Written From the Heart

by Trisha Ashley

  I nearly asked them if they thought that Charles Dickens was just writing for art’s sake, or whether he might possibly have had one eye on the market and the other on the money, but I didn’t want to lose my life over it and honestly some of them were starting to give me the evil eye in a very Wicker Man kind of way, though that might have been the fluorescent strip lighting. And just when did some novelists start going all precious about what they were writing, as if we weren’t all ladling different bits of stew out of the same pot and trying to live on it?

  But of course they were all writing Great Literary Novels that the public would jump on with glad cries because they were so brilliant, and the inference was that I was only a hack capable of writing cheap little potboilers, and never read anything more literary than Mills & Boon, because they’d pre-categorized me as a romantic novelist, who of course are all (a) the same and (b) bad.

  So I said, ‘Have any of you actually read one of my novels?’ None of them had, or any of ‘that kind of thing’.

  I tell you, it was a bundle of laughs all the way through, and except for needing the money I would have left at coffee time because I felt I was beating against a closed door, not to mention being patronized by a lot of amateurs.

  And to top it all, Luella came back in, although she didn’t say anything, so I don’t know what for except to scupper any faint empathy that might have sneaked into the group in her absence.

  When I looked at my watch to see how far time had dragged its weary carcass, she said: ‘Is that it, then?’

  Then two people said they had to dash for the bus and just left, so there was no vote of thanks at the end. Everyone else straggled out and Luella sighed and said I might as well follow her to the front desk and she would pay me, so I did, though she clearly didn’t think I was worth it and that she was being done.

  I took the money – goodness knows, I’d worked for it – and decided I was never ever going back there even if they offered to pay me double and hang banners out.

  I didn’t think they would ask me anyway because I was clearly not what they had in mind. Maybe they should have checked with Little Ms Assertive from Women For Intellectual Advancement; she’d have put them right.

  Eight

  Vintage Chic

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Ms Pucklington,

  No, I am sure we have never met since I am an invalid and rarely leave my home – indeed I discourage all personal callers since I need absolute quiet for my nerves. So although it is most kind of you to offer to call and discuss the more esoteric aspects of your novel in person with me, you can see it is quite impossible.

  Also, I am afraid you have confused me with the novelist Tina Devino, who is a distant family relation. (I am told that her novels are absolutely brilliant!)

  It is certainly very surprising that your first novel, Slapping the Leather, was not snapped up by a publisher, so that you had to print it yourself, especially in view of the success your non-fiction book on the history of sex and masochism had earlier achieved, and I will look forward to reading your new novel, Beyond Rubber, to see if I can put my finger on any problems that may be holding you back from acceptance.

  If you wish to proceed, please post the manuscript to me with a cheque for the full amount (made out to T. Devino) and include a stamped addressed envelope for its return.

  Yours sincerely,

  Tina Devino

  I saw Tube Man again on my next visit to Linny’s – the first time since we passed each other outside Miracle’s office – and we exchanged smiles. His dark eyes turned down at the outside corners and his smile made me want to cry … and my God, he was certainly Tube Man in more ways than one and I suddenly felt a yearning to have mine untied, or I would if they were tied, but you know what I mean. (This was unusual: I had never been able to see the point of children and, having been orphaned so early, the concept of motherhood was a foreign country to me.)

  Unfortunately, Tube Man was getting on as I was getting off, so surely that meant he must live in this area of London? Why hadn’t I seen him hanging out at Lemonia or any of the coffee shops or Russian tea rooms? And if I’d been in the possession of my senses I’d have got right back on the train with him!

  I wondered what he did for a living. ‘One thing’s for sure,’ I said to Linny, ‘he’s not a writer. Have you noticed how there aren’t any good-looking male writers, only female ones, though why they all have to be blonde beats me. But male writers are never really tasty, or if there are any I haven’t seen them yet.’

  ‘What about Martin Amis?’ she suggested.

  ‘What about him? He’s not ugly, but would you want to see him across the breakfast table?’

  Actually, the only stunningly attractive writer I could call to mind was Ted Hughes in his pre-grizzled days, when, going by the photos, he would have done it for me. Had I been born a few years earlier who knows what might have happened had our paths crossed? It would have had to have been pre-Plath, though, since I was programmed by my upbringing to leave married men well alone, on the strict understanding that hell would have a special place put by for me if I didn’t.

  But on second thoughts that would mean I’d be even older than I was, and I’d been thirty-five for so many years even I could see that the lie was straining at the bonds of credibility and, truthfully, I wasn’t so much the shady side as that dark spot in the corner that the sun never reaches.

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Ms Mendosa,

  Thank you for your recent enquiry. Yes, the Good Lord must have guided you to pick up that old copy of The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook with my address in it, while visiting your English friend in St Lucia. He moves in mysterious ways.

