A provocative unpublished novel by a published author
Requiem For A Loser † Mesdames Et Messieurs, Un Vampire Extraordinaire, Madame Tracy
Greg Watt is an unemployed screenwriter (laid off by a failed dotcom) who struggles to pay his bills while losing a battle with depression and alcohol. Given the nature of many introspective writers, Greg takes the reader through a series of observational rants on life in NYC that is searing and funny. Shunning the screenplay format, Greg decides to write a novel thinking it easier to be published than produced. His preoccupation with mortality and resourcefulness materializes in Tracy, a 199-year-old transvestite vampire with fake breasts living in a penthouse in the meatpacking district.
Tracy is a raconteur and an amusing seductress who has befriended everyone from Picasso to Calvin Klein but can only share her experiences with victims hours before she consumes them. She purposely stretches her sexual encounters out over the course of hours to gain an emotional bond with victims that transcends pleasure and simulates moments of intimacy. A wealthy predator, Tracy is the embodiment of a romantic with the cunning of a serial killer who has discovered a reason to live---unconditional love. She wants to be a mother. At one point, Greg thinks writing the novel will not only serve as a distraction but save him. Then life happens.
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Author Brett L. Renwick
His first novel, Wired For Chaos, was published by Creation Books in 2005 and made it to the semifinals of the Writer's Network Fiction competition that year. He is the author of numerous spec screenplays and sit-com scripts and a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. This book prospered from the insightful comments of the Dark Body Writer's Collective workshop that includes published authors and filmmakers.
Reviews from published authors
"I LOVE Requiem For A Loser. You're on to something here. You have found the right vehicle for your style, your voice, your pre-occupations. All your fortes come together effectively in this piece: Dialogue, acerbic wit, hardcore insight coupled with foul language, brutal honesty about the world around you. And for all its rawness, it's open and vulnerable in a way I've never seen your writing be. This one is different. It's close to you and therein lays its power. More importantly, this work is fresh in its structure-the vampire story narrated to us by the loser guy who is writing it, and who has his own arc. Very clever. And it's topical. Believe me, I'm reading The Corrections by Johnathan Franzen right now, and it's so much like what you're doing here (taking the pulse of our times) but without Brett's edge, and without the vampire. People want to read about how the go-go nineties left folks holding their heads once they woke up with a harsh 21st century hangover. Bonfire of the Vanities for the new millennium...."
Bridgett M. Davis, author Shifting Through Neutral, Amistad
"You are an amazingly talented writer with a very interesting take on the world. A very cool and knowing voice. And with the new work you've found a sweet merger point for your creative impulses and the really rich and intriguing stuff from your life as a writer, here and back in LA. All of that really shows on the page."
Michel Marriott, staff reporter The New York Times, author of, the skull cage key, Agate Bolden
"You are nearing art with Tracy...your damn writing was become pretty damn good."
E. B. Baisden, author The Fever Of The Years, Caribbean Research Press
"Brett, my friend, we think the unfinished end of a very good first novel has brought you to the start of an undoubtedly great one."