Executive Severance
Robert K. Blechman
About the Author
Robert K. Blechman is not a cartoonist. —That’s Robert O.— Robert K. was born at the start of the turbulent 1950s and spent the first 17 years of his life in a house on the western boundary between Maryland and the District of Columbia, that is, on the demarcation line determining voting and non-voting citizenship. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA in English Literature and went on to earn an MBA in finance and a Ph.D. in Media Ecology from New York University.
During the Viet Nam War, Dr. Blechman received a moderately high draft lottery number and so avoided military service. He was gassed once during an anti-war protest in Chicago, but otherwise emerged unscathed.
Until recently he held a senior technology position at a major medical school. He has worked a variety of jobs, including summers as a counselor at Camp Zakelo in Harrison, Maine, and several semesters as an adjunct professor of media studies at Fordham University.
In the course of his corporate career, Dr. Blechman has held management positions at iconic national institutions and has experienced a major bankruptcy, a major merger, downsizing, resizing, and rightsizing. He could write a book. He was triaged from Columbia University Medical Center when royalty money from the Axel patents dried up; expelled from the New York City Board of Education on pedagogical differences; debited at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP by his counterpart after a major merger; remaindered at HarperCollins Publishers during a change in senior management and deconstructed when Olympia & York Real Estate Management went belly up. All things being equal, Dr. Blechman looks forward to retirement.
Besides the present volume, Dr. Blechman looks to his three children, Alexander, Sara and Eliana to validate his time spent on this planet. Otherwise, it’s pretty much a wash.
“Executive Severance, a laugh out loud comic mystery novel, epitomizes our current cultural moment in that it is born from the juxtaposition of authorial invention and technological communication innovation. Merging creative text with new electronic context, Robert K. Blechman's novel, which originally appeared as Twitter entries, can be read on a cell phone. His tweets which merge to form an entertaining novel can't be beat. Hold the phone; exalt in the mystery--engage with Blechman's story which signals the inception of a new literary art form.”
—-Marleen S. Barr, author of Envisioning the Future: Science Fiction and the Next Millennium
ISBN 978-0-9832747-5-9
148 pages
$16.95
5.5"x8.5" perfect bound, paper
Excerpt from Chapter One
Willum Mortimus Granger was beside himself. In fact when his body was found the top half was right next to the bottom.
Granger's body was split in two. "Well, we can rule out suicide" said the coroner. "I rule out NOTHING!" I replied.
Self bisection was not at the top of my list of likely solutions. I hate ceding any ground when it comes to crime deduction.
"Maybe this was self inflicted. Then how do you explain the 3 1/2 other victims just like this I have at the morgue?"
So Granger wasn't the only one cut down in his prime. "You said 3 1/2 victims. You have half a body?" "No. Siamese twins."
Willum Mortimus Granger and 3 1/2 others (as per the coroner) were dead, their bodies sliced in half.
I stared at Granger's lower torso. Marshall McLuhan famously claimed that the wheel was an extension of our feet. Now I got it!
Reviews
"A He Dunit.
Sometimes a little verbose, but OMG this is the best twitstery I ever read. It's got everything: narrative drive, mystery, comedy, thrills, tension, laughs. Blechman is on to something, a genre as important to literature as the invention of haiku in rhyme. ..."
—Marvin Kitman, famous critic
“My work has been compared to Shakespeare, Proust and Joyce in that it is a tragedy they'd rather forget that has driven them to drink. It has been called riveting in the sense of nine inch nails being driven into your skull.”
—Robert K. Blechman
"A delightful 'twitstery' - a mystery written in real time Tweets - that is compelling, entertaining, and shows off what can be done in the 140-character form with style and mastery. Blechman's delight in the language shows in every tweet - that is to say, every thread of the story. His plot is tight, tingling, and diverting. Poe would have been proud of the new form Blechman has given to the mystery story."
—Paul Levinson, author New New Media and The Plot to Save Socrates
“Embracing the challenges found in publishing via the medium Twitter, Bob Blechman’s super silly story Executive Severance is stuffed with punny dialogue, clever character conditions, and a total lack of adherence to the old “rules” of storytelling. It’s a meaty tale told in deliciously rare, bite-sized chunks that I’d recommend for consumption to anyone hungering for fiction that satisfies. Well-done, Bob!”
—Michelle Anderson, ♥ mediaChick, author of The Miracle in July - a digital love story