“But really,” he said quietly after the mirth subsided. “The plague was not the problem. In fact the publishers quite liked that part… some of them even said they thought the writing was… pretty good! And you know, they love misery, those bastards!… they always have! Most published novels are full of misery.”
“Mmm.”
“Like 1984!” Pierre piped up.
“That’s it, there’s been millions of books like that…”
“Ahh…
“Mmm.”
“No,” David brown continued, inspired by his audience of two. “I had a few publishers who weren’t worried about that at all.…”
“So… what went wrong?”
“Well, apart from the fact that they were only offering me a pittance… which I didn’t mind in the beginning…”
“What do you mean exactly – a pittance?”
“Well, by that stage I’d worked on it for… I don’t know, thirty years? And they were offering to print three thousand copies, at thirty bucks rrp… so all up ninety grand… and me, ten percent … so nine thousand dollars… max… that was the deal, and I had to give away my rights, everything, all gone… and if it didn’t take off pretty much immediately… for real dough for them… that was going to be that… after that, another novel in the bin!”
“Mmm”
“Right.”
“But I was still prepared to take that chance, three thousand copies out there was better than nothing… for any writer… and I didn’t care about the money at all (I was a bit concerned about the rights – I was always concerned about them, for sure). But in the end… yeah… I probably would have done it, no worries.”
“And when was that, Dave.”
“2012.”
“Okay…So… tell us, why didn’t you?”
David Brown smiled knowingly.
“The big problem, in fact in the end the only problem, was the guy I chose to be President of America!”
“Mmm.”
“Mmm”
“Talk about a shocker! The bloke I chose… huh… you wouldn’t believe it!”
There it was, a little laugh from David Brown, that rare thing.
“But I’ve got to say – I loved that character! That was the relief in the novel. And… I had so much fun with him! He was by far my favourite character in the whole novel. He ended up making this pitiful, phony renunciation… trying to pretend that he had some actual faith in God! It was so good! He was truly amazing, to me at least. And in the end, all his faults, they didn’t matter! The people loved him anyway… despite it all… and he finally came through a bit like Stirling will here.”
“Mmm.”
David Brown was fully animated now.
“Yep…” He eased himself down a cog. “My President was a great character – so good to write! You know, you are both writers… he was the classic flawed character! And we all know that flawed characters… and my bloke was seriously flawed… are so much more fun to write about than nice guys.”
“It’s true.”
“I can imagine.”
