My Hero Read Free Page A

as the Milk Tray man, or did the landlady bring them in when she came in to hoover? He neither knew nor cared.
    Fight Scene , he read. Regalian fights with Gordian in the arena. One of them is killed.
    Marvellous, he thought. What the hell are we supposed to do, toss a bloody coin? He knew, in his heart of hearts, that it wouldn’t be him, however; because he was the Hero, and nobody kills their Hero with seventy pages still to go. What it really meant was that the damnfool author had made yet another lash-up in the structure, which meant the big fight was happening on pages 180-3, instead of 241-4. In order to cover her tracks, she was going to have to leave the fight scene at the point where one of them (not specified) was killed, and then go trailing off into the subplot or do flashbacks or something for
twenty pages or so before owning up and getting on with the story. The technical term is Agonising Suspense, and a surer indication of the pot boiling dry would be difficult to find. Regalian sighed. It meant a day or so off, at any rate, while some other poor fools (Linda, probably, and Doris) would have to work double shifts to cover. Not his problem, he decided. The milk was ever so slightly off.
    The rest of the lines confirmed his suspicions so exactly that he simply skimmed through them; then he turned back and studied the details of the fight with a mixture of professional thoroughness and abject contempt. You couldn’t do that , for a start, not with a six-pound, two-handed broadsword. You’d sprain your wrist.
    He threw the pages on the floor, stretched out on the bed and felt for the light switch. What the hell, he said to himself, it’s only work. More to the point, what was he going to do on his day off?
    Â 
    Jane sat down in front of her screen, flexed her fingers and put in the disk.
    The usual green lines, beeps and facetious user-chummy comments; and then the screen went blank for a moment. Jane scowled and leaned forward.
    Hi! My name’s Hamlet, you may have heard of me. I was wondering, do you happen to have a job going?
    Jane stared at the writing on the screen for a second or two and then reached out for the user’s manual. A computer virus? she wondered. Hackers?
    I know it’s not quite the done thing to approach an author direct like this, but I’ve had it up to here working for Bill Shakespeare. I think you and I could be good for each other, you know?
    â€˜Really?’ Jane said. ‘What makes you think that?’
    Well , read the screen, I’ve been a fan of your stuff for ages
now. I think you characters are, you know, neat. My kind of people .
    â€˜Thank you.’
    You’re welcome. Your people, when there’s someone whose head needs bashing in, they don’t stand around agonising about it in blank verse, they just roll up their sleeves and get on with it. No wimps need apply. That’s my kind of scene.
    â€˜I see.’
    Say it myself as shouldn’t , the screen read, I do have a certain following. Just think how it looks to the boys and girls out there. Like for instance, there’s the bit where I come up unexpectedly on the bad guy in the chapel?
    â€˜I know the bit you mean.’
    Well, I ask you. If it’d been one of yours, it’d be out with the whacking great knife, chippy-chop and on to the big love scene, no worries. And do you know what that ponce has me doing? Worrying that if I top the bastard, he’ll go to Heaven. I mean to say, what’re we doing here? A proper grown-up thriller, or Listen With Goddamn Mother?
    â€˜Um . . .’
    And the women , the screen continued, the words flashing up like a huge flock of rooks startled off a ploughed field. Don’t get me wrong, but they’re just not my type. Not like the birds in your stuff. I mean, you wouldn’t dream of pairing your hero off with some droopy bit with tits like goosepimples who goes around talking to the flowers, now would