| A World Without Heroes
Chapters 15-25 exclusively available via the "A World Without Heroes" book from MusiCare Online. Click over to www.musicareonline.org for all the details on ordering this awesome multimedia book project! |
INTRODUCTION
What you are about to read is a novel I wrote about KISS several years ago.
The time was 1984 and a couple of friends of mine were inducting me into becoming a KISS fan through a strange series of events. Okay, nothing that strange. Basically, I ended up going to the Creatures show with them in Dayton, Ohio back in 1983 and was finally convinced to become a KISS fan for good.
One thing that did happen was that I was introduced to KISS fandom through my two friends, Carlyn Nugent and Larry Blake. Larry, especially, was involved in fandom as he had been a KISS fan since 1974 and knew a bit more of the hard-core KISS following than Carlyn or I. It was Larry that was pulling out such fanzines as THE OATH and FIREHOUSE for us to look at when we were together and playing KISS records. These fanzines led to why the novel was actually written.
We all liked the idea of a KISS fanzine, certainly in reflection of the official KISS ARMY Newsletter having died a couple of years previously. Yet, while we enjoyed reading the fanzines we saw, both Larry and Carlyn thought that they could do something better. And they kept talking about it . . . and talking about it . . . and talking about it.
Finally, during one such boastful discussion, I said, "Well, let's stop talking about it and do it." I mentioned that I had an idea for a KISS novel that could run in several issues of the fanzine they wanted to do, and we could fill the remaining space with articles, cartoons, comic strips and reviews.
So we did it. STRANGE WAYS #1 came out at the end of 1984 and was the first 100-page KISS fanzine ever done. It did well enough that we went ahead with a second issue that finally saw print in 1985 (an ANIMALIZE special), and that issue also contained more of the KISS novel.
The problem was, it was also costing a lot of money to do -- money that we were not getting back in sales. I still ended in the hole for about $500 when all was said and done. That may not be a tremendous amount today, but I was only working part-time back at that point in time. So, even though we planned a third issue, we never actually printed it. It is too bad, but we certainly followed the shelf-life of most fanzines: around for a couple of years, then just completely disappearing.
A lot of time has passed since 1985. Larry, Carlyn and I have all gone our separate ways. Larry is still involved with KISS fandom (mostly through the fanzine KISS HELL) and does a lot of comic book art in small-press; Carlyn is completely out of KISS fandom, and I ended up buying pieces of her collection. Of course, not much has really happened to me. Still, it was fun while it lasted and I do look upon the whole period (including meeting the band members and going backstage many times during the 1980s) as a special time in my life.
So, why am I bothering having the novel brought back up from the depth of fandom? Because I still get nagged by fans to see the rest of the story and find out what happened to the characters in the novel. Also, while I had finished most of the novel, I never had a chance to see it in print and be able to say that it was a completed project. Chris has been kind enough and interested enough in giving it a shot here on The KISS Asylum, and I thought it would be fun to go back to it and FINALLY get it done!
A couple of notes here:
1) I have gone through the text and rewritten certain things from the version of the novel that saw print in STRANGE WAYS. Anyone that does creative work will know what I mean when I looked back at some of the text from the novel and just cringed. It has been more than 13 years since I wrote AWWH, and I'm not happy with people seeing my crummy writing from way back (I'd rather see what kind of crummy writing I can do today). So there have been some changes. But --
2) I decided to leave the central time-line of the novel alone. This includes starting the story in the 1980s and completing it in that decade as well. While I was tempted to change it somewhat, I thought it was best to stay true to my original intentions there. I hope you will feel that it works well that way. I also decided to leave some events in place that may be slightly different from what actually occurred (for example, this is quite true with a sequence dealing with the solo albums in one of the later chapters). True, it may not be historically accurate, but it was information in the text that was based on what we as fans knew at the time. Besides, if you're willing to suspend disbelief when imagining KISS as superheroes, then I think you can do the same with a couple of minor changes to their history for the sake of the story.
3) With that in mind, remember that these characters in the novel, while they may have the same name and identity as the members of KISS, are really just characters in a novel. I know that this may sound odd to mention it, but I got letters when I wrote the novel in the first place that were in disagreement about the novel for this reason. It's not real. It's just a story.
Finally, I just hope you enjoy it. Your comments are welcomed and appreciated. Mainly, though, I hope you have fun with it. I certainly did when I was writing it back in the 1980s and looking at it again in the 1990s.
-- Dale Sherman
February 7, 1998
Related:
Copyrighted (c) 1998-1999 Dale Sherman / KISS Asylum
We kindly ask that you please not reproduce this feature without prior consent!
|
|
KISS Museum