"Maniacal Bent..."

I hear a screech of tyres outside my house and look out of the bedroom window to see Sid, my agent, pulling up in his Beetle like something out of Grand Theft Auto. He hits the kerb with a front wheel and bounces up onto the pavement before jerking to a stop.

I get in the passenger side. “Just because you couldn’t afford a Porsche it’s not going to stop you driving like you could?”

“Perhaps the brakes could do with a tune up,” he muses, grinding the gears and scraping the underside of the chassis as we rejoin the road.

“You are sober, I hope? Best to check.”

“Sober and excited,” he says. “People have heard about you, Christopher. Word has spread. If Harper want to keep dragging their heels then we’ll show them we’ve got other options.”

“Sounds good.”

“Clearly their plan is to wait and see if there’s an audience before signing you on for a second book.”

“Clearly.”

“Well, rather than affording them the luxury of seeing it flop disastrously and then dropping you like a hot turd…”

“For Christ’s sake…”

“We force their hand and panic them into snapping you up into a long term contract.”

“Like the one you turned down in the first place?”

Sid waves his hand dismissively. “If we’d signed that contract we wouldn’t be in a position to negotiate now.”

“Right. How many other publishers are interested, exactly?”

Sid swerves the car unnecessarily wildly around a parked car. “Did you see that?” he mutters unconvincingly. “Madness.”

“Sid?”

“Hmm?”

“How many?”

He gestures out of the window at nothing. “The crazies are out today.”

“How many, Sid?”

“I’ll worry about the business side of things,” he says. “You concentrate on writing another winner.”

“Just the one, then.”

“Listen, this guy’s big in Sci-fi. Everyone knows Bilbo Hewlins.”

I sigh. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance he calls himself Bilbo for any reason other than The Lord of the fucking Rings is there please God?

Sid frowns in thought. “No, I think it’s a coincidence. He was called Bilbo ages before those films came out.”



We park in a residential cul-de-sac in Tadley. When Sid stops the engine even he pauses for thought.

“Why are we here?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “This is the address he gave.”

We get out and walk down a driveway half-swallowed by overgrown bushes encroaching from the lawn. The Volvo parked by the garage has scrape marks down its side made by twigs at the end of branches acting like stiff wooden fingers.

A small hand-written sign above the doorbell reads ‘Yes! this is Hewlins Publishers.’ Sid pushes the bell.

“Why a hot turd?” I ask him.

“Huh?”

“Why a hot turd?” I stress.

“Well, it’d burn your hand, wouldn’t it?”

“But surely you’d drop any turd, even if it was lukewarm?”

“Maybe you picked it up thinking it was just a stone or something, and you drop it because it’s hot rather than because it’s a turd.”

“So what was the point of it being a turd? Why not just a hot stone?”

He shrugs. “Your fingers would smell after a turd.”

I open my mouth to say something else then decide not to and the door opens.



Bilbo Hewlins is short and hairy and he lives in a semi-detached house that could only look more like a warren if his wife had given birth to rabbits rather than the free-range kids now running riot around the house. They all look the same and it is impossible to determine how many there are. Groaning bookshelves frame the walls and piles of books stand on almost every available inch of floor space. It is comforting even though I am secretly ambivalent towards them.

We sit on dirty armchairs in the living room and talk through crowds of children. Sid leans forward. “Basically, Harper are procrastinating just to show us who’s boss. We know they’re going to sign us up but we’re not sure we want to stay with them. We want to explore other options.”

“I see. I’ve never spoken to anyone who’s wanted to move from a major to an independent.”

“Alright,” Sid says, sagging into the chair. “They’re probably going to drop us and we’re looking for someone else to take us.”

I stare at Sid with my mouth open and Bilbo coughs uncomfortably. Eventually I recover the power of speech. “Remind me never to commit a crime with you,” I say. “I’ve never seen someone crumble for nothing like that.”

I look at Bilbo.

“It’s not even true. We don’t know what’s happening. But it would be nice to think we have other possibilities if it doesn’t work out for us there.”

He nods. “I understand. Well, it might be a breech of your contract to show me your work so far on the follow up, but of course if the situation does change then I would be happy to take a look.”

“What kind of advance are we talking?” Sid blurts out. “As my client is a published author we’d be looking for big numbers.”

Bilbo narrows his eyes. “I really don’t have the resources…”

“At least three figures,” Sid says.

Bilbo looks at me questioningly but I look away. “I might be able to manage that,” he says.

“Oh wait. I meant six. Six figures.”

Bilbo laughs without humour. He waves one hand at our surroundings. “This is a very small operation. A small company. We put out a lot of books but our sales are small. There’s not a great deal of money in this industry anymore. Especially in the specialist markets. We’re lucky to break even most years.”

“And a large first run of, say, a hundred thousand copies,” Sid says.

Bilbo looks at me again but I have found something desperately interesting on the chair cushion. He turns back to Sid. “If a major house such as Harper cannot make Christopher a success than how exactly can I? I don’t have the resources, the contacts, the bribes or the maniacal bent.”

“The quality of the work will shine through,” Sid claims.

“From what I’ve heard back from conventions, the quality isn’t exactly all that high,” Bilbo says. My chest compresses a little.

“Oh,” Sid says. “Damn.”

“Look, I haven’t read it and it may be great. If you send me a copy I promise I shall read it and get back to you. I can’t say more than that at this stage.”



Outside, I turn to Sid and fake a bright smile. “Well, I think that went well.”

He beams back. “Good. Yeah. You’re right. Great.”

We walk to his car and I suddenly feel utterly alone in the universe.