by Dean James
CHAPTER SIX
Later that same evening, when I had finally gained the dubious refuge of my hideous bedroom, I settled down to read through the manuscripts I had been assigned to critique. They were not an especially prepossessing lot, as I had discovered. There were nine in all, and out of the batch one was very promising, and two or three had problems that were fixable, if their authors were willing to listen to constructive criticism. But the rest—well, the rest were ample evidence of what Alexander Pope wrote: “Hope springs eternal...”
The hours slipped by as I worked. The good ones had been easy enough to critique, as is usually the case. The others were much more problematic, at least from my point of view. How could I address the manifest problems in any constructive way without discouraging the authors? Some—and here I was thinking of curmudgeonly Dexter Harbaugh— would no doubt revel in the chance to say nasty things, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, no matter how tempted I might be. It would definitely be easier to ridicule than to try to instruct, but the instinct to teach was too ingrained in me, though it had been awhile since I had been active in the role of teacher. Thanks to various circumstances—not the least of which was the whole vampire thing—I had been able to give up teaching rather early in my career and focus instead on writing.
I sat and glared at one of the manuscripts on the desk and front of me. It had been every bit as dire as I had been warned it would be. Earlier in the evening, Isabella Veryan had caught me alone for a moment amid the group.
“Simon,” she said, for by that time we had progressed to first names—the more sherry she imbibed the more casual she became, it seemed—“a word of warning, dear boy.” With her head cocked to one side and her gaze turning glassy from the sherry, she resembled nothing so much as a slightly tipsy parrot.
“Yes, Isabella, what is it?” I prompted when she fell silent
“What?” She forced herself to focus. “Oh, yes, a warning—definitely a warning is in order.” Her diction was as precise as ever. “Since you’re the new chappie here, no doubt Hermione has saddled you with the albatross.” She giggled, then covered her mouth with her free hand. “Oh, dear, I really shouldn’t say such things.”
“What albatross would that be, Isabella?” I asked, hiding a smile.
“Bloody Norah’s bloody book,” she hissed, peering around as if fearing to be overheard. “It is singularly without merit, the most sick-making combination of utter tripe and bloody nonsense you’ll ever hope to read.”
“Well, thank you for the warning,” I said slowly, watching her, fearing that she might tip over, from the way she had begun to sway back and forth.
“Not at all, dear boy, not at all. You are most welcome.” She leaned in closer to me, and I drew in a breath rich with the fumes of Jerez. “Just wanted to let you know, don’t worry about sparing Norah’s feelings when you critique the bloody thing.” She paused to cover her mouth as she belched discreetly. “Woman hasn’t got a sensitive bone in her whole body, so it won’t matter if you savage her. With all her millions, what does she care?”
After that, Miss Veryan had tottered away, leaving me puzzled in my corner of the room. What, besides apparently sheer malice, had been the point of that little conversation? Could Norah Tattersall’s book really be that bad?
Now, bleary-eyed at four in the morning, I knew Isabella hadn’t been exaggerating. Norah Tattersall’s manuscript was, without doubt, the single worst piece of utter nothingness I had ever read in my life. If anything, Isabella had been kind in her assessment. If Norah had ever had an original thought in her life, it had died long ago for lack of companionship. Everything in her book was derivative, and, even worse, derivative of books that weren’t that good at the outset.
The subjects and verbs of most of the sentences (at least, those sentences which actually had subjects and verbs) agreed—I’d have to give her that much. But beyond that, the writing was just plain god-awful. Next to Norah, a writer like James Corbett seemed Nobel Prize material.
To think that the woman had been working on this same book, year after year after year—well, it really didn’t bear contemplation. Could someone be that blind? That stupid? That masochistic? When I had seen her earlier, in interaction with George Austen-Hare and Isabella Veryan, she had certainly seemed sharper than this manuscript evinced. But, as I well knew, when it came to writing, a person could be very different on paper from how she appeared in the flesh.
I shook my head in a vain attempt to rid it of some of Norah’s dreadful prose. She had described one character as “a man with a face that could stop a clock, but not just any clock, he could probably have stopped Big Ben he was so ugly, but women nevertheless found something attractive about him, like he was one of those men you see on the telly selling something to bored housewives in Clapham who have nothing better to do.”
And that was one of the good sentences.
Faced with evaluating something this dreadful, I regretted ever having agreed to take part in this conference in the first place. Not that, as I recalled, I had had much choice about participating. Hurricane Hermione had swept me along in her path, and now I had to sort through the mess. I sighed and picked up a pen. What on earth could I say to this woman about her wretched manuscript? Was there any bit of criticism to which she would pay the slightest bit of attention?
I doubted it. If she had persisted this long, rewriting this drivel over and over again for years, she was obviously proof against any kind of criticism, constructive or destructive, for that matter.
After pondering it for a few minutes longer, I finally gave up without writing anything on her evaluation form. Perhaps I’d come up with something by the time I had to meet with her to discuss the manuscript. I shuddered at the thought. How could I ever look the woman in the face again after having read this mess of pottage?
“Still awake, Simon?”
