Menewsha Avatar Community - A Future Book.... maybe :?

Ok... so I started writting and its not much yet, and may never be, but I decided to elicit some opinions before I decided to put to much into this thing.

Sooo... First

The Blurb on Back
The Life of Antonius Messa

It was everything Jameson Davies could do to not scream at the wrinkled old Antonius Messa. The man was insufferable, rude, and manipulative, but this was an opportunity that could break him into a whole new market and give him credentials as a true and respected novelist. Before him sat a man who had been alive for one hundred years, the last fifty of which no one knew anything about. He was the man everyone in this town new of, but knew nothing about, and Jameson Davies was given the exclusive rights to publish the man’s biography, if he could follow the rules and make it through the telling of the man’s life that was.
Antonius Messa, was a wealthy man, but it had not always been so, and as death crept closer and closer he began to worry that no one would truly remember him as anything but the rich old recluse when he passed away. Rumors had been floating around about him for over three decades now, and when the young reporter for the local paper showed up to interview him for a petty one-hundredth birthday article he decided he would put the rumors to rest just as they were to put him to rest soon.

Prologue
“Do not presume to know the reasoning behind my actions or decisions, for you who do not know me are not in a position worthy of judging me. I made the choices for my life with what I knew of life at the time of their making and it is I who must live what remains of my days with those decisions.”

Jameson stared at the man who was half lying in the chair before him. Even death he was as hard and bitter as the cold steel he had resembled throughout his life. The old man had lived alone in this house for over fifty years and no one could ever recall family or friends visiting him. As a journalist Jameson had been sent to interview Mr. Messa for a small article to celebrate the man’s one-hundredth birthday. When he had first arrived the man’s nurse had answered the door with a look of relief as if his arrival would mean a few minutes of peace for her. Of course, he did not know at the time that his one small article would turn into this immense interview that had now spanned over a month. It seemed that as his age increased there was much of his life that Mr. Messa had wanted to tell to someone who would listen and as he said it, “Who better than some nosey reporter who gets paid to go snooping into other people’s business.”

This was Jameson’s sixth visit to the home of the aging Mr. Messa over the last month. He never knew when he would be coming back, but every few days the phone would ring and the raspy old voice of Mr. Messa would tell him a time and a day to arrive and then hang up without waiting for a reply. He learned quickly that Mr. Messa got what he wanted, when he did not show up for his first appointment. The next morning he had been woken by the phone to her the raspy voice tell him to go read the morning paper and then hang up in a resounding click. The headline that morning has read, “Hundred Year Old Native Plans to Release New Book”. Jameson has stared at the headline in amazement and then hurriedly got dressed and grabbed his things and rushed over to Mr. Messa’s house. The old man opened the door, just as he was about to knock, with and impish grin on his face.

“Do I have your attention now, or shall I find someone else to tell my story to?”

Jameson’s attention had definitely been captured, and his obedience to this man’s schedule was locked in tight. What had once been simply a minor article for the local paper had now exploded into hours of tapes, and a chance to write a real novel. He had since then been early for every appointed time that had been called in to him.

“I am sorry Mr. Messa, I am just a bit shocked is all. Do you mean to tell me that you actually walked down the aisle of the wedding to give away the woman you loved to another man?”

Antonius Messa looked at Jameson with a stern look and gritted dentures. “That is what I said isn’t it boy? Now are you going to continue questioning my story, or do you want to hear the rest of the tale?”

Jameson bit his tongue and looked down at the floor. It had gone this way ever since the second interview. The old man knew he was hooked and wasn’t going to blow this chance. “My apologies sir, please continue.”

Chapter One

It was a rainy night in November when Antonius Messa was born into the world, but that is not where this story starts. This story starts some eight years later in his childhood with an unexpected death, and the first hardening of his heart and what Antonius Messa counts to be the most defining moment in his life, the moment that would lead him to become who he was when he passed away at the age of one hundred years. Antonius Messa says that to start the story before then is, “a waste of time and paper”, as his childhood until then was, “normal and as unimportant as the life of any child being raised by both of his parents.”

It was at the age of eight years old when his parents had to go out unexpectedly and had called the neighbors daughter over to watch over him and his brothers, the youngest of which was to turn one year old in the morning. Antonius thought nothing of his parents having to go out, figuring they had simply to go buy birthday presents and a cake for his baby brother. It was when they came in late that night and woke him and his younger brother up with forlorn expressions that he knew something was wrong.

“Boys, your cousin Carie passed away. She was hit by a drunk driver tonight, and didn’t make it. We were at the hospital with your uncle, but she has gone to Heaven to be with God.”

With that statement Antonius Messa’s life had made a sudden change, and his childhood had vanished with the cousin he hadn’t know extremely well, but was extremely fond of. When he describes her he says, “She had a smile that would make you laugh and feel like everything in the world was wonderful. No one in the world had more faith in Christ than her.” It was her loss that would shake the very foundations of everything he believed and cause him to question everything.