John Woodwark's fiction page

Scheherazade, the girl who talks herself out of the consequences of a rather unpleasant one-night stand with a murderous royal playboy, is a Middle-Eastern heroine with a global profile, who has provided inspiration in many art forms. However, in bending her story more than a little, while stirring in some accountancy — or at least threatening to do so — I have no hesitation in claiming to have discovered a completely new angle that escaped even the likes of Rimsky-Korsakov.
     Scheherazade Audit started life as a romcom screenplay, entitled Desert Windup, some time late last century. I passed it around indie and wannabe indie production companies, as one does, and they were not entirely dismissive: somewhere I have the correspondence to prove it. However, the location requirements always made it a rather implausible project for anyone lacking a Hollywood budget. (Conversely, someone did suggest that I made it into a stage play; which sort-of seems like a good idea, except that I have no idea how to do it, and who might want to put it on if I did. . . .)
     Then came 9/11. The tragic consequences of that do not need retelling. Suffice it to say that the storm blew and even some of the tiniest, least important, not to say quite trivial leaves in the forest were shaken: in particular, a screenplay set in the Middle East that lacked seriousness and only involved one helicopter suddenly seemed rather out of tune. This I was told explicitly. So I put the script Desert Windup away in a drawer.
     It reappeared a few years later as the novel Scheherazade Audit. This rewriting did not, I regret to say, add much seriousness; but it did avoid the need for even a single actual helicopter. All the actors were fired too, of course: you get quite a sense of power handing out the redundancy notices which turn a screenplay into a novel. I have never done it before (nor have I tried to write a screenplay based on a novel, for that matter), but I can recommend it: although it's more work, you do end up with a text that is full of dialogue and action, and light on unnecessary description.
     I regret to say that the manuscript was not snapped up by a print publisher. But I have been here before and I was not surprised: it isn't category romance, the 'comic novel' is a subjective concept, and publishers don't seem to have my (or perhaps any) sense of humour. Eventually Scheherazade Audit came to rest temporarily at an online imprint called Books for Buck, which I see is still going — and undercutting plenty of others, too. I quote with pride from this publisher's blurb (not written by me):

"Scheherazade Audit" is not a typical romance. With its occasional author-narrator asides, its dope-smoking head of the harem, its aging crew of eunuchs, and its fast-paced story-telling, it's a sort of combination of the Arabian Nights and slapstick, "Audit" is something of the post-modern novel — but in a very good way. Bottom line, it's a lot of fun.

This edition also received a little review from a blogger called Kate Rothwell:
Favorite online fiction read — "The Scheherazade Audit" I haven't finished it yet. Fun author's style — so very not romance voice (voted for best use of single word page. See if you can find it).

Nevertheless, Books for a Buck did not seem an ideal location for my masterpiece, or more likely my masterpiece did not appeal to the majority of Books for a Bucks' readers, who probably expected a 'proper' romance. So, in an amicable way, I withdrew it and sent it for more drawer time.
     Earlier this year (2011) I belatedly realized that Amazon's Kindle and Kindle Marketplace were actually starting to catch on (unlike umpteen previous e-book readers and marketing models). So the drawer was opened again, and Scheherazade Audit pulled out for a substantial revision.
     However I then also realized that the characters did not behave quite like the people of 2011. They were not on Facebook, they did not tweet; they didn't even say "I'm good" to one another. The idea of updating them was toyed with and immediately abandoned: there are already enough books based on e-mails, not to mention films where the dialogue is largely spoken into mobile phones. (That is, perhaps, the future, and it stinks.) So, I simply rebadged "Scheherazade Audit" as a historical novel, by making the Millennium setting — and it's a promising moment for fiction, I think — a little more explicit. Time is now working for Scheherazade Audit, as it becomes ever more historical.
     Have I said enough? Yes. What you need is a sample. But I really hate the modern habit of summarizing vast amounts of plot in a blurb, so as to get the reader to buy, while ensuring that they have to get half-way — or further — through the book before they encounter a plot twist they hadn't been told about already. (Thus it must have been bliss to read The Hound of the Baskervilles week by week in the Strand magazine, with even the critics powerless to ruin it all by exploding the eponymous hound in advance of the denouement.) So I will conclude this blurb by giving you the first and second chapter, which are very short, like the rest (however, there are 194 of them).

1
If you wanted to build the Great Pyramid today, you might find it difficult to get planning permission. It's easy to imagine Cheops' drawings going off covered in hieroglyphics and coming back covered with circles and rude comments in red ink. Considering the size of the plot, says the inspectors' report, the accommodation is outrageously cramped. And very poorly lit. But, on the plus side, they have to admit that sound insulation is well up to modern standards; which is just as well, what with Cairo International Airport being so close.
     From the various Ramses to the vacuous Mussolini, the North African hinterland has been a magnet for big spenders intent on building structures of dubious utility, beyond the reach of meddling bureaucrats. But even the most well-heeled pharaoh, emperor or dictator comes up against the problem of getting utilities connected.
     Of course, a lot of stuff can be brought in by caravan, such as gossip, although a satellite link delivers the news a little more quickly, and you no longer have to make allowance for exaggeration. Depending on which channel you . . . Hmm. Maybe things haven't changed that much after all.
     Back to the fascinating topic of utilities. Energy isn't really a problem. There is plenty of sun ; and lamps at night — or a generator if you're posh. Sewerage? File under energy.
     The real difficulty is water.
2
But if you want to build a home in the desert — rather than somewhere very grand for your remains — then water is where you start. Find a spring, dig a well, or hack out a cistern big enough to catch the flash floods; after that it's a trivial project to construct the palace of your dreams. And, hidden at the centre of what is already a secluded property, better specify a hammam.
     Oh, the joy of a wet stone floor when the air outside dries the skin like cotton-wool! Gloat as you splash about, while hapless travellers pass by clutching small canteens half full of warm water — if they're lucky.
     Oh, the delight, on those rather frequent sunny days, of deep, deep shade, where you can rest tired eyes on damp cobalt-blue tiles with squiggly patterns, and a little fountain wobbles and gleams like a liquid diamond in the light from high-set, pointy windows. Why, the whole thing's an orientalist painting!
     And what do orientalist paintings always contain?
     Naked ladies.

For a very small fee (varied from time to time by Amazon for reasons which I cannot divine) you can now read the rest on your Kindle or other accredited device (terms and conditions apply) by going to this page.

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