I wrote a blog a while back.  I liked it. Sal didn’t.  “You can’t say this!”

“Why not?  No names.  Nothing bad.  Hell, I even made one guy sound great when, in fact, all he really did was just stand there.”

“No.  Too soon.  Too raw.”

“Raw?  This ain’t Pulp Fiction, Sal.  It’s rural crap.  It’s basically just what happened.  How can you veto the truth?  You working for the government now?”

“Nope.  Can’t do it.  Just can’t.  Someone might get upset.”

“Well, I’m upset.  So, you are right about that.  But, just so you know, you aren’t the boss of me.  I can publish what I want.  So, nyah, nyah.”

“Fine.  Go ahead.  But you  asked.  And I answered.  And that’s what you get when you ask.  You get my answer.  And my answer is, ‘don’t publish that!'”

“Well, thanks for the input.  Which I will ignore.  I will probably publish it because I want to.  And it will be just fine.  And, for the record, you are a nut.  No one reads the blog anyway except Margy and Derek.  Sometimes, Sid.  They sure as hell won’t be upset.”

“You know what I mean.”

So, like a flaccid doormat made from pussy fur…….I didn’t publish it.

Hey!  I’m not myself right now.  I’m ill.

She is NOT the boss of me but, well, who needs the extra grief, ya know?  I mean, remember, I got Shingles.  I don’t need more aggravation in my life.  Ya know what I am sayin’?

But, seriously….she is not the boss of me.  An influence, maybe.  OK, an influence to be sure. OK, even a bull-headed, dominatrix-type strong influence.  Scary, too.  But she is NOT the boss of me.

Officially?  I just chose not to publish it.

This time.

Maybe tomorrow.  Or someday.  Maybe.

Don’t bug me.

Susan Juby’s Republic of Dirt won the 2016 Stephen Leacock award for humour.  She deserved it.  It is good.  I was not going to read it, out of spite and jealousy, but I had to know.  I am glad I read it.  R of D is good.  It is funny.  And it is well written.

Which is also kinda irritating.  Juby writes about stuff I was writing about.  We’re off the grid on a piece of granite and she is off on a hardscrabble farm.  Not the same but similar in many ways.

Worse, she used a style that I was going to use in our second book.  Kind of a dialogue. Sal would talk and then I would talk and the story would get told by two different ‘voices’ on things.  In that way, readers would get to know Sal more (she was more popular in the first book anyway and, generally speaking, in all aspects of our social life.  It just made sense to give her more ‘stage’ time).  But Juby did that with four characters.

So…..bloody hell!

To be fair, our dialogue wasn’t working anyway.  Sal talks less than I do.  My chapter would go on for ten pages and then Sal’s chapter would be three paragraphs.

“Sal, you can’t just write a one hundred word ‘take’ on what I took ten pages to write.”

“Why not?  You already said it.  If I say it again, it is just repetition.”

“Not if it is in your own voice.”

“That was my own voice.”

“Maybe.  But there just wasn’t enough of it to know.  Normally, you have tons to say.  That was three paragraphs.  Come on, try writing more…”

And so she did and she wrote five or so pages.  But when it was complete, it was not her voice.  It sounded familiar but it was not hers.

“What?  This doesn’t sound like you.  This sounds…..kinda like…..well, you are kinda writing like me!”

“I know.  I hate that.  I have been editing you so long now that my voice automatically turns out sounding like yours.  It’s sick.”

“Calm down.  Maybe my voice isn’t me either.  Maybe the voice I think I have is a Sally-edited version of me and you are really the one speaking…?”

“No way.  I wouldn’t say all the crap you say.”

“Hmmmmm………that’s true.  So, who is writing this stuff?”