The Storymaker (Part Four)

© 2012 David Jasmin-Green

'Your XYZ story is now live,' a familiar pop-up message informed Gordon a few seconds after he posted the final chapter of The Venusian Project. Quickly he flicked through all nine chapters to ensure that everything was ship shape and Bristol fashion and his work was presented neatly. He had to be quick because a little while ago a rare idea for a new story had popped into his head and he was eager to jot down a few notes. Before he did that, though, he needed to go and see what was bugging his missus – though he had barely listened to her tirade earlier on it was obvious that she had a bee in her bonnet over something. Maybe he should make her a nice cup of tea, he pondered, and maybe he needed to nip into town, because he had a sneaking feeling that Sally Anne's birthday and their wedding anniversary were only a couple of weeks away.

Gordon opened the bottom drawer of his desk, reached under a stack of old notebooks and loose papers and pulled out a can of Stella Artois, which in his opinion was the finest lager the world had ever known. It was a celebratory tradition, he told himself, nothing more, it was a special treat that he only allowed himself upon the completion of a major project. He opened the can and took a long, deliciously refreshing drink. He only kept a single can in the house so that he wouldn't be tempted to cheat, because when it came to alcohol he was as weak as a baby.....

When he reached the bottom of the final page of The Venusian Project and the familiar 'The End' that he couldn't resist typing at the conclusion of all of his stories Gordon realised that he had received a comment. Already. But what was it doing at the culmination of the entire piece rather than at the end of the first chapter, which was surely the logical thing to read first?

Even a short piece took a few minutes to read and absorb, he mused. The Venusian Project was a smidgen over twenty two thousand words long, and no one could read that quickly. Excepting God, of course, and maybe the devil. And Buffalo fucking Mozzarella. “Bastard!” Gordon roared, forgetting all about his troubled wife. “The sickening little tit must have been sitting by his computer for hours, days even, waiting for me to post my latest bag of goodies so that he can fire his wicked, predetermined arrows at it, which more or less proves what I've suspected all along.”

“A delightful piece of work, Storyteller,” the message began, and the shock immediately dissipated Gordon's fury. “Absolutely brilliant. You actually paid heed to my suggestions this time, and the result is, well, I can't easily put what's struggling to escape from my mind and buzz through my typing fingers into words, which is a failing I rarely experience. This is a tremendous story, my friend, and it's exceptionally well told. I just hope you think it was worth the Herculean toil you went through to compose it.” Gordon was flabbergasted, and he read on as quickly as he could, desperate to see what else the Buffalo had to say.

“Your dialogue is brilliant, I really can't fault it, and your characters are varied and entirely believable. Including the non-humans, which is a difficult stunt indeed for an earthbound mortal to pull off anywhere near convincingly. You've done an excellent job with the flora and fauna of Venus too this time around, which fills my heart with more joy than you could possibly imagine. As for your own imagination, that has improved beyond recognition since I selected you as my one and only pupil and took you under my protective wings. You did a whole lot better than I thought you were capable of at the beginning of your tuition, and that makes all of my hard work worthwhile. You're an A plus student now, Storymaker, you've earned your stripes, so lie back and enjoy the warming sunshine of my approval, because I don't give such praise very often.

I guess you thought I was picking on you; I guess you thought I was bullying you, heaven forbid, and I dare say you probably believed that I harboured an intense hatred of you for some undisclosed reason, but nothing could be further from the truth. That was all part of my cunning plan, it was part of a shady ploy that I was unable to reveal until this much anticipated moment. Sure, I picked flies out of your work, but though you couldn't see it at that stage of your evolution they were constructive flies, every last one of them. I dismantled your stories syllable by syllable and I insisted that you sifted through the resulting debris, picked out the most resilient chunks of verbal masonry and rebuilt your visions more powerfully. That was because I genuinely thought you were worth my time and effort, it was because I felt it in my bones that you were capable of tremendous improvement. When the Japanese unwittingly break a piece of fine pottery they repair it most carefully and fill in the cracks with gold, because they consider something that has been damaged and lovingly repaired as an incomparably worthy thing.

I knew you had the gumption to make your stories more believable, more complete, if I harried you relentlessly enough. Rather mercilessly I rubbed in the implication that I thought your work wasn't particularly good - I admit every wicked twist and turn – but that was because I recognised that you alone, out of the fifteen thousand plus writers on this site, some of them admittedly very talented, possessed the spark of what it takes to become truly awesome. You are destined to become one of the most influential talents of the twenty first century, I could see that from the very start, but nevertheless you needed guidance, you needed lifting onto the wisest possible track and facing in the correct direction, otherwise you would never have reached your destination, otherwise your seed would have fallen onto stony ground and produced a few clumps of tatty weeds unworthy of the scrutiny of even the cruddiest literary connoisseur.

The sky's the limit now, Storymaker, really it is. It's time, I suppose, for me to cast aside my cloak of mystery and reveal my true colours. My real name is Andre Griffon-Smythe. I and Eleanor, my dear wife, run Asylum Thirteen, a fairly new Sci-fi publishing house with offices in London, New York, Paris, and in a few months Los Angeles and Berlin – I'm sure you've heard of us. I'm offering you a five book deal, starting with The Venusian Project which, I believe, should be published as an anthology along with half a dozen or so of your finer short stories. With my help your work has become very hard to beat. It's radical, it's different, it's brand spanking new - it is, in fact, amongst the best Science fiction ever written, and I intend to prove that to the world. The most difficult part of my job right now, though, is proving it to you.....

Your contract is in the post, Gordon. Yes, I know your real name – you're Gordon Ashcroft of number blah blah blah Rhubarb Avenue, Whatyacallit, Derbyshire. You don't think I'd have gone to all this trouble without getting to know my target, do you? And you don't think I'd reveal your full address online.

I have an interview lined up for you on Central Television's 'This Morning' in sunny Birmingham some time during the next couple of weeks (the exact date and time is yet to be confirmed), and the BBC is planning a fly-on-the-wall documentary about your majestic rise to fame. You're going to be inundated with calls from a flock of researchers pretty soon, but I've asked them to leave you well alone for the next few days to give you a chance to absorb the shock.

Think of the excitement your rags to riches story will generate, my friend. A post-depressive, long term unemployed Mr. Nobody takes up writing as a hobby to fill his long, lonely, agonising days. He joins an online writers' site in search of constructive criticism from fellow scribblers, only to be harried by the apparently vicious ravings of a complete maniac, an out and out cad who rips the shit out of his work non-stop for months on end. And then the bastard suddenly unmasks himself, revealing that he's a big, bad-ass publisher and he's been cunningly nurturing an up and coming genius all along.

What a fantastic story! The publicity campaign is already well under way. It's cost a small fortune already, mind, but I'm no fool, I'm confident that it's a sound investment. You're going to be big star, my boy, you're going to be an absolute phenomenon. I reckon the internet sales of The Venusian Project alone will top five million in the first six months, considerably more with a bit of luck. You're going to become a very rich man very quickly, Storymaker, and I of course, shall reap a nice, fat percentage of your record breaking harvest. I'm sure you won't begrudge me that, though, I think I've bloody well earned it.”