Guest Post: “Killing Peter Rabbit” – Jason Beymer, ROGUE’S CURSE

From Adri: Jason agreed to guest post for me today, to end this blog’s idle streak and give you guys a chance to get to know him. We’ve been working together on his book for a little over a month now, and I’ve been taking delight in making his life a living hell – while he’s been startling me by taking my suggestions, applying his talent, and producing some amazing results. If you like dark humor, this post will give you a clue of what you’ll find in the humorous fantasy ROGUE’S CURSE (only not quite so graphic).

And I’ll have you know, I didn’t edit this post one single bit.

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Killing Peter Rabbit
Jason Beymer

Adrien invited me to guest blog today. It’s not easy guest-blogging for your editor. I expect to see puddles of red highlighter all over this post, bearing familiar comments like “Watch your adverbs,” “An octogenarian is not a type of monkey,” and “You think this line is funny? What, are you seven?”

It would be disingenuous to say Rogue’s Curse is my first book. When I was five years old, I plagiarized The Tale of Peter Rabbit a thousand times, peppering it with unspeakable kindergarten horrors and bunny-on-bunny violence. I didn’t know my alphabet yet, and my penmanship consisted of squiggly lines. At first I copied Beatrix Potter’s story word for word. Eventually I improved it. I was a pioneer, like Gus Van Sant when he allegedly shouted, “Balls! I’ll remake Psycho shot for shot, but this time in color and with full-frontal boobies!”

In the original work, a naughty bunny runs away from home to go a’noshin’ in a carrot garden. He barely escapes Old Man McGregor, who chases him with a hoe. No, I was still too young to comprehend that word’s comedic potential. “Hoe” wouldn’t enter my vocabulary as a double-entendre for another six years, when I snuck into the living room and watched Eddie Murphy’s Delirious on HBO. Moral of the story? Don’t piss in Old Man McGregor’s garden. Or, as Momma Rabbit put it, “Your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.” Yikes! If that doesn’t stain your underroos at age five, nothing will.

The more I rewrote this story, the more it transformed. I became curious. How much of Peter Rabbit’s body could I dismember without killing him? It sounded innocent coming from my five year old mouth: “Mommy, if I wooze my arms and wegs will I still wiv?” The question was cute; the motive was not. Look, I didn’t have the Internet back in the ’70s. I didn’t have TLC and the Discovery Channel to conduct research with. If I wanted to turn on TV and gawk at a man with no legs and half a skull I had to wait for Donahue to hit the summer slumps.

So began Peter’s dismemberment stage: leg ripped off while escaping, ear severed by flying glass, paw lopped off in a sewing machine accident, etc. Soon Peter Rabbit wasn’t sneaking around Old Man McGregor’s garden searching for carrots anymore. Why not? How would I know? I’m five, remember? A new question came to me: How does one ‘accidentally’ put an old man into a pie? I researched it. All authors are expected to research their novels, right? I didn’t want to tarnish my credibility before my first pubes broke the skin, so I went to work. I watched the Looney Tunes classic “French Rarebit” and studied how the French chefs prepared Bugs Bunny for “Louisiana Back-Bay Bayou Bunny Bordelaise … a la Antoine.” Now the tables were turned: Peter Rabbit tossed Old Man McGregor into a cooking pot and baked him into a blueberry pie. This concept worked for several iterations and then I got bored.

And when I got bored, characters randomly died. This concept hasn’t changed much in thirty years. Random death is the spice of life. Peter stepped on a landmine, the carrots turned evil and attacked the Rabbit family, and the McGregors succumbed to an awful case of burning farmhouse.

Editing done, I prepared to show my creation to the world. This got me booted out of Cub Scouts. The pack leader claimed I was channeling Satan (psst, she was right!). So what is the moral of this guest-blog post? Squelch your child’s creativity at an early age, lest the Church strap him to a ducking stool.

Jason’s debut novel Rogue’s Curse is scheduled for release in August 2010 from Lyrical Press.

Visit Jason Beymer’s blog at http://www.beerandtv.com/.
Follow Jason’s Twitter at http://twitter.com/beerandtv/.