Literary Art at the Junction of Life and Death
A hybrid factual account / report from the editorial trenches, with some lessons for novelists deeply encoded
The call came to my landline as I was finishing my first cup of coffee of the morning. The CID showed the first name of one of my clients, with whom I had a Zoom scheduled later that morning. In 25 minutes, to be exact. So why was he calling now?
“William, hi.” (Names are changed to protect the honorable.)
“Hi, Ben. Sorry, I didn’t know if you got my text. I do want to have our discussion, but could you call me at nine? I’m going to be walking to the hospital, I’ve taken my mother off life-support.”
“Oh my god, William, I’m so sorry!” I knew that his mother was elderly and her health frail, but I didn’t realize things were at this point. William had been working on rewrites on his novel, and he’d also taken a vacation, so we’d last spoken three weeks prior.
He explained that it was inevitable, and it was all happening now, and a lot was up in the air, but he wanted to keep our appointment. “It’ll take my mind off of things.”
I called him back at nine. The agenda items, established via email some days ago, were a remarks from beta readers of his cozy mystery…
