Dear ______,
Look, I don't wish to be hard on you. I recognise that the smooth effusion of pulp fiction is not set in motion readily. However, I'm disappointed that you have not published anything yet.
Yesterday I sent to you a plotline for a whole series of novels about Guildford. It was in the form of an imaginary coffee shop conversation. Thus, in two pages of controversial chat, I set out the entire tapestry of life in Guildford. I don't expect you to repeat that!!!! What you can do is pick and choose your bits. I'll show you what I mean, with the following gorgeous sample:
"URGENT YEARNINGS"
by
Silka Feelie
(Another full-blooded but sensitive story from the "Guilty in Guildford" series)
It was a glorious May morning. The sun seemed to chuckle with pleasure as it spied a certain trim young lady tripping down Pleasant Crescent at 8.30am. This was Tracy Quick, coming from her night nursing officer duties at the local Mental Contusion Hospital.
At number 33, Tracy paused and took out her doorkey. She knew that by now her husband would have left for his place of business where he did his commodity broking. He worked so hard all day in the City and at the athletic club in the evenings! They hardly ever seemed to meet, she smiled ruefully.
As she entered the house, she heard a scuffling noise from upstairs. "Who's there?" she called. "It is I, Albert, your husband," her husband answered. "I decided to delay my commodity broking today so that I could show Peter here some of my nature photographs. We will dress and come down directly."
Tracy gave a rueful smile. She wished that Peter had not come. Today would have been a golden opportunity for she and Albert to explore together, sympathetically, the implications of his sodomite practices. She recalled the advice given by her friend and mentor David, who was a qualified policeman. He had spoken with her last night. "Work on him! Get the bastard to confess, in front of a witness," he had urged.
She must get Peter out of the way. Then she might encourage Albert to discuss with candour his emotional preference. She waited. Then, hand in hand, the two men came downstairs. "This is going to be more difficult than I thought," concluded Tracy, ruefully.
Meanwhile, at her cottage home in the centre of Guildford, Hazel awaited her husband David who was about to come home from his night duty foot patrol as a professional policeman. She was impatient for his return. She had asked him last night to contact Tracy on a very sensitive matter.
Hazel, a skilled marriage counsellor, was well aware that David, with his rather robust approach to life, might find that task too challenging. But David had been quite confident. "I got it, Kiddo!" he had enthused. "Lacy Tracy wants the lowdown on queers. How to nail the buggers!" He had left the cottage whistling.
Some acute professional instinct made Hazel unsure of the outcome between Tracy and David. She loved David very much for the strength and assurance he offered. She always felt his warm protective halo n crowded supermarkets (David had spent ten years in Traffic). But he never seemed to get involved with people in sensitive situations – unless you included the Athletics Club. How had he interacted with Tracy?
Hazel longed for David to return. She wanted to snuggle up against his large blue serge uniform and feel serge passion sweep over her.
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I've virtually written the entire thing. Just add a bit of polish and then start mining the rest of the rich seam that is Guildford.
Just one thing. Don't show the plotline to anyone. It's worth a fortune in multimedia exploitation rights. Don't even mention Guildford to anyone.
Conrad
