Diana, who’s been reading my first novel in typescript for, oh, decades, and thinks it brilliant, was sitting by the Tea Pot across the road and waved me over. I was going for the paper. On the way back I stopped. “I’ve started reading your book. It’s brilliant.” “It’s not my book.” She was eschewing schizophrenia on the basis of the chairs. “John liked that story too,” about somebody metamorphosing into a chair and being beaten up but, unlike the Kafka, metamorphosing back. “Prison John.”
Later she asked me to change a light bulb. I saw she was near the beginning of the book where my story was nowhere near. I apprised her of the fact the book was an anthology, that there were twenty-five other authors. She reads with the help of a magnifying glass and wanted to know where was my story. I wouldn’t tell her. I encouraged her to write down what she thought of the book whereupon I’d blog it.
Much later she mounted the stairs to leave a card indicating she’d found my story and I’d gone from brilliant to genius. Brilliant.
John's space 