First Chapter Madness - Karaoke Night

A little intro to my first novel, which was published back in 2018

I opened this one with an intro, setting it up as the author explaining what was about to follow. Given the way I wrote this book (all transcripts), I feared it would tank, but it remains my most popular release by far. Here is the opening…

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A little over a year ago, I went missing for 72 hours. I remember nothing during my time off the radar, yet I have a digital recorder that holds a series of interviews held during that lost period. These recordings offer some clues as to my whereabouts for those three days, but I quickly discovered that all the roads those clues took me on led to nothing but dead ends.

I am getting ahead of myself here, as it’s probably a good idea that I tell you why I was out on the road in the first place. My name is Brian Keane, and while I tell people that I am a writer, the reality is that I am little more than a glorified blogger. Before the release of this book, I had never had any of my work published, although I do possess a rather lovely collection of rejection letters that run the gamut from sweet and kind to bitterly acerbic in tone.

The writing niche that I carved out for myself came in the form of a popular travel blog. There is no point in my telling you more about my little piece of reals estate on the internet, as it has long since been taken down, a move that my publisher believed would make me all the more mysterious ahead of the launch of this book. I miss updating that blog on a daily basis, although the hefty advance that I received takes some of the pain away.

While it is certainly thrilling to find myself among the ranks of the published authors, I find myself in a bit of a quandary. The book you are about to read is not, regardless of how the marketing machine at my publishing house sells it, a work of fiction. I may not remember giving the interviews contained within these pages, but I also know that I did not plan them or pay voice actors to help me create a pre-planned script. I only wish I were that clever.

What I do know is that I ended up in a town called Redfield in the heart of rural Georgia. How I landed in that town is a mystery, as my last clear memory is of following a dirt road that was pointed out by a broken down old wooden sign that read, “Karaoke Night.” Since the goal of my trip was to write a piece about lesser known dive bars in Georgia, the sign seemed like one that was heaven sent. The mystery here is that Redfield does not appear on any maps of the state, but that is something that I will get into a little later.

Based on the digital recordings, as well as some handwritten notes in my travel journal, it seems as though the people at the karaoke night were in the habit of singing the same songs, over and over and over again. I understand that people who get up on stage to belt out a tune will more often than not choose one that paints their voice in the best light possible. That said, folks also tend to have a couple of tunes in their repertoire, and they certainly don’t sing the same song more than once on a given night. I needed to understand why this was happening, but I certainly did not expect the stories that were related to me.

The stories told here are all taken directly from the recordings, although some parts were muffled or otherwise unintelligible. I wanted to give as true a representation as possible when relating these stories, but since the publisher seems intent on pushing this as a work of fiction, I went with the advice of my wife and took some liberties in the recounting. I promise, the changes are small and do little to affect the overall theme of each tale.

I have some other things to tell you all, but it is perhaps best to save those details for the end. I will save you some time and tell you not to bother Googling the events outlined in this book. You will only find the same level of disappointment and frustration that I felt when I tried to validate the events you are about to read. It’s as though the town of Redfield, and the people who lived there, disappeared as mysteriously as I did last year.

The only thing left for you to do now is read on and formulate your own opinions. Is all of this real, or I am spinning a yarn to you now, reeling you all in with a tale of woe about not being believed by anyone other than my wife? I know the answer, but I will leave it up to you to decide how you feel. Maybe, just maybe, I will be able to sway the pessimistic among you when we talk again at the end of this book.