Seems like my  life may not be long. I may be killed off in the next chapter. That would be sad as I’ve just begun to enjoy living in the Big House with all its archaic paraphernalia and servants and what-nots.

And its weird language. ‘Your Lordship and Your Ladyship.’   Folk don’t care much about reading about the Big House anymore. They prefer, it seems, tales of Fantasy and other worldly shenanigans and murder mysteries. Or. that’s the impression I get when I sneek-a-peek at my author’s Socials and Insta.

My author, let’s call her Ornie, yes Ornie, You see you have to have an interesting author name. John or James doesn’t hack it anymore. Readers want exotica. Something that propels them outside of the humdrum of their own daily, keyboard lives, away from the desktop and the endless messaging where their eyes and ears are assailed.

So here I am tuning in to some of the endless banter about what readers want or don’t want their characters to do or to think. Odd, isn’t it? I thought that was the whole point of reading a story is to find an interesting, absorbing account of an event with an unexpected or different ending. Seems it’s not quite the case. Things have changed. The reader can be whimsical. There’s fashion in reading now almost like in clothes. Is it tight or loose jeans this season? Is it cheating on your partner or making up is this season’s hot topic? The whole world or maybe half of It at least, is writing these days. It’s a lot easier now than it used to be. Just compose something light and frothy and upload to a website and who knows? Fame could arrive in your inbox in a jiffy. Well maybe that’s an exaggeration. I’m feeling vulnerable, I guess, at the prospect of being guillotined in my morning coat and greying locks.

Anyway, I digress. My fate and my future hang in the balance. Ornie is typing furiously these days from  the moment the first reddish rays of summer morning sun light up the horizon and stream through her tiny study. Then she disappears for many hours only to return late and exhausted and shooing her Calico ‘Gypsy’ from off the keyboard. she reconnects with her fictitious people.

 Luckily I live out my  days on a Word Document and don’t have to take up space on a shelf   between the pages of a notepad. My fickle  existence can be terminated at any moment with the click of a keyboard. To my great surprise, I’m still here though awaiting my fate. I’m the guy, thus far, who has squandered his youth and now has to return to take ownership of the Big House without having any bloodline heirs.It’s a quandary. Wonder how Ornie will fix up that mess.

Truth to tell, I envy, yes envy, even in my fictitious state, the lives of some of today’s heroes and heroines who do not have to face the quandary of primogeniture and the first-born son. Emphasis has shifted away from these constraints. Others have taken their place.

All the same, I have to confess that I would feel very out of place if I had to, like many of today’s heros and heroines, spend my time between the covers of a book or on a Kindle reader or Audible talking about myself or being too introspective, trying too hard to change my spots, so to speak. I would also hate to reappear again and again in the next edition or the one after that. How would I keep the reader interested in my fate?

I guess I’m just a relic from the past, a fossil, maybe from a bygone era that people, most people perhaps simply can’t identify with or simply can’t be bothered finding out about.

Is that a metaphorical tear flowing down my aging face? Is my end nigh?

Oh wait! Ornie has just opened my Word Document and is typing furiously. Seems my dust-laden Victorian mores are getting a new lease  of life.