How I Became a Famous Novelist Read Online Free
Author: Steve Hely
of a 20mm machine gun.
The eyes of Nick Boyle, who’d given me so much weapons-related entertainment, accused me of civilian weakness. He looked at me with revulsion, knowing I was unworthy to stand beside him in the crush of battle. He looked at me as though the best thing I could do was get the hell out of his way, so he could launch armor-piercing shells and win freedom for pantywaists who didn’t know what to do with it. Later, at some salty bar where war banners hung, he and his comrades would mutter grimly over bourbon and nod at each other’s bloodstained shirts.
I took a sip of Nepalese nut soda and turned the page.
Next was Josh Holt Cready. He was done up like a Civil War tintype. Clever enough, although it looked like those oldtimey photos lame families get at amusement parks. Josh Holt Cready was the precocious author of Manassas, a novel about a precocious author named Josh Holt Cready who retraces the steps of his ancestor who fought for the Union and died at Cold Harbor. Writing a novel about the Civil War is lazy. Brother against brother, battles in peach orchards and wheat fields, all those Biblical names, the poignant geography, Abe Lincolnand slavery hanging over everything. There’s so much built-in pathos, it writes itself.
But being lazy myself, I couldn’t fault Josh Holt Cready for cheating. So I didn’t hate him. Not even when his book first hit the best-seller list. Or when awestruck profiles of the fresh-out-of-Yale prodigy started cropping up everywhere. I certainly didn’t hate him when Entertainment Weekly ran a three-page feature and talked about him as though you were some kind of crazed nihilist if you failed to be floored by his brilliance. I didn’t hate him when his smarmy wide eyes stared out at Ann Curry on the Today show while I tried to get through a bowl of Froot Loops. And I didn’t hate him when he was briefly linked to Scarlett Johansson. Or when Sean Penn signed on to play Grant in the Manassas movie, to be directed by Tim Robbins.
In a burst of not-hatred I turned the page so fast I gave myself a paper cut.
There was Tim Drew, he of The Darwin Enigma, posed with his arms folded, in a natural history museum, in front of a Victorian phrenology model.
Turning the page again, I was confronted by a man of about sixty. In contrast to Nick Boyle, the skin on this face was stretched tight around the skull like a drumhead. Two thin lines of beard converged on his chin into a vulpine point. He was sitting on a park bench, shot in dreary overcast gray. Along his arms and legs, birds were perched. Different kinds and sizes of birds. One nestled in the lap of his corduroy pants.
The picture, like all those in the Best Sellers series, was identified only by the author’s name and his current best-selling book: “Preston Brooks, Kindness to Birds .” This was just too much, the old bastard sitting there with birds on his arms. Ismushed some fish rind on his face, threw him in the garbage, and said good-bye to Sree.
It’s likely I never would’ve thought about Preston Brooks again if it wasn’t for an e-mail that I read when I got back to my desk.
2
FROM: [email protected]
TO: undisclosed recipients
RE: announcing . . .
Hello all—
Sorry for the mass e-mail, but not sure when I’ll see some of you, and wanted to give you the news. It’s been a year and a half since I first met James. Back then I thought he was the only good thing about DC:) Last weekend we went up to the Shenandoah Valley, blankets, hot chocolate, lovely B&B. James played me a song on the piano (I know, almost too cheesy, right?) and—you know what’s coming—WE’RE GETTING MARRIED! So weird even to type it, but I’m giddy.
Okay, so planning time, guys—wedding is a year from April. I know it’s a long way off, but now you’re committed! That’s the only time we can get the whole James clan in from Australia. And it’ll be cherry blossoms, Virginia spring—the works! Plus all of
The eyes of Nick Boyle, who’d given me so much weapons-related entertainment, accused me of civilian weakness. He looked at me with revulsion, knowing I was unworthy to stand beside him in the crush of battle. He looked at me as though the best thing I could do was get the hell out of his way, so he could launch armor-piercing shells and win freedom for pantywaists who didn’t know what to do with it. Later, at some salty bar where war banners hung, he and his comrades would mutter grimly over bourbon and nod at each other’s bloodstained shirts.
I took a sip of Nepalese nut soda and turned the page.
Next was Josh Holt Cready. He was done up like a Civil War tintype. Clever enough, although it looked like those oldtimey photos lame families get at amusement parks. Josh Holt Cready was the precocious author of Manassas, a novel about a precocious author named Josh Holt Cready who retraces the steps of his ancestor who fought for the Union and died at Cold Harbor. Writing a novel about the Civil War is lazy. Brother against brother, battles in peach orchards and wheat fields, all those Biblical names, the poignant geography, Abe Lincolnand slavery hanging over everything. There’s so much built-in pathos, it writes itself.
But being lazy myself, I couldn’t fault Josh Holt Cready for cheating. So I didn’t hate him. Not even when his book first hit the best-seller list. Or when awestruck profiles of the fresh-out-of-Yale prodigy started cropping up everywhere. I certainly didn’t hate him when Entertainment Weekly ran a three-page feature and talked about him as though you were some kind of crazed nihilist if you failed to be floored by his brilliance. I didn’t hate him when his smarmy wide eyes stared out at Ann Curry on the Today show while I tried to get through a bowl of Froot Loops. And I didn’t hate him when he was briefly linked to Scarlett Johansson. Or when Sean Penn signed on to play Grant in the Manassas movie, to be directed by Tim Robbins.
In a burst of not-hatred I turned the page so fast I gave myself a paper cut.
There was Tim Drew, he of The Darwin Enigma, posed with his arms folded, in a natural history museum, in front of a Victorian phrenology model.
Turning the page again, I was confronted by a man of about sixty. In contrast to Nick Boyle, the skin on this face was stretched tight around the skull like a drumhead. Two thin lines of beard converged on his chin into a vulpine point. He was sitting on a park bench, shot in dreary overcast gray. Along his arms and legs, birds were perched. Different kinds and sizes of birds. One nestled in the lap of his corduroy pants.
The picture, like all those in the Best Sellers series, was identified only by the author’s name and his current best-selling book: “Preston Brooks, Kindness to Birds .” This was just too much, the old bastard sitting there with birds on his arms. Ismushed some fish rind on his face, threw him in the garbage, and said good-bye to Sree.
It’s likely I never would’ve thought about Preston Brooks again if it wasn’t for an e-mail that I read when I got back to my desk.
2
FROM: [email protected]
TO: undisclosed recipients
RE: announcing . . .
Hello all—
Sorry for the mass e-mail, but not sure when I’ll see some of you, and wanted to give you the news. It’s been a year and a half since I first met James. Back then I thought he was the only good thing about DC:) Last weekend we went up to the Shenandoah Valley, blankets, hot chocolate, lovely B&B. James played me a song on the piano (I know, almost too cheesy, right?) and—you know what’s coming—WE’RE GETTING MARRIED! So weird even to type it, but I’m giddy.
Okay, so planning time, guys—wedding is a year from April. I know it’s a long way off, but now you’re committed! That’s the only time we can get the whole James clan in from Australia. And it’ll be cherry blossoms, Virginia spring—the works! Plus all of
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