A Tale Of Black Jack

This is one of the best concepts I've ever come up with that absolutely fizzled and died.

And I know exactly what happened.

So I've been to Vegas a couple of times in my life. And I'm not anxious to go back. Once you've been to Vegas, you've been to Vegas. All that's really there are some sexy shows, some cool sights, and too many opportunities to throw your paycheck away. But there is something about the Las Vegas of the mid twenty-teens that always called to me. Las Vegas is a city with a life and spirit of it's own. Las Vegas lives and breathes in a constant rhythm of life, death, and rebirth. Not the physical death of the body, but the of the soul. People put everything on the line: money, their sense of worth, their place in the world; and they're betting for more than money: they're betting on their hopes for the future, a new life, for the spirit of the game itself. If you've never gambled for a place among the stars, then you've never really been desperate. It's one of the reasons lottery tickets do so well among the poor. We're not betting on a weekend's worth of chips. We have bills to pay, children to feed, and dreams that are near death.

This is why I started writing Black Jack. I wanted to position Las Vegas as a cruel goddess who giveth and taketh away. Her will is in the card decks, on the slots, on the wheel, in the betting booths. Everyone is an atheist until it's about to come up red or black, or you have a 10 facing up. Then you start to pray to Her. You pray she'll smile on you this one time and give you that Ace laying face down, or that you'll hit triple diamonds on that machine.

My main character was of course a blackjack dealer named Jack (last name escapes me at the moment). He is foiled by my other main character, Memphis, a tattoo artist on vacation modeled after my own tattoo artist from New York.

Only Jack isn't just any blackjack dealer. He's a priest of Saint Elvis and Our Lady of Luck. He can actually read people's lives in the blackjack cards. They tell him about the players and when he asks questions, he is answered. The card suits and faces are like tarot cards to Jack. I even worked out what each suit meant in combination with other suits. I will not utter that here. People's eyes are greedy.

So why did this story that practically writes itself whither and die before it was even truly born?

Plot.

I have absolutely no idea what the characters are playing for, figuratively and literally speaking. Each character has to want something. I can tell you what the characters want in the moment, in any given scene (and I have over 10,000 words of scenes). I sorta had a loose plot that the tattoo artist might be in town to forget a relationship that just ended and he meets a girl at the hotel for a convention that Jack eventually cons his way into spending the night with, and that Jack and Memphis should duel to the "death", but I don't know what for. I wanted Jack to be able to take a piece of people's souls when he wins, but I don't know how that would work. I needed Memphis to come to grips with ... something!

Not only do I not have any plot, I have no good ideas that work with the concept that people would even be remotely interested in.

Enemies to friends against a common foe? Yeah, but like who or what?

Spicy Vegas romance? Maybe?

Can Jack reward Memphis with a future of his dreams? I wasn't going to have the mechanics be that powerful.

Vegas mob novel? I haven't even set it up for that.

My why is not particularly complicated. You can't have a novel with no plot. But more importantly I can't think of a plot that fits the characters and the mechanism in the setting. Nothing I apply to it feels helpful. Nothing seems to do it justice. It all feels contrived to me in ways that I haven't been able to really describe. It's almost like I don't want to cheapen my story with a basic plot. Like the plot has to be as complex as the myriad combinations of cards in Jack's deck. I planned on self publishing it, so I need the work to really stand out.

I even bought a plotting guide to help me solve problems like this (it's pretty much the same problem across the board with all of my book ideas) but since having my baby, I haven't had time to really dive into it. I'm hoping once the baby starts--or goes back to--sleeping through the night in his own bed that I'll have some time in the evenings to work on my plot. And that my crippling postpartum depression lets up a little bit so I can actually be interested in writing. I took some meds today. Sort of the only reason I've been able to even get this far. I'm fighting two uphill battles with this novel: I need a plot and a willingness to talk, to put words on a page, to feel as involved with my work and my life the way I used to. Other parents will understand that part, but for the nonparenting, the plot issues are enough to have paused this work for five years.

I'm open to suggestions. Right now I have a cool concept, great characters, and loads of music references I can't use.