Giles’s voice, heavy with sleep, jerked me out of my reverie. I looked up from the desk, turning my head toward the sound of his voice. He was leaning against the door leading from my bedroom into his.
“Giles,” I said, my voice deceptively mild, “why are you standing there naked?”
In the dim light of the reading lamp, the only illumination in the room, I could see his smile—and pretty much everything else, including the dragon tattoo that covers a goodly portion of his back, one arm and shoulder, and his chest. Need I say that his mother has no idea he has a tattoo, or else she’d be pushing up daisies in the churchyard at St Athelwold’s in Snupperton Mumsley?
“I always sleep this way, Simon,” Giles said, reaching down to scratch himself in what I’m sure he thought was a provocative manner. The dragon stretched in a sinuous movement.
“Giles,” I said, this time with a peremptory note in my voice, “what have I told you about such behavior?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand, because he knew it wouldn’t wash with me. “Really, Simon, you are the absolute limit sometimes!” He turned and pulled the door shut behind him.
Laughing quietly, I turned off the light and sought my own bed.
Some three hours later, I awoke, feeling much refreshed. Thankfully, vampires require little sleep, and I can even go several days without any, but I tend to start looking a bit haggard without it. I dislike looking haggard.
A clock in the hallway had just chimed seven-thirty when I finished dressing. I downed my morning pill, then strode across the room to open Giles’s door and peek inside. He was sound asleep, which was just as well. He is excellent company most of the time, and he’s most efficient at his job, but one can occasionally have too much of a good thing.
Downstairs there were quite a number of people already milling about, heading for the dining hall. I say hall rather than room, because it was a very large chamber, capable of seating about a hundred people. Now there were only about a dozen, among whom Lady Hermione, thankfully, did not number. It was too early for an assault on my eardrums.
I helped m
yself to small portions of eggs, bacon, and toast from the sideboard and found a seat. Vampires don’t require much in the way of food as sustenance, but breakfast has always been my favorite meal. I still enjoy the sensuousness of eating, and the cook at Kinsale House had provided fluffy scrambled eggs and bacon cooked just the way I like it. Add to that toast laden with butter and homemade black-currant jam, and I was as near to heaven as a vampire can get. I also have to admit to enjoying the fact that I won’t gain any weight, no matter what I consume. Hateful, isn’t it?
As I slowly savored and consumed my rather meager helpings, I chatted with the woman sitting to my left. She confided shyly that she was an aspiring writer of historical romance novels, and when I responded with interest rather than disdain, she blossomed, telling me about her work. Hers, as it turned out, was the best manuscript in the group I had been asked to evaluate, and I told her how much promise I thought it had. We spent a happy half hour talking about romance fiction in general, and hers in particular, and she quite won me over when she mentioned that yours truly, in my guise of Daphne Deepwood, was one of her favorite writers.
This pleasant interlude came to an abrupt halt with the appearance of Lady Hermione in the dining hall. Her voice preceded her, naturally. I think the woman could easily be heard over a heavy metal rock group at its loudest. I shuddered and shrank back against my chair.
Rather quickly—but politely, I hoped—I excused myself from my breakfast companion and made my escape before Lady Hermione could approach me. She had a certain gleam in her eye when she espied me at the table, but fortunately for me, one of the conference attendees claimed her attention, and I got out of there like the proverbial bat out of hell.
And ran right smack-dab into Dorinda, knocking her flat on her plagiarizing posterior.
CHAPTER SEVEN
If one were going to be literally correct, Dorinda wasn’t a plagiarist. She was an impostor, however, who lay stunned on the floor while I loomed over her.
Let me amend that to stunned and furious.
She recovered quickly. “Why don’t you watch the hell where you’re going, you big oaf!” She was sitting up and describing me and my ancestry with a string of invective as fluent as it was repetitive.
“I do beg your pardon,” I said, my tone as cool as I could manage as I extended a hand to help her up. She pulled hard at me, as if trying to jerk me down onto the floor, but I easily countered that and had her up on her feet before she realized what was happening. She did not appear in the least grateful.
“Apology accepted,” she said grudgingly.
“Thank you,” I responded. Having to apologize to her for any reason irked me considerably, because I felt I was being done the far more grievous wrong. Her very presence here offended me. But I couldn’t address that just yet.
“I thought I might attend your session this morning,” I said in as placatory a tone as I could manage, “because I’m very curious to hear what you have to say about writing mysteries with a hard-boiled female sleuth.”
“I’m sure you’ll learn something,” she said coolly as she dusted off her slacks. “This is my first writers’ conference, but I feel that I have a lot to offer. My work has been so highly praised that I feel it incumbent upon me to pass along something of benefit to the wanna-bes.”
Good grief, she had nerve! I itched to throttle her on the spot. If I still had blood that could boil, this would do it. The thought that she might be going around masquerading as Dorinda, being this patronizing and conceited, infuriated me.
Dorinda continued, not having noticed the scowl on my face. “My books are transforming the genre, though I have to say, I don’t really consider myself a mystery writer.” Oh, the scorn that dripped from her voice as she spoke that word! “I read two or three mysteries before I started writing, and I realized that I could easily write something better and much more serious, even though I do use some of the conventions of the form.”
