Introduction

As many of you know, I tried to encourage my friend Kirt to publish his fiction for some time.

Kirt and his lovely wife Jane live on a farm west of Lynchburg, VA, and I first met them in 2004 when I started buying Boer goats.

After a few trips to Virginia, and several thousand of my dollars being traded for a few of Kirt’s priceless goats, we became friends. It turned out we had more in common than pissing away money on animal feed.

Kirt made a career of writing any number of business publications and how-to-books, including, no surprise: How to Make Money Selling Meat Goats. During his 39-year tour through industry he even spent a few months in the early 1990’s writing press releases for the RF&P before it was absorbed by CSX.

One night while we were sitting on his front porch sipping Kentucky Bourbon and watching the sun set over Appalachia, Kirt admitted to me that his only regret as an author, was not having any fiction titles in his portfolio.

I am sure his second regret is sharing this small secret, as I have not let it rest since.

He lamented that every time he started with an idea, the pressure of writing the great-American novel overwhelmed him and his words turned into a “drivel of spit”.

Non-fiction he explained, is formulated writing. You outline the facts, you confirm the facts, you join them with sentences, organize them into paragraphs, add some footnotes and a bibliography, and send the whole thing to the copy editors. And wait for your check.

Fiction he elaborated, is far more personal – coming from the imagination and the soul – and even worse, subject to public criticism, which in the case of fiction, is scrutiny of the writer and his ideas. “The author of Trading Foreign Currency for Fun and Profit doesn’t get much fan mail, one way or another,” Kirt once shared. “Trust me.”

“I don’t even know what I want to write about,” Kirt protested when I urged him to revisit fiction. And from that sentiment, the Baker Project was born.

With more prodding on my part, and his wife’s feminine persuasions (which are far more powerful), Kirt agreed to start 13 works (the baker’s dozen) of fiction, in various genres and styles and on variety of subjects.

The idea was not to get overwhelmed or discouraged by one story line or lost gaggle of characters, but to explore the writing techniques that might work best for the author and his reader. A generous time line was established, so that deadlines wouldn’t impede on the creative process.

This project would not have been possible a decade ago, but the internet now provides the perfect media for authors to share their work, without being at the mercy of publishers. Of course, getting paid for internet publication is another challenge, which might one day be a subject for Kirt to pursue, if he returns to non-fiction.

The premise of the Baker Project is that the readers will ultimately decide, through feedback and comments, which of Kirt’s pieces should be pursued and which should be abandoned, which characters are worthy of development and which should be let go, before it’s too late.

The last challenge here was technology. Not only is Kirt not computer savvy – yes he has an email address – but he lives in a part of the world, hard to believe, where there is no 4G, no fiber optics or cable, and only sketchy slow DSL. It was with some self appointed obligation, but mostly Kirt blaming me for the whole endeavor, that I agreed to be the webmaster for this deal.

Somewhere along the line I also ended up his Editor.

In the end, we hope the effort was worthwhile, that you like Kirt’s style of fiction, and that you, the reader, will provide the feedback required to turn the Baker Project into the great-American novel.

Start Here.

Kean Burenga
Ringoes, NJ

Rose