Written From the Heart

by Trisha Ashley

  Anyway, I got the money out on the way home, because he’d promised to drop the computer off later at my cottage, and I was walking up the street thinking that I had better get a new keyboard, and maybe a mouse too, when I came face to face with one in the pet-shop window, sitting staring at me through the bars of its cage – a real mouse, that is, all white and pink like the sugar ones I dimly recalled finding at the bottom of my Christmas stocking in the days when I still had a mother …

  Well, before I knew what I was doing, I was in the shop parting with even more money, but something just came over me and anyway, she was so terribly sweet that I was sure she was going to be a great inspiration.

  It was amazing how much stuff one little mouse needed to keep it happy. I staggered home with two huge carrier bags and one very small, perforated box. By the time I had her cage and nest all nicely arranged and had installed her in it, the nice man from the pub had arrived and dropped off my new computer and monitor, and he was so kind he insisted on carrying them up to my little study under the eaves, before going off with the cash, whistling.

  Jackie’s daughter, Mel, came round to help me set up my new computer, and she brought me a keyboard and mouse she didn’t want any more. When I told her how much my new computer cost she said it was hot, and I said I thought it was pretty trendy myself, actually, and what should I do with my old one?

  ‘I’ll advertise it on eBay for you,’ she offered. ‘It’s such an antique bit of junk there’s bound to be someone out there mad enough to buy it … and is that a live mouse you’ve got over there?’

  ‘Yes, that’s Minnie. Your mother said the new computers gave off tons of negative energy and would damage my karma, so I thought if I got a mouse and it suddenly keeled over, like canaries used to do in mines, I’d know she was right.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ she asked, looking at me nervously, though I don’t know why because her mother is the one with the mad-as-a-hatter ideas.

  ‘No, I’m just joking, Mel. The mouse was an impulse buy. Do you like rodents?’

  ‘I should do … have you seen Mum’s latest boyfriend?’

  ‘No, but my ex-husband was a bit of a handsome love-rat. Jackie’s got better taste – whatever they may look like, all her men are pleasantly ineffectual.’

  When we had set everything up I was totally baffled by this Vista thing, so I began paying Mel to give me lessons. At first I only understood the bits I needed to pen my immortal prose, although we soon moved on to the esoteric world of emails and the Internet. I didn’t need any of the other stuff the computer did, which seemed to be such a waste, and I wished it would all go away and make my life simpler.

  Minnie watched every session from the front of her cage, gripping the bars with her little pink fingers – or paws, or whatever you want to call them – and looked like she understood it much better than I did.

  Linny called and told me she’d never visit the cottage again unless I got rid of the rodent.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but there are rodents and rodents. I was telling Mel earlier about Tim the love-rat! Minnie is different, you should see her peeling a sunflower seed, like a countess peeling a peach.’

  Linny said she felt sick, but then she’s never been an animal lover. It beat me why she’d chosen to marry Tertius the Tycoon, because he’s so hairy he doesn’t really need clothing to be decent in public, which is probably where the word ‘hirsute’ came from in the first place.

  Linny was feeling a bit snippy anyway, because she hadn’t heard a thing from any of the publishers she’d sent her manuscript to. I kept telling her these things take time, especially without an agent. I didn’t mention the towering slush piles of unread novels – I didn’t want to depress her further.

  On Thursday of that week I was sitting in my local bookshop signing hardback copies of Spring Breezes. Well, I say signing copies, but you know how it is: I had three friends round me all pretending they were big fans of my books.

  Anyway, there I was, when in walked this thin, peevish woman with grey hair, who looked like an escaped dishmop from Cold Comfort Farm, and she waltzed right up to me and said: ‘Is it any good, then?’ while riffling through a copy, crumpling the pages.

  Something came over me and before I could stop myself I said, ‘No, it’s rubbish, don’t waste your money.’

  ‘All right then, I won’t.’ She put it down, then stared at me and said, ‘I’m going to write a novel when I retire, a bestseller.’

