How Brett Favre Saved Me from Writer's Block

This is probably the last thing you'd expect to see from a blog posted by Madison, WI's 1 Bears fan but it's 100% true. In March 2007, I was wrestling with a very difficult scene in IVD in which my protagonist Mark Crizlanek is unsuccessfully trying to wrest the identity of his lover's killer out of escaped school shooter Erik Stockton by torturing him with repeated viewings of a video of Erik being brutally beaten by a group of drunken jocks at a party. No matter how much liquor or visual torment Mark forced down his throat, Erik refused to give in unless Mark agreed to help him deliver anti-Hmong signs for his racist uncle in Tomah. I had decided to make Mark give up and try his luck with ex-friend- turned-deadly adversary, Trevor Gates, a pedestrian, one-dimensional strategy that would do nothing to make this book a legitimate contender in this insanely competitive market, so you can imagine my immeasurable relief when a certain news story irrevocably changed the whole direction of the narrative.

The image dissolved to Brett Favre holding a news conference at Lambeau Field, a usually mundane spectacle that normally would have been saved for the tale end of the six o'clock news, except for the crawl on the bottom of the screen that read FAVRE RETIRES. Erik's face grew as white as the sheet of paper in Number Four's trembling hands as the King of the Packrats tearfully announced his abdication. His reaction caught Mark off guard. It had never occurred to him until now that a kid whose motivation for breathing revolved around manipulation and violence had just as much Cheese Whiz flowing through his veins as the hordes of Brett's loyal disciples that swamped Mendota's every football Sunday. Mark picked up the wastebasket and held it under the kid's chin just in case the sudden ghostliness of his features meant the effects of his forced binge were kicking in.

"No, I'm not gonna puke," said Erik as he pushed the trash bin away,"but that still doesn't make what I gotta do any easier."

"Kid, it's not like God just quit," reassured Mark, still not quite ready to believe that someone like Erik could become so distraught over the retirement of an over-the-hill quarterback.

"No it's not that," contradicted Erik, his eyes level with the floor. "It's just that now I don't have an excuse to hide the name of your girlfriend's killer any longer." Mark's initial impulse was to dance around the room shouting Thank you Favre for accomplishing what torture could not! However, his skepticism at the kid's unwarranted change of heart kept his feet firmly embedded in the floor.

"Why?" he asked. Erik hurled himself into the couch with the limp exhaustion of someone who'd just been through the emotional tae bo workout from hell.

"About a month before I shot the principal, I was asking my uncle how much he'd pay me if he gave me a summer job and he told me that if I delivered five hundred signs, he'd get me Packer tickets. Now that Favre's gone, the Pack are gonna be the bottom feeders of the NFL for the next ten years, so what the hell do I need tickets for? There's no reason for us to go to Tomah and there's no reason why I shouldn't tell you who killed the Logan girl."

IVD, A gripping tale of crazy Chicago sports fans, mobsters, and exploding DVD's set in the heart of Cheesehead Country http://www.squidoo.com/my-novel-IVD