I forced myself to take a step back from her. Otherwise, I was afraid that I might do something violent. What a load of pretentious tripe! This woman had to be stopped, and soon. I might have to sacrifice my anonymity to do it but I couldn’t allow her go around spouting such stupidity and besmirching my good name, as it were, as she did so.
“I’m sure I’ll learn something from your talk,” I said, though it was a wonder she could understand me, my teeth were clamped so hard together.
She smiled knowingly at me, then swept past me on her way into the dining room.
I stood there for a moment, fuming, trying hard to get a handle on my temper. I might end up smashing something—though that would in many ways be a mercy, considering the extreme tackiness of some of the so-called objets d’art gracing the halls of Kinsale House. That collection of garishly painted figures of the royal family on a nearby table might do for a start.
Had Giles not appeared just then, one or more of those ugly little statues might have been shattered. “Simon!” he said, coming up to me. “What’s gotten your knickers in such a twist? You should see the expression on your face!”
Tersely I explained. Giles whistled. “What a cow! What are we going to do?”
“I’m going to that session and try to keep myself under control,” I said, “and I have an assignment for you. I want you to cozy up to Lady Hermione’s assistant, Mary Monkley, and find out what you can about this fake Dorinda. See if you can get a look, somehow, at any correspondence Lady Hermione might have exchanged with her. Get an address or something, if you can. I want to know who this woman is.”
Giles sighed. “I think I’d rather go stake myself out on an anthill than have to chat up that little mouse. She’ll probably faint when I get anywhere near her! ”
“I think you underestimate your abilities to charm ladies of a certain age, Giles. Just bat those thick eyelashes of yours at her a few times and speak to her soothingly in that plummy voice, and you’ll have her cooing in no time, no matter how timid she is.”
He did not seem to appreciate the levity in my tone. “If you keep asking me to do such things, Simon, I’ll have to ask for a rise in salary.” He paused for a moment. “Or perhaps I’ll have to insist on certain fringe benefits.”
“Just do it,” I said, ignoring the lascivious twist of his lips. “I’ll expect results from you before the morning is over.”
“Yes, sir!” Giles saluted and clicked his heels together. “Would you mind if I had some breakfast first?”
I waved him away, and he pretended to stalk off. Chuckling, my good humor restored, I headed upstairs to collect from my bedroom what I would need for the morning sessions.
Ten minutes later I was downstairs again, finding a seat in the back of the room where the fake Dorinda was scheduled to speak. As I waited, various conference attendees wandered in and sat down, some of them chatting, others opening notebooks and preparing to write down whatever words of wisdom Dorinda would have to offer.
Dorinda finally appeared, only about five minutes late. She assumed a position in the front of the small sitting room, which had been adapted for conference use by the addition of about twenty chairs arranged in several short rows. Dorinda stood with her back to a magnificent marble fireplace, fiddling with a sheaf of notes, which she placed on the lectern in front of her.
She did nothing to introduce herself, other than to mention her name and a couple of the titles of the books she had written. I began to seethe. This was going to be every bit as trying as I had suspected.
It quickly got worse.
“I don’t write mysteries,” Dorinda announced. “I write novels in which unexplained deaths occur, and someone—namely, my heroine—has to figure out what happened. Because of that, I’ve been branded a mystery writer, and even my publisher puts the phrase ‘a novel of suspense’ on the covers of my books.” She paused dramatically. “But what I write is serious fiction that just happens to be about crime and murder.”
A hand shot up in the front row before she could
expound further.
“Yes?” Dorinda said, her tone icy.
“Does this mean you’re not going to tell us how to write a mystery novel?”
“If you’ll be patient and listen to what I have to say,” Dorinda replied, “you’ll find out how to write novels. Just sit tight, and listen.”
There was a bit of muttering after that comment, and not all of it came from me. Being rude to your audience isn’t the best way to begin a lecture. Dorinda was digging the hole deeper and deeper every time she opened her mouth, and I was looking forward to pushing her into it and piling the dirt on top of her.
Dorinda stared down at her notes for a moment, then looked up and addressed her audience again. “No doubt you’ve all read my books, and you may have thought you knew what they were about. But now I’m going to analyze them for you and explain what was really going on in these books. I’m certain you’ll understand better, once I’ve used the techniques of textual criticism on my work, and you’ll see how what many have mistakenly identified as genre fiction is really something else entirely.”
For a moment, I thought I might be trapped in an alternate universe. I had written what I thought were some darn good mysteries, what I thought were more than the garden variety whodunit. But the pretentious bullshit this fake Dorinda was spouting was nothing more than that: bullshit. Maybe this was what other writers experienced when they read articles or heard papers given on their work. On one level, it was fascinating to hear the “author’s” interpretation of the work. But since I knew she hadn’t written one single word of the books she was dissecting, it was plain old bullshit.
I stood it for as long as I could, listening to her rambling on and on about tropes and themes and other such literary folderol, and finally my temper got the better of me.
I stood up and interrupted her in full spate. “This is absolute nonsense, and you know it!”