With A Little Help from My Friends: The Buddy Story

Are you singing the song in your head? Or aloud? I sang it aloud, and my dogs gave me the look. Yep. That’s how bad my voice is. If you’re not singing it, have a listen. Joe Cocker’s version is one of my favorites.

Why am I blathering on and on about help from friends? Two reasons.

1. I’m helping a friend, C. S. Boyack, promote his new release, The Hat.
2. His story is an interesting take on the ‘buddy story’ plot.

Without further ado, let’s welcome Craig back to the site and learn more about his new novella.

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This is Lisa Burton, Craig’s robot-girl spokesmodel. She isn’t wearing THE hat. She is wearing A hat. And doesn’t she look smashing?

I’m here to promote my new story, The Hat. This one is kind of a paranormal superhero story. The hero part involves two, well, let’s call them ‘people’ even if that’s only half true.

Lizzie St. Laurent is a hard-working girl. She’s holding multiple jobs just to keep the wolf away. She comes into possession of an old hat with a long history.

The hat is a being from another dimension, trapped into the shape of a hat for all time. He’s been around for thousands of years, taken many styles, and seen a thing or two.

Lizzie is inexperienced with the dark underbelly of society. The hat has that experience, but no arms, legs, and ability to do anything about it. They form a symbiotic relationship to rescue some babies from human traffickers.

This is what makes the story so much fun. They have to work together or nothing happens. They don’t exactly like each other either. The hat has been on the shelf since Lizzie’s grandfather passed away twenty years ago. He’s exposed to a world so completely changed by computers and electronics it’s baffling to him.

The hat has his own baggage. He has a taste in music that is a little bit out of date. Oddly enough, it’s music that starts to bring them together.

This is the beauty of a buddy story. You have two different main characters. In this case, very different. Authors get to pick away at the differences and have some real fun with them. Lizzie and the hat get in a few pretty interesting arguments along the way, and it adds some real fun to the story.

I haven’t written a buddy story since Panama, and it was one of my most popular titles. The interaction between the characters is half the fun. It’s a chance for an author to really put a second effort into those characters, and good characters make for good stories.

I have no idea why it took me so long to return to a buddy story. This one was so much fun to write, I may have to do it again. I may even recycle Lizzie and the hat, because they seem to have more stories in them.

Pick up a copy of The Hat. It’s a novella, so it only takes an afternoon to read. It’s priced at 99¢ so it really isn’t much of a gamble either.

Blurb:

Lizzie St. Laurent is dealing with many of the struggles of young life. She lost her grandmother and her living arrangements. Her new roommate abandoned her, and she’s working multiple jobs just to keep her head above water.

She inherits an old hat from her grandmother’s estate, but it belonged to her grandfather. This is no ordinary hat, but a being from an alternate dimension. One with special powers.

Lizzie and the hat don’t exactly hit it off right away, but when her best friend’s newborn is kidnapped by a ring of baby traffickers, Lizzie turns to the hat for help. This leads her deep into her family history and a world she’s never known.

Lizzie gives up everything to rescue the babies. She loses her jobs and may wind up in jail before it’s over. Along the way, she and the hat may have a new way of making ends meet.

Humorous and fun, The Hat is novella length. Wonderful escapism for an afternoon.

Purchase Link

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