The Phantom Janitor Book-Signing Pitch

Any interest is still interest! 😀 This post will be me sharing the context behind my first, and currently only, book signing.

Now, I am going to preface this with a whole lot of context.

Obviously, anyone who’s read my blog knows about my debut novel. For those who don’t, it’s called The Phantom Janitor. The story is about my Timber Wolf MC, Derrick, who’s navigating his last year of high school after his crush returns home from a successful acting career. It’s a YA romance novel that I wrote whilst in high school (or shortly thereafter?)

I was a young writer back then. And our local library in town is pretty supportive of local writers. I was enccouraged to inquire about using the library to do my own book-signing.

Since I was young, the only people I was able to really invite, were people from church or home-school group. This was by no means a furry event, even though furries were my target audience sort of.

This speech was written back when I was nineteen or twenty, so about six or seven years ago. So, as you can guess, the writing is a bit rough. I am going to fix up some of the wording, but I am going to keep the base talking points the same. It may be quite cringey and silly, which will surprise no one.

Hello everyone!

So, you are probably wondering why I have gathered you all here today. Well… I didn’t personally gather you all here. Some of you probably saw an Italian guy with a long name wrote a romance book and came to see what that was all about. And to be honest… I don’t quite know myself. 

My name is Vincenzo Pasquarella, and yes, I did write a book. It started out as a project for a yearly writing competition I take part in every year. And Phantom Janitor was the project that seventeen-year-old me had decided to go with in November of 2015. It took me nine months of writing and a year of editing and waiting. It was a hard, long, and a somewhat stressful journey, but it was definitely worth all the time I had put into it. I know some of you have read it and know everything there is to know about it already, but some of you don’t. 

For those of you who haven’t read my book, my book is called Phantom Janitor. It is anthropomorphic fiction. Anthropomorphic, in this case, basically means applying human characteristics to animal characters. We see this in so forms of fiction and animation with characters like Mickey Mouse, Nick Wilde, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

The book’s story is about a young timber wolf named Derrick. He had a great childhood with a mom and dad who were very involved with the theatrical arts. Derrick acquired a love for the theater as well and, as he grew, he became an even better actor. When he was in early middle school, news of his father’s death came from overseas in the form of Ernesto Claw. From that moment, life got somewhat worse for Derrick. Ernesto married Derrick’s mother and made him change schools, Derrick’s mother got into a car crash that left her paralyzed from the waist down, and Ernesto took control of the family’s theater. Life was almost terrible for Derrick. He had to endure a new school, and new stepsiblings who wanted nothing to do with him. But it was not all bad. Derrick managed to secure a few good friends in middle school. You’ll meet the others as you read the story, but the one that Derrick falls for is the lovely Cassidy Wells. Just when you think things may get better for Derrick… some things happen to him that cause him to be more afraid of Ernesto and cause him to be insecure. This ends up being instrumental as he turns away an amazing opportunity to be part of a show with Cassidy. And with that, Cassidy was whisked away to become an actress. A lot of other things happen to Derrick, till we arrive at the last year of high school… Which is where the book starts. 

This speech ended with me reading from the book to a room of about thirty family friends, and supportive teachers. I fixed up what I could of nineteen-year-old Scribbles’ writing but it is still pretty rough.

But it does a decent job of setting up the context for the story. And it reminds me of just how much thought went into the characters and backstory. I put a lot of effort into this story in the planning phase. And I have grown so much since then.

I hope everyone enjoyed this blast from my past just as much as I did. ^-^

I am still working on this rewrite at my own pace. I am halfway through Chapter Five. And the project is at approximately 9k words. And the story is just beginning. I am looking forward to sharing a more complete vision of these characters and who they are. And I think it’ll be a lot easier because I am a more complete version of myself.

It’s a bit weird to say, but coming into my own in my writing and as a person really has me excited to reshare this story.