The Writing of One Novel
The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life;
Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fire
Copyright © 2012 by Thos. Kent Miller
All rights reserved
[Note: These posts are sequential, each building on the previous.]
 |
From
"The Hound of the Baskervilles"
—Sidney Paget |
 |
From Allan's Wife
—McDonald Edition |
The Second Chapter
The second chapter of The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life; Or, The Adventure of the
Rose of Fire is entitled "Editor's Note to the Movie Tie-In (Second)
Edition" and is not even two full pages long. It is the second bit of pseudo-front-matter. The conceit of this
chapter is that the [fictitious] original severely abridged printing of the
book had unexpectedly been enjoyed and commented upon by a [fictitious] top radio
talk show host, whereupon the book became a best seller and was quickly made
into a [totally fictitious] movie staring Gene Hackman and Sigourney Weaver with
the title The Rose of Fire.
Apparently I wrote this chapter with a great
degree of verisimilitude—because perhaps ten individuals over the last seven
years have, in all seriousness, asked me why they can't find the movie in Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide or IMDB or if
I knew when it would be released on DVD and other variations on this theme.
For those who haven’t read the novel yet, I
should mention the novel's core [fictitious] chain of events in chronological
order, in order to put this second
chapter into perspective
• I
[fictitiously] unexpectedly came into possession of a copy of Quatermain's
memoir, and it was arranged that I should coordinate its publication. [Note
that it is a copy of the original;
which means that the original might still exist somewhere . . . .]
• That memoir was [fictitiously] originally published in severely
abridged form as a one-shot cheap paperback titled The Rose of Fire. Beyond that, the publisher wouldn't have given it
a second's thought.
• Because
the book [fictitiously] unexpectedly gained a famous media friend, it became a huge bestseller
and was made into a movie.
• As
part of the marketing and hype for the movie, the publisher planned to release
a new pressing of the book, and I exercised my [fictitious] contractual rights
and insisted that the book be published as I originally intended, which made it
a Second Edition. This edition included my original [fictitious] Preface about
how I came across the manuscript in the first place and all sorts of other
ancillary material about the location of the origin of humankind. Titling this
Preface "Editor's Note to the Movie Tie-In Edition" was clearly required
to explain the significant differences between the [fictitious] First and [fictitious]
Second editions.
• Though
the [ficticious] movie failed at the box office, the [fictitious] Second Edition developed
an underground following and eventually came to the attention of some powerful
and/or influential people.
• The
wheelings and dealings of these people resulted in the formal UN-based creation
of a [fictitious] vast preserve in Africa marking the location of the beginning
of the human race, which, of course, necessitated a [fictitious] Third Edition,
the preface to which constitutes the first chapter of the novel, which was
discussed in the previous post, Post No. 7.
Post No. 9 will be relatively extensive
because there is much to say about CRUCIBLE's third chapter entitled
"Preface: 'The Prodigious Phone Call'".
Find used copies of CRUCIBLE at https://www.amazon.com/Great-Detective-Crucible-Life/dp/0809500507 .
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