  Your novel sounds very interesting, based as it is on your deprived and brutal childhood in Cuba, but I am afraid that I cannot receive it through email, even as an attachment. I would imagine it would be much cheaper for you to approach one of the many agencies in the USA, but if you have definitely made your mind up that NOVELTINA is the agency for you, then perhaps I could simply send you the critique without returning your manuscript, thus saving you return postage.

  I am unable to glance at it first and give you an idea of its saleability, as you suggest, without payment.

  Should you wish to proceed, perhaps your bank could advise you on the correct way to forward the full fee to me at the same time as the manuscript.

  Yours sincerely,

  Tina Devino

  The day after I visited Linny was one of the Society For Women Writing Romance get-togethers in London, which I usually went to, though sometimes I sneaked off to meetings of the League of Romance Writers, the rival outfit, where I had several friends and where they would let anyone in on the door if they stumped up a few quid.

  I don’t know why there were two rival groups of romantic novelists. The reason for the schism went back to some argument lost in the mists of time, when apparently there had been such a heated discussion that it was practically drawn fountain pens at dawn and one faction flounced off to start up their own association, which I hadn’t realized until after I’d joined the SFWWR. Although we often attended the same literary events it could be a bit West Side Story sometimes, because we didn’t actually mix but eyed each other over our wine glasses from opposite ends of the room, while trying to guess whose party dress came from M&S and who had gone down the vintage chic route (usually me).

  Anyway, I arrived at the SFWWR meeting to find a lot more men there than usual, most of them looking a little weird, so I said to Freya Rample that perhaps romance was in the air, and were they all spouses and significant others?

  She said no, they’d had a sudden influx of male members due to amending the constitution at the last AGM so that Rule 14 now read: ‘All men applying to become members shall, if qualified for accept
ance (see Rule 13 of the Constitution of the SFWWR), henceforth be honorary women for the purposes of membership.’

  At this point I’m afraid that schoolgirl giggles got the better of me, and every time dear Freya’s puzzled and slightly enquiring gaze rested on me during the ensuing meeting they broke out again. Eventually I just had to leave early and go home before the stewed coffee and rich mixed biscuits.

  So I never actually got to talk to any of the honorary hermaphrodites, but they were probably mobbed at the end for their novelty value anyway, so I wouldn’t have got anywhere near them: several of the female members were much bigger than I am.

  Still, it gave me a future pleasure to look forward to.

  Truth is stranger than fiction.

  Nine

  Insalubrious

  Dear Tony,

  No, I don’t think there is any market for a book about the Devino family history, even if you threw in bogus Mafia connections and the Ice-cream Wars of the early years.

  You are really getting into this family research thing, aren’t you? Let me know if you find anything juicy as I might get some publicity out of it. And you could write the book just for yourself (and the family) to read, couldn’t you?

  Anyway, I hope you get this before you fly off to Italy on a pilgrimage to the village of our forefathers, from which our family was so brutally torn by poverty and expediency, as you rather graphically put it, because I distinctly remember Granny telling me once that it had been shrugged off the mountainside by nature years ago.

  With love to all the family,

  Tina

  Sergei had gone back to being abstracted, and Linny frankly had gone totally off the rails, all giggly and frenetic and eating way too many chocolates.

  Their expressions of concern for my career seemed to have been short-lived too, even when I told them about the day I finally phoned Miracle to ask what she thought of Dark, Passionate Earth, only to have her say casually: ‘Oh, I didn’t read it – Chrissy had a quick look and said it was the usual stuff, then sent it on to Salubrious.’

  So now I awaited the verdict from Tiger Tim. What if he wasn’t Suited? What if he asked for huge, impossible changes? What if he said the whole thing needed rewriting?

  Tertius had told Linny the previous week that if she didn’t lose a stone quickly he was going to divorce her, because it was important in his position for his wife to look elegant, and how could she look elegant when she’d got more spare tyres than Kwik-Fit? Also, he’d booked her in for laser treatment for her facial hair as a birthday present.

  Well, I did keep telling her about that, but she just said it was her Lebanese blood, and in hot countries it was thought quite sexy really, and anyway, she couldn’t stand the thought of having it lasered because she was sure it would hurt.

  I said, ‘Not as much as your husband divorcing you would; not even childbirth could hurt that much, though maybe having your nose hair waxed would run it a pretty close second. How are you going to lose the weight quickly?’

  ‘I’m going to restrict my diet to apples, crackers and Camembert and nothing else. Then I don’t have to worry about calories or carbs or anything.’

  ‘Don’t you think you might get pretty sick of apples, crackers and cheese?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said brightly, ‘but if I go off them, I’ll lose even more weight, won’t I?’

  I suppose it was no unhealthier than a lot of the diets touted about, and at least she wasn’t going to starve to death even if she stopped eating, as she was carrying enough body fat to keep her going for at least six months, if not longer, mostly around the middle, so she looked as if she was wearing one of those inflatable swimming rings under her clothes.

  She did already look a bit thinner when I visited her to see how the first laser treatment went, but she’d made an excuse and phoned up to postpone that, having lost her nerve.

