Publisher: WE LOVE YOUR BOOK!

Dear Nick

It is exceedingly rare that we write the letter you are holding in your hands. In fact it is fair to say this happens around once or twice a year. We were at first pleased and interested in your mansucript, and then absolutely rivetted. Excellent prose, awesome plot, and such a relevant topic too. Being a fairly short story, I handed it to the Editor and other colleagues, all of whom stayed up the whole night reading HOLIDAY.

At this point we would like to offer you a contract, and request your permission to submit a copy for re-scripting to the Writer's Guild of America. In this way we can get it submitted to a Hollywood Studio. We would really blah blah blah, ya da ya da ya da...

The actual Email goes like this:

Dear Nick

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to J Media.

Although your manuscript is intelligent and well-written, it does not fit in with our publishing strategy at present. We recommend that you consult the Publishers' Association of South Africa (PASA) at www.publishsa.co.za, if you have not already done so.

Best of luck with your endeavours!

Yours sincerely
CL

I almost got suckered by 'intelligent and well'written'. They [publishers] say that to everyone, don't they.

Meanwhile the above image reminds me of the novel I wrote while in South Korea (yearning for South Africa): HALF FULL MOON. It's the adventure of a helicopter pilot who starts off fighting these urban threatening infernos; and accidently scoops up a shallow diver in the orange bambi dangling under the helicopter, and tosses him into hellfire. And so ends that chapter of his life.

He - Andy Snook - finds it hard to live with himself after that, and soon after gets helicopter-wrecked in the Kalahari, where a Bushman finds him, and guides him back to the 'Desert of the real', the now. He also meets the desert dragon; a spiritual entity called Alcala who reminds him that there is not one world, but two. In this existentialist realm he find himself, and through his journey - his redemption - we sees ourselves, mankind, redeemed.