Failed Fantasy Author by James Reinebold

The Failed Fantasy Author sits outside a Starbucks drinking coffee as he types another paragraph about the king of the elves. This is his fifth attempt at writing a fantasy novel and his fourth attempt where the protagonists are elves. The sex scenes in his novels have grown increasingly graphic. What at first could have been considered a loving elven romance would now be more accurately termed softcore elven pornography. His first four novels have all been rejected by literary agents. The fifth will be too, but he doesn’t know it yet. He will soon.

The first novel he wrote was entitled The Persistence of Memory. He later learned, only after querying it, that this is a name shared with a Salvador Dali painting that has nothing to do with elves. There were numerous problems with The Persistence of Memory (too many adverbs, too many cliches, a lack of any true artistic vision or purpose), but the years he spent writing it were some of the happiest of his life. No one responded to his query letters. The work was too amateur even for rejection.

His second novel, Memoirs of a Skeleton Clerk, was too sarcastic and bitter. In it, Rufio the reanimated skeleton chronicles his bureaucratic life sending memos to various offices in a vast evil empire as he struggles against the elven protagonists of the first novel. Unlike The Persistence of Memory, several agents did reply with some interest in representing the work. None eventually elected to submit to publishers, but the kindly (if blandly) written semi-form rejection letters inspired the Failed Fantasy Author to continue striving.

His third novel, Alabaster Nightmare, would have become an overnight success with both high-brow critics and low-brow populists if anyone had read beyond the first (absolutely dreadful) paragraph. It would have even gone on to win the Nobel prize. But the first paragraph was too much, and so his ugly little geode will remain forever unsliced. The fate of Alabaster Nightmare will be to sit on his laptop’s hard drive, then get transferred to another hard drive, then another, and then be uploaded to a server where it will remain, periodically backed up by anonymous bots, until a year after the Failed Fantasy Author’s death when its bits will finally be wiped shortly after the closure of his bank account. Then the greatest work of art possible, which the world will never see, which just so happened to be a very long fantasy novel about elves, will be lost forever.

His fourth novel, Rezgar the Valiant, was a major setback. The Failed Fantasy Author wrote it in a fit of depression over the lack of response to his third novel, which he rightfully considered his greatest achievement. It details a fantastic story of revenge by a lonely, misunderstood elf against the evils inflicted upon him by mysterious institutions. Rezgar was poorly conceived, poorly written, and poorly edited.

The fifth novel is going OK. The Failed Fantasy Author enjoys working on it. He gives it his all. Of course, despite his positivity, An Emerald Daydream will never be published. It will also be his last novel, for finally the entropy of all the rejections and indifference will be enough to overcome his desire to put words together in a sequence. He will give up on being a writer and perhaps try photography instead. Maybe he will start a family.

The Failed Fantasy Author writes another paragraph about elves. Gildor, the king of the elves, has long blonde hair and a spear of jade that once pierced the throat of the Beast of Unwyn. In three chapters, Gildor will be slain by goblins. They’ll cut off his head and feast on the legs of his golden horse.

Today the Failed Fantasy Author has written about two hundred words. Above him the Starbucks speakers play relaxing, inoffensive music from a variety of origins. He writes another paragraph about Gildor. He searches the phrase “should I quit my dreams?” on the Internet and finds that the results are mainly inspirational posts written by writers to other writers. A good portion of the publishing industry, he considers, seems to be writers writing to other writers. Maybe, he wonders, maybe there are no regular readers left.

A truck rumbles past, followed by a school bus. The Failed Fantasy Author closes his laptop and slides it back into his backpack. He takes one minute to gather his things from the table, fifteen minutes to drive to work, and five minutes to walk from the parking lot to his desk.

James Reinebold lives in Vista, California with his wife and son. His stories have appeared in Nature and The Portland Review. You can find him online at www.reinebold.com.

8 April 2022