Manifesto!

And they lived happily ever after.

In every story there is the hero and the person who becomes zero.
The hero lives happily ever after. The zero doesn’t.
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For all of you busy frequenting this blog, save your time and internet connection. You will not be seeing any new posts on it for a while. A long while.
Society will be better off in the absence of that blog and its owner.
I’m not gloating.
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The last one week has run like a high-budget movie. A few days ago Ms Adorna Shine was picked up by the Law, at a famous departmental store (name withheld) in a nearby city (name withheld), delirious, defeated, devoid of make-up. Her bag held only two items: Her switched-off pinkberry, and a yellowed, severely dog-eared sheaf of papers - MY MISSING MANUSCRIPT.
Her lips held no lipstick, only hallucinatory cries about being haunted by Broomington.
There is blood on her hands, on her pen, on her book covers.
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I’m not sure I need to remind you of this: that the hunter has now become the hunted.
And the man she had horribly brainwashed and coerced into her service, Carlos (previously known and addressed in some quarters as "Ms. Shine’s shin-breaker") has now seen the light and accepted a Proclamation of Emancipation from her mental and emotional enslavement.
(At the moment, Carlos is shuttling between here and the Offices of the Law helping out with investigations. She is trying desperately to rope him in, but I can assure you that at best - or worst - all he was was an unwilling accomplice, an actor-under-severe-duress. That we can easily prove, there are years' worth of letters and notes and emails ready to be called up as evidence)
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Carlos and I have decided to put the trauma of the last few weeks/months/years behind us. We are two men bound by the cruel antics of the same woman.
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Time to out with the news:
Carlos and I have decided to venture into publishing.
Serious literary publishing, two to three titles a year, prompt payment of royalties, active and committed representation of our authors (we will be agents cum publishers), plenty of T(ender) L(oving) L(iterary) C(are).
You might be thinking: How dare they venture into publishing? What experience have they got? One struggling writer, one pseudo-novelist’s long-term sidekick, what do they know about publishing? What have they got to offer?
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This is where you’re getting it wrong!
What does experience have to do with serious publishing?
If experience had anything to do with serious publishing then you need to ask yourself why the most successful publishing houses are not owned by the most successful writers. Surely a successful writer – having long been accustomed to dealing with publishers and navigating the treacherous catacombs of modern publishing, and having learnt (through suffering) how not to treat a writer – should be in the best position to start and manage a publishing house.
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Carlos and I will bring a combined wealth of tangential experience to this venture. We are outsiders, mavericks, intent on changing the system from the margins. We are not ‘more of the same’; we are not old wine (whether in old or new skins). We are encumbered neither by stale knowledge and misleading experience, nor by the stagnant, uninventive arrogance that comes with having being around too long. We want to be to publishing what the skinny kid with a funny name (Barack Hussein Obama) is to the musty-suited stiffnecks of Washingtonian politics.
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Our experience is as long-term marginalized persons, underdogs. I have written, and struggled to publish. I have had my work, painfully labored over, stolen, I have suffered the trauma of starting afresh. I have, in the paucity of my success, been slandered and victimized. I understand what it is spend all more time reading form-letter rejection slips than carrying on with my writing.
Carlos on his own part has for years served (albeit informally) as an ‘agent’, representing the interests of Ms Shine, serving as a go-between in dealings with her publishers, negotiating various contracts, serving as a counselor, idea-bouncing board, events manager/party planner, logistics personnel, project manager, muse, bodyguard and threat diffuser, etc.
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Here's to the future.
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We have already signed up our first author - and novel.

WATCH THIS SPACE!

Yours,
Desi