kayeaton | second draft || [written]

All right, I've got to know: Are there any publishing outfits here? In a town this size, the chances seem slim, but for all I know, there's a paper no one's mentioned to me. I've got a story or two started, and if I could see them in print, I wouldn't mind dropping my asking price to zero cents a word. It won't hurt them to sit in handwritten piles in my apartment, of course, but stories are always better when they're shared.

It's strange to think that it's May here. It was November back in Manhattan, and that meant a lot of gray skies and windy days, and some rainy ones. Thanksgiving was coming up; between Julius and I, a whole turkey is a waste of a bird, but we were going to have something nice for dinner nonetheless. And in the meanwhile, it would have been a whole lot of pounding on typewriters and talking, no doubt.

At least I left near the start of the month. Just in case time here doesn't run faster than every other world's time, he's got a few weeks to plan out a story or two about the drunken scientist or the mutant hillbillies, and from there...well, ideally, he'd show up here one of these days, too. And if not, he's written plenty on his own before; he's not about to starve to death just because I'm not there to do my share.

I do miss him, though.

((OOC: And just in case you're curious, when she says drunken scientist and mutant hillbillies, she is, uh. Completely serious.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I must've missed the bit about you. So are you the--[it takes her a moment to be sure she's got all the syllables lined up right]--the Haruhi Suzumiya in question?

That's right, chief of the SOS-Brigade. I also have a laptop, but that's not for loan.

Nice to meet you. I'm Kay Eaton.

[She pauses a moment, frowning at the journal, for all the good it'll do her.]

...What's a laptop?

Yeah, nice to meet you too- ... And uh, do you know what a computer is, before that?

I wouldn't be much of a science fiction writer if I didn't.

A laptop's a special type of computer - sound out the name. It's one which is small enough to fit on your lap, usually using wireless-

...Wait! A real scifi writer?

Small enough to fit on your lap? Good Lord, that's an improvement over what we've got back at home.

Afraid so. Are you a fan?

Depends on the writer, but more or less. [A pause, and then she adds] I guess one of my min-- [...] friends back home was a bigger fan though. She must have gone through at least three five-hundred something page books a week.

Who do the two of you like? I might know 'em.

...Well, you know, we're Japanese. You might not know 'em. [...Um. Let's see . . last book she read?] Kouhei Kadono? Of course we've both read some Dazai. I've seen Yuki reading Komatsu and a lot of other classics, but then she also reads weird foreign things. Not even just normal ones like Card or Isaac Asimov or Orwell, sometimes stuff which I think is in Arabic or even Swedish.

Yeah, I suppose the Japanese part makes it more difficult. [She thinks back through the names, but Card is two years old where she's from, and Asimov doesn't exist. Disappointing.] Well, I've read Orwell, anyway. Everyone else is new to me. [Pause.] If there're translations of your Japanese authors, I'll have to go look them up. I'm sure they're great.

Well, everything is auto-translated if you can find it in Luceti. I mean, if it wasn't how could anyone read anything at that big library?

They'd be limited to their own language, I suppose. I'll have to look for those authors of yours. [Pause.] Would you mind writing down their names? I'll be damned if I could guess at the spelling.

Dunno if there actually is anything by them. ...Particularly Kadono, he's pretty modern.

[Written
- Kouhei Kadono
- Osamu Dazai
- Sakyo Komatsu

Oh, that's great, thanks. I'll keep an eye out for them.

If you're ever looking for something to read, you should try Albert Macklin or Benny Russell. They've got some great stories.

Alright, noted. Inspirations for you?

Colleagues. For inspirations, you'd have to look up some Lovecraft and Howard, maybe some Baum.

I read a little bit of Lovecraft, once.

[...]

So anyway, the photo-copiers there if you want to use it. If it's a legit author, we wouldn't mind printing it.

Well, if and when I've got something ready to go, I'll let you know. Thanks.

second draft || [written]

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