  She said it accusingly, like it might be my fault, so I told her when I retired I was going to be a brain surgeon. ‘You’ve left it a bit late, haven’t you?’ she remarked, and walked off.

  Really, it made me wonder if book signings were worth the effort. Still, the bookshop is very supportive of local authors, despite stocking very little fiction. Actually it is called Necromancer’s Nook and the décor is a bit gloomy, but the staff are friendly once you get past the vampire-style make-up. In fact, the only time I took Sergei in there I thought I’d never get him out again.

  I arranged lots of local promotion for Spring Breezes because I’d learned from bitter experience that if I waited for Libby Garnett at Salubrious to do anything about it then I’d wait for ever, and I was trying to get a bit of a ‘buzz’ going about the book before the paperback came out.

  Despite all that, I had to crack on with my new novel, Dark, Passionate Earth, now I’d mastered the basics of the new computer. I simply had to make it big with this one. I felt I couldn’t go on scrimping and saving for the rest of my life, and despite my policy of attending every literary event I could beg, borrow or steal a ticket for, hovering on the fringes, hoping that some of the magic fairy dust of Instant Bestsellerdom would rub off on my wings, I didn’t seem to be getting any further.

  Salubrious Press would probably give my next book a publicity budget of about a fiver, as usual, whereas if I were a bestselling novelist they’d pour thousands into it, when it would sell anyway. But so it is in the world of writing: I mean, the people who win huge book prizes are usually bestsellers who are already so loaded they don’t actually need the money … and come to that, they’re so ungrateful, too. If they win the Women’s Prize for Fiction, half the time they say they don’t see themselves as a woman novelist, or, if the award is the Romantic Novel of the Year, they say they’re not a romantic novelist at all. Though they still pocket the cheque in front of hundreds of women who would admit to being anything for a bit of publicity and a fat cheque, and pardon me for the sour grapes but my cash flow had been more of a thin gluey trickle lately.

  Then one morning shortly after my signing, bright and early, I had a phone call from a friend in publishing and she said, ‘Don’t look now, but your editor at Salubrious Press has just decided to “resign” and she’s being replaced by a “suit”!’

  ‘But Ruperta can’t go,’ I said incredulously. ‘She loves my books and she believes in me, and I know I haven’t made Salubrious much money yet, although I sell more hardbacks than most of their literary novelists, so you can’t really call me a midlist author, but I’m sure this next one will be a big breakthrough novel – and what do you mean, “suit”?’

  ‘Tina, Ruperta’s being replaced by a man from the marketing department, so cost-cutting might be on the agenda and midlist heads will definitely roll – and maybe one or two others,’ she added hastily, but I wasn’t fooled and I could see she thought I was for the chop.

  No sooner had she put the phone down than someone rang me from Salubrious and told me that there had been a change in the editorial staff due to unavoidable restructuring, and my new editor would like to meet me, and what about Friday at eleven? So I assumed big surprise and said I would, yes. And if it was Friday at eleven I expect the Suit would take me to the little Italian restaurant round the corner, like Ruperta always did, and I could make an impression on him so he wouldn’t even think of losing me.

  I thought him suggesting the meeting so quickly boded well, too, though I couldn’t
think what to wear that combined ‘Professional Woman’ with ‘I’ll Do Anything to Stay Published’.

  Four

  I Believe in Miracle

  The Ramblings,

  Bosson Surcoat,

  Cresney

  Dear Ms Devino,

  I do not yet seem to have heard from you about my thriller Banking On It, even though it has been three weeks since I sent it. (And I note that the cheque has been cashed.)

  I would therefore like to remind you that with a topical work of this type time is of the essence, and I would be grateful if you could get back to me as soon as convenient.

  Yours sincerely,

  Harold Snaith, ACA

  On the following Monday, Sergei commented on how distracted I was – by which he meant I was not paying enough sympathetic attention to his latest interesting medical symptoms. I told him I felt nervous about my forthcoming meeting at Salubrious, but I wasn’t sure he quite grasped the importance of my making a good impression on the Suit.

