The Fictional Man Read Free

Rowling have that Golan didn’t? Why did Gaiman command a Twitter following of over a million, while Niles struggled to reach six thousand? Why had Bring Up The Bodies won a Booker while Pudding And Pie: A Kurt Power Novel had been so cruelly ignored?
    The critics, of course. Critics, Niles Golan believed, came in two varieties – insightful, and jealous. The insightful occasionally compared him to Clancy, or Crichton, which was flattering, although Niles really saw himself as being closer to a young Thomas Pynchon. The other kind of critic, meanwhile – the jealous kind – used words like ‘cosy’ and ‘predictable.’ Which was obviously ridiculous, especially after Niles had ended Down To The Woods Tonight: A Kurt Power Novel by having the Teddy Bear Killer murder Power’s new girlfriend in cold blood, just to cruelly mess with Kurt’s head and drive him back to the drink. How could anyone have predicted a finale like that?
    No, obviously whichever small-minded hack had called that stroke of brilliance ‘predictable’ – it was Lance Pritchards, writing in the Topeka Examiner – was suffering from a touch of the green-eyed monster. How depressing it must be, Niles thought, to sit behind a desk all day, being called on to write wretched little hit-pieces about wordsmiths who could out-write you in their sleep! No wonder Lance Pritchards so envied Niles that he had to use what meagre power he had to poison the well against him. Lance Pritchards and all those bastards on Amazon, giving their meagre three-star reviews to books like The Saladin Imperative: A Kurt Power Novel, even though it had surely completely changed their understanding of Middle Eastern politics.
    Bastards, all of them.
     
     
    C UTNER SMILED. “R IGHT, right. Nineteen books. And, obviously, you know Kurt Power could end up being translated any day now” – he was actively smirking now, in a way Niles didn’t much like – “just as soon as the studios realise what a hit they’d have on their hands. Which, I guess, makes you something like a minor God compared with me...”
    “I didn’t create you.”
    “No, but you...” He coughed, in a way Niles couldn’t help but notice. “You easily could have done. Ahem.”
    The Fictional’s thoughts were as visible to the author as words on a page, Niles thought. Anyway, he could have easily thought up a character like Ralph Cutner – easiest thing in the world. He’d just had his hands full with Kurt Power, that was all. Who, by the way, was a vastly more complex creation, what with his father having been murdered by the leader of the very terrorist organisation he found himself regularly defending the world from.
    Ralph read his expression. “Of course, as a writer – a wordsmith – you can probably see all my motivations, my inner workings, my tropes and tics, just the way you felt Loewes could see yours. Am I warm?”
    Niles grimaced. “Not even slightly. You’re stone cold,” he said bitterly.
    Cutner shrugged. “Well, that’s why you come to me, to hear things you can dismiss easily.”
    “That’s not true,” Niles scowled. “I just, ah, find you a little more...” – Niles searched for the word, not wanting to be drawn into any more discussions of his supposed realist tendencies – “more relatable than Loewes was. That’s all.”
    Cutner chuckled. “Well, of course you can relate to me, I’m an acerbic genius who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Relating to me strokes your ego.”
    Niles gritted his teeth. It took an incredible display of iron will for the author to resist rising from the chair and punching the smirk off the man. How dare he?
    He forced himself to relax, and pointed to the decanter. “If it’s not too much to ask, could you pour me a glass of that?”
    “Sure.” Ralph poured another apple juice and handed Niles the glass, a look of distaste crossing his face for a moment. “You’re not alone, you know – well, when it comes to the