fiction - brigits_flame - vestige

[hwango]

“Good evening, and welcome again to Words of Worth. I’m your host, Kevin Odell, and our guest tonight is world-famous author Wendell Rook.” Kevin has a lot of experience in front of a television camera, and his smiling façade is nearly flawless. Nearly. “Welcome to our show, Wendell.”

“Thank you, Kevin.” Wendell’s cheerful demeanor appears to be genuine.

“Let’s get right to the point,” says Kevin. “Wendell, you’ve written over a dozen best sellers in the last ten years alone. Your work includes amazing, timeless pieces of literature such as The Window of Beyond, and To Grasp the Edge of the Sky. Your fans number in the millions. And, of course, the movie adaptations of your The Final Hours trilogy each broke box office records all over the globe. And now your…latest work,” Kevin stumbles a bit, and the corner of his mouth twitches, “Timmyt eh Magic Teaspooon East a Whole Watermelon…is, according to many critics…probably the most disappointing and utterly loathsome book ever written.”

“That’s true,” says Wendell.

Kevin’s smile wavers.

“Well, then, I think I speak for millions of fans and readers when I ask - what happened?”

“Well, Kevin, first I’d like to thank you for mentioning To Grasp the Edges of the Sky, as it’s always been a personal favorite of mine, but it predates some of my biggest successes, and is therefore slightly less well known. But to answer your question…basically, I ran out of talent.”

“Really?” says Kevin. There is no incredulity in his response. It's all too easy to believe.

“Oh yes. I was born with some, and during my school years my teachers carefully nurtured it. By the time I graduated from college, I was positively brimming with the stuff. That’s why my first novel, The Crossroads of Fate, was such a remarkable success for a novice writer.”

“I see.”

“Talent alone isn’t enough, though, and over the years I added experience and dedication to my repertoire. But it was always the talent that made the books what they were, and eventually I just plain ran out of the stuff. Well, nearly. I keep the very last of it in this jar.”

Wendell removes a small jar from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. The lid proclaims that it once held strawberry jam, but currently it contains a few drops of shimmering golden liquid. It gleams magnificently under the harsh studio lights.

“So I gave up on using the experience and dedication, too. I thought I’d use them and the last of the talent in a few years to write a comeback novel, and try to win back some of the love and respect I lost with Timmyt. You know. After the rage has had a few years to cool down.”

Kevin is obviously having difficulty maintaining his composure.

“Yes, there are quite a lot of upset people right now,” he says. “In fact, I have here some comments that our viewers sent in about your…book.” Kevin gestures with a piece of paper, from which he then begins to read aloud.

“‘I only made it to page thirteen before I burned my copy,’ writes alicep93. ‘Why would you do this?’ wrote rook_fan_n1. ‘This book made me want to give up reading,’ says supermegabibliophile. And…and so on. Noted book critic Morris Sutherford is on record as saying ‘There is no law against writing such a book, and for that we can perhaps be grateful. Because when convicted of breaking that law, there is no sentence that could be carried out against Rook that would be severe enough to punish him adequately for the magnitude of his crime.’”

“Yeah, the book’s pretty bad,” says Wendell.

“‘Pretty bad?’” echoes Kevin. “It’s…it’s…” Words have clearly failed him.

“Have you read it?” asks Wendell.

“I made it about ten pages in and then I could no longer see through my tears, which I wept for the death of literature,” says Kevin as his professionalism deserts him for a moment.

“I can’t blame you.”

Kevin closes his eyes and takes several deep breaths before continuing.

“Some people think, based on what the title looks like it’s probably supposed to be, that this must be a children’s story. But the book is over a thousand pages long and contains some very adult material.”

“Indeed,” says Wendell.

“It also contains dozens if not hundreds of typographical errors, the most obvious of which are in the title. Were these intentional?”

“No, actually. Normally I have an editor that cleans that sort of thing up for me, but after reading the original manuscript, she quit. We brought in a replacement, and he quit. The third and fourth editors also quit. I believe the fifth is in a mental institution, and the sixth…well, we haven’t managed to find her yet. The publisher finally decided to go ahead and print it as it was, rather than try to find a seventh editor.”

“I’d like to…read a short passage,” Kevin says. The words are obviously a lie.

“I’d actually prefer it if you didn’t,” says Wendell.

“I can understand that,” Kevin says with a bitter little laugh, “but for those of our audience who think we might be understating how truly awful this book really is, I think we owe it to them to read a few lines. Ahem.”

‘He watch out the transparent window at a thing, using his eyes. They were outside. Blood already covered his hands from before then note: include murder scene. Thunder rumbled like a ___________, jostling each carefully placed knickknack on the mantelpiece above the fire palace…’

There was clearly more Kevin had intended to read, but he seemed unable to continue.

