“Let’s start with you, Lisa.” Majors kicked off the interviews proper. “Your debut, the striking novel The Balance of Justice, was released twenty-one years ago. It was a worldwide phenomenon, breathing new life into the courtroom drama, and from a fresh female voice too. It’s still reprinting today! A lot of people, me included, have been clamoring for your next book. We’re set to finally get it this Christmas. Excuse my bluntness, but what took you so long?”
“Well, following up The Balance of Justice was a tricky thing.” Lisa spoke out to the crowd, and I noticed she’d put on a hint of fake radio-announcer voice. “Certain parts of that novel were maybe ahead of their time, and I think the world has finally caught up to the conversation I wanted to have about women and our rights.”
“Fascinating.” Majors had the air of someone reading ahead to the next question. “So it wasn’t the pressure of the follow-up? That didn’t contribute to the gap?”
“I get writer’s block like anybody,” Lisa said, but a little uncomfortably. “I wanted the right idea . . . but I can’t say that really influenced it. I wanted to be in the right space to publish again—writing a book is a soul-baring thing, as you’ll know. Besides, I think a good book is a good book, no matter how long it takes to write.”
“Kids didn’t derail you? I understand you’re a single mum, not long after your debut? A book baby and a real baby in the same year. Must have been tough.”
“I don’t think you’d ask a single dad that.” Lisa didn’t even bother painting on a smile. “I’d ask the other women here, but seems I’m the token guest on the panel. Shame, when we should be sticking together.”
Majors took the hint. “That’s a good opportunity to move on to our next guest. Ernest Cunningham, I guess you’re different from Lisa in a way: I don’t think anyone’s hanging out for your next book.”
This insult blindsided me, and I took a second to steady myself. “Um . . . well . . . I think people actually quite liked my first. I hope they might read another.”
Majors faked a droll laugh. “Of course, of course. I simply meant we’re all hoping you don’t have to write another book. Given what happened to you and, more importantly, those around you, the last time.”
“Oh, sorry,” I mumbled. There was a loud cough and I saw a plume of assumedly blueberry-scented smoke arise from the crowd. Beneath it, Simone tapped one hand under her chin and used the index finger on her other to trace a line across her cheek. She was telling me to look up, speak up and smile more. To an onlooker, however, it might have looked like she was slicing her finger across her neck. I forced some energy. “Absolutely, I wouldn’t wish to go through that again. Especially not for the same royalties!” Even Simone smiled at that. Relieved, I relaxed into the conversation. “I am writing though. I’m working on a novel.”
“Good luck,” Wolfgang said, in the not-quiet-enough way where his surprise that I’d heard him had to be completely faked.
“Tell me about it,” I agreed. “No one told me fiction would be this hard.”
“Harder for some,” Wolfgang said, and I realized his first comment had not been the self-deprecating alliance I’d taken it as.
“Excuse me?”
“Your book. Stranded on a mountain, a serial killer.” He wriggled his fingers as if describing a scary movie. “All very sensational. The kind of sordid stuff that sells a lot of books, I’m sure.”
“I wasn’t thinking about book sales at the time,” I said. “I was rather busy trying to stay alive.” This got a gentle laugh from the audience.
“Excellent deflection. Media training kicking in.”
“I’m sorry, are you accusing me of something?”
“Festivals welcome feisty conversation, but let’s keep things civil,” interjected our host.
“I mean no offense.” Wolfgang wasn’t even speaking to me. He was pandering to the crowd, like he was the narrator and I the hapless clown in a pantomime, righteousness puffing out of him with every word. “There’s obviously demand—that’s how a writer like you can sell a lot of books.”
“What exactly is a writer like me?” I fumed.
“A connoisseur in the fine art of pulp.” He leered. “I mean that as a compliment, of course. Different strokes for different folks.”
Majors had crumpled the top sheet on her clipboard with her anxious hands. She made a feeble attempt to regain our attention. “Okay, I think we might—”
“No, sorry. I’m curious.” I turned to Wolfgang. “What exactly makes my writing pulp and yours literature? You can’t come to a crime festival and sneer at our whole genre, when all you did was copy Capote.”
He shriveled a little at that.
“It’s all words on a page,” I continued. “I put as much of myself into my work as anyone here.”
“If you don’t know the difference between pulp and literature, that would be a serviceable definition of the problem.” He crossed his legs and leaned back, as if to imply that his response was of such inarguable caliber he would not indulge a retort.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all start somewhere,” Alan Royce chipped in, predictably.
“Sounds to me like the only difference is having a last name or not, Wolfgang.” This got me another laugh from the crowd, which incensed Wolfgang enough for him to sit up straight again.
“You write blood and guts for the sake of it, as if it’s entertainment. It’s distasteful. In fifty years, books like yours will be spat out of machines. And of course, your prose is amateurish. I’m not the only one here who thinks that.”
He looked over at McTavish, who glanced up from his flask somewhat confusedly, and I realized that we’d been wrong about Wolfgang being too lofty to read the online reviews. Apparently no amount of acclaim can bandage the cut from a stranger on the internet. I’d done panels before, when the book had first come out, and I was familiar with the occasional barbed question, sure. But the majority of writers are generous and warm. For a literary confrontation, this had struck me as particularly aggressive. Now I knew why. Wolfgang was incensed that McTavish had ranked him down low alongside me, and so was now trying to assert himself above our commonality. It still came down to ego.
“You want the difference between pulp and literature? Between a real writer and just a writer? I’ll tell you: adverbs.”
“Adverbs?”
“You use too many of them,” he said, derisively.
It seemed to me quite snobbish to say that real writers didn’t use an entire group of legitimate words in the English language, but here is where I confess that I was too flustered to articulate this. I shut up, embarrassed and enraged in equal measures.
“Leave the lad alone,” McTavish said, surprising me by both coming to my defense and revealing that he’d actually been paying attention. He used the microphone like a father of the bride: inexpertly, alternating between too far from his mouth so the words came patchily, and too close so the wincing ring of feedback echoed. “Nothing wrong with a bit of blood and guts. I’m sure it’s fine.”
And just like a flare of lit magnesium burning bright and short, we settled back into the usual panel rhythm, though not without a few whispers of excitement from the crowd, no longer regretting missing the gorge tour. The next set of questions went to Wolfgang, beginning with his In Cold Blood adaptation and then moving on to his future works. It turned out he wasn’t writing anything new at the moment, but was instead focused on an “interactive art installation” titled The Death of Literature. He started most of his sentences with Well, you see and As you know as he discussed influences almost entirely comprising obscure philosophers. I found it grating but kept my mouth shut.