Mystery Mondays: Jim Webster

Well, I think this is a first for Mystery Mondays. We have Tallis Steelyard, a character, to tell us about his author, Jim Webster. Just who is Tallis Steelyard? Find out at https://tallissteelyard.wordpress.com

I think you’ll have some fun reading this…

Tallis Steelyard on Jim Webster

It has to be said that there are times when one has to come to the aid of a friend; even when they don’t deserve it.

Take the current example. This chap, Jim Webster, calls himself a writer, has a cunning plan. He’s noted that when he launches a book, the world stirs briefly, perhaps even opens its eyes, and he sells a few before the world moves on leaving him floundering once more in anonymity.

His cunning plan? Well each time he releases a book, he not merely sells the new book, but a few of his previous publications. So rather than release one a year, he’d release one every three months. He wrote, edited and prepared for publishing six novellas.

Yes, yes, I know, but for some people this really does pass for cunning. Still these six stories feature the antics of my dear friend Benor, normally when he’s sticking his nose where it’s not really wanted and solving problems that nobody was too worried about in the first place.

Yes I know that sounds jaundiced, but I do have to live here. There again, all is not lost; you do get to meet me, Tallis Steelyard, the leading poet of his generation, and my lady wife Shena. Indeed in the current novella a little of my poetry is quoted. Surely it must be worth purchasing for that alone?

But I digress. Jim Webster had a cunning plan. Yes, that was it. Every four months, regular as clockwork, he’d publish another of these novellas, get his little burst of publicity, burnish his battered ego, and sell a few books. Yet this would happen three times as often as it had in the past, thus increasing sales threefold and bringing his work to an audience three times as large.

Given his promotional techniques I would personally have said the audience would merely be three times as exasperated.

Still I don’t suppose you can fault a chap for trying. If indeed he had tried. So I ask you, what happens with the current book?

Well in March/April he did nothing because he was involved in lambing sheep. In May he went down with some ridiculous chest infection and was apparently delirious but nobody noticed any change in his behaviour.

Then he got caught up in writing another book. So involved was he that he was oblivious to the days passing by until, about a fortnight before the big day, he suddenly remembered. Since then he’s been frantically telling everybody he can think of about it.

Now if he’d been a poet, I could have forgiven him for this oversight, but those lesser literary artists have not our finer sensitivities. They’re supposed to be more business-like than we are.

Yours, as ever, Tallis Steelyard

***

photo of Jim Oct 2015 Hello, Jim Webster here. Whilst I have your attention, the situation is much as Tallis outlined it.