Chapter 19

Michel returned as Sarah finished the last page. “Where do you want me to put these?” Michel asked, holding up the bags.

“Put the milk in the ‘fridge. Put the rest on the cupboard, and I’ll put it up.”

Michel complied, and asked as he returned, “You finish it?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty good. Good exposition. I learned a lot in this chapter. What are you going to do with the next chapter?”

“I think it’ll be the first chapter of his book.”

“Are you going to just have parts of his novel, or are you planning to have a novel within a novel?”

“I was thinking novel within novel. I think it would be cruel to tease people with only excerpts.”

“I could see that. But wouldn’t putting excerpts of his novel in your novel break up the action?”

“Sure. I think it will create dramatic tension -- you have to read this chapter from his novel to understand what is going on in his head, but reading it causes you to have to wait for the next series of actions from the “real” characters.”

“Won’t that draw attention to the fact that they aren’t real people?”

“I don’t know. Probably. What’s wrong with that? They’re not real people.”
“
But people like to think of the characters as real.”

“Maybe, but they’re not going to get it from my novel.”

“You may not have too many people reading it.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll create my own audience. Why would people want to read the same expected things every time? This will be unexpected, fresh and new. Why wouldn’t people want to read something like that?”

“We think a lot of ourselves don’t we?” Sarah said.

“I’m not saying I’ll be able to pull it off like I imagine it. But I think the idea is a good one.”

“I can’t argue with that. But you’re already marginalizing your audience with the gay main characters... why would you want to do it even more with this structure?”

“It’s an experimental structure. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing...”

“Look, if you don’t like it, say so...”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I was thinking of marketability...”

“I’m not worried about marketability. You’re thinking of vertical sales, where the book makes a ton of money right away, but then peters off into oblivion. I’m thinking of horizontal sales, where I sell a few thousand this year, then a few thousand the next year, and I sell a steady number of books for decades - or even have the sale of my book go up over the years...”

“Great literature does that. Hemingway and Faulkner do that. Do you really think this novel is that caliber of a story?”

“That’s the plan.”

“You’re delirious.”

“No, I’m dreaming big. There’s a difference.”