Nano 2012 Day Twenty-Four

Menelaus woke up and looked at the calendar on his phone. It had been nearly two months since he and Tina had started going out. Since then he had barely any sleep at all, they both seemed to have a voracious appetite for each other and couldn't stay awake. He figured if he ever got himself a 'proper' 9-5 job he would need to put in some sort of boundaries so that he could actually get some sleep. Not that he minded the endless rumpy-pumpy, he loved it, but he also needed sleep. Overall, though, things had been going amazingly. Neither of them had many complaints with the other, though Tina thought he played computer games a little much and that he didn't really need to talk to strangers online when he had his own friends circle in "the real world" that he talked to. He argued that these were just people he talked to as an intellectual exercise and that he had met a group of them a few nights after they got together and that went fine. In fact, one of them, Calliope, had given him the details of her agent and told him to try sending some of his stuff over to him when he felt the work was ready. Tina really couldn't argue with that but at the same time didn't really think it was that big a deal. Maybe it wasn't. In any case, the almost argument was always forgotten pretty quickly.

He re-focussed on his phone. Two PM? Was he meant to meet with anyone for lunch? Tina was at work (she seemed to be able to function on no sleep with no problems, at least for now. He wouldn't be surprised though if eventually she started making her own rules for bed time to herself), Peter was at work. Actually, most of his friends worked. He wished he had more friends who worked for themselves so they could meet for power breakfasts, or power brunches, or power lunches... actually, they'd need to invent something between lunch and dinner so that he'd actually get to it. Power Luner? Sounded like a spacecraft. He got out of bed and showered to clear his head then opened up his laptop and checked his email. One of his usual clients wanted him to go back over some of the copy he'd already submitted and rework it to fit a different demographic. That was fine. He got himself a bowl of cereal and ate it down, then began work on his copy.

A couple of hours later, after a near disaster where the laptop nearly turned itself off because the cable had somehow gotten disconnected from it and his battery barely held a charge, he was done and emailed it off to the client. He got an OK a few minutes later so he started browsing through his normal sites around the place. Once he got bored he loaded up IRC to see who was on. He was happy to see Calliope still the operator for the night as sometimes she left it to other people. A few people said hello to him and he said hello back, though most of them he barely knew. It was just because it was the custom to say hello to anyone that joined. It was a nice custom, but it could make things confusing or tedious. He said hello to Calliope in the main chat, she said, "Hey M how are you doing?"

"I'm not bad, just bored. I've basically finished my work for the day."

"Lucky you, I've still got to grade a pile of papers before I can go do anything 'relaxing'"

"Shame. Well, my relaxing is coming into this chat channel really."

"Not your pretty girlfriend? ;)" She used a winking smiley face to indicate they knew what they got up together. Well of course she did. Everyone did. He thought to himself, I mean, most couples get up to that stuff right?

"Haha yeah well that's relaxing too but it pretty much means everything else is off for the night."

"And it can be hard work too, right?"

"Totally." He wasn't lying, he was pretty sure he nearly dislocated his hip the other night trying to twist into a new position they had found out. He wasn't sure why they got so frantic together but it always felt like it was the last time they'd ever get to make love. At least she turned out to be telling the truth about her pill, they hadn't had any pregnancy scares.

"So what brings you to the chat room then?"

"Like I told you, just to relax."

"What sort of work do you do, M?" This was someone else in the chatroom. He answered,

"I'm a copywriter"

"Oh cool cool. Do you do that from an office?"

"No I'm freelance from home."

"Do you have a normal job as well?"

"No, I don't really need one."

"Wouldn't your girlfriend like for you to have the extra money?"

"I think I make enough money how I am. Why do you care?"

"I don't care, I was just asking. So you make a lot freelance then?"

"I make a lot more than I did at my last job, that's for sure. It's paying for my apartment and my bills so that's good enough for me."

"Well alright then. I'm glad for you."

"Uh-huh"

He really didn't like where the conversation had gone with that person. What made them suddenly attack his profession? And bring Tina into it? Well, "His girlfriend", obviously they had no idea about Tina herself but just heard him talk about having a partner with Calliope. What nerve. He calmed himself down and spoke to Calliope again, "Hey Calliope?"

"Yes?"

"Are those details for your agent still current?"

"Well yeah, he can't really afford to be changing them all the time, he has clients all over the world."

"Good because I think I have something I want to submit to him."

"Really? Good work. Do you want me to take a look over it first?"

"That's OK, I've redrafted it a lot; I just want to send it off so he can see it and maybe give me some feedback if he doesn't like it."

"Well, if he really doesn't like it you won't get anything back. But I have known him to send encouraging feedback letters back to authors he felt might eventually be extraordinary."

"And we all want to be that author."

"Yeah that's right, or getting published."

"Or getting published, true."

Hmm, he wasn't sure what to say back to that. "Well, thanks for all your advice!"

"Don't mention it."

He closed his chat program and took a look at the writing he had been working on. He was inspired by the book I had that he had now read from cover to cover. He was sure that it had originally been a completely different book, but now it seemed to have morphed into this cheesy adventure book with a focus on smell. So he wrote a short story about a small family who went on a regular trip to Paris just to stand in cheese stores and take in the scent. And it ends up turning out that the reason they do this is that there is a hormone in the cheese that helps them digest ice cream better, and they all love ice cream more than anything but they are all lactose intolerant. So the fumes from the French cheese allow them to indulge their obsession with ice cream. It was all nonsense, of course, but it had turned into a witty little story and become quit bigger than its premise. He was, quite honestly, quite proud of it. He didn't have the guts to show it to Tina though, he wasn't even sure what sort of books she read, he would tell her about it if it got accepted for publication or won some sort of short story award of something. For now he would keep it to himself and Calliope's agent. Funnily enough, Calliope only referred to herself as Calliope to him, which implied to him that she wanted to keep the relationship semi-anonymous. It was alright with him, though most people in the chat room knew him by his real name or 'M' just because he could never keep track of nick names for himself.

He scanned the document for spelling mistakes for what seemed like the four hundredth time. Then he read it through to himself to make sure it made sense, that it flowed well, was snappy, didn't drag on any where, but it seemed perfect. He opened up an email and attached it to it, then looked up the agent's details. He copied and pasted the email address and wrote a cover letter to go with his story, and sent it off. He was going to also explain his connection to Calliope when he realised that without knowing her real name or the name of her books he wouldn't really be able to say any thing aside from "I know your client who writes fantasy books for and calls herself Calliope in a chat room". It didn't seem very professional. SO he sent off the email and prepared himself to wait.  In the meantime he loaded up his console attached to the tv. He had only got it recently because he normally played games on his laptop, having made sure it could handle the small group of games he normally played regularly and he originally didn't see the point. Although once he had gone to a friend's house and seen how they had theirs set up with its own hard disk full of movies to run from, and the ability to relax on the couch while switching through things, he was talked around. SO now he had this games box that he mostly used to watch tv shows from around the world.