This is your editor speaking. For too long we have allowed Violet Crepuscular to abuse our trust. We keep waiting for her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, to break into a plot.
Just look at this mess! A rhino hibernating in back of a chicken coop. A cold snap that freezes everything but the vicar’s backyard wading pool. And Mr. Pitfall face-down on Violet’s living room floor, the victim of a swoon. He was just starting to read Chapter DXXX, she says. Well, we haven’t read it yet!
She addresses the defenseless reader: “The thing is, when you’re writing an epic romance of 500 or more chapters, you can’t just leave Mr. Pitfall lying on the floor. How could I have finished writing Chapter DXXX, when I had to call the UN to come and get Mr. Pitfall? I mean, have you ever tried to telephone those people?!? Ye gods!”
[Editor: Not so fast there, twinkletoes! What about that Frothing Dragon of Scurveyshire, that you hinted at last week? Eh? Eh?]
“As for the Frothing Dragon of Scurveyshire–” [We’ve got her on the run!]–“I simply have to hold it back for one more chapter. Meanwhile, consult the Ibid Chronicles for the year 457, the year the dragon first frothed. Then you’ll understand!”
[Editor plunges into a fruitless search for the Ibid Chronicles…]
Ibid, hmmm? I still remember most of a limerick we learned in a bibliography course in graduate school.It went something like this (I’ve forgotten a few of the words):
A remarkable bird is the ibid,
Its manner all [something] and cribbèd.
It sits like a sage
At the foot of a page
To tell where the author has cribbèd.
And I thought figuring out calculus was hard 🙂