“Case closed, muthah!” Theo exclaimed, back to pumping his weights.

“So you think there’s some shows worth producing out of all them?” Khail asked, finished with his pacing and now stretching out on the office sofa.

“You and Dimi and the production people can decide that, Khail. You’re the creative brain trust. You know, at this point, I mostly just protect your wealth. I’ve only been helping on the show stuff for a few months now.” Chris doodled absentmindedly on his legal pad. An MBA from Stanford and this is what I’m doing with my life? Lord, did I just call Khail and Dimi and those pathetic producers a brain trust? Shit.

“Okay, Chris,” Khail said. “Just make sure there’s some baby shows for that meeting. Cute babies, fucked-up parents, right?”

“That’s the recipe. And we’ve got those. Plenty of them. Wait ’til you see.”

“And midgets, too, Chris X-X. People loves their midgets.”



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