Stage – Introduction to the Blog

 

 

This blog has come from hundreds of gig notes taken over decades of work as a professional and private bartender in Los Angeles, as well as old and new memories still in the mind, in hopes of laying it all down and eventually weaving it into a book series for possible future publication.

With the onset of blog popularity over the last five years, it provided the perfect opportunity to roll them out into short story form, as I start to write the material in its entirety. It’s now given me the idea to consider keeping it this way instead of stringing it together in one long book thread. To simply create a collection of these stories and encounters based on my experiences, as the thought and idea of a book of short stories is not only intriguing, but feels right for the material content at hand.

However, most normal blogs and their posts by their nature and design are of a few paragraphs, or maybe up to 500-700 words, the equivalent of a one-page magazine article or so, for the most part. This area of blog size or individual length of each post, I won’t be able to compromise with nor adhere to. The stories have a life of their own, so I’ve chosen to be free about it and write them out in as much full detail and color as is deserved to get the story across from beginning to end, without size limitations. I’ll edit a bit here and there for normal cleanup, but that’s about it. However, I do want to keep them in an average range of between 1500-2000 words, so at most they’ll just go into the completion of a third page.

I figure that after a year or so of weekly story posts, I’ll have enough for a 200+page book if an agent or publisher shows any interest, as I plan on submitting samples of the content at some point in time down the road when I feel there is enough variety for them to take a look at for consideration.

Nevertheless, I’ll continue writing on into a second year or even more, all pending on how many interesting stories I can remember from 29 years of experience behind the bar, having worked in more than likely the widest range of bar venues than anyone in town.

Yet, as I continue to work as a bartender today, the range of experiences I can write about also continues to grow, therefore result in a never ending spill of entertaining material to check out. It’s been a great outlet for me so far, to get these out of the can so to speak, give them some life, and to take the reader with me on short journeys into my bar work at various locations and events around town to give them a closer look and feel as to what goes on during the course of an evening, that most of the general public would either not be invited to, or wouldn’t even know was happening for that matter.

Something that might be good to clear up here, in case anyone takes issue or is misperceiving and/or negatively assuming. You’ll notice what may look like some casual name-dropping of a known public personality or someone of celebrity or professional sports status, whatever you want to call it, throughout some of the overall content. The mention is always with good intention. I’m not out to slam anyone. This is just something that I’ve worked around and within, people of this nature, real encounters that have happened, for almost my entire career behind the bar. They’ve been a part of my life for a long time now, and I have the same respect for them as I do in speaking about anyone else that I’ve either worked with or provided service for, communication or interactivity with at the bar, known or unknown.

One last thing. When I put up a post of a new story, I usually have to go back in at some point soon after and do some minor corrections, as the words can get a bit snowblind on the page beforehand when going through it over and over, a degree of it having to do with my patience (or lack thereof) at any given moment when I’m scanning and skimming, wearing the hat of being my own editor as well. There are also further additions I may think of after the fact, and if they’re important enough to enhance the overall piece of work, I’ll go ahead and drop them in.

I hope you enjoy my stories from the spillmat . . . . . where performing and observing is second nature.

Cheers,

Kyle