‘I loved it, Adrian. It was very emotional.’ The new novel has another fan. I had given her a copy of the unpublished manuscript presented in an A5 binder that made it look almost like a book.
‘You’ve got to get it published,’ she insisted. I frowned. That was not what I wanted to hear. It’s difficult enough to win the support of an agent and publisher these days, but I have not even made the decision to try. I’ve been telling myself that I must be able to find a way of improving it. ‘No, you can’t improve it,’ she insisted, ‘it’s just right.’
I quizzed her, suspicious that she was atypical. ‘Adrian, I read it very fast. Doesn’t that say something?’ She reads only a few novels a year, pulled by a busy career, a small child and a husband. I had expected her to take weeks to find the time to read.
My hesitation was not from the fear of repeated rejections from agents and publishers. That is part of the rite of passage to becoming a published author. Without it, you’ll make no friends from other authors.
‘It looks like it was heavily inspired by real events,’ the reader continued. With those words I realised she has hit on my real problem. I have opened my heart. The story and the people are fictional, but the experiences and the cat are real.
I’m not sure. Perhaps there are some stories that should remain a secret forever.
Stoke on Trent
It was not a war of his choosing. It was not even his profession. But step by step Doug Boulton found himself drawn into it. And with every step, the risk increased that people would discover his terrible secret.