Today I am sharing an extract from Brian Paul Bach’s book “Exposition : Act II of the Forward to Glory Quartet”.  It is available in paperback and also eBook format and is published by Clink Street.

Book Details:

• File Size: 1459.0 KB
• Print Length: 874 pages
• Publisher: Clink Street Publishing (28 Nov. 2017)
• Available to purchase from ~  Amazon UK~ Barnes & Noble

Synopsis:

Butterbugs is becoming somebody. He has come to Hollywood to act, and as an aspiring performer, so far, he is a survivor. His dream persists… though barely. But something’s coming.
He has had to endure nearly crushing challenges with a tenacity deserving its own kind of award. Perhaps simple luck is all that’s needed. It soon appears, from unexpected quarters. And starting there, his ascent begins. Butterbugs is about to be exposed – as actor, as talent, as star. A splash like no other will soon inundate Hollywood. In FORWARD TO GLORY’s guise as a four-part epic-noir-satire, EXPOSITION continues the grand procession commenced in TEMPERING. Proudly episodic, unabashedly sensational, it is a saga geared to a seasoned readership eager to embrace a daring narrative with determination and relish. As he advances, Butterbugs is gifted with the assistance of many: Vonda – the superstar, who literally picks him off the street; The Angry Black Priest – the super-artist, who, out of tragedy, teaches him wisdom; Sonny Projector – the super-agent, who sees something exceptional in this intriguing unknown; Old Atrocity – the super-technician, whose cinematic expertise perfectly compliments the actor’s unique persona; Cody, Saskia and Justy – women to love, who love him; Pepper and Prairie – whose very existence may be nothing more than shadows on a screen but whose power is projected upon him; and Heatherette – whose reappearance saves his life.
The FORWARD TO GLORY Quartet
I. Tempering – the Actor’s struggles
II. Exposition – the Actor’s rise
III. Apotheosis – the Actor’s climax
IV. Beyond Fin – the Actor’s legend

Extract:

Was Butterbugs at all tempted by the Dark Side of Hollywood?

Well, was he?

Or did ‘temptation’, in the classic sense, even enter into it? A sort of anonymous acceptance of the Side’s existence was necessitated by a set of experiences that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that such a Side did in fact exist, with metaphysical certitude, and indeed, it flourished not a heartbeat away from the conventional infrastruc­ture of the city.

What, pray, was the Side, anyway?

The sun shines only half the time, so what was the other half, but Dark?

The innocuous civic fixtures which surround the citizen on all angles, such as wholesome street signs, thoroughgoing sidewalks and curbs, sodium-tinted streetlamps (of lollipop or even Peyton Place configuration – you know, backlot globes in public candela­bras of utmost propriety), and coolly-illuminated horizontal signs with white text on green background, marking the likes of Sweetzer Blvd and its countless mates, as well as the smoothly-paved and excellently-maintained street surfaces themselves, seemed to mask the surety of the eccentric corruption just at hand.

Inside the countless vehicles occupying this matrix of streets, behind the usually closed doors, and well in back of private hedges, lattices, rat cages, loose-boxes, and fences that provided screens of discretion, there, in back of it all – backstage (which was where anyone with any sense in LA would enact their own personal varia­tions of what they wanted their Dark Sides to be) – was the ripe but essential truth that was the exhibition of the community’s true soul.

In these times, innate Dark Sides merged with the generic, until a tremendously high percentage of the citizenry elected to contribute their creative say and deeds to the collective corruption kettle. True, LA was corrupt. From the start, right up to the unfinished present. True, most of the corruption and naughtiness were either conceived or enacted in private (sacred privacy!), but not always. The streets, and the sidewalks of the streets, were at once a setting and a green room for a certain school of acting-out life’s drama, and wherein a special kind of danger lay.

It was because of this easy setting that Butterbugs did indeed explore and experiment with his own exploratory version of the Side. Because, quite frankly, there was no getting around it – he was desperate. He found himself in the kind of dire situation that he had dreaded all along. He couldn’t drive (tank on empty: so said the dipstick he fashioned out of a diseased palm frond and Burkmart straws, in lieu of a withered and shorted-out gas gauge needle), so he took to drifting the streets, halfheartedly looking for ‘opportunities’.

He found them.

Opportunities there were, all right. Especially those to enact Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s theses on fear and loathing. They were there, right on the sidewalks, so remote and unbelievable from the pro­tected bubbles that floated by in vehicular suspension. As long as he was on the streets and vulnerable, how could there not be an encounter with both?

Fear is inherent. Loathing is learned.

About the Author:

Brian Paul Bach is a writer, artist, filmmaker and photographer; he has worked across the entertainment business, in theatre, music and as an academic. He now lives in central Washington State with his wife, Sandra. His previous works include The Grand Trunk Road From the Front Seat, Calcutta’s Edifice: The Buildings of a Great City, and Busted Boom: The Bummer of Being a Boomer. He writes a regular column for Kolkata On Wheels magazine. The first book in the Forward to Glory quartet, Tempering, was released in March 2017.

Website – https://forwardtogloryquartet.wordpress.com/

Twitter – https://twitter.com/ftgquartet/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/brianpaulbach/

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/hooghlyside/

Many thanks for reading my post.