In April of 2021, I finished what I thought to be a final draft of a short novel. The previous year—the first year of Covid—I had finally had the opportunity to execute the idea for a book that had been rolling around in my head for some time. So excited was I, in early April 2021, to have successfully (so I thought, at the time) completed the task, and so eager was I to have people read my book, that I decided to use my lucrative career as a high-priced gigolo (HEY, it’s not MY fault I’m kinesiologically able to do what in 2nd grade elicited shouts of “gross!” but that later in life resulted in my having to be listed as “not currently accepting new clients”!)—I decided to use my lucrative career as a high-priced gigolo to fund a worldwide self-published-author’s book tour, with my first book-signing being in Buenos Aires on July 11th, 2021. 22 countries and 114 attempted book-signings later (on July 15th, 2024), I was headed up Mt. Fuji when it suddenly dawned on me that it had been over three years since I had read my book all the way through in one "sitting". And so, with a four-year-old girl (being led along by her mother) pointing and laughing at me (at my expressions of dismay), I read while I walked. Upon reaching the top of the mountain, eading the book’s final sentence, I looked up, made eye contact with a four-year-old girl, and said, “HOLY CRAP, I jumped the gun!… I need to do more work on this!… THIS WHOLE THING WAS PREMATURE!” I couldn’t believe it. I waved the book above my head and leaned towards the girl. “This is nothing more than a FIRST DRAFT!” As the mother pulled her daughter closer to her and picked up her pace, and with the girl pointing at me and laughing, I jumped to my feet and began to hustle back to the hostel. Eighteen hours later, I was back in New York reworking my manuscript. Fifteen months after THAT, I decided that “now—NOW—the book is finished”. Two days after THAT, I heard Conan O’Brien say, on his podcast, that Brian Kiley is the best joke-writer he’s ever known. Discovering that Brian had written two novels, I queried the books’ publisher, HumorOutcasts Press, and in February of 2026, the newly-entitled Falling Asleep to the Sound of Critics carried the HOPress imprint… SURE, this might not have been the biggest book deal in the world, but the book is out there, exposed, available to be read, and I’m happy about that…so who’s laughing at me NOW, little Mt. Fuji girl!?… (Well, potentially everyone in the world. I better disable the “comments”.)
NOTE #1: It was decided that the title of this (first) draft of what is now Falling Asleep to the Sound of Critics expresses an idea for which the world is not yet ready (MAYBE in a generation or two, but DEFINITELY not now). As a result, bleeping and blurring were employed.
NOTE #2: It was decided that attempted book-signings 18-114 went WAY too far off-the-rails for them to be shown... WAY too far off.
Very generally, Falling Asleep to the Sound of Critics is a portrait of someone with a supernatural ability to use humor to deal with how weird everything is (not the least of which is our awareness that, at some point, the fat lady’s gonna sing). A little less generally, Falling Asleep to the Sound of Critics is the portrait of a very lonely early life, from conception (“Aah maaan…now I have to die someday… Thanks a lot”) to, eighteen years later, blackness right after death (in which Average White Band’s Pick Up the Pieces plays over end credits). It’s a commentary on the possibility of transcendence that love and humor can provide, as well as (to some degree) on the meanness—the hate—that pervades humanity. It’s an account made from such a distance that just about everything can be played with…just about.
About the author (pretty much as it appears on the book): "After graduating from the secondary school portrayed in this book, Lucas Stone attained his goal of dropping out of three prestigious universities. (His parents said, “YEAH! He got it! HAT TRICK!… That’s our boy!”) Since, he has held various jobs on Earth. In the Fall of 2025, he heard Conan O’Brien say that Brian Kiley is the best joke-writer he’s ever known. Discovering that Brian had written two novels, Lucas (having recently completed Falling Asleep to the Sound of Critics) queried the books’ publisher, and the rest, as they say, didn’t happen if it wasn’t made into a TikTok video."
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