• Contemporaneous: A Living Novel

    Contemporaneous: Chapter 19

    19.   Arriving at work the next day, I feel a disquiet. My workmates still chat the way they always do, but I pick up a glance here, a lowering of the voice there, a sense of expectation – when you’re somewhere long enough, you pick up the rhythm of the place, as well as any disruption, no matter how small. I might’ve been pre-armed with the script that this was going to happen, and I’d decided to bluster my way through it – or maybe that was the way I was told to play it. But I can’t now. Fuck the script. This is an affront, even if it…

  • Contemporaneous: A Living Novel

    Contemporaneous: Chapters 16 – 17

    16.   I leave Melody’s manuscript sitting there in my email, festering like … and I can’t come up with metaphor or simile that will illustrate what a festering, diseased, terminal clusterfuck it is, so I’ll just say that it sat there in my email, festering like only her manuscript could. Despite my disdain, I still want to get the best out of it and out of Melody, so I need to work out a strategy. But I’m frazzled now. And feel an edge, like Melody’s dismissal isn’t the indifferent vainglory of some cocky young writer, but divine condemnation that exemplifies my own failures. There are other manuscript on my…