Maudlin

Seven years today, Mark McCann died.

Mark was a friend of mine. He died of pancreatic cancer. By the time they knew what it was, he had between a month and two left to live and as much morphine as he could bear to make it easier.

Mark wanted me to take his short story make it a novel, and get it published.
He asked me what I thought of it; the truth? It was a cool steampunk short story. A novel? I didn't know really. It was cute, it was all right. As an overview, I could imagine a front cover, but I couldn't build it beyond its natural length, and felt he was trying to stretch it out. After his death, I found myself facing USB sticks full of bits and pieces he wanted someone somewhere to make mainstream; it needed a professional full time editor; he chose me because I had been published. So had GM, and by a prestigious press too, but that was non fiction. Mark wanted me to make it work for him, and I realised too late that would mean working on his stuff and nothing else for years.

If he had been in his right mind, he would have remembered that I introduced him to my agent, and when said agent rejected his work, he contacted him angry and drunk and turned it into an email quarrel. I was so mortified! It did not reflect well on him at all. How was I to take this work, this work which was good, but not my good, not me, to that same agent and ask him to sell it? And even that was a far away problem. The real issue was that I couldn't make it work. I couldn't take what might be 30,000 words of pleasant steampunk and turn it into between 70,000 and 90,000, not without wringing it out and probably destroying it entirely. And also I wanted to work on my own stuff, already troublesome, already finding it hard.

I should have refused straight out. But how could I when he was dying?

I read that back and see the coward I was. And I hate that idea of myself. But to this day, I am not sure what else I could have done.

Truth is, I don't think my friend knew what he was asking, medicated into as much painlessness as possible. He just knew what he wanted.

Another friend wanted his work in order to see what she could do. After holding on to it for a couple of years achieving nothing with it or anything else, I relinquished all rights to it. He loved her, so it's not the end of the world. But.

Oh Mark, maybe you're in some other world, maybe you've been reincarnated as some wondrous patron of the arts back in Chaucer's day, or some future beauty with all the money and fame and respect you deserve. Or maybe you're the wind, the leaves, the sun, a hero in the fifth dimension, a prince of dreams, I don't know. I'm sorry for not trying hard enough, not saying the right thing.

I am not sorry for failing to give years of my life to your work; I couldn't do that, and that's the honest truth. I can't regret it; if selfish, at least aware of my selfishness.

I'm a believer. I hope you are OK.