The Point of Beginning

Alter Ego: Who Is Harry?

I believe that most, if not all, writers have an alter ego. Not a pen name but a character in one or more story that is them in story form. While I tend to place myself in just about all of my stories either as a character or a fly-on-the-wall, there is one character that I created specifically to be my alter ego—Harry.

Harry made his debut in a screenplay I wrote called 87 which would later be renamed Tank N Tummy. Tank N Tummy was the second part of a five movie series I had planned.

I actually ended up writing four of the five until I realized that screenwriting wasn’t something I wanted to do. I modeled Tank N Tummy off of Kevin Smith’s Clerks but instead of doing a whole movie at the gas station, I wrote half of it to be at the station and the other half as a ghost hunting adventure which was something I was into at the time.

I modeled the characters on me and my best friend, Randy. The name Zeke was something he had chosen while I chose Harry. I also felt that “Zeke & Harry” went well together. I imagined Zeke being a bit more uptight while Harry was laid-back. Harry was honestly who I wanted to be but I couldn’t just keep Harry a sex addicted, sarcastic jerk. I had to make him more real.

When I decided to turn Zeke & Harry into stories, I decided to try and make Harry a more sympathetic character and had his high school sweetheart and one and only girlfriend die. I also decided that Harry would be infertile, not just to get sympathy but also for story reasons.

I planned to write to write a novel detailing the Zeke & Harry story, and interspersing it with the story of the Miller family like I did for Tank N Tummy, but I’ve been going back and forth on that. I also considered rewriting Harter Union to include Zeke and Harry but came to the conclusion that adding their story and all of their friends would make the book excessively long and basically two completely different novels.

I plan on Zeke & Harry to make a few more appearances before I actually decide on whether or not to include them in a book. Currently they are featured in The Death of Tana Whitney and Tank N Tummy and I hope to get another story written over the summer.