Ben East

In these times of uncertainty, when it looks like the government will close its doors once again, there’s one group of people I feel really sorry for.

I feel bad for the characters of Patchworks, abandoned and alone these many years.

This isn’t such a big deal for the characters of my first novel, though just as few people read that as read Patchworks. But at least the citizens of Two Pumps were sketched from shapes in real life. Nobody needs to open the pages to let them out; versions of them walk and talk and breath just like you and me, out there living their best lives somewhere beyond the pages.

Not so my office-mates from Patchworks. These folks were pure figments of the author’s imagination.

The biggest crime here is my own. I haven’t thought of them in years, and it isn’t as if the government didn’t threaten to shut down, and then not shut down, and then threaten to shut down and actually shut down, and then open back up again since publication. For some reason, being back in DC as another shutdown looms, my friends from Patchworks have come rushing back to mind.

What made me think of them yesterday, quite out of nowhere, was reading another writer’s account of writing love triangles.

I was thinking: Man, what if I could write a story with a love triangle. This sounds like a nice, complex exercise for a composition course, until I realized how much I’d resent being told to develop some vapid romance plot. Then it hit me.

Tommy the IT guy was in love with Chloe the intelligence analyst who was in love with that scar-faced office rogue, Bruce Harcourt, who in turn loved only himself!

Whatever became of those three? Oh, right! They’ve been banished to darkness between the covers (not those covers) by their creator and the rest of the world. How could I do this to them?!

Now, to make it up to them, I’m going to set them free. I have a couple copies lying around the house if anyone wants to slide between the covers with them. Send me a note and I’ll ship it off.

Here’s the tale:

Gabriel Dunne’s government internship has him tracking gun violence in America. But before he can sink his teeth into the work, his boss tasks him with planning her wedding; Justin Parker begs for help wooing their fellow intern; Manny Teague won’t shut up about his kids; and Hubbard, the overzealous security chief, hounds him about an expired password. Topping it all off, congress threatens to shut down the government and send them all packing. So when one of their own is victimized by just the kind of violence the government exists to prevent, Gabe and his colleagues rally to avoid becoming victims in the next mad shooting spree.

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