You think it’s easy, being this woman’s editor? Hah! All week long, she’s been sulking. A customer review on some Charlie High-school website called her “Violet Corpuscle” and she couldn’t deal with it.
Nevertheless, somehow Chapter DXXX of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, has gotten written. Let Ms. Crepuscular (not Corpuscle) introduce it.
“I am proud to be introducing Chapter DXXX of my epic romance, Oy, Rodney,” she gestures hypnotically, like Mandrake the Magician. For her it doesn’t work.
We were expecting the Frothing Dragon of Scurveyshire in this chapter, and for once we got just what we asked for. The Dragon comes out from under the wading pool in the vicar’s back yard and starts frothing all over the place. Lord Jeremy Coldsore and Willis Twombley, the American adventurer who thinks he is Sargon of Akkad, watch in stunned horror.
“Germy, we got to do somethin’ about this!” says Twombley, balancing his six-gun on a fingertip. This makes Lord Jeremy uneasy. He has already been shot in one foot and has no desire for the experience to be repeated. Meanwhile, Squire Oochy’s greenhouse is buried under dragon-froth.
“Who the devil’s Squire Oochy?” Jeremy wonders.
“Suspense!” exults Ms. Crepuscular. “Tune in next week to find out who the devil’s Squire Oochy!”
The only suspense at this point is how many new characters will pop up in the next few chapters — and then disappear. I think Violet may be lacking some corpuscles. What brand of toothpaste has she been cooking with? (Oh, fine, you may say; and now she’ll go off into another sulk.)
Colgate–she swears by it.
What she lacks as an author, she compensated for with an exceptionally white smile. 🙂