Conspiracy of Fire

By John Gardner

Geoffrey has struggled to be accepted as a writer but life has been cruel. His wife walked out with their two children and, at fifty-three, he’s no longer sure the game of life is worth the candle. The Amazonian Amy, his second cousin, is desperate to get a man in her bed and snares Geoffrey. She tells him he is not, as everyone seems to think, a waste of space and works to support him. With her encouragement he plods through a miserably wet day to an agent’s door clutching his manuscript - but things do not go as planned.
Sylvia Cummings is as ruthless as they come and urges her assistant to throw Geoffrey’s manuscript in the bin but Pauline still has to make her mark. She reads Geoffrey’s story, a wild but not impossible challenge to accepted history and it fires her imagination. Was the Great Fire of London really planned? It made sense. A fantastic tale of skulduggery, treachery and murder leading to unimaginable wealth. She sees it’s potential as a Netflix series but would Oliver Stone direct it? Next day she works non-stop to bring Geoffrey’s dream to life - but will he live long enough to enjoy his approaching fame and fortune?
Does he meet his end in the turbulent waters of the River Thames? A sad man beaten by the system. Or does he find love in the welcoming arms of an old flame, a gorgeous younger woman who believes in him?
There are two endings to this story. The reader gets to decide his fate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Gardner
• Release date: Oct 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370720101

John Gardner

Writing is a passion, as are photography and music, they have defined much of my life.

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Acknowledgments

No book is just the product of the writer’s imagination. Others need to read it to find the bad grammar, spelling errors and typos. Even then, mistakes can persist but to all those who lent an eye, an opinion or a glass of wine. Thank you all.

Copyright John Gardner 2017.

First Published on Smashwords 2017

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

John Gardner reserves the moral right to be identified as the author of this Work.

Geoffrey Bolting, a librarian on the edge, has ideas that challenge written history. His quest to become a published writer takes him to the very edge. His saviours are a beautiful woman from his past and a young, new agent who recognises his talent. But the question burns, will he forever be, a waste of space?

§

He knew literary agents were notoriously difficult to get to. The idea of accepting new clients was akin to asking them to clean up cat sick.

In the past, all seventeen years of it, Geoffrey had tried. He had bought a copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Year Book, the writer’s bible, and studied it. In fact he had fastidiously ploughed his way through it. Read lots of on-line advice on how to get an agent, how to get a publisher. How to succeed as a writer. How to get someone to take him seriously. The ten best things to say, do and write.

All of it had failed.

Six years of writing letters, studying the form, placing his bets on which agent was right for his work, all seven books, but his horse was always the three-legged nag that limped into oblivion. One agent had phoned him and laughed down the line at him. ‘You live where? Kingston? Where in God’s name is that?’ she had said in her plummy, derisive Hampstead voice. ‘Nobody famous ever came from Kingston!’

‘Eadweard Muybridge,’ he had corrected.

‘What?’ She had not waited for an answer. ‘Listen, get an address in Hampstead if you want to be taken seriously as a writer. Oh, and don’t contact me again!’ had been her parting shot before hanging up.

The rejection slips kept coming, including the one from his wife who had left him fourteen months previously, just before his fifty-second birthday, taking their two children to go and live near her sister in Yorkshire. He read her leaving note several times. ‘We’re leaving. Don’t follow us!’ It was well written, concise and to the point. The rejection slips from the publishers and agents at least ran to more than two very short sentences but all with the same bland advice suggesting he buy a copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. Where did they think he got their details? The back page of The Sun?

The study of the book depressed him. He had to submit his manuscript in the way each publisher wanted. There was a basic standard format, so he had read in ‘the bible’ and on various on-line writers’ sites but nobody had told the publishers. It seemed everybody wanted something just a little different. It was confusing and irritating and required a mountain of totally unnecessary work. But he had slogged through it. Geoffrey was nothing if not a slogger. A tenacious, single-minded slogger.

He had to write an attention-grabbing letter of introduction, a riveting CV outlining why he was uniquely qualified to write his novel. This had been the one bit that had caused more thought than any other. He considered it over and over and the only answer he could come up was that he was uniquely qualified to write it because he thought of it. It was the product of his brain. Was there another answer? There was a long to-do list. He had to condense his longest work, a one hundred thousand word manuscript, into one page so that the publisher or agent could decide if they liked the premise. Specialists were employed by publishers to do this so why was he being asked to do it? And why was this needed as they only wanted to read the first ten