Homosexual dog walkers

I have embraced literary success in the past. A short story entitled ‘Blurred Clarity’ was once published in an e-zine. It concerned two homosexual dog-walkers. And it was bloody brilliant.

With a-money in the bank and time on a-my hands (wrist?), I decided to dedicate one week to a-writing. I would find auditions to attend and roles to bag the following week. There were always gigs for actors of my genus.

I needed a rest from Vague Blizzard. I feared the plot-line has become too convoluted. The graphic sex scenes did not sit happily upon my sense of aesthetic neither. I’d write something new.

But … what if I were to write a novel? I imagined that if I worked for a week, giving birth to 5000 words a day, I could complete 35000 of the bad boys with ease. Sitting at computer*, I decided to bung copies of the opening shit that I produced in this first session into brown envelopes and spunk it off to literary agents in the City.

The novel’s central premise was rather good:

It was based on the song ‘This Charming Man’ by The Smiths.  If you don’t know it, you should listen to it. It has a good tune with the guitars and that. As far as I could see, this particular song is about some bird who catches a lift with the titular ‘charming man’. They have a chat and possibly indulge in rudeness within his leather-seated car. Now, my idea for a book was a novel variation upon this situation:

A woman gets in a car with a man and they chat and possibly more ... the woman has a limp which is never explained. This creates mystery (an authorial hook).

They would talk about their life before the meeting (in the car). She would have been abused as a child, he was a pop star … etc etc … I hadn’t fully worked out the minutiae of their lives, but was sure that it wouldn’t be a problem. Too much preparation can sometimes be counter-productive. This car-chat would be the detail glue that bound together the repeated (but not repetitive) sex scenes.

I sent the following section of ‘That Charming Man’ to eight literary agents whose details I found on’t internet. I decided not to bother continuing with it until I received some response. I could then mould the narrative according to the interested agent’s tastes/suggestions. Read it with an open mind:

Eyes – narrowed. The road ahead – lengthy. Ears - listening to the radio,  listening to ‘This Charming Man’ by The Smiths. He liked this song because it reminded him of himself. He took his eyes off the black tarmac of the road he was driving his car upon and looked about his car. His car had nice leather seats.

WHAHWAHA.

Suddenly, he saw a woman on the verge. ‘Cor,’ he thought to himself.

And he pulled the car over.

The woman opened the car door herself, with her own hand. The hand had red nail varnish on the nails. When she got in the car, he smelt her perfume and he liked it. It was Chanel Number 5. He looked at her nails. Red, he thought, like passion.

“Hello,” he said. 

“Hello. My name is Anna. I would like to go to Aberdeen,” she said.

“Aberdeen?” he shouted. “You realise that we are in Weymouth?”

Weymouth is at the opposite end of the UK to Aberdeen.

“I do,” she shouted and she began to speak as he pulled off into the night.

Haunting stuff.

What do you think, Readers? If I'm not on next year's Booker list it's either because I shagged the wrong judge or I'm not related to the correct publisher.