Alex offers her his arm to lean on as she makes her way to the stairs. She does her best to ignore the jolt of electricity that shoots up her hand when she leans on him. She is starting to wonder if he is, in fact, radioactive, and that’s why there seems to be so much electricity around him? If those two things are even related.
She’s never been much for the sciences. Probably best not to think about it too hard.
Chapter Ten
From: Alex Maxwell
To: Jess Martin
Subject: Your feedback
Jess,
Thank you so much for the detail and attention with which you read my novel. If anything I say in this email seems less than grateful, I apologise in advance. I am genuinely impressed with, even touched by, the care you took. (As well as intrigued and somewhat amused by the colour coding.)
However, I must disagree with several of your observations. The women are not justthere in the background. They play an important role, even if they don’t narrateper se.
The scenes you have inserted, even allowing for the fact that they are first drafts, do not work for meas either a writer or a critical reader of the novel as a whole.
As for the repetitions you suggest may grate on a certain kind of reader, they are what’s known asanaphoraandepistrophe– deliberate figures of speech to create a certain style.
I must also re-iterate that having all the passengers survive seems profoundly unserious, and something that belongs in a romcom novel with a cartoon cover (no offence intended) rather than in the kind of thoughtful literary fiction that my readers have come to expect from me.
Along the same lines, though I admit the jokes you’ve inserted do represent the right sort of dark humour for the story in question (and though, I further admit, they raised a smile with this reader), they are nonetheless inappropriate for this kind of work.
All best,
Alex
PS: I trust your ankle is healing well.
From: Jess Martin
To: Alex Maxwell
Subject: Your feedback
Hi Alex,
My ankle is doing much better, thank you. I appreciate both the peas and the RICE advice. The offending boots have been temporarily confined to the naughty step in the shoe cupboard to think about what they’ve done.
It really was a pleasure reading your novel – I wasn’t just saying that to make any constructive criticism more palatable.
I’m sorry that we disagree so much on so many fundamental elements of the book and on how we can work together to elevate it. How do you propose we move forward?
Best wishes,
Jess
From: Jess Martin
To: Alex Maxwell
Subject: Your arrogance
Alexander,
Obviously, I’m never going to send this, but just typing it is helpful to get it off my chest. Maybe it’s the writer in me – the writer that you clearly don’t think exists or has any value, but that’s your prerogative.
