June 29, 2015 – ❧Defining Ways❧

Author Bio: Christopher Paul Meyer writes noir and nonfiction. He is a former bouncer, comic, soldier, firefighter, actor and prison chaplain. In addition to Icarus Falling, he has written five screenplays, three of which were optioned and/or commissioned. When not writing, he enjoys Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, improv comedy and political rants delivered in an angry mumble at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Author Links –

http://christopherpaulmeyer.com/

https://www.facebook.com/christopherpaulmeyer?ref=hl

Twitter: ChristopherPaulMeyer @TheLoadedPen

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/11642763.Christopher_Paul_Meyer

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00THE7CDI

Book Genre: Memoir

Publisher: Amazon Digital Services/CreateSpace

Release Date: 12/22/14

Buy Link(s): http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=icarus+falling

Book Description:

The true story of a failed actor, who – still tantalized by the promise of LA – reinvents himself as a nightclub bouncer. Working both downtown and on the Sunset Strip, he is thrust into the bloodstream of LA. Amidst the unending parade of strung-out transients, shimmering miniskirts, enraged gangbangers and unhinged party people, he avenges his history of cowardice, atones for his past infidelities and tries to become something better than another Hollywood casualty.

Excerpt:

I was bleeding confidence. Yeah, yeah, I told myself that I had nothing to lose confidence about – I had been outnumbered, I had made a defensible decision to grapple instead of brawl and, hey, I had won — but I was already dreading going back to the Sunset Strip. I worked in an environment where I had to put my hands on someone every night. Do that long enough and it gets real hard to walk away untouched. And for what? We weren’t cops or corrections officers or soldiers or feds. We were just check marks on a liability insurance policy. Nobody on the Strip was bouncing for God or country. I mean, this wasn’t Afghanistan. I wasn’t hunting bad guys in the Hindu Kush like a lot of my old classmates were. I was just making $13/hr to deal with the fallout from drunk people’s fantasies. It was so damn meaningless.

Or was it?

I felt her warm, naked ass press against me as the hot water spilled over us. The hot women and the cool job. The sex and the drama. It was the life that I’d wanted. It was a life I owed to the club. Sure, I could leave it all behind, but that felt too much like failure and I’d failed enough in LA already. LA owed me. LA was like this beautiful painting that I could only see after hours through the museum window. It was like a Firebird blasting some catchy tune until the light turns green and it speeds off, leaving me stuck with Katy Perry in my head the rest of the day. LA had promised me a lot and it had paid off very fucking little. I wasn’t leaving until I had collected. I wasn’t leaving until LA finished remaking me into someone better than who I was when I got here.

So I did something I hadn’t done since I first got to LA. I prayed. I prayed for just enough strength, stamina and health to stay a little while longer in the black lights and wallow in the adrenaline bath. I hoped God was cool with it. But even if He wasn’t, I didn’t care. After all, if He had been doing His job, I should have been a fucking movie star by now.