Sometimes it still surprises even ME that there's a book one. The concept
for Grease Monkey has been with me for a pretty long time (15 years as I
write these words) and the published version has been around for 10 percent
of that (1.5 years) so I have to occasionally remind myself that it's not
entirely mine any more. When a twisted string of causality finally resulted
in it getting published in a handsome hardcover edition from Tor Books in
summer 2006, it was like watching my child go off into the world to make
friends and influence people I would probably never meet. If you¹re one of
those people, I hope it was a good experience for you. If you haven't yet
become acquainted, you can remedy this any time over at
www.greasemonkeybook.com .
 
The story for Book 2 has been with me for about half of those 15 years
mentioned above. I had delusions about turning Grease Monkey into an
animated feature film once the first book got off the launch pad, but I also
had to confront the idea that if it were to be optioned by a movie studio
the first thing on their agenda would be to tear it to bits. Having seen a
few movies and read a few books in my day, I thought I had come up with
something that didn¹t need to be "improved" upon by some overpaid executive.
So even as I wrote my movie script there was a nagging voice in the back of
my head saying, "do it yourself, stupid!"
 
I actually did turn the first act into an animated mini-movie (which you can
also find at the website) and I thought about continuing on from there to
make the whole thing that way. But even that much effort wouldn't
bullet-proof it against tampering. All it takes is one middle-manager to
invent a problem and you're back to square one. It's a shame that it has to
be that way. When we look back over history we can see centuries of classic
stories that did just fine without having to be "re-imagined" or
"focused-grouped" or "beta-tested." In fact, if all those things had been
around before the 20th century, we might not have gotten classic literature
at all. Just a lot of mediocrity. Fortunately, the movie game isn't the only
one in town.

In the face of all this, I decided the script would do just as well as the
basis for a graphic novel and started drawing it. So here's the first chunk
of Grease Monkey Book 2. The whole thing is going to take a year or two to
finish, with new pages to be uploaded to the website every 60 days. If it
all works out, there will be a paper version at the end. In the meantime, I
hope it will make lots of friends.