  In fact, I found it hard to concentrate on anything else that week, though I had a ticket to a literary lunch at a very grand hotel on the Thursday, which I was looking forward to because I knew several of the novelists who would be there and I could pick up the gossip about Salubrious Press and also maybe find out where Ruperta had gone to.

  But the literary lunch turned out to be a bit of a let-down. They’d put me right at the back near the loos, I couldn’t see any of my friends, and there was this tall, skinny photographer who kept running up and down in front of the table, hunched double like a mad stork, trying to get good shots of the guest speaker. There was a man from an important newspaper on my left and someone’s boring relative on my right, and finally the man from the newspaper looked at me and I smiled, as you do, and he said, ‘Are you a novelist?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Tina Devino, author of several scintillating sex ’n’ gardening novels,’ I began eagerly, never one to let a publicity opportunity go for want of trying. ‘My new one, Spring Breezes, has just come out, and it’s—’

  ‘Yes, but isn’t there anyone important sitting at this table?’ he interrupted rudely.

  As you can imagine, I was absolutely delirious with pleasure when the icing sugar on his Snowy Heart Meringue with Strawberry Coulis went up his nostril so he looked like he’d been snorting something and gone a bit far.

  The next day I turned up at Salubrious Press on the dot of eleven o’clock, wearing a well-cut dark suit with a short – but not too short – skirt, something frivolous and low cut underneath it, and killer heels.

  Normally I conduct a mild flirtation with the elderly man on the front desk while waiting for Ruperta, but today everyone seemed subdued. A little red-haired girl collected me – she seemed to be wearing a knotted hankie over one shoulder and a small paint-splattered bandage round her hips, but I expect it is very cutting edge – and whisked me straight up to what used to be Ruperta’s office, only it looked subtly different already. There was, however, nothing subtle about the shock it gave me to find out that the Suit sitting behind the desk (and he didn’t get up) was my ex-husband, Tim.

  I hadn’t seen him that close up for years, he having been an early mistake tried on for size and briskly discarded in Sergei’s favour, so it took me a moment to take it in.

  Sitting down uninvited, I just stared at him, thinking that he looked a lot better when he had hair.

  ‘Well, Tina,’ he said, with a cold smile, ‘glad you could make it – I know your little secretarial jobs take up a lot of time.’

  My spine suddenly went all rigid and my mental faculties returned with a whoosh. ‘You know very well I’ve always been a writer, and just used to temp when I needed the money, which luckily hasn’t been necessary since my first contract with Salubrious.’ I didn’t mention my little lit. crit. thingy, which just about kept my head above the waves financially, because it was none of his business.

  ‘You surprise me. We don’t pay our midlist authors very much and I’d have thought you would have trouble living off your advances. You certainly don’t seem to have done much more than earned them out, so there can’t have been a great deal in the way of royalties on the sales of your books.’

  He shuffled some papers together as though my entire life history was written down in front of him, which for all I know it was because he’s that weird, and then he gave me the cold smile again. ‘But I suppose you’re still shacked up with that old ballet dancer, even though current rumour says it’s boys he’s more interested in than girls – what was his name?’

  I said coolly that his name was Sergei Popov, as he knew very well, and that I had never lived with him but always preferred my independence, although we were still together, so clearly rumour lied.

  Then I added that I didn’t consider myself a midlist author anyway, and Ruperta had always thought highly of me, and he said, in a mock-sad sort of way that made me want to strangle him, that Ruperta’s judgement hadn’t always proved a financially sound bet for Salubrious, and now she had resigned he’d found things in a bit of a mess.

  Well, we batted the conversation to and fro like this for quite a while, each trying to score points, but the gist was that if my next novel, Dark, Passionate Earth, wasn’t (a) delivered right on time, and (b) a mega bestseller, they wouldn’t be taking up the option on the one after that, because hordes of bright young writers were panting at my heels.