  Then as we sat down there was this house-rocking subterranean thundering and I said to her, ‘Linny, I didn’t know the tube ran under your house. Funny I’ve never noticed it before, isn’t it?’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ she said, looking self-conscious, and that’s when I realized it was just abdominal rumblings, and I wondered whether Tershie would really prefer living with a thin bald camel to a plump sleek walrus.

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Ms Mendosa,

  Thank you for your manuscript, Voice of the Mangrove, and the bundle of notes. East Caribbean dollars are quite colourful, aren’t they? I don’t think my little bank in Shrimphaven had ever seen any before, and it took them ages to work out the exchange rate.

  I have now read your novel (which wasn’t easy, due to the ultra-thin paper and the fact that it was single-spaced, though I do understand about the weight being an issue when you are posting it from abroad).

  Yes, I can quite see that your life experience is just as valid as Isabel Allende’s, although I think your manuscript is reading rather too much like an autobiography at the moment.

  But I’m sure readers will sympathize with your heroine, Maria, as she struggles to better herself, even when at sixteen she marries that rich old American, Jerome, in order to escape Cuba.

  While I expect that the later episode set on Antigua – where on a complete impulse she suddenly pushes him down a blowhole and escapes into a new life with the insurance money – is entirely fictional, I think you will have to make poor Jerome a bit more than just fat and old in order to get your readers to feel that his demise was justified at this point.

  Apart from these minor quibbles, which I have expanded on at more length in the enclosed critique, I also wondered why you had chosen to write in English when your first language is so clearly Spanish.

  I am not saying that your English isn’t absolutely brilliant, considering, but there is quite a large market for novels in Spanish, and if it were a success then it would probably be translated later. Just a suggestion – I mean, it may be worth trying a Spanish version first.

  Anyway, I hope you find my critique helpful.

  With best wishes for your success,

  Tina Devino

  A Guardian review for Spring Breezes! It said it was a ‘subtle blend of gardening and eroticism’.

  Well, I do my best.

  I sent copies of it to Miracle, Tim the Suit and Libby Garnett, the Salubrious marketing person, just in case they missed it.

  Jackie’s daughter, Mel, who had been giving me the computer lessons (and also mouse-sitting when I was away), pointed out to me that compulsively visiting my book page on Amazon is not so much surfing as dabbling my feet in the smaller waves. So she showed me how to access Google and other search engines, where I found hundreds of mentions of me! OK, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but lots anyhow. Only it was just like opening Pandora’s box and I couldn’t resist checking all the time to see if anyone had said something new (and flattering) about me …

  On the Amazon site there were some new readers’ reviews of my books, and one woman said she and her husband had always been keen gardeners, but my novels had changed their lives, but she didn’t say whether for better or worse. Another one said she had now read all my novels and was indescribably appalled by my depraved and warped view of sweet innocent nature, though goodness knows there was nothing innocent about nature that I’d ever noticed. But apart from these two, all the reviews are unambiguously enthusiastic.

  My email address book was still pitifully small and it was mostly just Linny who filled my inbox, with the odd missive from Salubrious and Miracle. Mel said if I went on Facebook I would soon have lots of friends, but there are friends and friends, aren’t there?

  Mel’s definition of ‘friend’ seemed pretty loose to me – but then, her mother’s was even looser, so I suppose that wasn’t surprising. Mel was now writing a novel too, which she was reading to me in very short chapters, and I could see it was actually just a day-by-day description of
what it was like to live with an ageing upper-class hippie with a good accent and connections, a series of dodgy boyfriends, and just enough private income to keep you one tin of beans above the poverty line.

  Ten

  Hot Beds

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Ms Pucklington,

  What an interesting novel Beyond Rubber is! I feel I have learned so much, although I did become somewhat lost in one or two places, especially about the feather, and the role of the bicycle pump … so perhaps the general reader might also find these references a little baffling.

  However, I think you will find a publisher for this and your lack of success to date has simply been because you have been aiming at the wrong market.

  Instead of Mills & Boon you should try the publishers Red Hot Candy Press, since they are always gagging for this sort of thing and – a major point – do not require any plot whatsoever between erotic scenes, which will suit your excellent novel perfectly.

  Therefore I enclose my critique to enable you to add that final polish to your work, and a copy letter for you to send to Red Hot Candy Press together with your manuscript.

  I wish you all the best in successfully placing it.

  Best wishes,

  Tina Devino

  I was in the papers again: the Sun had an article about me! Well, it was about Sergei really, but it mentioned me.

  There was a very unflattering photo of him leaving the stage door of the Royal Ballet with his arm around Grigor, with the caption, ‘Is Sexy Sergei a Dancing Queen?’ Under it: ‘“Absolutely not!” says close friend Tina Devino, author of several sizzling sex ’n’ gardening novels.’

  When the journalist called me the day before for my comments, he promised to mention my books and so he had; the newspaper was also going to review Spring Breezes and offer a free copy to the first six readers who write in, so my profile is going up and up! Anyway, I was happy to set them straight about Sergei.