I started writing when I was five years old. From that moment on, I rarely let a day pass without putting pen to paper. Everything I wrote back then fit neatly into genres: horror, comedy, drama. I didn’t yet know there was a world beyond those tidy categories.
Then, at eighteen, fresh out of high school and burning with rage at the world, I wrote Lapdog Destiny: A Manic Expression Story. What poured out was something that refused to stay in any single box. Part revenge tale, part tender romance, part coming-of-age story, part horror, and part meditation on God and abandonment, this story is a raw descent into madness—existing as its own strange creation rather than conforming to genre conventions.
What Lapdog Destiny is about: Fresh out of high school and trapped in an abusive home, Charlie Edwards is a ghost in his own life. Abandoned by his friends after a failed suicide attempt, he drifts through a world that refuses to see him—until the day he discovers he can shed his skin and become anyone he wants.
What begins as a desperate search for happiness curdles into a violent hunt for retribution against everyone who turned their backs on him. But as the body count rises, a flicker of light appears: a girl who sees the man behind the masks and offers him a path back to humanity. Now Charlie faces a final, terrifying choice—embrace the love that could save his soul, or surrender to the destiny that promises him the power of a god.
The long, strange road to this release: Lapdog Destiny was my first real attempt at making a movie. In the fall of 1998, armed with a cheap consumer-grade digital camera, I started filming with myself in the lead role of Charlie. That version never got past the halfway mark of production. I tried again in 2001, this time focused more on directing (though I did play the supporting role of Steve). I finished that shoot, but the lack of budget and experience meant it was never festival-worthy.
When I decided to adapt Lapdog Destiny into a novella for the Manic Expression collection, I faced an interesting dilemma. At twenty-six, I was no longer the seething teenager who wrote the original. While I still understood Charlie’s pain, I also found myself thinking, “Jesus, kid… calm down!” I asked myself a difficult question: should I soften the rage and violence, or let my younger self speak unfiltered?
In the end, I chose not to censor the story. Softening Charlie or lecturing him felt like invalidating the very real pain I was processing when I originally wrote the story. Lapdog Destiny is a time capsule. It’s a portrait of a disaffected loner who lashes out at a world that ignored him. Charlie was never written to be a hero.
Many readers today will see Charlie as the textbook definition of an “incel.” I’ve never liked that word, even if I don’t agree with the behavior of those it applies to. A lot of young men enter the world filled with rage. I was fortunate enough to have writing as an outlet. Not everyone is so lucky.
I stand by Lapdog Destiny, even if I’m no longer as sympathetic to Charlie as I once was. Reading it now takes me straight back to a dangerous crossroads in my life. I hope it gives you some understanding of young men like him—toxic and broken as they may be.
Grab your copy today!
I’d love to hear your thoughts—do you enjoy stories with deeply unsympathetic protagonists, or do you prefer clearer heroes and villains?
See you next week for another dive into the Manic Expression universe.
James Daniel Walsh
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