  When I said they’d have to be fast to catch me, he said insincerely that despite our past differences he hoped that we would still be able to work together to the furtherance of the aims of Salubrious Press, or something like that – I was a bit punch-drunk by this point.

  I can understand a threat as well as the next woman, though, even when it’s delivered with a smile, and it was clear to me that Dark, Passionate Earth would have to sink or swim on its own: not only would it not get a publicity budget, but it would be lucky to make it into Salubrious Press’s back catalogue.

  Then Tim said he’d been glad of this chat with me and though he was very busy, which he was sure I would understand, Jinni would love to take me out to lunch, and in came the little red-haired girl on cue, so either she was listening or telepathic.

  To add the final insult, she’d been given a miserly budget to take me to Pret A Manger rather than Garibaldi’s, and the most I could do was eat as many expensive sandwiches and pastries as possible, while she watched me anxiously over her lo-fat lo-cal Lettuce Carnival, so I feared I would probably come out in spots by the next day.

  Linny was not terribly sympathetic, because she said at least I had an agent and a publisher, whereas she hadn’t heard a thing about her manuscripts, which were probably being used as loo paper all over the city as we spoke, due to the fine quality of the paper she printed them on in order to make them look more attractive. But she had always had money and so did not understand the desperation of someone who made her sole precarious living from writing in one way or another … which reminded me, I had a little backlog of Noveltina manuscripts to catch up with over the weekend, too.

  I had to wait until Monday to phone my agent, Miracle Threaple (whose real name is Marianne), since she didn’t encourage weekend calls even in extremis, but once I got her on the line she extracted every last word and nuance from my meeting with Tim.

  ‘What am I going to do, Miracle?’ I demanded, and she said she’d have to think about it all, but she’d call me back after Christmas and we’d get together and discuss it, and then she rang off.

  I didn’t feel very comforted by this, but I was putting my faith in her to think of something.

  It was mid-morning before I got to Sergei’s flat, and due to an overactive imagination he was convinced I had been involved in some ghastly accident and was practically penning my eulogy.

  After I finally succeeded in convincing him that it was really me and not my sorrowful shade come to bid him a fond farewell, we exchanged Christmas gifts, cards and possibly some strange and fatal virus that
he was convinced he was harbouring.

  He doesn’t actually celebrate Christmas until 7 January, for some inscrutably Russian reason, but he loves presents and so do I. But I also love surprises so, however tempted, I would not open mine until Christmas morning. (And I hoped it was something suitable for revealing to the Devino family circle, among whom I would be unwrapping it.)

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Mr Snaith,

  Thank you for your recent communication, which as it happens arrived just as I was parcelling up your manuscript to return to you, together with the enclosed critical assessment. It has taken far longer than expected due to the fact that at 350,000 words it is more than twice the 150,000 paid for, and I would be delighted to receive a further cheque for the second half.

  It is a very interesting work, but has some major problems to overcome in order to render it more appealing to an editor – and indeed, to a reader – foremost among them that it is too long for one novel and should be divided into two as indicated in my critique.

  You will also find that by creating chapters and indenting the first word of each new paragraph, you will make a world of difference to its appearance.

  For a thriller, it’s not really very thrilling, is it? And I don’t find all those nubile twenty-somethings throwing themselves into bed with your hero, Conrad Kravatsky, very convincing, since you describe him as a sixty-year-old balding accountant with a rather – dare I say it? – bland personality and a strong interest in golf. And what did you mean by asking me if you should increase the romantic element? There is no romantic element.

  As to the alien abduction on page 545, I think that is a definite mistake, as are the passages of rather low Carry-On-style comedy involving foreign nationals that occur randomly from time to time, but basically it is the sheer length of the thing as it stands that is rather too much, so that by page 500 I was losing the will to live. I sincerely think that your readers will prefer something shorter, especially if they are slow readers and have to support the weight of the book for any time, and also you might like to consider the publisher, who may well feel that the brilliance of your work does not quite justify the enormous expense of producing such a huge volume.