100 Things: 47/100: Sparkle Fading to Dust
Title: Sparkle Fading to Dust
Fandom: Original Fiction
Rating: Gen
Orientation: Het
Word Count: 1,231
Prompt: Hurt Comfort Bingo Fill: "Disappearing”
30 Days of Flashfic Day 26: Write a personalized rejection letter for the YA novel “Sparkle Lust”
Each letter that came stole a little bit more of Ralph’s confidence. Little by little, he felt his motivation, his drive, his will to keep trying disappearing. Rejection after rejection for his latest book hurt like nails being driven into his heart, or more appropriately in this case, stakes.
“... we find your work derivative and too similar to mainstream popular fiction and films...”
His agent, Beverly, had stopped taking his calls, which was only fair, since he had been avoiding her calls for weeks after submitting the manuscript for “Lust Sparkles in the Night” to her office. He knew he was off his game, though he had poured everything he was capable of into the novel this time. It just wasn’t enough.
”Unfortunately, this is a retread of several other pieces we have seen from you in the past. We need something new and fresh to appeal to our audience.”
Unable to cope with the calls and the city, he had become a recluse, moving up to his family’s summer home in the mountains. As he walked by the lake, he tried to recapture the feel and the spark that had catapulted his dragon series to such popularity and made him a name in the young adult fiction community. He had written his masterwork here, surely he could find that inspiration again? Ralph knew he needed something, but he didn’t know what, he could not put a name to the empty place within him.
”The content of this novel, especially the title, seem far more mature than the target demographic warrants... Too titillating, it needs to be toned down... We are not looking to publish more vampire fiction at this time, but please do consider submitting something akin to your dragon series.”
His muse was gone, he had just failed to acknowledge that the bitch had up and disappeared on him, as he had tried to disappear from the world to wallow in his failure. He sat on a folding chair beside the lake and sipped his vodka from the bottle and moped about the loss of his drive and ability to please his reading public.
“Here you are. I figured this is where you disappeared to,” Michela called as she came down the cement stairway and crossed the grass to stand beside him. She scowled at him and crossed her arms. The sunlight caught the red highlights in her brown hair, just as he remembered.
“Hiya Mike,” he tipped his bottle at her.
She shook her head at him. “What’s with the disappearing act, Ralphie?”
“My muse is gone. She might be dead. Give a sniff, do you smell the decomposing corpse?”
“I smell fresh air and the lake and a man that needs a shower.”
He blinked up at her. “Bev sent you, didn’t she?”
“It was me or the state police. No one knows about this place. You’re big news, Ralphie-boy, there’s a manhunt out for you.”
“Why?” he was honestly curious. He had come to the lake plenty of times to write and no one had cared.
“Your apartment was broken into. With the place torn up and you missing, they suspect foul play.” She sat on the grass in front of him and patted his knee. “Bev has your insurance guy investigating, they’ll cover the damages. I took a look , it doesn’t seem like anything is missing.”
He couldn’t even bring himself to care that his place had been trashed. “Everything of value is with me here or in the safe deposit box.”
“Talk to me Ralphie. What’s going on?”
He reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out the folded rejection letters and handed them to her. She flipped through the worn and wrinkled pages and scanned them quickly. “You’ve had rejection letters before, babe, why is it different this time?”
“I put everything into that book, Mike. I don’t know if I have anything left. Maybe dragons are all I had in me, maybe I only had one story to tell. I’m fading away.”
“Always so dramatic!”
“I’m a writer, I’m paid to be dramatic.”
She shook her head and slapped his knee, handing him back the letters. “Do you want the truth?”
“From you? Always.”
“I read your sparkly little book. It sucked, Ralph. The characters were shallow and there was nothing to relate to, no life in them, no spark... if you’ll excuse the pun. You breathed life into those dragons, babe. This was a pale shadow in comparison.”
“I know.”
She frowned. “Then why put it out there? Why even try to publish it?”
“Publish or perish? I guess I’m afraid of fading away, of people forgetting my name.”
Michela stood up and hugged him tightly. “That will never happen. Your dragon books are being used in middle school curriculums. So, what else have you got, Ralphie? I know you, and you wouldn’t be out here pouting if you didn’t have something else on the burner, you would have stayed in the city to make us all miserable. You only come here to write.”
He sighed and stood up, taking her by the hand and leading her up to the house. He opened the story he had been working on and passed the laptop to Michela. Then he went to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee for her and went to shower while she read.
“This is what you should have sent Bev,” Mike said when he dragged himself out from the pounding spray of hot water and went into the living room, sipping at his own coffee. “Why didn’t you?”
“It isn’t YA.”
“So?”
He shrugged and looked at his feet. “It’s personal. It’s you.”
She smiled. “I see it. I’m flattered. Send this one to Bev, forget about the target audience, let her renegotiate with the publishers. Forget about the sparkling crap and supernatural. This is real, I care about these characters, I sympathize with them and see through their eyes, and that isn’t just because Samantha is based on me.”
Moving to the sofa, he sat down beside her and after hesitating a few moments, put his head on her shoulder. “Don’t go back to the city, Mike. I missed you. Stay with me.”
Michela ran her fingers through his hair. “I thought you said ‘just friends?’ Is this a ‘just friends’ sleepover?”
“I was an idiot when I said that. Please forget the whole conversation.”
She laughed lightly at him. “You can’t edit real life, Ralphie.”
“Just this one little rewrite?” he lifted his head and looked into her eyes hopefully. Until she showed up that afternoon, he hadn’t realized that she was the missing element. When he had pushed her away and shut her out of his life, he had damaged himself, he had quite effectively killed his own muse.
Michela set the laptop aside and took his cheeks in her hands. “I won’t put up with the disappearing and not calling nonsense. And this is probably the last time I’m going to mollycoddle you through an artistic crisis.”
“Liar, you always come and read my crap and then pet me and make me feel better.” He leaned forward and kissed her, and forgot about rejection letters and failed novels and sparkling vampires. For the moment, there was only Michela.
The End
Originally posted at http://rinkafic.dreamwidth.org/