“Yes, that’s pretty representative,” says Wendell

“It seems as if the book shows not only the absence of talent, but that you seem to lack even a basic grasp of how to write a sentence, let alone a story. You left plenty of notes for yourself to back and add or change material, none of which appear to have been acted upon. Why…,” and here, Kevin finally breaks down. He weeps openly.

“Why? For the love of - why would you do this? Why not just stop writing? Why create this…this abomination! I loved your books! I LOVED THEM! And now I can’t even look at them anymore!”

Wendell laughs. At first, it is a phony, self-deprecating chuckle, but it quickly spirals out of control into diabolical cackling.

“I HAVE A THREE BOOK DEAL!” he crows in triumph. “I’m already working on the sequel! Ah ha ha HA HA HA! You pitiful fools! There is no escape for you! NO ESCAPE!”

Kevin collapses to the floor and cowers in terror, totally overwhelmed by the amount of pure evil radiating from his guest.

“First, I shall retcon Timmyt so he has been a vampire the whole time, trained from birth by a secret society of assassins to be the perfect double agent to infiltrate an elaborate government conspiracy controlled by time traveling aliens from a parallel universe, only to fall in love with the daughter of the leader of the rival group of assassins hired by the corrupt government agent sent to infiltrate the first group of assassins! The previous three books will all have been a dream! Then I shall insert a fictionalized counterpart of myself into the story, who will have written all of the books before that, thereby scouring all of the remaining redeeming quality from the entire body of my work! In fact, all that remains is to come up with an appropriate ending!”

Space battle? Timmyt robot instead of vampire?

Comments

[thorarosebird.livejournal.com]

"Blood already covered his hands from before then note: include murder scene"
<-- i lol'd. :D

This is really funny, hwango. I love how it slowly descends into something completely bonkers, what with the cackling and the Dark Lord routine Wendell suddenly gains at the end.

I did have two things to say critique-wise, and I hope you don't mind? The main one was the pacing - it felt like the conversation didn't move forward very much in the middle section and Kevin's bashing of the book wasn't as funny as it was in the beginning, so perhaps you can condense that down or somesuch. My other things was smaller: "Wendell’s smiling demeanor" <-- "demeanor" means bearing/body language, so "smiling body language" doesn't seem quite right. Perhaps you can say "Wendell's smile appears to be ..."

Anyway, hope you don't mind the comments! I really enjoyed reading your All-Stars entry and I hope you do well. :D (I'm sure you will, though!) Good luck!

[one-time-pad.livejournal.com]

Brilliant.
That is all.

[bluegerl.livejournal.com]

Teeheee Oh my goodness. The rotten stinker. Drags them all into his grasp with his other books, then gets himself a three book deal, and can write WHAT HE REALLY WANTS TO SEND OUT - MAD CRAP just to get his own back for having to write all those 'nice' books. teeheeeh love it!!!! And this is not the last book either..... hahahahahhaha

[belluminabyssus.livejournal.com]

I absolutely ADORE the concept of being able to run out of talent ... I've never seen that done before, and I loved the idea. I also lol'd at the actual book Wendell had written -- my friends and I make a point of reading horrid fanfiction/regular fiction, and that book looked exactly like what an internet troll might write for fanfic. It's so brilliant.

I do agree with Thora in the sense that it moves from normal to diabolic a little too quickly, but I completely got the gist of the story and think it was pretty damn hilarious.

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad it made you laugh. = )

By middle, do you mean the bit where Kevin reads the comments from the audience and the critic? I'm not sure which part you're suggesting I trim.

As for the "demeanor" issue, I can see where it might not fit for some usages of the word. It doesn't seem that unreasonable to me, but it's certainly an easy fix if I tweak this after voting (it seems tacky to make edits other than typos before then). I'll just swap the "smiling" and the "cheerful." "Smiling façade" and "cheerful demeanor" should both be fine.

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[hwango.livejournal.com]

I expect the third book will be a prequel, but the events it shows won't actually match up with the content of the other two. Also, it will be a different genre, printed in an annoying font, and pages will be set out of order. = )

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Regarding the jarring shift...um, it's a twist ending! Yeah, that's it. = )

Well, okay, only the very end is actually the meta self-consuming ending joke, and so that transition is a bit sudden. I think maybe I should have shown more hints of diabolical evil earlier on, rather than just blasé indifference up until that moment. What can I say - I'd mostly used up my ration of talent by the time I got that far.

But I'm glad it's still funny. = )

[thorarosebird.livejournal.com]

Yes that part, where they're talking about how far in they got. :) The host saying he only got ten pages in and wept for the death of literature is funny but it's right after three or four quotes from critics basically saying the same thing.

""Smiling façade" and "cheerful demeanor""
<-- Those seem to be much better! :)