"Threads" is the working title to a piece I started in 1990 when I'd just gotten my new Macintosh SE/30 computer. It began as a single scene, then grew into a short story, a novella and finally a series that I eventually ended up posting on a weekly basis to the USENET newsgroup alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo under the title, "Mr.Tap's Problem". In a strange twist of events, my little Mac had a nervous breakdown a year after I'd started writing, and it mangled the first six chapters completely. All the punctuation was gone, all the spaces and capital letters were deleted, and large blocks of text were shuffled about at random. It was a total fiasco that broke my morale such that I never tried writing again... Well, at least for a few months. During which time, I'd tried to tease apart the knot of letters and reconstruct my work. More than anything, that process helped me understand a lot of what was going on in the story; it forced me to really consider each part on an intimate level and, I think, eventually made me a slightly better writer for it. Of course, I was sixteen at the time, so the usual disclaimers for age and ignorance apply (oh, gentle readers).
The second book, "Ever See a Dog Fuck a Toaster" is, as yet, unfinished I don't know when I plan to get back to it, though there is still much I want to do with the story, still much I want to say with the characters. That said, I hope you enjoy what there is of "Threads". I enjoyed writing it :-) Any and all commentary on the story is welcome.
James Goodwin